Early DAR Vol. 5 Chapter 18 Part 1

Full title: Starting a New Life for the Discarded All-Rounder

Note: If you found any typos/mistakes, pls write them in the comment. Thanks.

Translator: Airis

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Chapter 18 - Nostalgia and the Battle of the Gryphon

At the Perdu Kingdom headquarters of the Adventurers’ Guild, a mass resignation crisis had erupted.

More than half of the kingdom’s guild heavyweights had tendered their resignations.

Because the Adventurers’ Guild coordinated with the governmental cores of each nation, the official stance was that each country’s branch set its own policies and operated independently, while sharing information across borders.

With so many of the upper echelons gone at once, chaos was inevitable—like a hornet’s nest kicked open.

With over half gone, the remaining leaders saw their workloads simply more than double. Many people were saddled with duties they had never handled before, and operations descended into confusion.

Everyone working at headquarters was clutching their heads.

Fortunately, the uproar remained confined to the kingdom headquarters and did not leak outside. The resignations were limited to the heavyweights, and the number of staff handling day-to-day work had not changed.

No one on the ground knew why the resignations had ballooned so drastically.

Rumors spread that some unnamable crime had been committed and dealt with in secret, but nothing was certain.

Those who left retreated to the provinces the moment they submitted their resignations. Every last one clammed up and gave no reason.

Those who remained seemed to grasp the broad outline, but they too kept their mouths shut.

From that, the headquarters staff concluded there must be a secret of considerable weight, and they stopped prying.

The Adventurers’ Guild was an organization to rival a nation.

Accordingly, it held many secrets; some grave enough to topple a country.

Poking around carelessly could shorten one’s lifespan. The staff had keen noses for dangerous topics and the savvy to avoid them.

Thus, the true cause of the resignations—that it traced back to a single boy with an all-rounder job, and that those who quit were the ones who had agreed to his assassination—was quietly buried in darkness.

Meanwhile, in the Perdu Kingdom’s Amadan County, someone else had their head on a desk, groaning.

Viviana.

This was inside a great pavilion tent raised on the Adventurers’ Guild training grounds. After a mysterious building-collapse phenomenon, they had dragged out the large field headquarters tent used for major magic-beast subjugations, pitched it on the intact grounds, and turned it into a temporary guild office.

Partitions divided the interior, but Guildmaster and clerks alike worked under the same canvas.

Viviana was the guild’s former chief receptionist.

'Former' did not mean she had been expelled; it was quite the opposite.

Just the other day, without warning, she had been appointed Guildmaster of the Adventurers’ Guild for Amadan County.

“…I feel like I’m going to die.”

A small bottle of fatigue-relief tonic was clutched in her hand. It wasn’t a magic potion but ordinary medicine, deliberately formulated with muted potency to avoid side effects. Because it was cheap, many laborers kept it on hand. Viviana had never taken it before; one of her subordinates, seeing how utterly spent she was, had slipped it to her.

“That muscle-brained man… ran off…”

Steed, who had been guildmaster until a few days ago, was already gone. He’d been transferred to the Perdu Kingdom headquarters and, claiming he needed time to prepare, he had taken an extended leave. By the time anyone noticed, it was too late; he had already left town. He was probably off indulging himself somewhere.

Under normal circumstances, he would have remained for several weeks to hand things over, but Viviana had only been serving in a supporting role, and there was little for him to brief her on. If anything, Viviana understood the guildmaster’s duties better than he did.

The guildmaster tasks themselves posed no problem, but the work Viviana had previously handled as head receptionist was the real issue.

First, she had to appoint the next head receptionist.

On top of that, she needed to train and hand over the job while still keeping up with routine duties. As if that weren’t enough, there was the cleanup from the collapsed guild building and arranging for a replacement. Guildmaster duties, head receptionist’s regular workload, training and handover, and the extra tasks spawned by the collapse—

Had Steed been around, she could have offloaded the guildmaster work to him and perhaps spared herself some strain. But he had fled.

As a result, Viviana found herself doing four to five times her usual amount of work.

“How did it come to this…”

She lifted her bowed face. Her hair was disheveled, her skin rough, her eyes bloodshot, the dark circles under them speaking plainly of exhaustion. From Viviana’s point of view, she had acted as always: doing what she believed would be best for the Adventurers’ Guild. She had intervened to save the all-rounder boy who, improbably, had acquired a powerful familiar in the form of a Gryphon.

When someone unskilled obtains power far beyond their capacity, they will inevitably destroy themselves. The all-rounder boy would only end up miserable.

That was why she’d tried to pry the dangerous Gryphon away from him and hand it to someone more capable, so no further trouble would arise.

She meant for nobody to lose out, for everything to be settled where it belonged.

And this was the outcome.

