"Oh, you are here?"

Orphina ignored Bloody's greeting with a snort. Then she bowed and greeted the emperor. "I, Soldier Orphina, have returned after defending against the Demon Territory."

The emperor acknowledged her salute with a nod. "Good work. I heard it was hard because of the increased activity of the demons in the Demon Territory.”

"No, thanks to the united soldiers, the demon subjugation was easier than previous years."

Bloody clasped his fingers behind his head at the very formal Orphina and retorted, "Yes, it must have been easy for just you."

At the sight of the irksome Bloody, Orphina clenched her fist. She wanted to beat him right away but barely held it in because she was still in the audience room. On the other hand, she was amused that Doomstone, who was currently in the Demon Territory, was able to completely suppress this wild daredevil.

When she had met Doomstone, his powerful body definitely seemed like it had surpassed human limits. As far as she knew, the head of the Dragon Tribe, the Dragon King, seemed to be the only one who could match Doomstone.

Orphina thought it was disrespectful, but objectively, even she felt that the Dragon King alone would not be a match for Doomstone. She realized that it was why Doomstone's activities from twenty-six years ago, when he left the Olympus Forest, were talked about as a legend.

"Well, why don't we go to the conference room now? I miss William at times like this. It was so convenient to teleport."

Arcanta clapped his hands and cleared the air. Everyone in the audience lightly laughed at his joke and agreed.

For William, it was quite a difficult magic even with the help of a magic circle. However, there was no way to know his struggle because no one could use teleportation magic except him.

Still, the audience room and the secret conference room were not too far away, so it didn’t take too long to get there.

As it was her first visit in half a year, Orphina went to her seat and rubbed the table first with her fingers.

"Hey, Bloody. Why is this not cleaned?” Orphina glared sharply and asked.

Bloody shrugged and turned to Arcanta in return. "So she says- why isn't it cleaned?"

As Bloody passed it on to him, Arcanta frowned and said, "I'm already working beyond my limit. What do you mean, why is it not cleaned?"

With that, Bloody shot Orphina a glare of criticism. "That's right! Arcanta is already busy, but you’re asking him to clean on top of his responsibilities? Are you out of your mind, Orphina?"

"I’m talking to you! You good-for-nothing!

Orphina wanted to pull out her whip right away, but she had left it with the chief attendant before coming into the audience room, so her waistband was empty.

Bloody grumbled at Orphina, who was looking at him with irritated eyes. "Ayy, isn’t it like this in secret conference rooms normally anyways? Servants can’t even come here to clean, so aren’t you being too uptight?"

"Cleanliness is a must for soldiers! You rude b*stard!”

Bloody responded with a look of provocation. "Nay, nay, then please do your best to clean up ‘General’ Orphina, who is a real soldier."

He purposely pronounced 'General' strange to attack her pride as a soldier.

"I’ll kill you!"

Finally, Orphina’s lid blew off. She went beyond martial aura and straight to a killing aura, wrapping her fist with mana.

Despite her explosive aura, the faces of the trio, except for Bloody, were calm. It was evidence that Orphina was thoroughly focusing her killing intent on the Crow.

"Shouldn’t we stop them?" Prince Zantes asked, feeling uneasy about them fighting and not just Orphina's killing aura.

The emperor and the prime minister were used to it. They took out a piece of jerky from a space expansion bag, and took a bite.

"Why would you stop such an entertaining scene?” The emperor gestured towards Arcanta's back.

When the prime minister pulled a book from the bookshelf on the wall of the conference room, the wall opened and revealed a secret space. There were four luxurious chairs in the secret space, and the words, "viewing room" were written on the wall of the revealed space.

"Let's just watch, it's not like it happens all the time."

Zantes, who hadn’t come to the secret conference room in over a year, was dumbfounded.

When the emperor, the prime minister, and the crown prince sat down, the viewing room became isolated from the secret conference room with powerful defensive magic.

"Crown Prince, have a bite too. You can't miss out on beef jerky for such an entertaining match."

Receiving the jerky from his father, Zantes looked dazedly at the prime minister. 

Arcanta responded with a dejected smile. "Well, I tried to stop them at first. But how can we stop them without William?"

It turned out that Arcanta was right. Equally powered peopled needed to intervene to stop the two. But among those who could enter this secret conference room, who else but William could dare to stop them?

The former head of the state, the current director of the Adventurers’ Guild, who used to have authorization for entry, might have been able to just somehow stop them. However, the said man was not authorized to enter this place.

"The answer is to eat jerky and wait for them to stop on their own," the emperor stated.

Zantes watched Orphina and Bloody's fight as he took a bite of the beef jerky. In the absence of their swords and whip, the hand-to-hand fight was full of tension.

Orphina hit Bloody with her elbow, and at the same time, he kicked her leg, shaking her balance to weaken the elbow’s power. They stared at each other with bloodshot eyes, wiped the blood from their mouths, and opened their fists.

