"Long live the hero——!" Flower petals dyed the sky. White and gold paper fragments drifted down. The Triumphal Avenue——the twenty-meter-wide stone-paved main street that ran through the center of Falcrest——was overflowing with crowds of people. It was a parade to celebrate the hero who had slain the Dragon King Grand Scale three months prior. A marching band in procession, flags waving proudly, citizens cheering from the roadside. That exhilaration and fervor carried the tangible joy that the age of dragon calamity, which had tormented the continent for forty years, had finally come to an end. And that hero, right now. Was crouching behind a garbage bin in a back alley. "...Wait, wait. This one, and this one, and..." Léon Crawford, twenty-three years old. His black short hair had a slight wave to it, and right now it was beginning to stick to his forehead with cold sweat. His deep brown eyes desperately tracked the stack of papers in his hands. His thin eyebrows were bent into a V-shape, and his normally gentle expression had completely crumbled. He stood at one hundred seventy centimeters tall, dressed in a white shirt, black slacks, and leather boots——utterly ordinary attire. There was a faint sword scar on the back of his left hand. His slender frame with well-developed muscle was indeed that of a swordsman. But in this moment, not a shred of heroic bearing could be found in him. What he held in his hands was a stack of demand notices. Already opened. With each one he confirmed, the same string of characters jumped into his eyes. 〈From the Iron Claw Commerce Guild——a financial business based in the Blackcopper Hall in the lower city of the royal capital Falcrest——Payment Due: Two Thousand Four Hundred Gold Coins〉 "...Two thousand four hundred plus...interest..." He tried to calculate in his head. Failed. Tried again. Failed again. The third attempt also failed. On the fourth try, he finally arrived at the correct total. "Yeah, I'm dead." He murmured quietly. Another cheer echoed from the main street. The cry of "Long live the hero!" traveled through the stone pavement and reached even behind the garbage bin. Léon sank further back into the shadows of the bin, watching the flower petals swirl into the entrance of the alley. ——The Iron Claw Commerce Guild. Annual interest rate of forty-eight percent——an exorbitant figure, but they thrived as a refuge for adventurers and small merchants whom no one else would lend to, with extremely lenient lending standards. It had started when merchants facing financial difficulties during the age of dragon calamity came flooding in, and now it was a proper organization with ninety members——whether "proper" was accurate was debatable, but it was a legal financial enterprise. They made regular "donations" to the city guard, so no one could complain. And Léon had a debt of two thousand four hundred gold coins to that guild. Various expenses accumulated before and after the expedition had crystallized here in the form of debt. "Long live the hero!" Cheers. Léon buried his head deeper into the garbage bin. --- The stack of demand notices came with a detailed itemized attachment, thoughtfully included. Léon read through them one by one. They say a person sees their life flash before their eyes before death, but he was being shown it while still alive. The first attachment. 〈Dragon's Breath Defense Potion (Premium) × 1 bottle. Fifty Gold Coins〉. "Ah...ah, this one..." It was the day before the expedition. A female vendor at a market stall had smiled brightly at him. "This suits a hero perfectly," she'd said. The moment those words left her lips, his hand had opened his wallet of its own accord. Dragon's Breath Defense Potion. A medicinal product that granted heat-resistance and impact-resistance effects against dragon breath attacks. The standard version cost five gold coins. The premium version, marketed as "special," cost fifty gold coins. The effect was...one point three times that of the standard version. "With the price difference, I could have bought thirty-eight standard bottles..." The moment he calculated it, he hugged his knees. Behind the garbage bin, the hero hugged his knees. The second attachment. 〈Lodging at the Highest-Grade Suite, Multiple Nights. Three Hundred Forty Gold Coins〉. Wherever he stayed during the expedition, the innkeeper or receptionist would say with tears in their eyes: "If a hero like you doesn't use this room, we'll have to close down." Each time, he'd immediately booked the highest-grade suite. Later investigation revealed that several of them were habitual con artists who used the same line every year to lure travelers. Léon slowly banged his head against the stone wall. Thud. Thud. Thud. The third attachment. 〈Party Dissolution Celebration Dinner. Two Hundred Gold Coins〉. The female members of his party had smiled and said: "At least for the last time, we want to indulge a little, right?" The moment he saw that smile, he'd called for the head chef. "In front of a woman's smile...my thinking stops..." Léon verbalized his own condition. It was quiet resignation. "This is a disease. It's a disease. I'm not at fault," he murmured, but even he knew it had no persuasive power whatsoever. "Long live the hero——!" Another cheer. Léon cracked open the garbage bin lid and peered inside. He seriously considered getting in. He decided against it. It would be too much if a hero actually got into a garbage bin. --- After a while, Léon reached for the sword at his waist. Dragon Slayer——the longsword he'd used to slay Grand Scale. When he drew it just a few centimeters from the sheath, the blade gleamed with an almost silver-white radiance. The Crimson Flag Adventurer's Guild——the largest adventurer management organization on the continent, managing eight thousand registered adventurers——treated this sword, whose name was known across the entire continent, as proof of