Published: March 21, 2026
About an hour earlier———
"This puts you at yellow rank. No complaints about going into the labyrinth now, right?"
What Akira was holding in his hand and fanning out in front of Yamato was the stack of request forms the guild had issued to him just two hours earlier.
There were five of them.
Each one bore the stamp that indicated the request had been fully completed.
"Y-You really deliver on your promises, Akira."
Yamato's face twitched at Akira's smug expression.
Mile, taking care of another adventurer at the reception desk beside them, also widened her eyes in surprise.
Even though the requests came from the guild, they were just the backlog of menial tasks the guild had funneled to Akira.
One of them was the kind of assignment that had made plenty of rookie adventurers cry before: giving an old, crotchety man a shoulder rub. Even that request Akira finished in just ten minutes.
On top of that, the request form even included a note saying that from now on, the guild should forward all such requests to Akira.
"What kind of magic did you use to satisfy that old man?" Yamato muttered.
Akira tilted his head and then said as if it were obvious.
"Magic? I didn't use any magic. I just talked to the old man, rubbed his shoulders, and got him to stamp the form. ...Honestly, what does it mean it takes a week? It was done in ten minutes."
Yamato, who couldn't bring himself to scold Mile gaping with her mouth open and ignoring the other adventurers in their care, forced a smile and changed Akira's dog tag to yellow.
"What about the other requests? There was house demolition, errands for those aunties, ideas for creative dishes...what else?"
Akira took the yellow dog tag and put it around his neck.
Because the requests had been easy to him, he didn't feel any real sense of having ranked up.
"Oh, right!"
Yamato, who had been skimming the request forms, spoke up.
He felt everyone's gaze turn to him. Excited, he leaned forward as if he didn't notice.
"The cleanup of that trash house! How did you clear that out?"
Akira nodded and put a hand to his chin.
He wasn't particularly neat, but he did have odd bouts of cleanliness — and seeing a genuine "trash house" for the first time in his life had stunned him.
"Well, the house demolition was simple. The client could use a bit of barrier magic, so I had them cast a noise-blocking barrier, then I just broke all the load-bearing pillars and that was it. Apparently you only needed to make the house collapse, so that was enough."
Akira looked up absentmindedly and counted off on his fingers.
(Yamato's mental interjection—How did you break those pillars? I could have sworn one of that house's pillars was thicker than a person's height—was of course unheard by Akira, and Akira certainly wasn't going to admit he shaped shadow magic into a blade and sliced them clean.)
With no one to call him out, Akira continued.
"The errands for those aunties were the easiest. After eating out every day with Amelia, I remembered the restaurants, their prices, and distances, and planned the shortest, cheapest routes."
At that, Yamato buried his face in his hands.
(No one remembers that stuff naturally! And those aunties always ask for amounts nobody can handle alone; that request was supposed to be for a party of adventurers. Someone must have posted it by mistake!)
Unaware of Yamato's internal panic, Akira folded another finger down.
"As for the creative dish ideas...well, I cook myself, so I gave them advice based on my experience and, for some reason, they started taking lessons from me."
Akira tilted his head as if wondering why, and Yamato slammed his forehead against the reception desk.
(An adventurer with cooking skills better than restaurant chefs? Open a shop already! And the chef who posted that request is a pretty famous cook in this city!)
Luckily Yamato hadn't said that aloud; otherwise his voice would already be hoarse.
When Yamato raised his head, Akira looked at him with the sort of pitying expression one gives to someone a bit unfortunate. That made Yamato wince inwardly.