“Oh, an owlbear?”

As the name implied, an owlbear was a magic beast with an owl’s head and brown bear’s body. Generally, owlbears were monsters around level 15. They were common magic beasts that lived in forests around the world. Fairly apex predators, they lived as the free-spirited kings of their forests. How nostalgic. I’d fought one of these before. That must’ve been back when I chased after Ruti, who’d gone charging into the forest looking for some friends of hers who’d gotten lost.

That was around when I was seven. Nowadays, I could easily handle one, but…

“Well, it’s not like there’s a reward for it.”

I nimbly hopped down from the tree. Animals and low-intelligence monsters like magic beasts could instinctually sense when their opponent was stronger. The owlbear and I exchanged glances before it slowly moved back, turned around, and ran off into the dark of the woods. I didn’t bother chasing after it and just climbed back into my sleeping bag and slept until morning.

* * *

The next day, after I’d finished gathering what I needed, I returned to town to find it in an uproar for some reason. I tried asking the guard at the gate if anything had happened.

“What’s up?”

“Oh, Red, you staying safe?”

“Yeah, same as always. Things seem a bit troubled here, though. Something happen?”

“There were some adventurers who got attacked by an owlbear. They’re currently trying to put together a group to go take care of it, so the mountains will probably be off-limits until it’s been sorted.”

Oops. That owlbear had probably stumbled across me after attacking some adventurers nearby.

“Really? How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Who knows. It’s pretty rare to have something as big as an owlbear show up around here. It’ll probably be either our ace B-rank party or else a big group of thirty some odd people.”

Adventurers are categorized into six ranks from S down to E. The ranks are based on parties rather than individuals, so when the makeup of the party changes, so, too, does its rank. Generally speaking:

E: Rookies who just registered

D: A party that can survive in the wild where monsters roam

C: A party that can resolve a crisis that endangers a village

B: A party that can resolve a crisis that endangers a town

A: A country-level party that can resolve a crisis that involves multiple cities

S: A legendary-class party that is mobilized to deal with crises threatening a continent or the world

Generally speaking, most towns have around one to three B-rank parties that form the peak of the local power-dynamic pyramid. Only really big cities like the kingdom’s capital would have an A-rank party. Right now, all the best adventurers were active on the front lines fighting the demon lord’s army.

Incidentally, I’m D rank. It can’t really be helped, since I basically just collect herbs, and if I ended up rising to B rank here, I’d stand out too much and people might figure out who I was. Worst-case scenario, if that happened, it would cause problems for the head of the knights, my benefactor. As such, I was content leaving the owlbear to other adventurers.

“I guess I’ll have to sit tight in town for a while.”

At least I was able to finish my business in the mountains first. I headed to the Adventurers Guild to sell my wares.

* * *

My earnings this time totaled around ninety payril.

After returning to my room in the town house where I was living, I did the regular maintenance on my bronze sword, though I had only been using it to cut plants lately. I also repaired my traveling clothes that had gotten torn up from hiking.

I had raised my Repair skill a fair amount. Back when we were fighting on the frontier, before we’d set out for the capital, it had proved pretty useful. As time went on, though, everything became reparable via magic, so it had become redundant along the way. But I didn’t have any mage acquaintances now who could use Repair magic, and armorers cost money. Since I was saving to open my own apothecary, it was definitely a valuable skill.

Having finished the upkeep of my gear, I used some eggs and potatoes from my pantry and the green nuts I brought back from the mountains to make a dinner of salad and mashed potatoes.

When that was done, I used the shared washroom to rinse myself off and went to bed.

This wasn’t some battlefield with monster corpses strewn everywhere, a dragon’s nest with scores of the creatures, or a frozen snowy mountain. It was just a small room with a roof, so I could close my eyes in peace.

Once I saved up enough money, I would build my own house and operate the apothecary from it. I’d set up a garden in the back to cultivate some of the more important medicinal herbs, too. It wouldn’t be some huge success, but there wouldn’t be any life-or-death battles or nerve-racking conspiracies to deal with. That was the sort of life that could be had here in Zoltan.

