Grandson of the Holy Emperor is a Necromancer

**

The burly dude behind the adventurer guild counter formed an unreadable expression. "Oh, so you have a surname. Are you from a noble house?"

I replied with a line that I had thought up of beforehand. "Ruined, actually."

"If you don't mind me asking, affiliated with which kingdom?"

"Lome."

"You a knight in training?"

"Something like that."

From the get-go, this man didn't even bother to use polite speech.

He probably couldn't get a good look at my face because of the dwarven-made full-body armour set that covered my noggin. He might be able to guess that I was still young from my voice alone, but figuring out how young exactly would be quite tough.

Besides, the name 'Allen' was fairly common among boys, too.

The receptionist groaned under his breath before shifting his gaze to the two people some distance behind me.

Alice was looking around the interior of the adventurer guild with sparkling eyes as if everything here was so strange and exciting to her.

As for Hans, he was standing near the entrance where the request board stood tall. He scanned its contents as if he was there to place a request of his own.

The receptionist asked, "Are those two also going to register?"

"That's the idea."

"Being an adventurer isn't a child's game, so what the hell..."

He said something that was considerably rude to us. He probably thought that since I was from a ruined noble house, there was no need to mind his manners or some such.

"Still, as you're from a noble house, I'm guessing you've managed to pick up on a couple of swordsmanship techniques. Correct?" The receptionist tapped on the Minotaur's horn and glanced at me again. "Did you really hunt this monster down? I mean, you need at least five proper knights to just barely hunt down a single Minotaur."

"Of course."

I nodded nonchalantly.

The receptionist looked as if he didn't have much of a choice in the matter. He then pushed forward a wooden plaque towards me. "Very well, you'll be registered as a 'Wood' rank for now."

It seemed that he still wasn't fully convinced by our little group. That's too bad, but I didn't have another way to prove our strength without exposing ourselves. Nothing I could do about it for now.

Besides, becoming an adventurer was my idea of fooling around. In other words, it was a fun way for me to pass my time during this vacation. There was no need to get too invested in it.

At the beginning, you'd receive a wooden plaque like mine which denoted the beginner rank. That's right, both adventurers and mercenaries had their own ranking system.

Starting from Wood, the ranks were Stone, Iron, Eltera, and finally, Orichalcon.

Adventurers up to Iron rank were pretty commonplace, but apparently, ones with Eltera rank or higher were quite rare. I heard that only around one thousand people with such ranks existed in the entire continent.

The receptionist carried on, "Remember that your rank will fall or simply get revoked outright if you don't do anything for a long time. You must complete at least one request within a month of your first registration."

Wow, this does kinda feel like I'm in a game, doesn't it? That's why it's so fun!

In any case, I was planning to enjoy the next two months of this trip at my own relaxed pace. As for the remaining month, my intention was to spend it on searching for the first Holy Emperor's relic.

I took a look around the adventurer guild. It was sure noisy, alright.

A group of burly men sitting on a table nearby were chatting away with someone who looked like their client, while some other adventurers were busy clinking their alcohol-filled mugs and listening to the minstrel's songs.

There was a huge noticeboard set up by the entrance, where I could see adventurers and mercenaries perusing the available requests before picking up the request forms that piqued their interest.

Alice and Hans were standing before it, too. And they were attracting quite a lot of attention at the moment.

In the case of Alice, it was due to her obvious good looks. And as for Hans, his huge luggage.

"Which noble house is she from? Should I like, chat her up or something?"

"It might be your last chance. If they decide to head into the forest of demonic beasts, they'll surely end up as Minotaur snack. Go right ahead, man!"

"Hahaha! Now I've seen everything. Even a peddler wishes to become an adventurer these days?"

"I'm sure they'll give up after a day or two of pretending."

I could hear the mercenaries and adventures say some disparaging remarks about them.

However, these folks had no idea. No idea that one of those two was a martial arts expert strong enough to crush a Minotaur's head with her bare hands, while the other one was a top-class Alchemist who even confronted a dragon only seen inside legends.

I simply ignored these fools and walked up to Hans and Alice. "Found any fun-sounding requests yet?"

We were on a journey, and it was our sworn duty to have a good time. Let's treat it as an open-minded, 'learn many new things on the way' type of experiential journey.

