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I had talked a lot with Julia while we were having tea with sweets and pastries, we began to think about the many things we would do from now on that I was here. She really needed somebody like me, this small duchy only had a single B-Rank Adventurer, and she wasn’t even present here as of now, as she was killing off monsters from a faraway village.
“The B-Rank Adventurer, Titania is the only Adventurer in this small duchy capable of doing something on her own to help us, but she had been very busy lately, going around each town surrounding the duchy because waves of monsters keep showing up. Various dungeons popped out of nowhere recently, so it’s a hassle, and they’re too far away for us to investigate them into detail.” Said Julia. “Sending some of the strongest members of the other guilds would leave my place completely defenseless if something strong enough show up… I can’t investigate as much as I would had wanted.”
“I see, you’ve gotten it pretty hard, princess.” I sighed..
“I am not really a princess, I am a duchess!” Said Julia while pouting. “But I suppose you can call me one if you prefer, Marie… But not in front of other nobles or loyalty…”
“Haha, sorry. It just that you’re cute enough that you fit a princess role…” I said.
“G-Geez! Do you have a thing for women or something? I-I will not fall for petty flattery!” Said Julia while crossing her arms, I think she misunderstood me, but I better not continue this awkward topic and go back to what we were talking before.
“Anyways!” Said Emeraldine, interrupting me. “Titania… This Adventurer, is she the only B-Rank? Are there no A-Rank or S-Rank?” Emeraldine wondered. Her memories of staying in this duchy must be faint of very few, she spent little time being an adventurer when she got here before being kidnaped, sadly.
“Eeeh? A B-Rank Adventurer is already an incredible person, capable of superhuman feats beyond everything… A-Rank and beyond are… very rare, and often too famous for my tiny and poor duchy. They wander the Kingdom’s capital or are somewhere else, probably in high ranked dungeons or big labyrinths to the center of the continent. They’re unbound by nobles and wander across the world as they like… There’s no way I would ever find such powerful people to help me out.” Julia lamented, as she sipped some of the black tea before resuming her speech.
“I am already very lucky to have you four with me. By merely glancing at you with my eyes and my [Mana Detection] Skill I can already tell you’re all incredibly strong… Could you be between C or B Rank in terms of strength despite being lower ranked?”
All of us glanced at one another, as I quickly used Telepathy to speak with them. It was a basic ability that I was able to do by touching them with a small piece of my soul.
We discussed about if we should tell her that we are pretty fucking strong or not, but we decided to be humble in this, all four of us were already B+ Rank in the Status, if not higher if we add my buffs and everything else. However, we had to be humble so we wouldn’t bring too much attention.
“To be honest I have no idea, this classification system also takes into consideration quests and everything else, right? We can’t really estimate how strong we are and… We wouldn’t like to have our Status seen if possible, it is part of our privacy policy.” I said, making it seem as if it were our privacy policy as mercenaries.
“I-I see, I apologize for trying to intrude into your personal information and all of that, I am sure I can trust you already. You seem very capable as well, its not like I will order you to slay a high ranked vampire or a behemoth or something, it is mostly slightly strong thugs or magicians! No worries.” She said. Perhaps she thought we were weak or something and we were ashamed to show our status. Well, that’s for the better. She’s very nice anyways, even if she is assuming that.
“Oh, don’t worry about that, dear.” I said while sipping some tea. “Anyways, me and my group are quite interested in leveling up, finding strong enough monsters is becoming harder. Do you know more information about this dungeon break you’re talking about?”
“Oh, right, yeah.” Julia said while nodding. She quickly took some papers from the pile at her side, as she began to read them attentively while furrowing her eyebrows in full concentration mode. “You see, lately in the nearby towns, four different dungeons appeared around a month ago. We have no idea how they just popped out, but some assume that there was a big fight between natural monsters that left large piles of corpses. You know? Dungeons are born with an excessive amount of miasma that is accumulated in a single place. Monsters for the most part secrete a lot of miasma when they rot away, so when there is a big pile, dungeons show up…”
“Oh, but four at the same time?!” Asked Emeraldine with intrigue. “Isn’t that a bit too much? And… is one of those towns affected inhabited by a few Elves immigrants by any chance?”
“Elven immigrants? No, not that I know…” She said. “Don’t worry, I think the village you’re talking about is far from this danger. Did you live near the duchy?”
“Something like that…” Said Emeraldine, without wanting to elaborate further.
Now that I think about it, didn’t we had a big fight against the Vampires and the guys from the church near that part of the surrounding land of this duchy? Huh, but we didn’t killed any monsters- Ah, right, Catarina did broke the ground a lot. Maybe she ended killing a lot of wildlife like that… Did all those monsters dying there… provoked those dungeons? Oof.
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