Step, step, step!
"Lady Riana!"
Rert immediately ran from the training field after Dionnardo's speech over.
He was searching for Riana, the girl that emerged from the thin air in the of him.
He had a question.
No, a mountain of question.
To her that suddenly become so mysterious that he could no longer identify her as the same Riana who drank much Ales and act
rude to everyone.
As he descend the stairs from the second floor to the first floor, Rert's mind was all about Riana's calm face as she walked out of the training field.
What's wrong?
He want to asked her.
What's happened?
Did something happen?
Why are you looked so sad?
Today's Riana seems to be completely stranger to yesterday's Riana that Rert's still growing mind.
As far as Rert's knowledge able to comprehend, he and Riana's relationship is already at the level of friendship.
So he want to know more, if not help, this new friend of him.
So, after reached the first floor, Rert immediately looked at the surroundings, trying to find that particularly beautiful girl.
Then there she was.
Sat at the chair at the edge, hugging a sleeping girl.
Wait, what? Hugging a girl!?
Just what happened while Rert listening the Guildmaster's speech!?
Rert quickly rushed over to her, confused by the precense of the unknown girl.
"L-lady..." He called, hasitantly.
Riana raise her face and found him after she heard the call.
"Hm? Oh, Rert. The speech is finished?" She smiled gentlely and asked Rert.
"Uh, um, yeah..." He nodded.
Rert wanted to ask who the sleeping girl was, but he stunned momentarily by Riana's gentle smile and lose his prepared words to asking her.
"How's it?"
Maintained her smile, Riana softly pat the sleeping girl's head and asked.
Rert had his eyes alternated between the sleeping girl's face and Riana's smile, completely have no idea just how the two ended up in this situation, before sat at the empty chair cross the table and answered slowly
"... The Guildmaster was amazing. He tells us about the wrong and bad of mindset we could had as we grow and became stronger in the future. We shouldn't had enough by the status quo, but shouldn't be greed, too. It's difficult, but very helpful. Altough not so detailed like what the Guildmaster said, my Dad said the same. So..."
Rert clenched his fists, brought it to his front.
"... Sadly but excitedly, I was still so weak. Mind and all. I had too many things to improve of!"
Rert frowned while glanced at his fists.
"The road to become a Hero was... Unbelievably long, so long that I may never be able to reach it by my hands. But we shouldn't fade our passion, the Guildmaster said."
He then smiled with determined eyes.
"Passion was our fuel. Just because we realized that our dream was impossibly absurd to reach, we shouldn't stop. A good Adventurer trained when they found a obstacles that prevent them to getting the fame, money, woman and power! We ran when we couldn't and wait. Wait for the times when we could! That was, the Adventurer! Because we are Adventurer!"
Without even realizing it, Rert shout and raise his voice.
He stood and brought his fist up the head, raw excitement written all over his face.
And.
Of course.
That's gestures would gather the attention of the Adventurers.
Unbeknowns by Rert, a crowd already gathered around him.
"Oh! That's a nice words you have there, kid!"
A man pat his small shoulder with his big hand and laughed.
"Eh, who are you!?"
"Tell 'em, cute boy~!" A muscular woman in light leather armor shouted.
"HAHAHA, You seems to be a promising Adventurer, brat!"
"Kyaaa~!"
"Dreamed to be Hero, huh? Maybe we should indeed aiming high!"
"It's cute how he raised his fists, right?"
"Right~."
"I won't lose, then!"
There's people who praised him, some just follow the flow shouting without reason, while there's also some whose inspired by him.
There's even a boy who started his own dream expressing sesson to not lose to Rert.
The guild's atmosphere today was noisy.
Very cheerful with burning desiring shout of the young Adventurers, that inspired by Dionnardo's speech and triggered by Rert's impression, and the older Adventurers, that follow the cheers and admiring the youngs' strong passion.
Seeing that sight, Riana widened her eyes a bit.
"... I see."
She muttered quietly.
"This was the reason you never claim yourself as a Hero, right?"
Her eyes, clouded if compared by her usuals, was now colored by waves of nostalgia.
She don't know.
But it's seems.
She's old already.
They said Old peoples tends to gazing at their past for everything.
And it was true.
At least for Riana, she sure it's true.
Because she never forgot.
Caressing the hair of the sleeping girl on her hug, Riana smiled a sincere smile she never did for a thousand years.
***
—Several days later.
"I don't understand you, Lady Riana."
While holding a bag full of herbs, Rert looked at Riana, who was squatted to gathering herbs she found beneath a rock, and at a girl in his age, who's at some point started to follow them.
Riana calmly proped her chin and looked up to Rert while still in squat position.
"What do you mean?"
The girl silently glancing the two in anxiety.
"Everything, you know. Everything!"
Up until today, the three of them busily and excitedly (except Riana) did quest after quest because of burning desire to be become a great Adventurer or even a Hero inside Rert pushed them to do so.
While the quest they do mostly is just herb gathering quests, they speed at completing quests was so fast because of Riana's unexpectedly vast knowledge about forest's ecosystem and herb help them in avoiding most monsters and secure the targeted herbs safely.
Even if a Monster or two sometimes found them, they could handle them quite in ease even without Riana help them.
Rert already had combat experience and skill to some extent thanks to his father.
So, low-level monster like Horned rabbit and Green Lizard was not strong opponents for him.
After adding the unknown girl's ability in Earth and Wind element magic, just two of them was enough to overwhelmed any low-level monster they could encounter on this forest.
But precisely because of that fact, Rert's curiousity and perplexity re-surfaced.
"Who are you exactly, Lady Riana?"
This white-haired girl had a stunningly beautiful face, the rare white hair and ocean-blue eyes, appearance akin to the symbol of purity, maiden and holiness, the holy Goddess Fharmadaria.
But her nature was the exact opposite. A rude, lazy drunkard girl, who had weird sense of pride.
But the most shocking was her knowledge.
Added to her rather solemn demeanor that sometimes surfaced randomly, specially at the Guildmaster's speech, then you got a strange but somehow attractingly enigmatic girl.
And.
"Who is that girl?"
The identity of the unknown girl.
Just who was her is!?