Zantes, who had a desire to see all the martial artists of the empire, sat eagerly watching the battle in front of him as he bit into the jerky.

"It's tasty."

Zantes picked up some more jerkies.

-o-

I looked at the exterior of the Adventurers’ Guild headquarters before I entered. For the large entity that it was, there was an equally giant headquarters that was about five floors tall.

It wasn't my first time coming here. I had stopped by several times during my civil servant training and visited to seek cooperation with the venue for the preliminary round of the martial arts competition.

Feeling a little nervous, I entered the building where I would be going to work in the future.

As soon as I entered, I saw a counter where civil servants sat and worked.

On the wall left of the counter was a bulletin board packed with a list of requests that adventurers could take. And on the other side was a store selling simple groceries for their convenience.

It was still before the opening time, so there were no adventurers in sight, but during the day, quite a few adventurers would come and crowd it.

It felt strange to think that this was where I would be working from now on. It may be all the more so because in my past life I had only passed the civil service exam before coming into a very strong intimacy with the truck-kun.

"Oh, you came early." Flam greeted as he entered.

Of course, Flam’s outfit was no different than mine, a uniform provided by the Adventurers’ Guild. But unlike myself, it felt like he was a retired adventurer who couldn’t forget the work of an adventurer and got himself re-employed here.

"Never mind me, Flam, you are here early too? Didn’t you say that you were so busy moving out of the dormitory?"

"Haha, what are you talking about? It's already been a week." Flam slapped me on the back and laughed cheerfully.

There were two groups of people working in the Adventurers’ Guild. One was appointed here after passing the civil service examination like me, and the other was local residents hired by the branch themselves. Those in the former group were simply called civil servants and those in the latter group, guild workers for ease of distinction.

As there was a limited number of civil servants that could be sent every year, it was natural to select guild workers. In fact, the guild workers of the Adventurers’ Guild's local branches were retired adventurers in many cases. And so, there were rumors that locals did not look kindly upon the civil servants sent to the Adventurers’ Guild.

Certainly, there was no way former adventurers would look kindly upon newcomer civil servants being their superiors when these newcomers didn’t even know the ‘adventure’ part of adventurer.

Putting it in context, it was like a second lieutenant with zero experience of being a sergeant was commissioned to be a platoon commander for a platoon of sergeants.

I'd heard that the Adventurers’ Guild headquarters, to which I was appointed, was filled with civil servants, perhaps because it was located in the capital. It remains to be seen whether it is a good thing or not, but at the least, since civil servants were the majority here, one could say that there were no adventurers who looked down upon the newcomer civil servants. 

While talking to Flam about random topics, a man with disheveled hair wearing comfy clothes came out of a place marked as a ‘night-shift room’.

"Ha-am~"

He looked like an unemployed person, yawning with a blank face and scratching his back like that.

When the man appeared, Flam stopped talking and looked at the other, while the latter was surprised when he saw us.

"Huh? Are you perhaps newcomers?”

It couldn’t be that that older guy who looked like an unemployed man was our senior civil servant, right? The man scratched the back of his head and spoke bluntly.

"Ee-ya, I’m showing an embarrassing view of myself in front of my juniors. I was on night duty yesterday."

Don't you usually have to wear a uniform on night duty?

No matter how you looked at it, the man's outfit was a tracksuit that he wore comfortably at home. Furthermore, looking at the drool mark around his mouth, it seemed he slept very well.

The man looked at the clock and yawned. "You're early. You could have just gotten here by nine o'clock.”

It was eight-thirty now, which was quite early.

Looking at the man in front of me, it seemed that this position truly lived up to being called an awesome job.

"Hmm, introductions will be later, but I'm Demuir. I'm your senior by one cycle." Demuir spoke as leaned onto a nearby table.

If he was one cycle our senior, then it meant he passed the civil service exam half a year earlier than us. If so, he would be like a newcomer like us, but he already looked like this. 

I’ll have to use him as my role model.

The appearance that Demuir briefly displayed was my ideal.

“I am Flam.” 

“I'm Den.”

Demuir looked surprised at our introductions.

"Den? You are Den?”

Demuir approached me and shook my hand.

"Ee-ya, nice to meet you. I’m meeting you here like this when I’ve only been hearing about you."

"Yes?"

Unable to understand Demuir, I clumsily shook hands.

I’m meeting this person for the first time, so where did he hear about me?

Demuir smiled brightly and waved my hand.

"Ahaha. I heard you took my study notes. My mother is a real estate agent on Welcon Street."

"Ah!"

Only then did I understand what Demuir was talking about. Demuir was the son of the real estate agent who connected me to Mrs. Arscilla’s boarding house.

"I made good use of the notes. Thanks to you, I passed the exam and managed to become your junior here."

It wasn't a lie that Demuir’s notes were used well. Although I had peeped at the question papers before the exam, I had referred to his notes to manipulate my score.