Somehow she was about to be crushed by an avalanche of work. She had acted for the guild’s benefit and yet was being driven to unreasonable labor by orders from that very guild.

“What on earth is the Fixer thinking?”

The Fixer. A shadowy mastermind who never appeared in public yet pulled the strings of Adventurers’ Guilds from behind the scenes. Even guild staff only knew of that presence by rumor; some doubted the Fixer even existed. The Fixer was the shadow ruler touching every guild across the world.

It had been that Fixer who suddenly thrust Viviana into the position of guildmaster. It was punishment for what she had done. In lieu of prosecution, she had been told to give herself over to the Adventurers’ Guild and work it off.

There was no legal slavery in this country. A generation or two ago, the royal family had abolished the practice. Yet Viviana’s treatment was slavery in all but name.

“I was celebrated and felt humiliated for the first time.”

From the staff’s perspective, it was a promotion from head receptionist to guildmaster. Viviana was feared but not hated, and the staff had taken the trouble to celebrate her. There had been little time because of the collapse, but they still arranged an internal congratulatory reception. While she was being feted, Viviana felt nothing but humiliation and an oppressive dread about what awaited her.

“That boy… I—”

The instant the words left her lips, the black, roiling emotions that had churned in her heart were suddenly snuffed out.

“No, that child is not to blame.”

When she found herself almost wishing the all-rounder boy dead—the very cause of her predicament—her anger evaporated. That thought was wrong, unjust; she corrected herself. The boy was not at fault. He was one of the victims swept up in the incident caused by the Crack of Dawn hero party. He was innocent.

Such feelings rose up and suffocated her resentment.

“All I can do is keep going. Even a ruined Guildmaster is still a Guildmaster; the position and its remuneration aren’t bad. Once this busyness subsides, I can return to a normal life.”

She sighed as if surrendering, then set her pen to the paperwork and began to write.

She was unaware that her thoughts were being constrained by the underground passageways—now transformed into magic tools—hidden deep beneath the city.

𑁋

On the seventeenth floor of the Citadel Dungeon, Nostalgia and a Gryphon that wielded dark magic still faced one another in a tense standoff. Even after some time had passed since the twins were taken, neither side moved. Nostalgia’s members kept a respectful distance from the Gryphon while tending to Dietrich’s wounds.

The dark-magic Gryphon lay sprawled, watching them.

“That bastard, acting all calm. I hate it. Looks exactly like that sly Gryphon—Uncle Gry,” Dietrich spat.

Dietrich sank down onto the floor and cursed from a pool of his own blood. Bernhart stood ready, prepared to cast at a moment’s notice, but the Gryphon gave no sign of moving. Still, there was a sense of obsession about it, as if it would never let its prey escape.

If Nostalgia tried to withdraw now, the Gryphon would doggedly pursue them. And once it took to the air at high speed, there would be no outrunning it.

The Gryphon was waiting for Nostalgia to finish treating their wounded and come at it fully healed. Like a cat toying with an insect, eager to play with those who resisted violently. Dietrich bristled at that sadistic streak.

He knew perfectly well that sulking and swearing would change nothing, but he could not help himself. He was furious with his own helplessness at having had the twin wolf familiars stolen; he felt on the verge of losing his composure. He needed something, someone, at which to vent his anger.

A darkness he usually kept tamped down swelled inside Dietrich. Blood smeared his face, and a streak ran from the corner of his eye to his jaw; blood that had been washed away but left a line. Nostalgia’s members noticed it but did not call attention to it.

“Leader, drink this,” Cornelia said.

Without waiting for argument, she thrust a bottle of healing potion into the muttering Dietrich’s mouth. Unable to use his arms, he managed only a weak protest; he had to drink. She forced down a high-grade healing potion. With his shoulder bone shattered and nerves likely severed, a mid-tier brew wouldn’t have sufficed. The potion was costly, but thanks to Roa, they had plenty in stock.

“Ugh…”

He clenched his teeth and bore the pain as the wound knotted shut.

“…Were you able to do Body Reinforcement Magic?” he asked, as if to distract himself from the pain. The magic in the area had been disrupted, so body-reinforcement should have been impossible. Yet Cornelia’s earlier movement could not have been achieved without such a spell, especially while still holding a heavy warhammer.

“I followed Uncle Gry’s advice,” Cornelia replied.

“Advice?”

“He let Roa use magic and showed us, right? He said a stability-focused formula could be cast. I just followed that. It reduces power a lot, but if you prioritize speed it works.”

Dietrich frowned slightly. Uncle Gry’s remarks had hardly been intended to be helpful; he wasn’t the sort to worry about others’ needs. If anything, he’d mocked those who could no longer cast spells. Still, if that exchange had enabled Cornelia to use Body Reinforcement, it was a good thing.

“Kristoff.”

