My Daughter Grew Up to “Rank S” Adventurer - Chapter 57.5

This room seemed to be a break room for the guild’s staff. There were a number of chairs and tables. However, no one was taking a break, probably because they were still busy or engaged at the moment.

Belgrief and Qasim sat at the table, facing each other. They wanted to converse with each other.

Belgrief was a bit confused as to what to say, and Qasim also seemed to be the same, his eyes darting around restlessly, but then he meekly opened his mouth.

“I don’t know… I don’t know how to talk about this, do I?”

“Haha, well…”

“… How are you?”

“Yeah… I’m okay. And you?”

“I’m…”

Qasim’s eyes were downcast, and Belgrief scratched his cheek awkwardly.

“I heard you quit being an adventurer, even though you made it to S rank.”

“Yeah… I just felt so depressed…”

Qasim looked up and chuckled in response.

“Do you think it’s rude of me to say this?” 

“No, not at all… Hey, can I ask you something? What happened to Percy and Sati? What’s happened to you guys since I left to return to Tornella?”

Qasim was silent for a bit, but then opened his mouth.

“Me and the others, we were trying to get stronger back then. We were trying to get much stronger, to achieve higher ranks, to be able to take on more difficult requests… I mean, I was hoping we could find a way to fix your leg.”

“Mmm…”

“Don’t laugh at me, okay? We were young and stupid, too. We knew you were hurting and still trying hard to smile. But we didn’t know what to do. I was afraid that if I said something bad to you, you’d completely shut down.”

“I see… So…”

“Yeah… So I was desperately working my way up the ranks. I figured if I got stronger at that and found a way to fix your leg, you’d come back to us. More than anything, Percy believed that. He was the one who, you know…” Qasim’s words trailed off.

Qasim was about to continue speaking his mind, but Belgrief interrupted him and shook his head.

“No, it wasn’t. That was just a bad combination of various events. No one was at fault.”

“… I see.”

Qasim tipped his mountain cap lower, to close his eyes.

“Anyway, we were looking for a way to heal your missing body part.”

“… If only there was such a way.”

“Ah. Yes, there is, Belle. In the end, we couldn’t find a proper remedy to do that. Even if there was one, it was classified as a forbidden method. Even if you got your legs back, you’d end up going crazy. The legs would corrupt other parts of your body and turn you into something else. That’s all there was to that forbidden method.”

Qasim continued with a sad, pathetic smile.

“With you gone from Orphen, Percy, who was smiling less to begin with, finally stopped smiling. Sati also started to look away more often. The three of us, you see, were all the strong-minded type, weren’t we? You were always there to mediate, so we were able to get along.”

“That’s not true…”

Belgrief was about to say “That’s not true…”, but Belgrief held his tongue. What’s the use of being modest now?

“While I was looking for you, we had more and more fights over trivial things. One day, Sati walked out. That was the clincher. So Percy and I split up. I never heard from them again. It’s ironic. We all wanted to help you. But each one of us got sick of each other.”

“Qasim…”

Thanks for reading.