GalaxyTL
* * *
Arc 6 begins.
Will Emi be able to become an adventurer after all?
——
“Hmph! What’s wrong, hurry up and take out your weapon, cursed child! You want to be an adventurer, don’t you? You must have a knife or two on you, right?”
“…….”
This is the adventurer’s guild branch office in the town of Yoshanka.
Yoshanka is a town built on a windy cliff, and all the buildings are made of stone.
Naturally, the floor is also paved with hard stone, but the cursed child who was provoked… Emi, a black-haired, black-eyed 7-year-old girl, lightly kicks the floor with her bare toes, checking its sturdiness.
……With the same careful touch as if handling a soft clay sculpture.
“No weapon.”
“Hah? You mocking me, you brat! An adventurer’s job is a matter of life and death! What were you planning to do without a weapon?”
The boy… Kamasse, a magic swordsman with beautiful short silver hair and sharp eyes, sneers at Emi.
It’s around 10 o’clock in the morning, just when adventurers head out for quests, leaving the guild quiet.
Inside the adventurer’s guild, there are only a few adventurers on break, a few clients, and the guild staff – the receptionist and the branch vice-chief.
Apart from the whooshing sound of Yoshanka’s characteristic sea breeze hitting the building, there is no other noise, so the provocation rings out clearly.
However, no one reprimands Kamasse for drawing his sword against the unarmed Emi.
Emi is a black-haired, black-eyed cursed child.
There are very few people who would help a cursed child.
Even Pilitza, the receptionist who should have stopped the commotion inside the guild, just yawned while resting her cheek on the counter, watching how things would unfold.
That cursed child had made the outrageous demand to Pilitza to register as an adventurer, despite being a cursed child.
There was no law against refusing her.
Moreover, somehow that cursed child even had a letter of recommendation from the former renowned adventurer, Baron Martz Salar.
However, she is a cursed child.
Filthy and intimidating.
Pilitza would rather not get involved if possible.
So Pilitza crumpled up the letter of recommendation into a ball and threw it in the trash, then ordered Emi to leave the guild immediately.
Because she is a cursed child.
A letter of recommendation from “The Sword Guardian” Baron Martz?
That must have been a forged fake, no doubt about it.
If the chief of this branch office, Dakkante, an old friend of Baron Martz, had been present, Emi would not have received such treatment.
Unfortunately though, he was away on a long business trip.
The only staff at this small branch office were Pilitza and the meek vice-chief who rarely spoke up, so no one objected to her outrageous behavior.
However, Emi did not give up.
With halting words, she desperately pleaded with Pilitza to let her become an adventurer.
In response, Pilitza stubbornly insisted she leave.
The argument, if it could even be called that, went nowhere, with only time passing as the two remained at an impasse. That’s when the magic swordsman Kamasse arrived on the scene.
The receptionist unjustly refusing Emi adventurer registration, and the cursed child insisting and occupying the reception counter.
If the general public saw this scene, who would they judge to be in the wrong? Obviously the cursed child.
Because of course the cursed child is the evil one, no matter that she is still just a small girl.
So to help the receptionist, Kamasse said this to Emi:
An adventurer is a profession of battle.
You have to be strong to do it.
If you truly want to become an adventurer, defeat me here.
This is a test for adventurer registration.
With those words, he drew his sword against Emi.
To strike her down, intimidate her, and ensure she never utters such nonsense as wanting to be an adventurer again.
While Kamasse’s adventurer rank was still only 4th, his combat ability alone was said to be on par with 2nd rank already.
He had studied sword techniques of the Sword Saint style from a young age, and also learned magic at a prestigious magic academy. His knowledge was extensive.
At only 14 years old, he was looked up to by his peers, touted as someone who would undoubtedly reach the special rank adventurer level.
However, his mentality had not matured enough.
He was unbeatable against his peers, in other words, arrogant.
Anything he disliked, he would simply crush with his strength.
That nasty side of him reared its head in this situation.
It emerged.
And his nose…
Was broken by Emi.
Clean off.
* * *
Before he knew it, Kamasse was staring up at the branch office’s ceiling.
He didn’t clearly understand what had happened.
However, the cold feeling of the stone floor, and the pain in the back of his head from being slammed onto it, made him realize he had been literally “defeated.”
The one who did it was the cursed child he had mocked earlier.
In an instant too fast for him to comprehend, she had closed the distance as he tried to strike her. With that momentum, she jumped a bit, grabbed his neck with her tiny hand, and slammed him to the floor.
“…..’defeated’.”
The cursed child muttered that as she held Kamasse’s neck pinned with her small palm.
It was an adorably small voice.
Yet her expressionless face and deep black eyes filled Kamasse with dread.
“……!?”
As Kamasse tried to shake the cursed child off, he noticed with confusion that his body wouldn’t move, as if pinned to the floor.
To explain, that too was Emi’s doing.
【Peel】, the ability to strip away any dirt.
If she could do that, then the opposite phenomenon of 【Adhesion】 should be easy as well.
Thinking that, Emi devised this technique.
Kamasse’s body had been magically stuck to the floor.
For now, this technique required Emi’s body to make contact to activate, but once used, the effect would persist for a while.
Leaving the struggling and confused Kamasse behind, Emi toddled up to the reception counter and conveyed the same request to the dumbfounded Pilitza that she had been repeating:
“……Please register me as an adventurer.”
No weapon? Dam, why didn’t she take one of those spines with her