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Volume 7 Chapter 3 Part 7

「Your sword, my lord.」

The knight holds out the Duke’s Orichalcum sword to him, and the Duke takes it back and places it at his hip where it rightfully belongs. He then continues to walk forward in a hurry. I follow after them too.

The Duke doesn’t say any word until we return to Bode’s castle from the from the lobby of the Earl of Selmar’s castle thanks to the 「Field Walker」 used by one of the Duke’s Adventurers, which worries me quite a bit.

「Lord Michio, first and foremost, allow me to apologize to you. There is an old-fashioned tradition that the Earl of Selmar is upholding: a tradition that the castle of the Earls of Selmar has been build with Shield Cement in order to prevent Adventurers from being allowed inside of it. I have completely forgot about it, and I had no idea that he is going to bring that up in the first place.」

After arriving back in Bode, that was the first thing that the Duke complained about to me.

「As for the story about Lord Michio being an Adventurer, I think that it is most likely that he heard about it from one of the maids that have been delegated to come here to Hartz Duchy from my home. Thinking about it now, I should have forbidden them from ever talking about this to anyone.」

「It is a little late for being remorseful now that the deed has been done, but I was definitely careless as well.」

「That might be true, but still, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that the Earl of Selmar, my own uncle, would come up with this kind of harassment and discrimination towards someone whom he only just met.」

Cassia shares the same opinion as the Duke, and while I do agree with them wholeheartedly, then there’s still something that I fail to understand no matter how hard I’m thinking about it: what was even the point of this sudden accusation towards the Duke and Cassia? Everything started going south from that point onward, but I fail to grasp why would he do something like that to his own family? Even if they don’t like each other all that much, then shouldn’t family members support one another?

「Still, I was surprised that Lord Michio changed his job to Explorer. I have to admit, when you suddenly offered to have your Intelligence Card checked just like that, I have broken into a cold sweat like I haven’t done in quite a while.」

You and me both, man. You and me both.

「I thought something like that might happen, so that’s why I decided to do that.」

「It is not impossible to change your Job from Adventurer to Explorer, and honestly, that might not be such a bad idea when you consider the fact that there are still some places and the aristocratic clans, families and houses that still abide by the old custom of not allowing Adventurers into their aristocratic homes to the Adventurers being considered as 「unworthy」 of being in the same place as the nobles. Nevertheless, if you have truly foreseen that such a thing might happen, then I feel that I must congratulate you all the more. Well done, Lord Michio, as expected of someone as excellent as yourself. If I may ask this of you, was that the reason for why you didn’t come straight to the castle’s lobby, but came here from the outside? Because you lost the ability to use 「Field Walker」?」

The Duke is making his own assumptions and drawing his own conclusions, which honestly works out perfectly for me. You see, this is one of those times when my worrying does actually pay off, because thanks to that and me worrying about the worst-case scenario, I ended up coming to the Bode’s castle from the outside.

If I did arrive in the castle’s lobby, that would’ve caused the Duke and Cassia to think that I was still an Adventurer, which would only worsen my situation during the Intelligence Card check. But thankfully, the worst possible outcome has been swiftly avoided.

「While it might’ve been by chance, ultimately things did turn out all right in the end.」

「That it did, and once again, we have you to thank for it. By the way, since you no longer have the means of travelling anywhere you want by yourself, then how are you going to go back home? Should it be necessary, I can send one of my Adventurers to take you back to Quratar if you want.」

「Thank you for the generous offer, but that won’t really be necessary. My friends from my Party are already waiting for me outside, and they’re going to take me back.」

I properly decline the Duke’s offer to turn one of his Knight Adventurers into my personal taxi.

Normally in this world, the process of changing Jobs needs to be carried out by visiting the temple of the Guild that focuses around the Job that you want to acquire and praying at the temple’s altar. So if I changed my Job from Adventurer to Explorer and wanted to change it back to Adventurer, then I would have to do it at the temple belonging to the Adventurer’s Guild. I am still unsure about the most crucial thing: whether I can visit any temple in order to change my Job or do I have to visit a specific one in order to make that happen, but for the time being, it would probably be a good thing to not let the Duke and Cassia know that worries like that are what’s currently being on my mind.

「Now, as for the ring that you have retrieved from Heinz the Bandit the other day, then it is just like I told the earl of Selmar: I took it to the Armor Shop in order to get it appraised, and after the process was finished, it turned out that the ring was indeed a Ring of Determination. We never agreed on the price that I would offer you for selling it to me, right? So what do you say for twenty gold coins for it? Would that price be okay with you?」

「Yes, definitely. I am grateful for your consideration.」

Twenty gold coins? If he willing to offer me such a price so readily, then I guess this ring must be more valuable than I was giving it credit for.

Putting aside the possibility of the Duke feeling extra generous due to how we were able to wipe that smug smirk off of the Earl of Selmar’s face, I tried to recall the prices of other accessories that I know about and calculate the possible market value of the Ring of Determination, an all of my calculations are leading me to believe that its regular market price should be around one hundred thousand Nars, so that means that the Duke is offering me twice its price!

We didn’t have to wait too long for a Knight with a drawstring bag to arrive, almost as if the Duke predicted that I am going to accept the price that he was offering to me. The Duke took the bag from the Knight and handed it over to me after he inspected the contents of the bag to make sure that not even a coin was missing from it.

「Well then Lord Michio, thank you for taking the time to go visit the Earl of Selmar with us today. It didn’t exactly go as planned, but the most important thing is that it didn’t end up in a complete disaster.」

When I receive the drawstring bag from the Duke, Cassia expressed her gratitude to me as well as she headed back inside to the castle. I am glad that I got to smell the sweet fragrance of her perfume until the end.

「In that case, I am going to be taking my leave as well.」

「Of course, and thank you for your help today. I hope to see you again soon, Lord Michio.」

Now that Cassia has left and returned to the castle, there is literally nothing left holding me down here anymore, so I was also on my way, walking until I left the castle premises, but I didn’t stop there. Just in case if I was being followed by someone, I decided to continue walking until I left the city of Bode and then made my way all the way to Bode’s Labyrinth.

「How far has the exploration of this Labyrinth progressed?」

「Up to the tenth floor.」

I talked to the Explorer stationed at the entrance to the Labyrinth to gain intel on how far did the Exploration progressed and then headed inside.