“What is it?”

Kristoff had been holding an Assassin Knife to Eileen’s neck, keeping the Nemophila Knights in check, so he could not join the front-line fight. Dietrich glanced briefly at Eileen and the others, then fixed his gaze on Kristoff; looking at Eileen made him feel like he might lose control.

“Tie their arms and stuff gags in their mouths. I don’t care if they die unable to move. With Kristoff absent, they can’t be allowed to interfere with that Gryphon.”

He would not tolerate another interruption like before. The gag was to stop spellcasters from chanting. Even if someone had the skill to cast a Fire Lance without full incantation earlier, without the ability to chant at all, they would be unable to use magic reliably.

“You—you! How dare you treat us, common adventurers, like this! You’ll pay for such insolence!” Eileen shouted.

Eileen’s blade was pressed to her throat by Kristoff’s Assassin Knife. Perhaps the battle potion had skewed her thinking enough to let her shout on impulse.

“My name is Eileen James Amadan. I am a count’s daughter! You cannot harm me, my status forbids it!” she declared, chest out.

“Huh,” Dietrich snorted.

He looked at her slowly, coldly. His gaze was like the deep bottom of the sea. That look shut Eileen’s mouth. Even Kristoff, who stood behind her with the knife at the ready, felt a chill run down his spine.

“…Di… Di-san…” Kristoff blurted out an old nickname.

It was the name Dietrich had gone by when he’d been uncontrollable: his childhood moniker. Only Kristoff, a childhood friend and fellow delinquent, remembered the terrifying side of Dietrich from those days. Back then, he had been violent, contemptuous, and inclined to treat crime like a game. The dark side of Dietrich had not surfaced in years, except when he drank, yet now it seemed anger had stripped away the restraint.

“A being who cannot be harmed, huh? Convenient. Kristoff, use her as a shield in the fight. She’ll at least be useful enough to create an opening,” Dietrich said.

“What—!”

“And another thing: if it’s about status, I’ve got status too. I don’t like it, but I’m the prince of the Nereus Kingdom. Oh right, I haven’t introduced myself. I'm Dietrich von Scarlet. Charming, huh? Pleased to meet you for a short while. Do your best being bait and a shield.”

Dietrich gave a bestial, unpleasant grin.

In the newly founded Nereus Kingdom, where traditional family names didn’t exist, nobles took their parent’s name as a surname. Scarlet was unquestionably the name of Nereus’s queen. Eileen froze utterly—wide-eyed and motionless—unable to think under the weight of a de facto death sentence delivered by someone whose status negated her own.

A light flashed, illuminating Dietrich and his companions.

“That Gryphon looks bored of waiting. Showing off like that, but impatient too,” Bernhart said.

The light came from when Bernhart had countered the Gryphon’s dark magic with a burst of light magic. Bernhart had put everything into the opposition, but to the Gryphon, it was little more than a mild provocation. It seemed to be losing patience with waiting. Cornelia had slipped from Dietrich’s side and begun to watch the Gryphon’s movements warily.

“I’m gonna smash that smug face!” Dietrich snarled, glaring at the Gryphon that so resembled Uncle Gry.

After a beat, Dietrich and the dark-magic Gryphon exchanged vicious smiles. Dietrich rose, testing the wound’s resilience. He felt no awkwardness of movement that a standard healing potion would leave behind. Startled, he forced himself to accept it as Roa’s concoction and steeled his resolve.

“Bernhart, can that shadow magic be stopped physically?” Dietrich asked loudly, so everyone could hear. Gryphons had excellent hearing—hellish ears, as Uncle Gry had taught them—so if they were going to be overheard, they might as well speak loudly enough that everyone could hear.

“That’s still immature dark magic. In attack form, it takes on more of a physical object’s properties than of shadow. You can block it with a shield or cut it with a sword,” Bernhart replied in a low but clear voice.

Dark magic, when perfected, was said to absorb all attacks, to become untouchable and only counterable by light magic. Such power was the essence of dark magic; impossible to stop physically when mastered, and thus incredibly difficult to learn. But the Gryphon before them did not look skilled enough for that level.

“Alright. Then I’ll be the shield! Cornelia and Kristoff, it doesn't matter where you are, just focus on landing your attacks. Bernhart, you cover the two of them. Don’t try to kill it; only make an opening big enough for us to break free.”

“““Yes!”””

At Dietrich’s command, the group answered in one voice.

The order was concise and accurate. Short as it was—necessary before the enemy—Nostalgia’s members immediately grasped Dietrich’s intent. He still wore that menacing air, but he hadn’t lost his head; his judgment remained clear. It stung to admit, but Nostalgia did not have the strength to defeat the Gryphon outright. Their only options were to escape or buy time until Uncle Gry settled things. The members worried Dietrich might try to take matters into his own hands because the twins had been taken, but apparently that fear was unfounded.

