As Zane made his way back, he was greeted by yet another thought-stopping sight.
Melinda and Adrianna - both fully clothed and, more importantly, healthy - were sitting at the edge of the former shoreline of the sapphire lake.
Former being the key word, as the volume of the water decreased by at least one-third, and now the lake's murky surface was littered with literal dozens upon dozens - if not hundreds - of corpses of the aquatic monsters…
…monster corpses getting cooked by the steaming lake with all of its water brought over the boiling point…
"...that's a big pot of soup…"
"That's what I said just now! But Adi isn't in the mood for jokes."
Zane breathed out in disbelief while approaching the girl from behind, and Melinda leaned back and smiled, glancing meaningfully at the brown-haired maid clinging to her with eyes full of tears.
"What exactly happened?"
The monstrous servant asked,
"It seems I steam-cooked myself."
The gold-haired girl answered casually.
"It wasn't exactly what I was asking about, but... Holy shit."
Zane shook his head before faltering back as Melinda's words took a second to sink in.
"Pretty awkward, wouldn't you say? This bad boy is well worth the money. It does suck a bit that vitality and defense are separate stats, but also, I can't say I can complain about staying alive. While we're at it, it's very interesting how in the world, I was able to survive something like that. I mean. My eyes got hardboiled!"
"My lady… please don't talk about it…"
Melinda snickered showing off her necklace before shrugging her shoulders and looking back towards the boiling lake while Adrianna cired out and snuggled closer to her.
"I'm sorry for scaring you like that, Adi… That said… do you think any of those would be edible? I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere about people eating the Rock-Pincer Crabs."
The gold-haired girl snuggled back to the surprisingly meek maid before raising one hand and pointing at a specific monster floating in the shrunk lake.
"I'm not sure about it… yet this brings me back to my original question. What in the world happened exactly?! How did this open pressure cooker become a thing?!"
Zane furrowed his brows before remembering the point he was going for and asking while poinitng at the scene of the disaster.
"Kinetic energy transmission, I guess? Probably? Maybe? I smacked the water... so hard that it boiled... and since it was so sudden, it kind of caused the explosion."
Melinda pointed out with a shrug, tilting her head, unsure of the exact mechanics of the phenomenon she had created.
"Were you aiming for that?"
"I believed it would be possible to heat up the water if I used just enough strength, I was a bit off though. A slight miscalculation on my part."
Zane asked, and the noble girl sighed while looking to the side, dodging the eye contact.
"..."
"..."
Zane was staring daggers at Melinda's back, but the girl stubbornly refused to meet his gaze.
"...you want to lure in the Deep-Dusk Dullahan, don't you…?"
"!!!"
All of a sudden the monstorus servant pointed out and the gold-haired noble flinched like a child caught red-handed on mischief.
"Seriously? You can't go out of your way to bully every edgy cavalry unit you meet along the way, you know?!"
"I have to assert my dominance! I want them to fear me!"
"...?!"
Zane rolled his eyes and called out, causing Melinda to throw a hissy-fit back - the actions of both of them making Adrianna lean back and look at them with a pitiful expression.
"My lady, can we go back for today?"
The sad maid asked, clinging to the gold-haired girl so strongly as if she was afraid Melinda would disappear the moment she let go of her.
"We could… buuuut, Adi, we're close to finishing all the quests! Three more hours… no, two more hours. How about it? If we don't hunt down the quest monsters within the next two hours, we will go back, and I will not complain!"
Melinda leaned from side to side, hearing out Adrianna's request but very clearly having her own idea.
"Speaking about more hunting - I let the monster that I attacked to heal you go. If that's not a problem, please do not kill a one-armed Pigkin Orc, please."
Zane perked up and spoke in a slightly guilty tone.
"Alright. Noted. That said, let's check on some of those monsters. Up we go, Adi~ I believe a few should have dropped stat-boosting pearls."
Melinda nodded as she got up, pulling the brown-haired maid with her and motioning towards the boiling lake with her chin…
—--------
Not counting the overconfident noble girl around noon, and the uncanny-looking man with an ability that let him turn into a giant, bringing a bisected monster whose threat level was recently raised from A to S to prevent any rank B adventurer parties from attempting to challenge it and getting slaughtered, the day at the adventurer guild was rather slow.
Many local adventurers were sitting around the guild using the tavern part of the building for drinking and complaining about the hunting quests being stolen from them and laughing at the reckless girl, wondering what face she would make when the time limit for the quest completion inevitably runs out and she'll have to pay the penalty.
Normally, Terry, the receptionist who signed the quests for that girl, would never join in on such conversations, but this time was different.
"I swear, it's always those noble brats! They get a few levels thanks to buying experience points with those EXP shackles and think they're gods!"
Terry had already clocked out his shift and was talking angrily over a pint of dark beer.
"I must say, she struck the lottery with that high level gigantifying guy. He is something else - tearing a Blood-Sigil Bear in half like that is an outstanding feat - but still! If he is that strong, the experience points from killing monsters weaker than him will get lower and lower… HA! I bet he will drain that idiot from all she's worth and ditch her. Her character's awful, too - and I have a good eye for people - so I bet he's planning on doing that soon! Maybe even using the chance to get her in debt by refusing to help out with her quests!"
As presented, Terry was a very talkative drunk - normally, it wasn't a problem because he was a generally good lad, but this time it seemed convinced he saw something rotten inside of that gold-haired girl.