Abnormal Monster Behaviour

‘…It’s still alive after that attack…”

The Maneater Bass had looked like it was completely frozen, but it was in fact, still alive.

It was quite tough.

‘It’s coming towards us!’

‘Help!’

After being freed from the block of ice, the Maneater Bass did not return to the water. Instead, it used its tail to kick itself into the air and jump towards us.

It was a fish who could fight on land. No wonder it was called the Maneater Bass.

However, a fish is still a fish.

What could it do once it had been barbecued?

‘Magic Transfer—Fireball.’

I used all of the surrounding slimes to attack it with a barrage of fireballs.

The dozen or so fireballs hit their target at the same time, and the Maneater Bass went up into flames.

‘Kii…’

Unlike land monsters, the Maneater Bass could not let out its voice in the open air. And so there was no death cry as it fell to the ground.

While it could come back from an ice attack, it could not do the same from a fire attack.

‘Put the Maneater Bass into storage.’

‘Okay!’

The slimes said as they put it in their storage.

It just looked like the slime was eating some grilled fish.

‘All right, let’s go back.’

‘Time to rank up!’

‘But what is a ‘rank up’?’

And so we made our way back to town.

◇

“I’d like to report the completion of a quest.”

I said at the desk, once I had returned to the guild. She looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“Surely… You’re not going to tell me that you already killed the Maneater Bass?”

“Uh, but I did. The slimes worked really hard.”

I said as I passed her my guild card.

She took the card and looked at the crystal ball—her face was filled with surprise.

“You-you really did do it then… Which method did you use this time?”

“Well, since we had trouble finding it, I used a monster corpse.”

She looked at me with a look of dissatisfaction.

Apparently, it was not the answer she had been expecting.

“Uh… You do realize that Maneater Bass are not exactly difficult to find?”

“What? No, it took us a long time to find it. …It was hiding at the bottom of the river and wouldn’t come out.”

“Huh? They are meat-eaters and should be lurking near the surface where they wait for their prey…”

…Did they really?

In any case, she seemed to want to know how I killed it, not how I found it.

“As for how I killed it, it was with fire magic…”

“In other words, there really weren’t many of them in the river right now?”

She said, interrupting me.

It seemed like an important point.

I saw how serious she looked and replied.

“The slimes and I searched for 3 hours without finding a single one.”

“…Thank you for this information.”

She said as she began to hurriedly scribble on a piece of paper. Then she handed it to a different guild worker.

I couldn’t read what it said from where I was, but the paper was red and it seemed like it was urgent.

“Please pass this on.”

“…Understood!”

The guild worker said as they accepted it and then ran off. Then the receptionist looked back at me.

“Well then, you have completed the quest. …Here is your reward.”

She said as she handed me a few coins.

“I’ll also raise your rank as well. …Are you fine with it being raised up to D?”

“…Is there a reason why I wouldn’t want to raise it that much?”

“Well… There aren’t really any demerits, but you won’t be able to accept any beginner quests anymore. But as you’re a B-Rank Scout, you shouldn’t have trouble finding any work.”

Beginner quests, huh…

I did remember seeing that there were quests that had restrictions in terms of your rank.

So I wouldn’t be able to accept quests like that anymore… Well, there wasn’t much point in stealing quests that had been prepared for lower-ranking Adventurers.

While I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle the high-ranking ones, surely I would be able to complete D-Rank quests just fine.

“That’s fine. Raise it to D.”

“Good. Then here is your new guild card!”

She said as she pulled out the new guild card from her desk.

Up until now, the guild cards had been made of something like tin, but this one was made of copper.

By the way…

“You can receive your new guild card so soon after ranking up?”

“Well, in your case, we had discussed it with the other guilds. And they assured me that you would indeed complete the quest, and that we should make the card in advance. …It turned out that they were right.”

So rumors were spreading about me.

I didn’t know which worker at which guild it was… But I was at least thankful to have been able to receive the card so early.

…But now that I think about it, there was something that had been bothering me.

“What were you writing on that red paper?”

“Red paper?”

“When I made the report about the Maneater Bass. You wrote on a red sheet of paper.”

“Oh, you mean the emergency survey slip. …Yes, we are supposed to send those in when monsters have been acting strangely.”

I see.

So it was strange that the Maneater Bass were not near the surface.

“But is some fish being a little shy really a matter of emergency?”

“Yes. …Well, usually it’s 1 out of 10 cases where it turns out to be serious.”

…1 out of 10.

It seemed low, but it was actually quite high.

“If it needs to be investigated, I could help as long it’s part of a quest. I am a B-Rank Scout, after all.”

As for abnormal activity from monsters, it reminded me of the Blue Moon of Salvation and the incident with the magic stones.

It might be easier to deal with it if I joined the investigation team…

“No, we have professionals to deal with it. I think we will leave it to them. …But a request may be put out. It would depend on several factors.”

So they had professionals.

Well, I guess there was no point in tagging along then.

If it turned out that they would launch a large scale attack, then they would probably put out a request.

“Okay. …I really hope that it’s nothing.”

I said before leaving the guild.

…From today on, I was a D-Rank Adventurer.