**Day 39 Night Omui Guild**
The workload is dizzying. It drags on day after day, making the exhaustion even worse. This remote frontier guild has never been so swamped that heads spin. So I have to welcome the busyness with open arms. This is the first time fatigue has ever felt so pleasant. Today again, because of a single boy, the guild is stuck in overtime.
Every day from morning till night, merchants flood in with orders for magic stones. The number of visitors grows daily. The sales counter is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with goods and people. Magic stones fly off the shelves, replaced by towering piles of gold coins. For years, Frontier Count Omui-sama desperately advertised, yet chambers of commerce and trade guilds never came. Now they line up, bowing deeply to secure trading permits. The prosperity brings massive profits to both the guild and the town.
For so long, the guild could not even pay proper compensation to adventurers who risked their lives thinning forest monsters and culling labyrinth ones. They fought on with inadequate, mismatched gear despite their skill. Finally, we can repay them. Finally. How many adventurers' lives have we lost over the years? If we had provided proper equipment sooner, recruited more people—how many deaths could we have prevented? How many have we lost up to this day?
Even so, the guild—as Guild Master—must order them to slay monsters, protect residents, defend the town and villages, no matter how dangerous. We cannot say "that's enough." Frontier Count Omui-sama has sent every soldier he can muster, standing at the front himself to protect the border. He lives frugally to support the guild, yet soldiers are never enough. They never will be. Fighting the demon forest and the oldest Great Labyrinth forever—there is no number of troops sufficient. More lives are lost in battle than saved in defense. We cannot even repay those deaths. The frontier held only tragedy and despair. Who could have imagined it would one day laugh with happiness and cry from busyness?
That frontier tragedy is being killed off one after another by a single boy, who even pours the enormous profits back into the town and its people. A boy who appeared at Lv9, slaughtered a vicious pack of Big Green Wolves, and saved my friend's off-duty group. Too low-level even to join the guild, yet he entrusted us with massive quantities of magic stones. The black-haired boy who saved the town—saved Omui-sama himself—from crisis. No one knows him. He says nothing.
The worst monster stampede in guild history. An unprecedented crisis not even in the records. Later we learned it was an orc-king-led horde. Impossible to defeat. The town and surrounding villages would all fall. But black-haired adventurers arrived—young companions of that boy. All with jet-black hair and eyes, high levels, and even rarer skills. Mysterious boys and girls, each absurdly strong. Yet strangers with no ties to this town—probably none to this kingdom—joined the life-or-death defense line. We heard they are all still 16. No one would blame them for fleeing. We wanted to scream at them to run, yet we bowed our heads and begged for help.
We braced for death and hell, enduring long hours. Yet not a single monster appeared. Because that black-haired boy was there. Not one casualty. Because a single boy had slaughtered them all. He took none of the vast weapons or magic stones. As if nothing happened—never boasted, never spoke of it. No one knew until it was over: the worst stampede in history ended with zero deaths, zero injuries, thanks to one boy.
That is the source of this busyness.
Adventurers in the guild now wear gear that makes them look completely different. Equipment and weapons once far below their level are now top-tier, rare pieces with skills—worthy of first-class fighters. Is this really the sight of a poor frontier guild? Everyone who sees it weeps. They cry thinking how many lives, how many comrades could have been saved if we had this gear, these weapons back then. No guild staff could fail to shed tears at that.
The boy handed over this arsenal of weapons and armor as thanks. He left a huge quantity of Lv58-class frog-man harpoons for Omui-sama. Instead of helping us prepare, he single-handedly killed the labyrinth before we could even begin. Single-handedly climbed back from the 100th underground floor. The massive magic stones he brought to the guild. The potions he spread across town to save adventurers, townsfolk, villagers. The huge stock of dirt-cheap clubs he gave weapon shops so even the poor could defend themselves. All of it—one boy. One black-haired boy who changed this entire town.
Never praised. Never honored. Never thanked. Never repaid. Yet he saves everyone.
Only those involved, those who saw it with their own eyes, know.
When we delivered the massive frog-man harpoons to Omui-sama, he wept too. With weapons like that, how many soldiers could be saved? How many citizens? How many lives and troops could have been spared if we had them before? He wept thinking of it, offering thanks to a boy no one knows.
I felt the same. When he handed over the huge arsenal as thanks and vanished despite my protests that it was too valuable, I bowed repeatedly, tears falling.
I will never forget what Omui-sama said then.
—A dying town. A tragedy town. Without anyone noticing, one day it realized it had become happy. We who knew only tragedy had finally witnessed a miracle.
He said it through tears, gazing at the bustling town, the town where laughter never stops.
Never praised. Never honored. Never thanked. Never repaid. Yet he saved everyone. A boy named Haruka. A black-haired boy who smiles with black eyes.
Cursed by bad skills, his level still has not reached 20. Cursed by bad skills, he cannot even join a party. Despite fighting so much, slaying every kind of monster, he cannot reach Lv20. Forced to fight with a wooden staff and cloth clothes, unable to form a party, suffering alone with trash skills.
We cannot repay that debt. We can do nothing for him. Yet he still fights alone, unable to become an adventurer, still uncompensated.
He saved this town. Saved the frontier. Reborn this town and frontier into happiness.
Even if repaying such a debt is impossible, letting him remain alone and unrewarded is unforgivable. He seeks no fame, no status. He acquires everything himself. Yet to the benefactor who gains nothing—what can we do to repay even a fraction?
Surely that boy wants nothing. Surely that boy will never be repaid. What can we possibly do?
Even when he says "I have no money" and appears, all that money flows back into the town—enormous cash, weapons, armor, potions, everything. The town grows rich. And still he fights alone, gripping a wooden staff, wearing only cloth and leather.
No matter how busy, no matter how overwhelming the workload, that one thing never leaves my mind. Today again I am buried in work.
Everyone else has been rewarded and made happy. Yet the one boy who accomplished it all remains unrewarded, unfortunate, still fighting alone… the black-haired boy with black eyes who smiles.
**Day 39 End**