"Mistress?"

Mmm~ Katsuki… Ehehehe~ Fluffy~

"Mistress?"

Hmm? Katsuki is calling me… That means… Umm… Yeah… It's time to wake up…

I slowly cracked open an eye and sure enough, Katsuki was standing at the edge of the bed, already dressed up in her maid uniform and looking completely pristine and clean despite all the love making we did last night.

Like seriously, there was one point where I was literally ploughing her into the bed from behind and she was screaming her lungs out in pleasure while her tail was wagging like crazy and her love juices flooding the bedsheets.

Well… Then again… I do have the [Cleanup Crew] boon which would erase all the mess we make after our love making sessions anyway so it's not like Katsuki had to clean everything up.

Though sometimes, for some reason, she would request that I leave at least some of the mess for her to clean up afterwards.

Since the boon also allows me to specify not to clean up everything, I did it for her and didn't question it.

I yawned, "Mnngghh… Did we oversleep, Katsuki?"

"Not at all, Mistress. There is someone from the Guild outside that is looking for you."

It took me a moment to register what she said in my head, "The Guild? What… Yaaaawn… What do they want?"

"She did not say, Mistress. She simply requested to meet with you. Should I send her away and tell her to come back later?"

I shook my head, "It's fine. I'll meet with them and see what they want. Could you help me dress myself?"

I teleported myself out of the bed, leaving the rest of my girls still cuddling each other as they continued to sleep, all of them needing the rest after how much I did them last night.

Well… I can't help it… The rest were also a little upset that Ira intruded on our time together so I really had to do them even more to satisfy them… And I may have gone a little overboard because of that…

Katsuki quickly dressed me up in my usual clothes before I headed to the sitting area of our suite while Katsuki went ahead to show them in.

The same Guild staff we saw at the counter entered, the Trasif woman scurrying in while hugging a bunch of papers to her chest.

"Mi… Miss Aster!! Go… Good morning!! I apologise for coming here this early! But I don't know when you might be leaving town so I thought I should come as soon as possible before you leave!"

I tilted my head at her from where I was seated on the couch, "Did something happen?"

"Umm… In a way, yes. Although… Ah! You're not in trouble if that's what you're worried about! Umm… Sorry! Let me start over! Ahem… We have decided to raise everyone in your party to B rank effective immediately! So I am here to update you on that, Miss Aster! You can call yourselves B Ranked Mercenaries from now on!"

"Oh? That's honestly unexpected. I thought that we would still be stuck at C rank for a while… Is it just because we took down that dragon?" I admitted.

She nodded, "That, and also the members of the Spring Sword Mercenary group has vouched for your abilities and we find that it would be a waste that you would not have been able to take that Request normally despite already being able to deal with it. That's why there was a decision to promote your party based on that achievement and the testimonials from the other Mercenaries."

Well, I guess I wouldn't complain about having my rank increased so I'll just take that.

"So… What's the other thing that you are here for? There must be something else, right?" I asked.

She hesitated before she placed the pile of papers on the table in front of me, revealing that they were all bounty posters.

"These are all illegal slavers that have been active in the forest lately… Recently, they have gotten a little bolder and began attacking villages directly when before, they would only try and target travellers which makes it an already rare occurrence… Unfortunately, their group is really strong… Equivalent to an A Rank party in strength… And the only other party that can possibly take them on are the Spring Sword Mercenaries but these illegal slavers have some kind of magic that works really well against Trasifs so they won't be able to handle them… That's why…"

"That's why you're increasing our rank so that we can just barely qualify to take this Request and deal with them before they start attacking this town?"

She nodded, not trying to deny it.

"Don't the towns and villages have the protection from the saplings from the Tree of Life? They prevent people who seek to harm the towns and villages from finding them, right? So how are they even attacking those towns and villages?"

The Guild staff hesitated for a moment before letting out a sigh, "I suppose there's no point in hiding it as you would be dealing with them… They are using Trasif slaves to track down the towns and villages to attack them… And we don't know how, but those Trasif slaves seemed to be guiding them to our hamlets willingly instead of being forced to do so… Because the enchantment should also prevent people from forcing others to guide them to those being protected under the Tree of Life blessed by our God Drebann…"

Huh… That's interesting… Should I ask Drebann about this? Nah… I think it's too minor of a thing to ask.

I reached forward and picked up one of the bounty posters, seeing a hooded guy with a noticeable scar across the left side of his face, with what was visible marking him as a Wrunch.

This guy's bounty was already at ten thousand Creas and he was the lowest bounty that I could see amongst all the posters here… And there was about a dozen of them

I'm assuming that the bounty money also has a direct correlation to how strong they were or, at the very least, how big of a risk it was to try and deal with them so this group of illegal slavers must be especially problematic.

"I'm guessing that we can claim their bounties if we were to manage to take them down?" I asked.

She nodded, "That's correct, Miss Aster. And we are also making this a formal request from the Guild as well so there will be a reward money for completion of this Request as well on top of the bounty from subduing the illegal slavers themselves."

"Hmm… I suppose I'll just ask if you have an idea of where they might be for us to hunt them down?"

"We do not know their exact location… But we know that they will be hitting this town soon judging by their recent targets. That's why we would like for you to help this town of ours by stopping them when they attack."

"You seem pretty sure that they will actually attack this town… In that case, why not evacuate this place?"

"We did that for one of the villages before this but they simply attacked them while they were in the midst of evacuation, almost like they already knew that would happen and were prepared for it. At least in the places that fought back instead of running, there were still people who still managed to escape. The village that tried to evacuate, however… Every single Trasif was captured by them…"

So it's better to just hunker down and at least fight back to allow some to escape than to just turn tail and run I see.

"Another question," I continued, placing the bounty poster back on the table. "Do we have to capture them alive to get the bounty? Or we can also kill them to get it?"

"You can kill them, Miss Aster. We just need something of theirs to use [Analyze] on them to make sure they are one of the bounty targets to pay you the bounty, Miss Aster."

Nice, that means we don't need to worry about holding back on these guys.

"Don't suppose you have any details as to what their abilities might be?"

"Unfortunately not, Miss Aster… We don't even know how big their group actually is. These twelve people are only just the ones we've managed to identify and are clearly occupying some sort of important position in the group. They also have multiple followers with them which they also command under them. And that's not counting the Trasifs they had already enslaved and the few who obey them for some reason."

"Any idea of when they might attack?"

"Most likely within the next few days, Miss Aster. But if you are able to find them and deal with them before they launch their attack… That would be preferable."

Hmm… Alright then, guess I'll take the Request.

Also… It's time for our intelligence network Katsuki!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.