“You seem to have taken a liking to him.”

“Ah, hm? That’s right.”

Lost in thought, Roselin nodded at Deputy Commander Varger’s words. She smiled as she rubbed the wrist the young man had seized moments earlier.

“He’s no ordinary kid. That snake bitch really does have a good eye. Where did she find someone like him this time...?”

Roselin mulled over what had just happened.

How exceptional could he possibly be?

She had approached the young man with that casual thought, only to revise her assessment at once. Even under pressure that forced Green-ranked adventurers to bow their heads, he had kept his head raised.

‘And he didn’t stop there...’

Even when she deliberately bore down on him, the young man had not bowed his head. Instead, he had opened his eyes wide and snatched her wrist. That meant he had broken through a Sword Seeker’s presence head-on.

“I have no idea how he did it.”

Roselin rubbed her chin, intrigued.

The amount of mana accumulated within the young man’s body was unquestionably small. Far from being a Sword Expert, he was barely a beginner in the use of mana. There was no way he could have shaken off her pressure with that paltry amount.

It should have been impossible, but Roselin had seen it.

The moment the young man shook off her pressure, the mana she had scattered around him was sucked into his body. For that fleeting instant, the presence he displayed was in no way inferior to her own.

It was a mana training method unlike anything she had ever seen.

Roselin had met countless powerful people, but not one of them had handled mana that way.

“Could he be some noble house’s abandoned child? I’ve never seen a training method like that. What do you think, Varger?”

“What would I know? He certainly seems to have guts.”

“Doesn’t he? Mm, the more I think about him, the more I like him.”

Roselin smacked her lips.

Varger glanced at her and sighed. Just as the Snake That Swallows Gold never spat out anything she had swallowed, Varger’s commander would secure anything she set her sights on, whatever it took.

The Snake That Swallows Gold, Dieta Arbenia.

And Red Eye, Roselin Ascalo, licking her lips over the adventurer Dieta had marked as hers.

‘This is going to be a headache.’

Varger suspected that a conflict with the Dieta Trading Company would be unavoidable.

2.

“You there.”

Just as Najin was about to head into the forest, someone called out from behind him. He turned and glanced at the person who had stopped him. She wore a green nameplate.

“Yes, you. Blackie.”

She gestured at Najin.

The adventurers still preparing to depart turned their attention to him again. They pointed at the adventurer confronting him and whispered among themselves.

“What does Marsen want?”

“She probably doesn’t like him.”

“Well, Marsen was supposed to be the center of attention here...”

Marsen, a Green-ranked adventurer.

After ten years in Cambria, she was a veteran among veterans, and she had the strongest record of any adventurer participating in this Dochenberg Forest Clearance Operation.

Marsen would take first place in this operation.

That was what the adventurers had been saying. She, not this Black-ranked young man, was supposed to command everyone’s attention.

“Do you think this line of work is a joke?”

Marsen had spent years steadily building her record to join the Red Eye Mercenary Company. To her, Najin was nothing more than a thorn in her side.

“How dare you show such disrespect to a White Horn adventurer, and Lady Roselin at that...”

“You talk too damn much.”

“... What?”

Najin’s face twisted into a deep scowl. Looking annoyed, he pushed aside Marsen’s pointing finger with the back of his hand.

“Is that all you have to say? If you’re done, I’d like to get going.”

“What did you just say?”

“Why are you holding up someone who’s busy? You could catch another monster in the time you’re wasting here. Aren’t you interested in placing?”

Najin had spoken without giving it much thought.

He knew neither the adventurer’s name nor that she was the favorite to win. Since he was aiming for first place himself, he was simply annoyed at being held up by a conversation that served no purpose whatsoever.

To Marsen, however, as the favorite to take first place, it was an unmistakable provocation. Her expression soured.

“Ha. What an unbelievable little shit.”

Marsen let out a disbelieving laugh and pointed at Najin.

“Just you wait. We’ll see each other again when this is over. If you place below me, you’d better brace yourself.”

Najin indifferently let her words go in one ear and out the other. Thinking the conversation was finally over, he headed toward the forest. The adventurers who had watched him and Marsen merely whispered among themselves.

Marsen listened to those whispers, but Najin had no interest in their voices.

Only one thing interested him: the scoreboard guarded by a mercenary company member on the platform. He had heard that scores would be updated there as participants brought in monster heads.

He would put his name at the very top.

Turning that goal over in his mind, Najin headed into the forest.

* * *

Najin had scarcely ever hunted monsters.

He had completed a few simple extermination commissions through the guild, but he had never tracked a monster’s trail. All his experience involved hunting monsters in known locations, such as goblin settlements or caves.

‘So this is my first time.’

This would be his first time tracking monsters down to hunt them. Still, he didn’t think it would pose much of a problem. Najin steadied his breathing and narrowed his eyes.

After all, following a monster’s trail... wasn’t so different from pursuing a human, was it?

He had never tracked monsters, but he had more than enough experience following the traces people left behind and beating the hell out of them. He had done it endlessly as Ivan’s hound, and while hunting and being hunted by the Order’s covert operatives.

CLINK.

Najin touched the hidden weapons strapped to his wrist.

-You’ve taken a liking to those, huh? You use them quite a lot.

‘They’re pretty handy.’

He had stolen the technique for throwing hidden weapons from the covert operatives.

With one weapon in hand, Najin followed the tracks on the ground. His sharply honed senses missed not even the slightest sign of another presence.

