Chapter 264 – [15th Round] The Inconvenient Truth

“Mollan~?”

“Mullan-Mullan~?”

While in the middle of the dungeon, we watched a friendly conversation between Grand Master Mollan and the slime from the toilet.

I thought Sieg would rush us to leave, but he calmly waited until they finished.

Was it possible that respect for the master had arisen in him too?

Everything went well after that.

Sieg quickly defeated the middle boss, Timid Slime, and then defeated the final boss, Bold Slime, with a little effort.

He reached level 37 in just two days!

Compared to my 1st round, his progress was quite fast.

“Let’s go to the Holy Kingdom!”

Our party decided to leave the Dumpling Kingdom and make our way to the neighboring Holy Kingdom to recruit Saintess A.

The last time I saw her, Saintess A became a regent, ruling the united Northern Continent in my place.

Back then, she was an extremely ambitious woman…

I wondered if she was still the same now?

“Are you a hero? Help! My father is sick!”

After we cleared the creepy dungeon with slimes and headed to the capital of the Dumpling Kingdom to stock up for our travel, we were stopped by a young girl who seemed to have been waiting for us.

This was why I didn’t use roads.

It would be more profitable to go through the forest and deal with the monsters living there, helping all of humanity.

They could assault passersby, after all. There was no glory or reward, but it was more important than the small side quests given by random citizens.

But these were just my own opinion.

Sieg, the leader of our group, examined the girl from head to toe and smiled at her.

“Dear young girl, please tell us what’s wrong.”

“Okay…” She whimpered.

The girl began to tell her story with tears in her eyes.

Her father, a hunter, was seriously injured during a fight with an orc.

She wanted to hire a healer, but it was too expensive for them. Therefore, she decided to use traditional medicine, purple herbs, that grew only in dense forests.

“But you can’t collect them because there are terrible monsters all over the woods?”

The girl nodded in confirmation.

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you!”

The leader of our squad was Sieg.

I didn’t really like his decision, but I had grown accustomed to such actions after spending ten years dealing with the spontaneous decisions of my companions.

How could I forget the pain I suffered throughout my 1st round?

Hence, I didn’t interfere.

I wasn’t a hero now, but Hero Sieg’s “companion.” I would respect his judgment.

However…

“So your father can be cured?” I asked the girl.

It wasn’t necessary to go to the forest for herbs. Purple herbs were just a remedy anyway.

It didn’t matter how we helped her father heal.

“Y-yes, but there I don’t see any saintess in your group. One could cure my sick father…”

“I’m a shaman.”

“Wow! That’s a rare occupation! Please help me collect herbs with your power! My father is very sick…”

“And I have spirits that can heal.”

“…”

“Sweet girl, please take me to your father. This is usually a paid service, but for your sake, I will make an exception.”

I didn’t know how deplorable his condition was, but there was no patient that couldn’t be healed for a former saintess who could resurrect even a person who died long ago and was left without a body.

The girl smiled awkwardly and stepped back.

“Oh! I just remembered I have an urgent appointment. I have to go! Dad, don’t worry, I’ll cure you somehow! Farewell, Hero!”

She ran away.

She was only level 2. There was no way she could hide from us, but we didn’t chase after her, for our party leader didn’t move.

“What just happened?”

I tried to come up with the simplest explanation for my naive friend.

“The official name of the purple herb that young lady wanted to find is Celebrity, a rare poppy that only grows in the wild. Although it is used as a pain reliever, it is also the highest class aphrodisiac. It’s as expensive as it is rare and effective. Need more explanation?”

“So it’s a top-class pain reliever…”

My friend’s incompetence was phenomenal.

“The girl tried to deceive us. Having invented the story about her father, she tried to get expensive herbs for free. I don’t know if she even has parents at all.”

“I disagree, Marquis. Maybe she really did have an urgent appointment!” Lanuvel intervened.

Patience, I needed patience. This was not my squad …

“Ahem, Miss Lanuvel, what kind of meeting could be more important than a sick father?”

“Um… Ah! A date! Even if her father is sick, he probably can last a few more days, but everything would be over if her boyfriend breaks up with her!”

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

However, I didn’t want to talk to Lanuvel anymore, so I remained silent. Sieg had the last say on our next move anyway.

“Lanuvel is right.”

‘Are you out of your mind?’

“Of course, Hero! I think you made the right decision!”

After always lecturing him, she praised Sieg for the first time in two days.

That was already a sign.

“Such a sweet girl couldn’t possibly lie to me. Of course, I don’t believe in her excuse about an urgent meeting. It seems to me that Marquis Sosiris frightened her, causing her to run away.”

So this was my fault?

I spoke to her affectionately with the smile of the Righteous Hero, but was scared off? None of this made sense.

‘Hey, cowardly wife, don’t look away.’

“Well… That is a very convincing assumption. Her running away because of her fear of you isn’t that far-fetched.”

‘I can’t believe you even went that far. That doesn’t help at all!’

“Sieg! I’ll follow the girl and find out where her house is. Collect the purple herbs that grow only in the dense forest for now. Meet me at the fountain in the city square at sunset!”

Lanuvel soared into the sky using flight magic and followed the girl.

Ah. Just like in my early days.

