Chapter 24 /// The Duo That Stands Out Too Much ///

In the center of the Kingdom of Rodan, the Great River of Rodan flows, and the capital city, Rotra, exists along this river.

Relations with other countries have been good for many years, partly due to the gentle nature of successive kings.

Because of the many rivers and lakes, fish dishes are famous and tourists often come to eat them.

Twenty percent of the entire population is made up of beasts, and in Rotra, that percentage rises to nearly forty percent.

Therefore, when entering a city, travelers are first surprised by its diversity. And you will be impressed by how many people are so unique and blessed.

Rotra is divided into commercial, industrial, residential, and noble districts, but the commercial district is probably the most active.

Today is no different, but the air feels much more exciting than usual because of the battle for pride that is taking place.

A gorilla beastman who runs a throwaway shop is having a hard time dealing with a wandering traveler.

If the challenger can throw the gorilla beastman at least once in one minute, the challenger wins and gets 10 potions.

Even potions, which are considered to be the lowest level of recovery, cost no less than 300,000 Gawn per bottle. Therefore, he doesn’t want to give away ten of them. In fact, the thrower was confident that he had won a hundred battles in a row.

Once he grabs his opponent with the arm strength inherited from his gorilla blood, he can throw him with ease.

This time, however, even though his opponent was inferior in height and build, when he grabbed him, he cannot be moved like mountain. They’re grabbing each other, but he was completely outmatched.

“Urrgh… What’s with this strength?”

“If I win, you’ll really give me ten of them, right? Please don’t say that you won’t give it”

“Ergh, fine! But you have to tell me, what’s with the black aura that surrounds your whole body?”

A black aura overflowed from the young man - Shion’s body as if it was shimmering with steam.

“This is called the [Black Veil — Attack Type] and in exchange of constantly consuming magic power, it significantly enhances your senses and physical abilities”

“Where the hell is Mr. Axe? ……”

No way, did they find out? For a moment Shion started to panic, but it didn’t seem that way, so he quickly decided to end the game. He easily defeated a two-meter, 40-centimeter gorilla beast with a back throw.

“Holy sh*t!”

“it’s my first time seeing Mister Gorilla lose!”

“Nii-chan, you’re good!”

While waving to the crowd, which was at its peak, Shion obtained ten potions with a big smile on his face.

“I’m glad I got this. I can’t use recovery magic”

By the way, Haku is also an attack type and recovery is not good, so they had talked a while ago about saving up as much as possible for potions.

He makes a jet-black hole in the space and puts all the bottles full of light blue liquid into it. The gorilla beast, who was watching, said with a drawn-out expression.

“There’s even a storage system. Seriously, you’re not the Dark Hero, are you ……?”

“Th…There’s no way, right? My dark magic is not even a step below the hero’s. Ahaha…”

“But if you look closely, you’ve got the style”

“Oh, my friend is waiting for me over there, so I’ll be going now!”

Quickly, Shion ran to escape that place.

About three hundred meters away from where Shion was, there was an unbelievable excitement swirling around him.

An eating contest is currently being held here, and one unusual participant has caught his attention.

‘It’s delicious! Rotra is the best place to find such demons in the world!’

There was one being, or perhaps just one being, whose pace was clearly different. What was being eaten was the cooked meat of a Giant Lobster, a demon that often appears near large rivers.

Since it is cheap to eat in Rotra, aristocrats and others hold such competitions for fun.

The record so far is 30 large plates in 10 minutes. You can calculate that you could finish one plate every 20 seconds. However, the number of plates piled up next to that fox, Haku, was more than fifty.

“—aaaannnd, STOP”

The end of the game was announced and the plates were counted, but it was so obvious that the winner didn’t need to be counted anymore. When the MC found out the number of plates, he shouted excitedly.

“The winner is Haku, the Tamed Demon. The record is a whopping… Sixty-Five Plates!”

“He ate too much!”

‘…Burp. Oops, excuse me’

It’s true that I may have eaten too much, Haku thought as he burped.

But for once, it was a battle he couldn’t afford to lose.

“The first prize will be either an axe, a shield, or 30 pieces of Grass of Tranquility!”

‘I’ll take the Grass of Tranquility, please’

Haku explained to everyone present that this was his only purpose and the food was secondary, and then left the place briskly. By the way, no one believed him.

“Hey, you’re here. How’d it goes?”

‘I got the Grass of Tranquility~. It’s the kind that can be used to make potions, and other things’

“Well done! I got the potion too”

‘Nice. We don’t have any other means of recovery, do we? I’d really like to get something rarer, though’

I’m not going to get greedy today, Shion said, and turned to the adventurer’s guild next.

I’m going to stay here for a while, so I’d like to say hello and sell some of the demons I’ve hunted along the way.

In Rotra, there is a guild that is the headquarters of this country, so we moved there. The building was quite large compared to its surroundings, and it was easy to imagine that adventurers from all over the town would gather there.

“Hello”

When he walked in with Haku, they became the center of attention. There were others who had Tamed Demon, but Haku was the best in terms of lustrous fur.

Shion approached the woman at the reception desk and handed her a card. Data is written on the card, and by using a magic tool to read it, the owner can find out details such as the percentage of requests accomplished so far.

“Please wait a bit while I’m looking into it right now…………Huh?”

“Did something strange happen?”

“Well, you know. It says you’re ranked C now, but the date you registered and the date you were promoted are a bit odd…”

She looked a little surprised when Shion explained that he had risen all the way up to C with a special exception within a few days of registering.

“It’s a really rare case. I think you have a considerable ability”

“Nah, it’s not a big deal anyway”

“We at Rotra Headquarters would like to welcome you, Mr. Shion. Would you like to accept a request today?”

“I just need you to buy the material today”

“Okay, please put it here”

The place is small, so we move around a bit and bring out a few of the Haydock that Shion hunted in the mountains.

“Oh, my God! This many!?”

‘This many? it’s just six of them, right?’

“Just six of them? The Haydock is one of the most powerful bird species, and it’s hard to hunt them because they are expert in running away!”

“…Looks at Haku”

‘…gulp…’

Shion makes eye contact with him, asking him to set up that he had a hard time, and Haku understands it instantly.

‘Yeah, that’s it! It was a fluke of a fluke. We were lucky, right Shion?’

“It’s true. There’s a lot of time we almost die”

“I…I see”

Trying to quickly move on, Shion then casually pulled the wyvern’s corpse out of the [Dark Pouch] and—

“What the…?!”

Everyone gasped, not only the receptionist but also the adventurers. They couldn’t say it in words, but in their hearts, they were all shouting, “We’ve got to get out of here!

They’ve brought an actual wyvern!