The grassfield’s flowers shone orange in the evening sun. When Roa’s group arrived at Floural Hill, it was almost evening. As soon as the horse carriage stopped, Roa bolted out with a basket and started quickly gathering camilles. He wanted to pick a basketful before the sun set.

“Look at him go..”

Nostalgia’s members laughed wryly while looking at Roa, whom they were supposed to escort, rushed out without making sure the surroundings were safe.

However, the wolf twins were at his side, so they didn’t stop him from going far from them. They knew well how strong the twins were, as well as how loyal they were to Roa. With the twins around, Roa would be safe even without Nostalgia protecting him.

Grandpa Gry was also guarding the surroundings. There was no need to grapple Roa to keep him still, as they were on their way to the forest. The coachmen released the horses from the carriage and started caring for them. In the meanwhile, Nostalgia’s members set up tents, lit a fire and prepared to camp.

As for Grandpa Gry..

Suddenly, thunder roared.

<Hmm, it’s more powerful than I thought.>

After the completely calm comment, Nostalgia looked towards the source of the sound and found a large dent, spanning dozens of meters, formed in the blooming grassfield. The ground was now shaped like a mortar, but the plants in it were unaffected.

“Eh? What??”

Roa hurried to the source of the sound..Grandpa Gry itself.

<Sorry, it was just a little experiment. It was my first time using earth magic, so I didn’t know how to hold back. I meant it as a little spell, but..anyway, next time I’ll be able to control the size and strength perfectly! Mwahahaha..>

Grandpa Gry laughed to change the topic, but did not dare look at Roa’s eyes.

“Grandpa Gry?”

<I properly apologized, didn’t I? I’ll return to how it was later, anyway!>

A retort just like a little kid found in the middle of a prank.

“Rather than that, that was magic you never used before? Why now?”

Roa inquired why Grandpa Gry would try such a spell at a time like that. He knew he had to scold Grandpa Gry, but he was more interested in why it would do that.

<...thanks to the contract between us, I can now use new kinds of magic! Of course I would be itching to try it out!>

“You can use new kinds of magic?”

<Thanks to magic share, one can use the partner’s elemental magic as well! New elements!! Anyone would want to try, such is human nature!>

“Human nature..?”

Grandpa Gry, you’re a magic beast, aren’t you..?

Roa mentally reacted like that, but then thought about what Grandpa Gry said. The contract’s magic share involved not only magic power, but also elemental magic.

The only thing Roa possessed in great quantity was the number of elements he could use: his magic power was little and he had never been trained, however, so he couldn’t even perform the most basic offensive spells.

On the other hand, as he had repeatedly used what little magic power he had in delicate work when making magic potions, it could be said that he was a genius at magic manipulation.

It was said that with enough training, anyone could learn to use all elements of magic. In actuality, affinity was a real issue. It affected what elements could be effectively used: if affinity was bad growth would be extremely slow, so each person ended up with elements they couldn’t effectively use.

“Grandpa Gry, what elements could you use until now?”

<I am most proficient with “Wind”, of course. Then “Lightning”. I can use basic spells even while sleeping, if it’s these two. Lastly, “Light”.>

“Hmm..”

Roa became lost in thought, so his reply seemed uninterested.

Roa often used “Fire”, “Water”, “Lightning”, “Earth” and “Ice”; he couldn’t actually freeze things, but he could cool them down. He could also use a little bit of “Light”, to the extent of making his surroundings brighter.

He never uses mental manipulation magic on humans, but he could make magic potions with such effects. He wasn’t aware of it, but if he could make magic potions that affected the mind, he probably could use magic of the same type as well.

There were also other similar types, which he didn’t test himself but produced results that suggested he could use them.

Roa thought this far and suddenly felt scared. Grandpa Gry’s magic power easily exceeded any human’s. Not even great wizards could compare. All magic beasts possessed larger quantities of magic power than humans in the first place. Its magic manipulation was first class too. It had sliced through a Mithril Golem with a basic spell, after all.