Dietrich pulled Cornelia’s shield from the magic bag Kristoff had been carrying and strapped it on. He then gripped a mithril sword.

“Let’s do this!”

He sprinted.

As Dietrich closed the distance, the Gryphon met him with multiple jet-black whips. Cornelia and Kristoff moved at the same time; Eileen and her group were left bound and gagged. They had to fight fast and finish fast. Everyone in Nostalgia knew there was no other way; the longer the battle dragged out, the worse their odds, given the yawning gap in stamina and magic reserves.

If they had any chance, it was while the Gryphon still treated this as sport and held back. Even without time to confer properly, past experience had unified their resolve.

Dietrich rushed forward and met the onslaught head-on, raising the shield to take the jet-black lashes. The impact shoved him back a step, but it did not send him flying. Blows that arced around the shield were sliced aside with his sword. Anything he couldn’t handle was cut apart by Kristoff.

Just as Bernhart had said, the black whips could be blocked with a shield and cleaved with a blade. So long as this Gryphon wasn’t as viciously sly as Uncle Gry or hiding its true ability, they could fight it.

“Haah!”

Cornelia swung her warhammer.

She aimed for the base of one wing. The hammer struck with a blow that sent feathers flying.

This Gryphon lacked the finesse of Uncle Gry; there was no simultaneous defense-and-attack trickery. The warhammer bit cleanly into flesh.

While Dietrich and Kristoff parried, Cornelia circled to the flank, using the strike as a diversion. Uncle Gry had taught them where to hit: the wing’s root. That area retained strong avian traits: hollow, brittle bones and relatively thin protective muscle. If those bones shattered, the wing would become dead weight, crippling flight. On an immature specimen, pain would shatter concentration and interrupt magic; precisely a weakness to exploit.

At the time, she’d been shocked Uncle Gry would casually share such specifics, but now she thought of it as a challenge from him. Perhaps he was trying to say, “Go ahead and try if you can.”

No matter how fragile that part may be, there's no way a human could shatter a Gryphon's bones that easily. 

“It’s broken!”

Cornelia cried out involuntarily at the sensation of bone giving way, more stunned than triumphant. The warhammer must be enchanted; it produced an odd effect. A scream—a high, keening wail—escaped the Gryphon’s throat. Simultaneously, the black whips stilled.

“Now!”

At Dietrich’s shout, a torrent of rock and rubble poured down onto the Gryphon like an avalanche.

Rock Avalanche. A spell Bernhart had fashioned through grueling training with Uncle Gry. Borrowing lessons from their previous battle with golems, it served as both offense and hindrance: powerful enough to wipe out a typical golem horde in a single blow while erecting a defensive bulwark. It was a costly spell in time and mana even under normal conditions. Now, with interference, firing it successfully was a gamble. Failure would be fatal. Bernhart must have trusted his comrades and prepared anyway.

The falling stones piled up, filling the area with choking dust.

“Pull out!”

If they were going to flee, it had to be now; this was the opening. Dietrich barked orders even as he hesitated to leave. He wanted, at least once, to strike the blow himself and avenge the twins. After landing that hit on the Gryphon, his bloodlust had flared.

Normally, Dietrich would not waver. He put comrades’ lives first and valued his role as their protector. But now anger gnawed at him, barely held in check by reason. Given the slightest provocation, that fury could erupt. His earlier threats toward Eileen and the others had not been idle bluster.

Part of the blame for the twins being taken lay with Eileen’s group; forgiveness was not on his mind. Their current being alive and left bound was simply because there had been no chance to use them as shields or decoys. If the Gryphon hadn’t begun to provoke them, Dietrich would likely have folded Eileen and company into a broader strategy.

“Leader!” Cornelia shouted when she saw Dietrich still there instead of withdrawing. She had already put sufficient distance between them upon feeling Bernhart’s spell gathering.

“Di—san!” Kristoff called, keeping to a safe distance. The panic in his voice was plain. As Dietrich’s childhood friend, Kristoff could predict the kind of recklessness that old Dietrich might fall into.

Dietrich cast aside his shield, gripped the sword with both hands, and steadied himself.

“You lot—fall back. Run with everything you’ve got. I’ll keep playing with this one a little longer.”

He fixed those crazed eyes toward the swirling dust. To anyone not close to him, he was always aggressive and quick to crush what he disliked. When pursuing his goal, he disregarded his own safety and repeated reckless gambits. That had been the Dietrich of old.

He smiled. It was not the smile that reassured comrades. It was the grin of a beast craving blood.

He intended to rip open whatever might have hurt or slain the twins—the companions he cherished—and drown it in blood. He smiled at the thought of that moment.

The dust that blanketed the field began to clear.

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