the highest rank: Platinum Grade. "If I pawn you...I could get around six hundred coins...but..." If he gave up the sword, he couldn't take Platinum Grade jobs. Without jobs, he couldn't repay. Without repayment, the forty-eight percent annual interest would balloon. To pay the ballooning interest, he'd need jobs——. "I should write this down." He murmured and patted his pockets. No paper. His wallet was empty. Come to think of it, he'd used up all his parchment. He noticed the back of the demand notice was blank. He pulled out a pen. Just as he was about to start calculating, his gaze met the requested amount printed on the front of the notice. The pen slipped from his fingers. "I could defeat the Dragon King, but..." Léon murmured. Leaning against the stone wall, he looked up at the sky. "Why am I losing to a single piece of paper?" he asked. There was something in that voice that couldn't be laughed at. Half comedy, half tragedy. An emotion suspended between the two, unable to be either. --- "Ah! It's the hero! It's really him!" It happened the moment he cautiously poked his face out from the back alley onto the main street, at his wit's end. One shout. That was all it took. Thirty citizens immediately swarmed him. "Uh, ah, but I'm kind of in a hurry right now——" He tried to escape, but both his arms were already grabbed by multiple people. In the shower of flower petals, the hero's face was exposed, and the cheers grew even louder. "Please give us your autograph!" "Show us your sword!" "Where are you from, hero?" "Paper! Please give us paper!" "Ah..." On impulse, he handed over the paper he was holding. It was a demand notice. The citizen looked at the paper to get an autograph. And their eyes stopped on the numbers printed there. "What does this number at the top say?" "Please don't look at it! Don't look! Don't look!!" Léon desperately pleaded while continuing to write his autograph on the back of the demand notice. The hero's dignity was zero. His handwriting was slightly trembling. Second notice. Third. "Léon Crawford" appeared again and again on the back of the full billing statement. "Hero." Suddenly, a child about seven years old called out to him. "Your face looks like you're crying." Léon stopped writing his autograph. He looked directly into the child's eyes. "Adults sometimes make that kind of face." It was undeniably the truth. The child said "I see" and returned to their parent. Watching that small back disappear, Léon wrote his fourth autograph. --- He somehow managed to shake off the citizens and tumbled back into the back alley. For a while, he couldn't move, just leaning against the stone wall. The sound of the band's performance continued in the distance. The parade was still going on. A parade without the hero, accompanied by cries of "Long live the hero!" He took one deep breath. From somewhere, a single sheet of paper came flying on the wind. It stuck to Léon's face with a soft pat. "...Another demand notice?" He was about to despair when he noticed the texture was different. Unusually high-quality parchment. Clearly different from a demand notice. Tilting his head in confusion, he read the text. Written in elegant calligraphy was a single sentence. 〈All debts forgiven. Condition: In the Northern Frontier Earl's Domain——a remote region spanning the mountainous terrain at the continent's northernmost point, requiring approximately ten days' travel by horse from the royal capital——rescue a girl. For details, consult the Star-Reading Witch——a practitioner of a special divination art said to read the heavens and fate, passed down in that land.〉 There was no sender's name. The seal pressed into the wax bore an unfamiliar crest——a complex pattern combining a star and a crescent moon. Léon read the sentence. He read it again. He read it a third time. On the fourth reading, numbers began counting in his head. Gold coins. Two thousand four hundred. Léon stood up. "This is suspicious. Definitely suspicious." He muttered to himself while shoving the stack of demand notices into his chest pocket with his right hand. Crumpled as they were. Then with his left hand, he carefully, gently, and reverently gripped the parchment. He left the alley. --- The moment he stepped onto the Triumphal Avenue's stone pavement, flower petals rained down. White and gold paper fragments struck his cheeks. The band's music vibrated his eardrums. The cry of "Long live the hero!" descended from all directions. Léon ignored it all and ran toward the lower city. Only the words "Star-Reading Witch" occupied his mind. He ran while unfolding the parchment to read it. He ran again. He read again. His thumb traced the star and crescent moon crest on the seal. He ran again. Just at a crossroads, a festival float passed in front of him. Huge. Impassable. The procession blocked his way completely. From atop the float, an armored messenger called down loudly. "Hero Léon Crawford! Why do you not participate in today's parade!" Léon was forced to stop and look up at the float. "I have an urgent matter to attend to!" "What! The hero is already off on the next adventure! What admirable dedication!" The messenger shouted with tears of emotion. Hearing this, the citizens lining the street all stirred at once. Cries of admiration rose up. An elderly man collapsed in tears. A young man raised his fist. "The hero has no time to rest!" "Truly, the man who slew the Dragon King!" Léon said nothing. He simply found a gap in the thinning crowd and slipped through. He ran without looking back. Behind him, the cheers celebrating the hero grew louder. In inverse proportion to the volume of those voices, the demand notices in his chest pocket made a crunching sound. He gripped the parchment a little tighter. "Northern Frontier Earl's Domain...Star-Reading Witch..." His feet didn't stop. Flower petals accumulated on his back. Thus began the new battle of the her