It could also create original advanced spell formulae. Seeing how easily it modified the Magic Bag’s formula, there was no doubt about it. If Grandpa Gry started freely experimenting with all the new elements it had obtained..

Things would turn very bad, very quickly.

“You are hereby forbidden from using new magic without my permission!! Or I’m sure you’ll make one mess after another!! Got it?”

Roa’s words created an utterly displeased expression on Grandpa Gry’s face.

“I know that you’re eager to experiment, so I won’t tell you not to. But don’t do it without asking! If you don’t obey, then no meals for you!”

<Mhngh...>

Roa’s curiosity towards the unknown was even stronger than Grandpa Gry’s. Or rather, it was bottomless. To restrain such an urge was difficult: for Roa, it would be like torture. That was why he couldn’t completely outlaw Grandpa Gry’s actions.

<..I suppose there is no other way..>

“It’s a promise, then.”

Roa smiled to Grandpa Gry, judging that the case was closed. Grandpa Gry seemed to accept the restriction, as it wasn’t completely banned from experimenting.

...there were certain people, however, who were dissatisfied with such a conclusion. Nostalgia’s members, of course. They gathered together and whispered among themselves.

“Hey, boss..can we really leave things like that?”

“We can’t, can we? Roa can make magic potions, so he can use all sorts of elements, right? Depending on the element, it could cause serious damage.. ”

“Simply wonderful! To create such a hole with basic earth magic..! To create holes without scattering the ground in the surroundings is a very advanced skill. Because you need to instantly compress the ground and turn it into rock! To do so in such a casual manner..! As expected of Lord Grandpa Gry!”

“Bernhart..there’s nothing wonderful at all here, so stop. If it goes on a rampage with all other elements it can use, it’ll be a catastrophe..”

Kristoff and Cornelia looked dead serious, but Bernhart did not seem concerned in the slightest. On the contrary, he was overjoyed.

“Shouldn’t we tell Roa to forbid it from experimenting altogether?”

They knew that saying anything directly to Grandpa Gry would be meaningless, so Dietrich agreed that relying on Roa was the only way. This, however, created another cause for worry.

“Even if we can convince Roa, if the gryphon learns we told him, what will happen to us..?”

Kristoff’s worry had solid grounds to exist.

“So? We just let them be?”

“But..”

Dietrich was at a loss for words. They continued discussing the topic, making sure Roa -who returned to gathering camilles- didn’t hear them, but couldn’t agree on a course of action. In the end, Nostalgia discussed it several more times, where Roa and the servant beasts couldn’t hear, but no conclusion was ever reached..

?

Meanwhile, back at Norfar valley, the Adventurers’ Guild search & rescue party was advancing deeper into the valley. The setting sun turned the whole valley bright orange.

While it was called a “search & rescue party”, only a few of the guild staff members were actually specialized. The rest were normal adventurers, some of them with scout expertise suited for searching, and their party members.

“There’s something there..”

One of the adventurers pointed towards the direction they were headed to..deep into the valley. There was indeed something, reflecting the evening sunlight. They proceeded quickly, making sure to check the surroundings for any threats.

“..what the..hell is this..?”

Masses of silver. A number of Silver Golem corpses, enough to cover the whole area.

“....whoa....”

No other words could be said. Illuminated by dusk, the golem remains appeared simply unreal. Some of the party members were enchanted by their beauty, others by how much they could be worth, others by the fear towards whoever defeated them. The members’ reactions were varied, but they all swallowed their breath and looked at the surroundings, speechless.

The silence continued for a while.

“...hey!!”

One of the men suddenly shouted.

“There’s someone collapsed over there!”

All members then moved. If there was someone there, it had to be one of the people they were tasked with searching for. The search & rescue party had been sent to the valley precisely to look for the Hero Party Crack of Dawn.

Around the location where there were people on the ground, the number of golem corpses was very small, almost as if something separated the two areas.

“There’s someone here too!”

“Here too!”

One after the other, collapsed people were found. Those responsible for the discovery all had sour expressions on their faces: the condition of those they found was far from the norm. They had been clearly mauled on and stomped by a large number of golems.

