「A-arisa, stop!」 「Nope~! This is punishment for making us worry, okay~!」

Saying so, Arisa carries me while rubbing her cheeks on mine. She’s really treating me like a kid, it’s really embarrassing, so I desperately struggled to escape. But no matter how much I struggle, I still couldn’t shake off Arisa’s clutches. Arisa’s a slender, female Mage so she looks like she has barely any physical strength. And although I’m also a female Mage, who even looks like a child, I should’ve been strong enough to break free. Yet despite that, there isn’t any sign of Arisa losing her hold.

「U-urania!」 「Lily! Let go of her!」

Asking Urania, she immediately grapples Arisa’s arm. However, at that moment, I felt Arisa’s eyes mysteriously gleam.

「What’s this cute little creature~~~!!!」 「Eh?」 「W-wha!?」

Urania should have been grappling Arisa’s arm, but before I even noticed, she’s being carried in Arisa’s arm. Since Arisa’s still carrying me, she’s carrying both me and Urania at the same time, but for some reason, I feel that it’s a lot more balanced than before.「Ehe, ehehe… There’re two cute creatures…… Ehehehehe~」 「Release us!」 「Let, go!」

Though Urania and I are desperately struggling to break free, looking at Arisa, there’s no sign of her restraints weakening. And despite being held on this tightly, why doesn’t it feel oppressively tight? No, really, please, let go of us already. The adventurers around are looking at us with amazingly affectionate warm eyes. Hey! Ms. Bikini Armor right in front of us; what exactly are you planning with your hands moving like that? Are you getting ready to pounce at us any time soon?

「H-help-」 「Come on, that’s enough.」 「Fgyah!」 The one that saved us from this pinch was Grim March’s leader, Grimhart. Thanks to a deadly chop that just visited Arisa’s forehead, our restraints got loose, and we were able to safely break free. While we were escaping, I took the chance to kick her shin with my heel. So right now, Arisa’s crouching paralyzed by the pain coming from both her head and her shin.

「Grimhart, thanks for saving us.」 「Thanks.」 「No, sorry about her. Still, we really were worried about you two. Just understand that.」 「Ugh-」

Being told that, I can’t really talk back to them. Still, this and that are different things.「That’s… we’re really sorry about that, but we’re adventurers too. There will be times that we’ll stay out for more than a day for reasons, so it’s going to be troublesome if something like this happens every time.」 「You have a point. Still, most of the adventurers here don’t know what you’re capable of. We only know that Lily’s a powerful Mage, but other than your Magecraft, we don’t know a lot about you. We also have no idea how capable is the young Dog Ear-kin lady over there.」

That’s certainly true. Though it’s in the Guild Card that I’m a Rank D adventurer; that only means I’ve cleared the Guild’s standards. No matter how much we tell them 「We’re strong enough to be D rank, you know?」, with how young we look, it may be reasonable for people to underestimate us.

Still, that can’t be helped. After all, it’s not like we can just go ‘We really are strong!’ and pick fights with random people.

「Since that’s the case, why don’t we try having a mock battle?」 「Hah?」

According to Grimhart, this Guild’s ridiculously large buildings are equipped with several training areas. So how about we use one of them and have a mock battle with everybody? We’ll be able to show everybody our strength and the mock battle itself would be a great learning experience.

「Still, the main objective here is interaction. For a lot of reasons, adventurers have a hard time finding ourselves a permanent home. It’s often the case that we just suddenly drop dead, and sometimes we die inside Dungeons without anyone finding out. We can’t really stop those from happening. However, what we can do is to live on in someone’s memory. Dying in some random place without anyone even noticing is pretty lonely, don’t you think? That’s why we should regularly interact with each other so that at least we can leave memories with our comrades, right?」 「Grimhart……」 「Hm? What is it?」 「You’re too cheesy.」 「Wha!?」

When I made fun of Grimhart’s speech, the whole Guild burst with laughter. Well, the interaction part is something that I agree with too. These days, I’ve been asking Urania about various things and have acquired some knowledge, but still, I feel like I’m still lacking the so-called common sense. After all, even Urania has a lot of things she doesn’t know about, and she also doesn’t have much of the adventurer’s common sense, it seems. To obtain those kinds of information, I do think we need to interact with other adventurers, so this should be a good chance. Looking at Urania, she gives me a silent nod. She probably knows what I’m thinking about.

「Grimhart」 「Now what…」 「We’ll do the mock battle. I do feel like the live-on-as-a-memory stuff is a bit too negative. Still, interaction is really important, after all.」 「Ohh! Then it’s decided, I’ll try gathering participants for tomorrow!」

With this, Urania and I decided to join the “Grim March” sponsored mock battle.