…It’s still alive after that attack…”

The Maneater Ba.s.s had looked like it was completely frozen, but it was in fact, still alive .

It was quite tough .

‘It’s coming towards us!’

‘Help!’

After being freed from the block of ice, the Maneater Ba.s.s did not return to the water . Instead, it used its tail to kick itself into the air and jump towards us .

It was a fish who could fight on land . No wonder it was called the Maneater Ba.s.s .

However, a fish is still a fish .

What could it do once it had been barbecued?

‘Magic Transfer—Fireball . ’

I used all of the surrounding slimes to attack it with a barrage of fireb.a.l.l.s .

The dozen or so fireb.a.l.l.s. .h.i.t their target at the same time, and the Maneater Ba.s.s went up into flames .

‘Kii…’

Unlike land monsters, the Maneater Ba.s.s could not let out its voice in the open air . And so there was no death cry as it fell to the ground .

While it could come back from an ice attack, it could not do the same from a fire attack .

‘Put the Maneater Ba.s.s into storage . ’

‘Okay!’

The slimes said as they put it in their storage .

It just looked like the slime was eating some grilled fish .

‘All right, let’s go back . ’

‘Time to rank up!’

‘But what is a ‘rank up’?’

And so we made our way back to town .

“I’d like to report the completion of a quest . ”

I said at the desk, once I had returned to the guild . She looked at me with a puzzled expression .

“Surely… You’re not going to tell me that you already killed the Maneater Ba.s.s?”

“Uh, but I did . The slimes worked really hard . ”

I said as I pa.s.sed her my guild card .

She took the card and looked at the crystal ball—her face was filled with surprise .

“You-you really did do it then… Which method did you use this time?”

“Well, since we had trouble finding it, I used a monster corpse . ”

She looked at me with a look of dissatisfaction .

Apparently, it was not the answer she had been expecting .

“Uh… You do realize that Maneater Ba.s.s are not exactly difficult to find?”

“What? No, it took us a long time to find it . …It was hiding at the bottom of the river and wouldn’t come out . ”

“Huh? They are meat-eaters and should be lurking near the surface where they wait for their prey…”

…Did they really?

In any case, she seemed to want to know how I killed it, not how I found it .

“As for how I killed it, it was with fire magic…”

“In other words, there really weren’t many of them in the river right now?”

She said, interrupting me .

It seemed like an important point .

I saw how serious she looked and replied .

“The slimes and I searched for 3 hours without finding a single one . ”

“…Thank you for this information . ”

She said as she began to hurriedly scribble on a piece of paper . Then she handed it to a different guild worker .

I couldn’t read what it said from where I was, but the paper was red and it seemed like it was urgent .

“Please pa.s.s this on . ”

“…Understood!”

The guild worker said as they accepted it and then ran off . Then the receptionist looked back at me .

“Well then, you have completed the quest . …Here is your reward . ”

She said as she handed me a few coins .

“I’ll also raise your rank as well . …Are you fine with it being raised up to D?”

“…Is there a reason why I wouldn’t want to raise it that much?”

“Well… There aren’t really any demerits, but you won’t be able to accept any beginner quests anymore . But as you’re a B-Rank Scout, you shouldn’t have trouble finding any work . ”

Beginner quests, huh…

I did remember seeing that there were quests that had restrictions in terms of your rank .

So I wouldn’t be able to accept quests like that anymore… Well, there wasn’t much point in stealing quests that had been prepared for lower-ranking Adventurers .

While I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle the high-ranking ones, surely I would be able to complete D-Rank quests just fine .

“That’s fine . Raise it to D . ”

“Good . Then here is your new guild card!”

She said as she pulled out the new guild card from her desk .

Up until now, the guild cards had been made of something like tin, but this one was made of copper .

By the way…

“You can receive your new guild card so soon after ranking up?”

“Well, in your case, we had discussed it with the other guilds . And they a.s.sured me that you would indeed complete the quest, and that we should make the card in advance . …It turned out that they were right . ”

So rumors were spreading about me .

I didn’t know which worker at which guild it was… But I was at least thankful to have been able to receive the card so early .

…But now that I think about it, there was something that had been bothering me .

“What were you writing on that red paper?”

“Red paper?”

“When I made the report about the Maneater Ba.s.s . You wrote on a red sheet of paper . ”

“Oh, you mean the emergency survey slip . …Yes, we are supposed to send those in when monsters have been acting strangely . ”

I see .

So it was strange that the Maneater Ba.s.s were not near the surface .

“But is some fish being a little shy really a matter of emergency?”

“Yes . …Well, usually it’s 1 out of 10 cases where it turns out to be serious . ”

…1 out of 10 .

It seemed low, but it was actually quite high .

“If it needs to be investigated, I could help as long it’s part of a quest . I am a B-Rank Scout, after all . ”

As for abnormal activity from monsters, it reminded me of the Blue Moon of Salvation and the incident with the magic stones .

It might be easier to deal with it if I joined the investigation team…

“No, we have professionals to deal with it . I think we will leave it to them . …But a request may be put out . It would depend on several factors . ”

So they had professionals .

Well, I guess there was no point in tagging along then .

If it turned out that they would launch a large scale attack, then they would probably put out a request .

“Okay . …I really hope that it’s nothing . ”

I said before leaving the guild .

…From today on, I was a D-Rank Adventurer .