We head back to the party after talking with Sakuya.
There’s a lot on my mind, so I want to talk to the others, but we’re still in Ayane’s house. In the palm of Sakuya’s hand. After seeing her for the first time, I feel like I don’t need to be wary of her, but at the same time, don’t feel like I can really trust her.
But is my Intuition not telling me anything because I don’t need to be wary, or because she’s so dangerous that even my Intuition can’t do anything about her? In any case, unless I know for sure, I don’t feel like I can talk freely here.
So… I’ve greeted Sakuya… My mother-in-law, but I feel like it would be a waste to just leave already, so I’m staying to get more acquainted with people here. I greeted the main people, the branch managers, but I don’t think I’ll be able to greet Aki and Maki’s grandfather, the head of the dungeon association.
That leaves me with two categories of people I haven’t greeted. Important business people who have agreements with my mother-in-law, and adventurer teams that mainly work in the mid rank dungeon and have Sakuya’s trust to a certain extent.
The former are too much for me, so I’m leaving that completely to my fiancees.
But since Ayane would feel lonely by herself, I’m bringing her with me.
“I’d appreciate it if you came along.”
“I don’t mind. I know all the adventurer teams here. Leave it to me.”
Apparently when Aira helped Ayane grind, it was mostly in the mid rank dungeon, so she met adventurers that way. And I follow her as I think about how she’s being uncharacteristically reliable.
“Hello, Blazing Blade.”
“Ah, Ayane!”
“It’s been a while. How are you doing?”
“You’re all dressed up. You always look so cute.”
“Hawawa, let me go!”
Ayane is surrounded like a small animal in a cage of starving beasts. They start rubbing her cheeks and hugging her, attacking her with affection, but it makes sense that such a nice honest girl is popular with other girls.
“So you’re Shouta Amachi. I’m sorry about my wives, but they were worried about her because she suddenly stopped going to the dungeon.”
“Hello, you can call me Shouta. And you’re… Touya Shintou, right?”
“Yes, call me Touya too. I heard about you from Shuu, he has high hopes for you. He invited us to watch those videos too. I was shocked to see those monsters in my old haunt.”
“That’s kind of embarrassing. From your point of view, it must’ve been hard to watch the way I fight, right?”
“Well, it is rough and too dependent on stats and skills, but that’s a path everyone walks. If you feel embarrassed by it, you’re going to keep growing.”
“Thank you.”
Then Touya tells me about the mid rank dungeon, as a thank you for the information about the rare monsters. Some of it is very interesting.
Like for example, skills that never drop even if you can see them with Appraisal.
I know about Limit Break, but apparently there are more. Or maybe they just have an incredibly low chance of dropping. In any case, I definitely want to check it out.
Then we have to pry Ayane away from Touya’s wives, because they don’t want to leave her. But apparently friendly teams like Blazing Sword are rare. I say hello to a few others, and they all treat Ayane roughly and glare at me. We can’t even greet any of them properly.
But the last team we greet is also friendly. The rare all girl team Azure Mist.
“Hello, Shouta Amachi. I am the leader of this team, Kaori Ikazaki. You can call me Kaorin, like our fans.”
She says with a smile bursting with playfulness.
The members of Azure Mist are all either A or B rank, so they’re apparently pretty strong. And this team is supported by not just adventurers, but regular people too. All girl teams are pretty rare, but there’s a reason why this one exists.
Firstly, as people level up, their bodies ‘evolve’. That means that the more people level up, the more beautiful they become, and the easier it is to maintain their figure. That’s a theory anyway.
If this is true, it could be valuable as a tool to recruit adventurers, so some all girl teams were put together as an experiment. Azure Mist gained attention because it’s the best model case among them.
I heard all this from Aki and Maki.
I also heard that their figure and the general aura around them is completely different compared to before they were adventurers. Well, to them, this is dark history. They don’t want people to see their old selves, so I doubt they’d let me see them too.
“No, I’m not really a fan, so I’ll call you Kaori. And you can call me Shouta.”
“Fufu, really? I saw your videos. I was surprised to see those things in that dungeon, but I wonder if you’re going to expose secrets in our dungeon too.”
“Yes, that’s the plan.”
“I look forward to it. If you went around greeting them, I assume you know that the teams connected to the Houjouin family are unpleasant. They hog rare monsters and treasure chests.
Rare monsters are about Luck, so there isn’t much that can be done there, but hogging treasure chests hurts revenue. I look forward to you doing something about it.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
According to Kaori, the parties I went around greeting are all under Ayane’s siblings, and they didn’t like that I got invitations. And they liked even less that I said no.
After exchanging some more information, we shake hands. And Ayane runs over here after being mobbed by the girls.
“Are you done, darling?”
“Yes. Good job Ayane. Let’s go back.”
“See you later, Kaorin.”
“Later, Ayane.”
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Blazing Sword -> Blazing Blade
Thanks for the treat.