"So, which one of us will share a room with Franz?"
I found myself in a situation where offering my opinion would only bring trouble, so I made the best decision I could: do nothing. I simply remained standing, blending in with the environment.
Jess was the first to volunteer. "I think it would be better if I share a room with him." I started sweating profusely. 'Anyone but Jess!' I wanted to say.
"I don't know, Jess… You always try to harass Franz; he'll probably feel very uncomfortable sharing a room with you," Angie said, crossing her arms.
"You worry about nonsense, Angie. I know I get into some mischief with Franz sometimes, but I can control myself on such an important mission. I won't do anything over the limit," she replied with an innocent face.
"Even so..."
"Anyway, it's not like you're willing to share a room with him, is it?"
"A-ah, sharing a room with a m-man is a bit complicated for me," Angie said, blushing.
Jess seized the opportunity to attack. "Besides, Eva can't share a room with Franz."
"Why can't I?"
'Because if you did, the remaining three people wouldn't fit inside the same room.' It was something that everyone thought of but no one said. We decided to ignore Eva's question.
"The only options left would be me and Nat. However, Nat has only known Franz for a short time, so she would feel very uncomfortable and insecure if she had to share a room with him. So the best option is clearly me," Jess said.
Actually, what she was saying made so much sense that it was hard for Angie and even me to intervene.
However...
"I have no problem sharing a room with Franz."
They all looked at Nat in surprise.
"N-Nat, are you sure? What Jess said made a lot of sense... Sharing a room with a man you just met is..." Angie waved her hands anxiously.
Angie was quite clumsy with this kind of thing.
"Don't worry about me. I trust Franz won't try anything weird. Besides, I can always defend myself by hitting his lower body and then yelling for help or something like that." She already had the entire ploy in her head, to harm not only me but all my potential descendants at the same time.
I broke into a cold sweat thinking that another scary woman had joined the group. 'I must start recruiting more men instead.' People might think it was an advantage to be part of a group with a lot of women, but in truth, it was quite the opposite.
Jess wanted to quibble against Nat at first, but she remembered what had happened in the village a few days ago and reluctantly decided to give up. After all, previously Jess had wrongfully beaten Nat by mistaking her for being dangerous. So Jess, who still felt ashamed and sorry for what she did, wasn't able to contradict her at all.
"Very well, in that case, Franz will stay with Nat while Eva and Jess will stay with me," Angie said. I wasn't involved in the final decision, but I still had thoughts about it. 'Yes!' I was incredibly relieved not to have to share a room with Jess. Even if I didn't quite understand why Nat had made that decision, it was still very favorable to me.
Having finished that topic, I asked:
"So, have you guys already moved our belongings inside the rooms?"
"Yes, we did. The receptionist gave us two room keys. Here is your key," Angie handed me my key.
"So, how do we start investigating? Should we just go to different businesses and ask?" Angie said as she was eating the last cookie from the package.
Eva gave her a murderous glare that she hadn't even shown when she slaughtered the black-robed men in the village. It was hard to blame Eva for acting like that since the cookies were incredibly delicious.
"Hmm no, I highly doubt merchants would want to share relevant information with us since it could affect their business."
"So, what do you propose we do?"
I already had two options in mind.
"The first option is to gather it indirectly. I'm sure if we go to an adventurer's guild branch, we'll hear valuable information just by sitting nearby." This was a classic method used in many fantasy stories that I'd read while I was still living on Earth. After all, few people are more chatty than a couple of drunken adventurers.
"Sounds like a good method. What's the other option?" Angie continued asking.
"The other option is much more direct and could even give us all the information we need, but it depends on various circumstances."
"Is there such a convenient thing?"
"Of course there is. How do you think nobles and wealthy merchants gather information for their ploys?"
"Ehh, I suppose they use spies?"
"You're not entirely wrong; they can use spies, but there is a chance that it will be found out that they sent them. Besides, training spies is extremely expensive and takes a long time."
"But then?"
"What wealthy people do is hire the service of information guilds. The most famous information guild in the capital is called Crescent Moon, and it has branches in most of the relatively important cities in the kingdom."
Information guilds were quite expensive, so ordinary commoners couldn't afford them.
"The problem is finding out if they are still operating in this city or not. Their branch is usually hidden in the first place, so finding out where they are in this city will already be a problem..."
There was a chance they weren't even operating at the moment considering all contact with the rest of the kingdom had been lost.
The girls nodded to my words.
"In that case, let's go to the adventurer's guild first."