The instant he heard a rustle, Najin whipped his head around and threw the weapon.

GURRK!

A goblin cried out at the same instant. Najin approached it, cut off its head, and put it in his sack before moving on at once.

Then he hesitated and briefly came to a stop.

-What? Why did you stop?

‘Now that I think about it...’

Najin raised his head. Looking at the dense growth of tall trees, he murmured inwardly.

‘I don’t actually have to stick to the paths, do I?’

-You’re going to travel through the trees? Isn’t that something only elves do? An ordinary sense of balance won’t be enough—

Najin abruptly climbed a tree.

After tapping a branch a few times with the tip of his foot, he let out a long breath.

TAP.

He pushed off the branch and leaped.

The distance was precise, the landing smooth.

Najin had moved through alleys using narrow gaps in walls as footholds. To him, a tree branch was a sufficiently broad and stable platform.

-Huh...

Leaving Merlin at a loss for words, Najin moved swiftly through the trees. His eyes moved a little faster still than his rapidly traveling body.

‘Found one.’

At a glance, he appeared to be running aimlessly, but his eyes picked out the monsters with precision. Leaping from a tree, Najin split a monster’s head with a single blow.

He put the split head into his sack and moved on.

With each repetition, his movements grew more agile and economical. Watching him leap from the trees and take a monster’s head in an instant, Merlin thought it was like watching a bird of prey hunt.

3.

How much time had passed since the Dochenberg Clearance Operation began? As sunset approached, the adventurers gathered once more at the forest’s edge.

The deadline was drawing near.

One by one, they arrived with sacks of monster heads. They handed their sacks to the Red Eye Mercenary Company’s supervisor waiting on the platform and had their scores tallied. By the time most of the adventurers had arrived, they turned to the scoreboard on the platform.

As everyone had expected, Marsen was in first place. Having arrived a little earlier, she held the top spot with 31 points, five points ahead of second place.

“Marsen’s first, just like we thought.”

“I figured she would be, but 31 points? That’s no joke. Just finding the things was hard enough...”

Everyone had expected her to win, so while the number of monsters she had hunted drew attention, her being in first place came as little surprise.

“Hey, that Blackie’s no joke either. Look at the standings. He’s twelfth.”

“A Black rank in twelfth? Holy shit...”

What surprised them instead was the placement of the Black-ranked adventurer, Ivan.

12th. Ivan (14 points).

Fourteen points. Even Green-ranked adventurers would struggle to reach that score. Finding and hunting monsters hidden in this forest required a range of keen senses. Just as they were thinking that he certainly had the ability to draw attention...

“Huh? Something’s a little odd, though.”

An adventurer spoke up. He had only just returned from the forest. As his score was being tallied, he pointed at Ivan’s name in the standings.

“I saw him going around cutting hobgoblins’ throats. They’re worth three points each, right? I saw him take down more than four. And that was over an hour ago.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see wrong?”

“No. I was getting ready to hunt a group of hobgoblins, and he suddenly dropped out of a tree and took their heads.”

He had killed four in an instant and disappeared.

The adventurers listening to the story began to stir.

“Come to think of it...”

“He’s not back yet.”

Although the deadline was almost upon them, the Black-ranked young man was not among the adventurers gathered at the forest’s edge. Had he handed in one sack midway through, then gone back into the forest?

As they waited, a dragging sound finally came from the forest, just before the deadline. A young man emerged from the sunset-lit woods, drenched in blood. The blood covering his body and hair was not his own.

It was the dark blue blood of monsters.

The adventurers recoiled at Najin’s unsettling appearance. Passing between them, he climbed onto the platform and handed his sack to the supervisor.

CLATTER.

When the supervisor shook out the sack, seven hobgoblin heads tumbled out. The watching adventurers’ eyes widened. He had hunted nothing but the highest-scoring monsters in the forest.

Their gazes turned to the scoreboard.

Najin’s existing score was 14 points. But if the seven hobgoblins added another 21...

“Thirty-five points...”

As someone murmured those words, Marsen’s name was erased from first place. The name replacing it was Ivan.

1st. Ivan (35 points).

2nd. Marsen (31 points).

Everyone turned to Marsen.

Her eyes wide, she stared at the scoreboard and at Najin standing beside it. Defying everyone’s expectations, the Black-ranked adventurer had taken first place.

Just as Marsen hurriedly grabbed her sack and tried to head into the forest, the supervisor rang the bell.

The deadline had passed. Marsen ground her teeth and glared at Najin, but he merely stepped down from the platform without so much as looking at her. As though she had never interested him in the first place.

GRIND.

Grinding her teeth, Marsen was about to approach Najin when his head whipped around. Hurried footsteps were coming from deeper in the forest, in the direction he had turned.

“Hah!”

Several adventurers burst through the undergrowth. Gasping for breath, they practically fell and tumbled onto the ground at the forest’s edge. Their faces were pale, and they trembled as though terrified.

“Inside! In the forest!”

Even before their cries rang out—

THUD. THOOM.

Heavy footsteps resounded, drawing closer to the forest’s edge.

CRACK.

Then an uprooted tree came flying toward the gathered adventurers.

The adventurers screamed.

Footsteps scrambled backward in panic.

Weapons scraped free as cold sweat ran down their wielders’ skin.

Amid that clamor, a monster emerged from the sunset-lit forest.