I asked the two, but they simply shook their heads. So I took a look at the noticeboard myself.

One name among the requests immediately jumped at me – Benikin Church. And the director of said church, a nun named Evelyn.

Now... that name seemed awfully familiar. Hang on, wasn't it from one of the letters delivered to the Imperial Family in the past?

That's right, the church's name belonged to one of the orphanages Ruppel had been supporting, wasn't it?

**

Benikin Church was located right at the edge of the city of Elusha. The church building itself was small and quite shabby. Its director, Sister Evelyn, was an old nun in her seventies.

She was the only guardian taking care of the children in this orphanage, but at the moment, she was lying on the bed with an injured back.

Alice treated the nun while Hans was entertaining the kids by distributing some toys to them.

I took a closer look at the church's state in the meantime. Mildews and fungi were seemingly growing everywhere, while some walls had already collapsed. Several pillars of the building had rotted away and it was hard to tell just when they would give in.

So… Third Imperial Prince Ruppel had been supporting such a place financially, huh?

I perused the request document one more time. Its content was quite simple.

A young child had accidentally dropped a doll inside a sewer, and another orphan, a girl named 'Yuria', went to retrieve it, only to go missing herself. That happened about a day ago.

"Excuse me, Lord Allen?"

Alice walked up to me and whispered in my ear what she found out so far.

As it turned out, the incidents of kids going missing seemed to be happening rather frequently in Elusha as of late.

Not only that, weird things were continuously happening within the sewers. Such as, the sewer cleaners suddenly going missing during work, or every guard that ventured in there to investigate also disappearing without a trace.

The smell coming from the sewers was getting worse everyday, and apparently, signs uncomfortably similar to an outbreak of a plague had been detected there as well.

The fiefdom of Elusha had been urgently gathering enough forces to form another investigation unit, a more substantial one this time, but the progress on that front was on the tardier side of things. This force should be ready to set out in two, maybe three days' time, but that was too slow.

Leaving a young girl inside such a sewer alone for that long was too risky.

That was the extent of the information Alice had gathered so far. And I came up with a conclusion based on what was on the request form and her intel.

There was something 'untoward' hiding in the underground sewers.

"I went to inquire with the city garrison, but all they were willing to say was that they still needed to gather more personnel to start the investigation. They didn't seem willing to divulge any detailed information, but it felt like the matter is quite dangerous in nature. That's why I sought out adventurers or mercenaries..."

The old nun explained herself, and I grew puzzled while listening to her.

The underground sewers of a major city were dangerous?

No matter where I looked in this city, its public order was firmly in the camp of 'satisfactory'. Which could only mean that there must've been something seriously suspicious going on if no subjugation forces had been dispatched by now.

"As you may have guessed, I can only give you a small amount as a reward. If it's not enough, I'll take on extra debt to repay you. That's why, please, I beg of you. Yuria... Cough, cough!"

The old nun coughed heavily and Alice gently patted her on the back.

Miss Saintess then glanced at me. "What should we do, sir?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "We'll take care of it."

I figured that it wouldn't be a bad thing to make my brother owe me yet another one.

**

We didn't even need to prepare a whole lot.

We simply got some information from the adventurer guild and heard some stories about witnessing 'gigantic sewer rats' from the soldiers on guard duty.

Some rumours said that monsters called 'Ratmen' were hiding in the sewers. These monsters were usually found living under a city, or in natural Negative Fields located inside forests. Their diet mainly consisted of all sorts of excrements, filth, and even rotting corpses.

It was omnivorous and possessed a fairly violent streak. It'd be considerably dangerous for a young girl to be left alone in the underground sewers for a day or more when such things were scurrying around in there.

"Are we going to catch a rat now, sir?" Hans asked while tilting his head.

"That's right. But it ain't a regular rat. Apparently, it's called a Ratman."

The top brass of the adventurer guild and the leaders of Elusha deliberately withheld this information from the citizens living in the fiefdom. Well, not many people would be chuffed to learn that a whole bunch of half-rat, half-man monsters were scurrying somewhere below their largely-peaceful city, now would they?

They obviously wanted to get rid of the monsters before those things had a chance to cause a massive headache if the circumstances allowed it. One of the things they were worried about was the fact that Ratmen were renowned for spreading deadly plagues.

So, it was in everyone's interest to eliminate them as soon as possible.