"Yep, let's do that."
We left the inn after paying the bill and leaving a generous tip.
We were outside the entrance of the adventurer's guild called Gray Wolf.
As soon as we entered, we could see an unexpected scene inside the guild.
And by unexpected, I mean completely expected.
At least for me.
"Move before I make you do it!"
"Even if you trained for 100 years, you wouldn't be able to do something like that."
"This is why spear masters get such a bad rap!"
Inside the guild, a large number of people of different sizes, ages, and genders were gathered to discuss with each other.
They were all dressed in exotic clothing that sane people wouldn't wear in any other circumstance.
For me, it was like attending an anime convention in which all the attendees were wearing cosplays.
The most ridiculous thing is that they were wearing inappropriate outfits for this freezing weather.
I mean, it's true that being a mana user you're less prone to feeling cold, but it still looks very out of place!
'There's even a woman in classic bikini armor!' I thought as my eyes scanned the armor in detail.
In front of us were various Parties fighting each other and yelling at the guild staff members.
"Wh-Why are they behaving like this?" Nat said, a bit intimidated by the atmosphere inside the guild.
"I can easily imagine the reasons why they might be upset... But for now, let's go closer and hear what they're talking about."
We made our way to one of the empty tables to sit down.
If we were still on Earth, I would've bought some sunglasses and hats to be incognito.
"Please, I ask you to remain calm; the guild is doing everything possible to resolve the situation as soon as possible!"
The guild receptionist looked clearly exhausted.
"Resolve the situation? How long do you think we've been stuck here!!! The magicians in our group weren't even able to perform their job properly and had to find other jobs to start earning money!!!"
"You are well aware that we have already tried everything possible with the help of the Duke, but it has not been possible to break through the barrier... So we can only wait until they send people from the capital to help us."
While the adventurers discussed, we listened attentively at a safe distance.
'Then it is true that we are trapped within the barrier. It seems these adventurers are making a fuss because neither the adventurer's guild nor the Duke has been able to solve this problem.'
Well, it was only natural that they would be upset, especially since most of them probably didn't even belong here.
Seasoned adventurer groups often received orders from all quarters.
It wasn't uncommon for them to earn a lot of money as payment for running errands in more remote areas like this place.
The tension within the guild was very high, so it wouldn't be strange for a real fight to break out at any moment.
If that happened the situation would get really ugly.
To my surprise, I was able to recognize several famous S-rank Parties gathered here.
On the right was the Scarlet Flower Party, which consisted of five female knights. All of them had reached the rank of master in the art of the sword.
But the most impressive and dangerous part of them all was the head of the Party.
Anastasia.
She is a Grand Master.
Someone who has surpassed the limit of a master rank and has reached the pinnacle of mastery of a weapon.
To be honest, even I haven't managed to reach that level of skill with any weapon.
Of course, unlike other people, I am the only person in the continent, probably in the world, who has reached master rank in multiple weapons.
After all, it was normal to spend your entire life mastering a single weapon.
In fact, even many people who had trained for decades never managed to reach the master rank.
So the feat accomplished by Anastasia and me, at such a young age, was almost a miracle.
'If she's here, it means that even her sword wasn't able to cut through the Anti Magic barrier.'
My expression turned serious.
Earlier, I'd considered using Merlina to cut through the barrier as a last resort, but if the barrier was capable of withstanding a Grandmaster's attacks, then, the amount of mana required to achieve it would be astronomical.
But they weren't the only amazing people.
They were there too...
S-rank Party, Shadow.
A group made up of an unknown number of highly reputable expert assassins in the kingdom.
Why did a group of assassins work as adventurers?
Well, they didn't actually do the common jobs in the adventurer's guild, they received requests from third parties specifically for them instead.
The adventurer guild served as an intermediary to ensure payment and keep the employer secret.
I find it hard to believe that the laws of the realm would allow such a thing.
But since this service was commonly used by wealthy people, it hadn't been banned until then.
It was surprisingly easy to identify that they belonged to Shadow since they always wore gray robes with distinctive tattoos on their faces with an identification number.
According to the information that I had gathered, the smaller their number, the more skilled and powerful the assassin will be.
Other than them, there were about three parties that seemed to be ranked A or B.
Unfortunately, I didn't recognize any of them.
By the way, the people who were arguing with the adventurer guild staff were the low-ranked adventurers,
While Scarlet Flower, Shadow, and other high-ranking parties were only observing the situation as my group did.
...
'No,
Aren't they looking at us?'