“Melissa!” shouted the woman in a skintight outfit, twin daggers in hand.

The moment her cry fell, a massive wall of earth rose up in front of her. It gave her just enough time to steady her breathing and pull away from the huge monster before her. But the earth wall only held for an instant.

At the exact moment she widened the distance, a terrifying arrow, imbued with Helen’s holy power, shot into the one-eyed monster’s body.

Green blood sprayed out. When it hit the ground, it corroded tiny pits into the earth.

Karin glanced at her two daggers. They were high-end weapons, at least. She’d known for a while that after Arnold left the team, hunting the monsters their old squad used to handle would become difficult... but she hadn’t expected it to become this difficult...

In this squad, the one most affected by Arnold’s departure was Karin, the Blade Dancer, a swordswoman who fought in an assassin role. The second most affected was Melissa, the Harmony Weaver.

Karin’s risk had gone up directly. With the other three all being backliners, even with her current role, she still had no choice but to kite the enemy herself.

Assassins were good at striking once and vanishing far away if they missed. But in the end... one tiny mistake could get her killed. She was fragile.

And she clearly didn’t think that if she got injured, Helen would have any chance to heal her. The enemy wasn’t stupid. This one-eyed giant had been enduring her attacks the whole time while trying to kill the three people in the back first.

Melissa, who was affected a little less, now had much more to do. She had to create room for Karin to maneuver, deal damage, and counter the one-eyed giant’s magic. Karin could see the bloodshot veins in Melissa’s eyes. This style of fighting was obviously putting a huge burden on her.

But then again, what use did Helen even have now? Other than giving everyone holy light that dealt extra damage to demonkind—she was basically useless.

She could heal and restore, sure. But in a fight at this level, if you got hit once, you were basically done for. Arnold was gone. There was no one left who could just plant himself there with a greatsword and tank the one-eyed giant’s attacks.

There was simply no room for her to use recovery or healing divine arts.

Had this become funny somehow?

Karin didn’t exactly hold a grudge against Cassipero. After all, expelling Arnold from the squad had been something she agreed to as well. Even if they now seemed to be tasting the bitter consequences of that choice, what she was really complaining about was this: they didn’t have another frontliner. If they were going to kick Arnold out, shouldn’t they have found a replacement first? Kicking him out and only then looking for one, only to fail to find anyone for ages—wasn’t that just ridiculous?

In the middle of battle, though, she had no room to think about things like that.

In the end, the fight against the one-eyed giant came to a close.

Karin was badly wounded. At a time like this, Helen finally had a little use. In the final desperate struggle, the giant actually managed to hit Karin. For that instant, she thought she was already dead.

—

“I don’t think we should keep hunting magic beasts on the level of one-eyed giants,” Karin said, voicing her opinion. “The risk on me is too high.”

That was right. If something happened to her, the squad would collapse in moments. And if one of the others, all backliners, died during battle... they might still at least have a chance to run.

That made Karin feel deeply unbalanced.

Faced with a team member’s suggestion, Cassipero forced out a smile. “But didn’t we successfully hunt the one-eyed giant? That proves we still have the strength for enemies at that level.”

“You call that a success?” Karin said bluntly. “If we’re going to keep fighting like this, then why shouldn’t I just join the Moonshadow Squad?”

Her dissatisfaction spilled straight from her heart.

“They’re also a Heroic Rank squad. Moonshadow invited me before. They’re all assassins like me. Their whole style is mutual kiting. Wouldn’t it be better if the risk were shared by everyone? The Demonhunt Squad is strong—but it’s supposed to be a squad with the ‘most reasonable’ composition. And now, without a strong enough frontliner, you want an assassin like me to kite powerful monsters and shoulder the biggest risk alone?”

Blade Dancer Karin clearly couldn’t accept that.

“In the end, Captain, haven’t you hunted demonkind of the same level by yourself before? So why is the pressure on me this huge in battle?”

“Same level doesn’t mean same kind of enemy, and you know body type changes everything, right?” Cassipero replied. “The one I hunted was from the Wind Demon Clan, known for agility and fragility. That’s completely different from a one-eyed giant.”

She wasn’t wrong.

But—

“So what did the guild say? You went to the guild two days ago, right?” Karin pressed on.

Helen and Melissa looked like they wanted to say something, but neither could get a word in.

Cassipero pressed her lips together. “The guild said there was someone at Brave Rank willing—”

“What use is Brave Rank?!”