How could she leave the squad without the Hero’s permission?

‘Hey! Sieg! Say something.’

“We must hurry. There isn’t much time left before sunset. Leave the girl to Lanuvel. We’ll go collect the herbs! Marquis, help us locate them using earth and wind spirits. Sylvia, please collect them as soon as he finds them.”

He obediently followed her plan.

“You heard that, right? Get to work.” I told the Earth Spirit King, who was hiding in my groin area.

After that, I gently massaged my temples with my fingers. I felt like my blood pressure had risen.

And all because of my stupid friend!

The time had come to discipline the party by punishing Lanuvel, who willfully detached herself from us.

“As you wish. You sound a little like a real hero now, at least.”

Princess Sylvia, whom I thought had changed for the better, agreed with Sieg.

Despite the fact that the Elf Kingdom had changed a lot, and the elves now received early education, it seemed that their natural stupidity still remained.

I concentrated and called Boris, who was waiting in the distance.

“Master? Is something wrong? I saw Lanuvel leaving your squad.”

“You did well noticing that. Follow that bitch.”

“As you command.”

I found the herbs at Sieg’s request, but it wasn’t me who exerted effort for it, but the Earth Spirit King. No, more precisely, it was the spirits at the very bottom of their social hierarchy.

In fact, I didn’t even need Sylvia and her stupidity.

I could harvest all medicinal herbs in this forest by mobilizing the spirits. I wouldn’t even have to go deep into the forest and fight mosquitoes since they simply collected and delivered the items to us.

Regardless, I didn’t intervene and acted in accordance with his instructions.

“I finally witnessed my husband’s patience again. Can’t you be this patient at night?”

“You can leave if you don’t like it.”

Even without the cowardly demoness, there were enough heating pads around me to relieve my stress.

“Even though you’re being mean, I know it’s just because you’re expressing a lot of stress. During times like this, I advise you to enjoy your wife’s warm embrace.”

“Mollan~”

Master Mollan told me to agree, leaving me with no other choice but to do so.

I wrapped my right arm around Ssosia’s narrow waist and pulled her to me, enjoying her cowardly tenderness.

My mind calmed down a bit.

“Miss Sophia, with all due respect, are they real?” Sylvia cautiously asked Ssosia, looking at her chest enviously.

Elves that weren’t flat-chested were extremely rare.

“Do I need to answer that?” She replied.

“No… I can figure it out just by looking at the expression on your husband’s face. Hmm… I need to get married soon.”

Sylvia didn’t question Ssosia’s form.

Not all elves were the same.

There were ugly elves, fat elves, muscular elves…

Of course, purebred elves couldn’t have a body as prominent as Ssosia, which defied common sense.

I could even argue that her figure was contradictory to the foundations of genetics.

Consequently, Sylvia, a royal “Arch-Elf” with pure blood, had neither dreams nor hopes.

“I think I gathered too much…”

Sieg, the weakest in the squadron, voluntarily became our porter. The B-ranked Hero was sweating noticeably because of the bag of herbs’ weight.

If it was that hard, he should just save up some money and buy a space bag.

If I were to describe this situation using RPG terms, then…

[Gathering herbs: 4713/5]

It would be something like that.

The diligent lower spirits gathered every single purple herb available in this forest.

Weren’t there too many of them to be labeled rare?

But they were indeed uncommon for ordinary herbalists, considering they grew under boulders and in places where strong monsters lived, making it difficult to harvest them.

After that, we went to the town square to meet up with Lanuvel, who was already waiting for us when we got there. Pretending to be sweet, she waved her arms over her head.

“Here! Here!”

Sieg waved back.

“Did you find the girl’s house?”

“No, unfortunately, I didn’t.”

“Eh! What should we do now? I collected so many herbs…”

As if expecting such an answer from him, she swiftly replied. “I have a good idea! Sell them in the market for a low price! That way, the girl will be able to buy them and heal her father.”

“Oh! Good idea!”

That was just laughable.

Sieg naively believed that a level 200 mage missed a level 2 girl, and she offered to get rid of the herbs at a low cost, which was tantamount to just throwing them away.

In that case…

“You must have spent a lot of energy carrying the herbs, so why not have a snack? My treat.”

I made an offer the hungry B-ranked Hero, who hadn’t eaten since dawn because of Lanuvel, couldn’t refuse.

“If it’s the Marquis’s treat, then I gratefully accept your offer!”

I went to the nearest street vendor.

“Give me the four dishes that that great pretender ordered from you not so long ago.”

“Great pretender? Oh! The lovely lady is here again! Please wait a bit, sir. It will be ready soon.”

After finishing our food from one food stall, I took Sieg to another.

And I made the same order.

“Give me the same order this great pretender ate this afternoon.”

“This afternoon? Oh! Miss Lanuvel, I see you’ve brought your friends to our shop. What you ate just a while ago was pretty spicy, wasn’t it? Please sit down and give me a moment! I’ll work wonders with my seasonings!”

We repeated it over, and over, and over …

Sieg, who at first didn’t attach much importance to my words, began to notice that something was wrong.

And finally…

“Lanuvel, you were looking for a girl in town, weren’t you?”

I asked her a question as an ultimatum.

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