“Kazuma, hurry, we must find some monsters! Ideally, a great many weaklings! | want to try my new staff!”

Such was the request Megumin suddenly brought me.

Hmm.

“Sure. | haven’t had time to try out the skills | learned since we went on that Zombie Maker quest. How about we find something nice and easy to do?”

“No, let’s do something profitable! | used every eris | had to pay my tab, so | can’t afford lunch today!”

“| say we should find a powerful opponent! Something of immense strength, whose every crushing blow will feel sooo good...!”

Sheesh. | knew everyone wanted to do their own thing sometimes, but this was ridiculous.

)

“Well, let’s see what’s on the board first and go from there.” At my

suggestion, we all crowded around to see the quests. Where...

“What’s going on? There’s almost no posts here.” Usually there was hardly space on the board, but today only a few pieces of paper hung there.

And what was there was...

“Kazuma! I’ve found our quest! A giant bear called Blackfang has been spotted in the mountains...”

“No way! What’s going on here? All these quests are, like, impossible!” Everything on the board was wildly out of our league.

A Guild employee approached us.

“Ahem... I’m very sorry about that. A person appearing to be one of the Demon King’s generals recently took up residence in a nearby castle, and, well... all the weaker monsters are keeping out of sight, meaning much less work for adventurers. A division of Knights will be sent from the Capital next month to deal with the emergency, but until then, we expect mostly high-level quests...”

The penniless Aqua gave a cry of despair at the employee’s apologetic words. “Wh-whyyyyy?!”

For once, | had to agree with her.

“Arrrgh... Why’d that stupid general have to move in now? | don’t care what rank he is, if he’s undead, then just leave him to me!” Aqua grumbled with

brimming eyes as she flipped through the classifieds.

Everyone else seemed to be feeling the same way. I’d never seen so many adventurers drinking in the middle of the day. The mood was despondent.

What did a general of the Demon King want out here, anyway? Most of the adventurers in Axel weren’t that much stronger than we were. Of course there were some more powerful parties—but even they weren’t all that impressive.

Axel was a starter town, a place people came to begin their careers. A general of the Demon King was the sort of enemy you’d expect to encounter at the end of a game, not the beginning. We could barely handle some overgrown frogs. The entire town together probably wasn’t a match for whoever was in that castle.