This was my second chance after getting pushed out of the Hero’s party.

* * *

Three days later, a team of twenty-seven adventurers was assembled to hunt down the owlbear, and they ventured off into the mountains bolstered by cheers from the townsfolk at their backs. During that time, I was fishing at a nearby river and selling what I caught.

The work earned me eight payril. It was possible to get a room and two meals a day for only one, so eight payril for three days’ effort was a decent haul. In order to open my own apothecary, though, I would need 1,730 in funds.

I was gradually saving up, but between the general cost of living, buying preserved rations in order to go out to the mountains to gather herbs, and maintaining my gear, my actual profit for a single trip was only about thirty payril. At that rate, I was going to have to keep doing this for another six months.

“Well, not that that’s the end of the world.”

There was no particular rush. No impending peril loomed, so I could just take my time.

I was lying on my bed and reading a book I’d borrowed from the library to kill some time. It was shortly after noon when I heard a knock on the thin door to my town house.

“Coming.” I tucked a bookmark between the pages and hung my bronze sword from the belt at my waist as I headed to the entrance. Readying my sword was a habit I had picked up from my old quests.

There had been several occasions when we’d been attacked in our sleep back in those days. The experience made it tough to sleep if I wasn’t ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Even after I was ousted, I still wasn’t really comfortable turning in without a weapon close at hand. It felt weird to be unarmed when a gust of wind blew by, too.

Living the slow life meant I would need to do something about those habits, though…

“Who is it?”

I opened the door to see Megria, one of the employees of the Adventurers Guild. Behind her stood a man wearing fancy-looking armor along with what was clearly his party.

“I’m sorry to bother you while you’re resting, Red.”

“Oh, Megria. What is it? And Albert, too.” The armored man, Albert, twitched at the offhand greeting.

“Show some respect, D rank.”

Albert was one of only two B-rank adventurers in town. There were no higher-ranking adventurers, and the other B rank, Rit, only worked solo. Thus, Albert’s party was considered the ace team of the Adventurers Guild in these parts.

“…Right, Albert, sir. So what brings you here?”

Albert moved toward me, beaming as he patted me on the shoulder.

“I’ve heard stories about you. You specialize in gathering medicinal herbs and know more about the mountains than anyone, yes?”

“I do my best.”

“My party is headed to take out the owlbear. It’s not something we would normally handle, but the first suppression team failed, so there’s no one else who can deal with the beast.”

Oh, so they got routed, huh? With that many people, they should have been able to win, but maybe the group got divided along the mountain trails. This was the first I’d heard of them losing, and noticing that, Albert smiled condescendingly.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard? I guess dealing with an owlbear is something far beyond someone with your skills, but the mountains are the pillar of your livelihood, right? You should really pay more attention to stuff like that. If you ask me, that sort of mindset is why you’re an eternal D rank.”

What was with him lecturing me out of nowhere? I just nodded perfunctorily as I glanced at Megria to move things along and get to the point.

“Sir, the time.”

“Ah yes, time is of the essence.”

The assembled party members nodded, too. It was really just a one-man crew centered around Albert. He was the only one with a noticeably high level. The rest didn’t even meet B-rank standards. Other adventurers in the party rarely even spoke unless they had permission from Albert.

“Like I said before, we’re headed out to take care of the owlbear, but we’ve hardly done any herb-gathering jobs. We don’t really know much about the mountains.”

“I see. So you wanted a guide?”

“Yes. We’re more than capable of the actual hunt ourselves, of course. But I don’t want to spend days chasing something like an owlbear. If we can get this done faster with you as a guide, then all the better.”

“But I’m just a D rank, right? Wouldn’t it be better to ask one of the adventurers in the first expedition that failed?” A look of contempt crossed Albert’s face at my words.

“Huh? This is your chance, isn’t it? All you have to do is guide us, and you’ll get a nice accomplishment you can point to. You might even be able to get to C rank out of it. What are you so scared of?”