We walk up to the guild door and step inside. Over a hundred people—more precisely, adventurers—are sitting around, getting drunk and talking loudly. We enter, and everyone looks at us and goes quiet. Some giggle, since we are still quite young and don't look particularly strong. After all, my body looks like that of a weakling. We walk to the reception, where the man already looks at us as if five‑year‑olds were walking up to him.
"Hey, we'd like to register," I say to the man.
The man looks at me as if I'm far too weak for the adventurer rank, the same look he gives the girls.
"Alright, if you say so. Name and age, please," the man says to the four of us.
He gives the four of us a sheet of paper and we move to the side so we don't block the other adventurers. Then we look at the papers, which simply ask for our names, our age, and which element we control best. I just write down one of the elements I can use, since I can use all of them equally well. Lui writes hers down, and the other two do the same.
Then we're supposed to write down our status as well, but ever since I realized that this system doesn't use real numbers, I can no longer open mine. The three girls open their status and write down all their data.
"How is it that I can still see the status of the others?" I think to myself and just write down slightly increased numbers.
THE VALUES:
Level: 54 Strength: 26010 Mana: 14300 Speed: 8010 HP: 40010 Defense: 10200
"Alright, that should roughly match my data based on the number that's the only thing I see when I open my status," I think, and try once more to open it. But only the number "510100" appears. That's the only number displayed. I close it again and place the paper on the counter next to the three girls' papers.
The man doesn't even read it, since he thinks it's all lies anyway.
"It's true, after all," I think and briefly turn around to look at ten men who are staring at Mori, Lui, and Sür with lustful eyes. Meanwhile, our guild cards are being made. I turn back around and use my detector spell, which detects when someone approaches us with strange or malicious intentions.
Perverts really are everywhere. I sigh in annoyance and wait for the guild cards to be finished.
But just before they're done, the ten men approach the girls and try to grab them—while I've already bound their arms with magical ropes. The girls don't really notice anything, since to everyone around us it looks like I never moved. The moment they entered the detector zone, I dashed forward using magic restraints.
It was far too fast to follow.
What was too fast for normal people took exactly one second. I grabbed the arms of all ten men with perfect timing, tied them together, and then stood back at my original position, acting as if nothing had happened.
Now back to the present, where the man places the guild cards on the reception counter. The four of us take them and smile in satisfaction, while the ten men glare at me. I release the magical restraints before the girls notice. The ten men run back to their seats and pretend nothing happened.
The four of us walk over to a board covered in papers. Written at the top is "Quest Board." I look at two notices: one marked with the lowest rank, F, and one marked with rank E. Since we're starting at rank F, as a group of four we're allowed to accept E‑rank quests.
I take the E‑rank quest that reads: "Kill 20 Mini Killrabbits in the forest behind the city." I take the quest from the board and we go back to the man to accept it.
"We'd like to take this quest," I say to him.
The man stamps the quest and places it into a folder labeled Cro. Every adventurer has a folder—some thick, some thin. We turn around, walk through the guild toward the door, and head outside.
There's still a massive crowd moving through the streets. I look around and notice a small side alley leading outside. I lead the three of them there, and we see a passage that leads out toward the forest mentioned in the quest. I go ahead, and after two minutes we come out on the other side.
I move forward again, and the forest is only one kilometer away.
We head out with smiles and determined expressions, ready to start anew. We reach the forest but don't see any Killrabbits yet, so we enter. The trees stand very close together, and monster footsteps can be heard again and again. The deeper we go, the darker it becomes due to the dense trees.
Suddenly, five goblins appear, though they aren't very strong. Lui jumps forward and casts a water‑stream spell that forms in her hand and shoots toward the goblins like a sniper round. It pierces two of the five goblins, and they fall dead to the ground. Lui jumps back as Sür rushes forward.
"I've never seen Suri (Sür) fight before," I think and step back a little. A powerful but relatively small tornado forms. She hurls it at the remaining three goblins, sending them flying high into the air before they crash hard into the ground.
Suddenly, a loud noise echoes through the forest—it sounds like the roar of an Orc General, a C‑rank monster. The Orc General suddenly appears in front of us, and Mori jumps forward, wanting her turn.
If you ask me, she's by far the strongest of the three. I can't count myself in comparisons like that, since I'm a bit too overpowered for such evaluations, I think.
Mori creates a fire bow with five fire arrows. Along the flaming string hang flame bombs attached to the burning feathers of the arrows. I watch with growing excitement as Mori fires the arrows at the Orc General at unbelievable speed.
An explosion erupts, creating massive wind pressure, and shrouded in a cloud of dust, the Orc General is defeated.
As the dust clears, only the corpse of the Orc General remains. We move on, constantly looking left and right so we don't miss any monsters. Suddenly, we hear the sounds of rabbits—but they sound enraged and look like they could attack us at any moment.
"You three handle this on your own?" I ask in a relaxed voice.
I sit down on a goblin I killed earlier when it tried to sneak up on us from behind while I was asking the question. The girls nod.
"Yes, we can handle it," the three say with determined voices.
I smile happily that they want to take action themselves and not rely solely on me. Of course, if something happens, I'll help immediately. But these creatures aren't very strong, and they're nothing like the enemies I fought at the beginning of the journey when I saved Luna.
These three girls are strong, and they have the potential to become just as strong as—or even stronger than—me. I think about a few things as the girls perform a triple attack combo, combining their magical attacks into one large ice‑flame‑water sphere.
Ice isn't actually the main specialty of any of the three, but I don't pay much attention to it at first.
Only when the magic sphere is launched do I realize something is wrong. The sphere doesn't obey the girls—it obeys the rabbits. I stand up, my eyes glowing red‑purple, and the magic sphere stops in midair.
The red‑purple eyes are Magic Stop Eyes. I deactivate them and kick the sphere toward the rabbits. They panic and try to flee, but 18 out of 20 are caught in the massive explosion.
"I see. They memorized the attacks used against the goblins and the orc and tried to replicate them," I think as I dash toward the last two. Without anyone noticing, I draw my dagger, cut them in half, and sheath it again.
The girls look at me with shining eyes, clearly not expecting something like that from me. By now, my speed is already absurd. Even rabbits that can clearly see and dodge at 100 km/h can't react—my speed is simply too ridiculous to be considered normal.
I walk over to them as if nothing happened and store all the rabbit corpses in my dimensional space. The girls are still staring at me with sparkling eyes. I just look around and grin slightly.
I take out some food from the dimensional space—noodles, but higher quality, also known as "ramen." I give each of them a bowl. Since time stands still inside the dimensional space, I can prepare hot food without any worries.
The girls quickly finish eating, while I eat calmly and at my own pace. They relax, their tense shoulders easing. They even start massaging each other, relaxing more and more as if nothing had happened.
"Apparently, I'm like a life insurance policy to them, which means they don't have to fear enemies," I think as I finish eating.
I stand up while the girls hand me all the ramen bowls. I store them back in the dimensional space I create once again, and we head back to Kimura—the city where we'll be living from now on.