“Then what do you want me to do?!” Cassipero finally snapped. She glared at the constantly complaining Karin. “Wasn’t making Arnold leave a decision we all made together? Weren’t you the one who said Arnold was always ignoring adventurer rules and doing reckless, self-indulgent things? Did I hear that wrong? Weren’t you the one who said he was the only man in the team, and people outside kept saying we were his harem, and that it would make finding lovers harder for us in the future? And that if the Chosen Hero turned out to be a man and chose our squad, he’d definitely get ideas, so it’d be better if we had another girl instead? Didn’t you say that?”

Having old accounts dragged out this fiercely made Karin agitated too.

“I never said making Arnold leave was wrong! I’m asking why you made him leave before finding someone else to replace him!!!”

The two of them were like enraged beasts, panting as they glared at each other.

In the end, Karin seemed to suddenly lose interest.

“I won’t be taking missions for now. If you want to work, then go do it yourselves.”

After throwing out those words, she left the squad’s residence.

The three who remained looked at each other. But there was nothing much to say.

“For the next few days, just take whatever missions you can handle on your own,” Cassipero said, issuing the captain’s order. “We’re all Heroic Rank adventurers.”

...

As for why he’d been dismissed, Arnold had no real clue. But then again, being dismissed wasn’t so bad. Recently, he’d started to feel that what he’d been doing before didn’t really mean much.

In the end, the reason he became an adventurer in the first place was Cassipero. She wanted to build great achievements, and as her childhood friend, he couldn’t stop worrying about her, so he became an adventurer with her. Step by step, they’d made it this far. Come to think of it, his childhood dream had only ever been to live an ordinary, peaceful life.

“Besides, when it comes to the Demon King and all that, there’s the Chosen Hero to defeat him...” Arnold said with a sigh. “Looking through history, plenty of Chosen Heroes were swordsmen. If a Hero appears and chooses the Demonhunt Squad, then my role would clash with theirs anyway. At that point, they probably wouldn’t even need to ask. I’d leave the squad myself. That’s probably all there is to it.”

“That part isn’t wrong,” Caro said. “What I’m curious about is whether there was anyone in that squad you liked. Or anyone who liked you.”

Arnold spread his hands. “If someone liked me, there’s no way they would’ve just watched me get kicked out. In the end, this was a joint decision by all of them. If the person I liked got treated like that, I’d definitely protest. Or I’d just leave the squad with her. The result we got says everything.”

“Damn, that really does make you pathetic,” Caro said with open schadenfreude, patting Arnold on the shoulder. “If you were one of those normie winners, I’d be annoyed, bro.”

“...”

Arnold didn’t really understand what Caro meant by “normie winner,” but he more or less got what the girl was thinking.

What now? The girl he liked didn’t see him as a man at all. Winning her over clearly wasn’t going to be easy.

The money offensive had already been declared a failure. It had even almost lowered her opinion of him. So how was he supposed to raise her affection now?

“Then objectively speaking,” Caro said, clearly very interested in Arnold and his old squad, “after you left, do you think your team got weaker?”

If she could turn this into a story too, maybe she could even make a projection of the Demonhunt Squad—

That’d be sick. Even if her projection wasn’t necessarily strong, that squad’s biggest advantage was how complete it was. It had everything.

“Probably not?” Arnold said casually. “If they decided to dismiss me, that means they must already have another frontliner in mind, right? I don’t know who, though. Well, they’ve got a lot they need to do. If they have to lower the level of monsters they hunt, that’d probably feel pretty bad for them.”

“Oh? In what way exactly?”

Arnold hesitated and looked at Caro.

“Ah—I guess it’s not convenient to say...” Caro said in understanding. “You really are something. They kicked you out, and you still want to keep their secrets.”

“I’m not planning to get revenge on them. I’ve thought things through these past two days. In the end, changing teams isn’t anything unusual. Plenty of adventurers go through it in their careers. It’s just that I helped build up the Demonhunt Squad too, so I felt sad about it. A mature man should accept his own failure calmly.”

Caro looked a little surprised. “That’s actually a pretty solid attitude.”

“So really, the only one worth taking revenge on is the Adventurers' Guild.” His tone suddenly shifted. “The guild struck my name off and put me on the blacklist. That’s something I can’t understand and can’t tolerate. It’s not like it would kill me, but it’s definitely unpleasant. I don’t know what Nastia is thinking, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t angry about it.”

“Sounds like you’ve completely let it go,” Caro said, giving Arnold a solemn evaluation.

Arnold gave a bitter smile. “Not completely. To be honest, it still hurts a lot sometimes. But... I think I got a lot of courage from you.”

“R-Really?”

Being praised like that made Caro blush a little.