The restaurant area built into the guild was mostly unoccupied that morning. Its patrons were out on commissions or dungeon diving. Even the receptionist area was quiet, allowing the guild staff to take a few moments of rest before the hustle that would come during midday.

There were four parties in the guild. One of them was idling about in the waiting area while the other three were in the restaurant. By name, they were the Black Eagles, White Crows, Blue Phoenix, and Matthias’ party.

“It’s been over a week now and we haven’t agreed on a party name yet.”

Matthias sat on a chair facing his two female party members. The two had their heads buried in books for the last couple of hours. Meanwhile, he simply sat there, bored as hell, waiting for either of them to raise questions.

“Well, it’s not like a party name is required,” he mused absentmindedly.

Despite Matthias’ extensive book knowledge, he didn’t know about the naming convention adventurers used until a few days after they had registered. It was obvious after hearing the samples. Several decades ago, party names had more variety. For example, a peculiar H-class party whose members were all mages had the name “Five Peaks” because their hometown had a magnificent view of the Lumelec Mountain Range. Despite that, when he asked if they could use a different name, the receptionist’s face twisted into an awkward smile as if to say “are you sure you’re going to do that?”

He sighed and ate the fried bread sticks on the table. They were seasoned quite well and tasted delicious. But he doubted whether they could finish the small serving they ordered.

After all, the two women haven’t touched the food for as long as they’ve been studying.

Manna was reading a book on arithmetics, while Soleil was tackling a kind of encyclopedia about monsters. Both of their eyebrows were drawn together. Instead of studying, they look more like they were being tortured. He had to focus hard to stop himself from teasing them.

For a party to be promoted, they must take an academic exam and a test of ability. The latter’s contents dependent on their role; combatants were generally tested on various things such as their skill with their weapons, their ability to defend the backlines, and other similar things, while non-combatants such as apothecaries, housekeeping mages, and explorers were tested in other ways. As for the former, the content was standard for everyone.

The academic exam had three subjects, which were Survival, Culture, and Mathematics.

Survival encompassed topics such as knowledge of usable plants, monster biology, how to make use of the land, the markings adventurers commonly use, and other such topics. Basically, it was a simplified combination of biology and camping. This was a subject that Manna excelled at. She had been hunting ever since she was young and commonly spent her nights out. She was even somewhat knowledgeable regarding herbs and edible plants, similar to an apothecary.

“Don’t bother trying to hire an apothecary, especially that girl. Got it?”

That was what she said. What happened between them? Back when they last saw each other, the apothecary girl also looked like she was trying to avoid Manna.

Anyway, Culture was a combination of many things such as law, racial differences and culture, history, and other related topics. It was oftentimes the most boring subject and many adventurers didn’t like it. And since the results of the academic exam placed a very low weight on this subject, nobody bothered studying it and just answered whatever they could.

Normally, Matthias would consider himself the expert on this subject, as he had a noble’s education as well as a library full of books that he had obsessively consumed as he grew up. There were certain parts he was not quite familiar with, however. For example, racial politics were alien to him, as even after over a decade of living in a fantasy world, his mind still makes an effort to believe that certain races were just a different “flavor” of humans rather than a completely different species.

“It is what it is,” he would always say.

Finally, Mathematics. The arithmetic knowledge of that world was quite… low. Other than the ability to add, subtract, divide and multiply, nobody else bothered to expand upon those processes to create comprehensive fields of study. For more complicated requirements, people just derived something that worked and then left the idea to the wind. Perhaps only the Astrological Society of the dwarves was capable of higher forms of mathematics. Essentially, the math of that world was just at the level of an elementary student’s knowledge.

Strangely enough, this was Soleil’s specialty.

When they received their test results, both he and Manna were shocked that Soleil obtained a perfect score on it. Wanting to test it out, Matthias tested her with one question which he knew the answer to by heart.

“What’s 6,969 multiplied by itself?”

“48,566,961. Why?”

She answered almost instantly, and with no hesitation.

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Just in case it was a fluke, the two of them asked Soleil several more questions ranging from multiplication and division of multi-digit numbers to basic algebra. But not only did Soleil answer each of their questions immediately, but she also did so with a baffled look.

“It’s just numbers. What’s so hard about it?”

Did her body augmentation also make her brain think faster?

Regardless, despite Manna’s extensive knowledge of the first subject and Soleil’s peerless arithmetic ability, they were still only able to pass with a decent grade. The problem was that the subject one of them specialized in, the other would flunk.