Their limbs were twisted in unnatural directions, their bodies were crushed here and there. They had also lost a lot of blood, so from a distance they looked like nothing but corpses.

“This one’s alive!”

“Wait!!!”

One of the men found a woman near a strange mass of wreckage and approached her, but someone else intimated him to stop.

“..the stuff pooling around her is magic potions? There’s a lot of shattered bottles, right?”

The reason why he spotted the other man was the liquid pooling around the woman. Most magic potion containers had unique shapes, so they were easily spotted. The man had noticed that there were many such containers among the shattered wreckage.

As they were many kinds of containers, there were probably multiple kinds of potions mixed together. It was impossible to tell what would happen if you drank such a mixture. The woman was lying in the middle of such a puddle.

“Don’t touch it with your bare hands, or you might get poisoned.”

Most magic potions became effective after being drunk, but that was not all. Their effects appeared also if they were absorbed through wounds or skin, and some of them even after they were only smelled.

The most feared effect of such a large mixture of magic potions was “Magic Poisoning”. If a human was subjected to large quantity of magic potions or magic, they went into the state called Magic Stupor. If such a state worsened even more, it turned into Magic Poisoning.

If a human contracted Magic Poisoning, they wouldn’t be affected by magic recovery unless the poisoning healed: not only recovery, but they would become impervious to the effects of any kind of magic and suffer even more pain than in a state of Magic Stupor. It could also take weeks until Magic Poisoning wore off completely.

The time needed until recovery depended on the amount of magic one was subjected to, so dipping in such a large amount of magic potion probably meant it would take months, even years to recover.

For adventurers, who often made use of recovery magic and potions, it was one of the worst case scenarios they could encounter.

“What should we do?”

What they would do was already decided, however. They were a rescue party, so they had no choice but to rescue her.

The men nodded to each other and stepped, protected by their boots, in the magic potion puddle, carefully, then grabbed the woman by her clothes, where they weren’t wet. They gave up un lifting her, as her clothes would get ripped, and dragged her out of the magic potion liquid in one pull.

The woman’s body would get bruised, but it was not the time to worry about that. She was already wounded and bloody, so she won’t complain about a few more bruises, probably.

“This is Bonne, right?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

The adventurers talked while looking at the muddy face of the woman they dragged out. Her features were so different it was difficult to recognize her. Not only her face changed, though: her arms and legs were fractured, twisted in abnormal shapes. Her torso was probably wounded too, as her clothes were red with blood.

She was still alive, however. She was unconscious, but detection magic registered her as a living being and she still had a pulse. Her wounds made it seem a mystery that she was still alive, but she was. The magic potion mixture probably saved her life in a sort of miracle.

“...damn..wasn’t it better for her if she died..?”

One of the men muttered.

“She’s definitely in Magic Poisoning too. With so many potions, it’ll take months..or even years.”

Recovery magic or potions did not affect those suffering due to Magic Poisoning. In a world where the progress of medicine was slow, due to the existence of recovery magic, there was no way to cure such grave injuries without magic.

The multiple bone fractures and larger wounds would never heal completely, the damaged muscles and nerves would never return to normal. To make things even worse, the partially healed wounds could not be affected by recovery magic or potions.

The partially healed state would be perceived as a natural state, so the power of magic would try to return to such an “original” state. In order to truly heal them, advanced recovery magic would be necessary, but it was so valuable that even nobles struggled to obtain it.

Even if the Magic Poisoning wore off, her body would remain damaged, her wounds never heal.

“What terrible luck to end up in such a state..”

“Luck? They were the lucky ones. They got the Hero Party title and all. I guess their luck ran out then.”

“It ended? They ‘threw it out’, didn’t they?”

“Yeah..”

The face of the All-Rounder surfaced in the men’s minds. Despite being in the same location, some people could leave the forest safe and sound, despite the disturbance that happened in it.

One of them even used to belong to the Crack of Dawn party and picked up their servant beasts in the forest. The luck that Crack of Dawn threw out definitely had human form..