Manna was the typical example of someone who can’t wrap her head around numbers. According to her, simply seeing numbers longer than three digits made her head hurt. Meanwhile, Soleil had a more fundamental problem when it came to her view of survival skills.

She had a “just punch the enemy” and “eat anything that looks good” mentality. Perhaps the time when they were gathering herbs and she couldn’t tell the difference between them and weed should have already given them an idea about it.

While Matthias was confident that they could all still pass the academic tests for C-rank promotion, what about the next ones? Fearing for their future, he decided to leave at least one day of every week to tutor them across all subjects.

That was where they were at now.

He sighed again. As expected, things wouldn’t go so well on the first day. Manna had already fallen asleep with her eyes open, while Soleil was glaring intensely at the book like she was trying to decipher what a set of ancient hieroglyphs meant.

“Be careful of their toxic breath? Bring antidotes to avoid wasting mana? Can’t I just punch it before it does?”

The genuine confusion in her murmurs sapped Matthias’ motivation.

“Do you… need some help?”

None of them responded. Even Manna, who prided herself in being able to wake up at the smallest stimuli, looked like a victim of a sleeping spell cast upon her by a book of elementary mathematics. In Soleil’s case, she was simply too preoccupied with trying to burn a hole through the book with her eyes. Despite the disappointing sight, he found one part to be funny. Though the three of them might be very powerful, it only took a couple of thin books to completely stump two of them. God truly doesn’t bless people with a perfect hand.

Seeing the lack of development, he decided to get out of the guild for a bit to get some fresh air. The two girls didn’t even notice him leave owing to the much bigger threat that two mere books posed to their sanity. As the morning sun’s warmth washed over his strangely exhausted body, he decided to pick up some fried shrimp croquettes to distract himself. Even if the girls didn’t touch the fried bread sticks, surely at least Manna would feel energized after having her favorite food.

He had only left for a quarter of an hour, but when he returned with a bag full of snacks, there was already a commotion happening inside the guild.

Inside, several hooligan-looking men wearing the armor of town guards were arguing with the guild staff.

“What’s going on here?” he asked a random peer in the waiting area.

“They’re looking for someone here. Dunno who. They were demanding to search the place but were refused. Only the receptionist area is open to the public.”

He looked to the right and saw that an entire party had lined up to block the restaurant area, acting as the guild’s security. A big, burly man had also blocked the entrance to the receptionist desk and the back rooms. Everybody was on edge and looked ready to fight, even if the other party was the town guard.

“Is the guild trying to hide a criminal?!” one of the town guards shouted. He looked more like a criminal himself than someone who enforces order among the public.

“All we’re saying is that you’re not allowed to search our premises. We will handle this situation and hand the person you’re looking for once we determine the legitimacy of your claim.”

Sharon, whom Matthias had thought was meek, stood firm and met the fierce glare of the much taller man without yielding.

“The guild has its own rules recognized by the country. If any of its members are accused of a crime, we have the right to carry out an investigation of our own.”

The Adventurers’ Guild highly valued professionalism, something that even the nobility of that world did not possess. That was another reason why the guild wanted to cultivate highly-skilled individuals of both martial strength and academic ability. To protect its members, the guild offered them many benefits such as legal arbitration and free shelter among others. In exchange, adventurers worked for the guild full time.

As such, even in the face of criminal accusations, the guild stressed that its members would be protected by them until definitive proof of their guilt was presented.

“It doesn’t matter! We have definite proof!”

“Where is it, then?”

“It will be presented at trial.”

“Apologies, then. But we cannot comply with your demands. Please leave.”

Despite the pressure exerted by the experienced adventurers around them, the town guard did not relent. They kept arguing to get their way. If this was done in any other establishment, then the staff would have had no choice but to comply. However, this was the Adventurers’ Guild. It held much more influence and power than a local group of bullies.

That meant they had something that made them confident about facing the guild, which had members strong enough to defeat monsters.

“What’s going on here?”

Suddenly, Manna slipped out between the lines of adventurers and walked towards him. She had several fried bread sticks in her hand and one in her mouth.

Soleil followed after her. She immediately saw the bag Matthias was carrying and reached for a piece. But right as she did, the town guard members saw her and approached her with heavy footsteps. Soleil, despite the intimidation they tried to show, did not even put her guard up and just ate the croquette absentmindedly. It was obvious that she didn’t consider them a threat at all.

“You! Beastkin woman!” the leader-like guy shouted, spreading spittle everywhere.

Matthias shook his head. “So they were looking for her? What kind of trouble did she get into now?”

“You’re under arrest for the murder of three men!”