Everyone was distressed and that showed in their expressions as we pulled out our leather rain coats and hid away the more vulnerable food supplies. Now that Maira was gone, the rain storm around us hit us with full force, instantly soaking our clothes and armor.

This certainly didn’t help to lift the dangerously bad mood and honestly, I had no heart to pretend like everything was ok. Nothing was ok. Yet again a member of our party had disappeared. And the only thing keeping me from breaking out in my rage and agony was that she wasn’t dead yet.

We had to save her, and to do that I had to remain level headed and cool. So that’s what I did, suppressing any negative feelings within me as I watched Enri return carrying something in her arms. The ‘compensation’ left by that bastard of a hero was as expected a slave.

A cute girl with bear ears on her head, wearing an overly cutesy skirt-outfit that would fit right into a bad isekai manga. Guess that’s exactly what this is…

She curiously stared at us, while letting herself be carried in Enri’s embrace. Since both were about the same size this ended up looking quite hilarious, but sadly I was no in the mood to laugh about it. Instead I simply mustered her before shrugging my shoulders.

“Great, another loli to add to the collection.”, I couldn’t help but feel annoyed. People will start to misunderstand my sexual orientation if this continues!

“M-my M… I mean my old Master also called me a loli… But what does this mean?”, the bear girl asked me with a shy expression. Her eyes darted around, not daring to look me in the eye.

“An underaged girl….”, rolling my eyes I gave Riina a sign to get some rope from her backpack.

“B-but…”, the girl’s expression turned wry.

“I-I’m not a girl….”

I looked at her-… his… her… face? It had a clearly feminine body structure and her clothes would fit right into a cringy Japanese idol show. Then my eyes closed themselves and I began to massage my temples to prevent the upcoming headache.

“This bastard….”, I could feel the ire within me explode even more than before.

“He seriously gave me a FUCKING TRAP????”, mate, I will be honest… This almost enraged me more than the fact that Maira was abducted. To pull such a trick on another man…. He deserved more than just death!

“L-let’s just go back to town.”, after a few moments of losing myself in my anger I shook my head and forced myself to ignore the walking degeneration with his cute bear ears. A bear trap…

Ok my thoughts went a little too dark at that moment. Maira’s disappearance had clearly affected my rational thinking.

We did begin to move back to town, with Riina keeping a close eye on the bear… b-…person.... She seemed very skeptical of this ‘gift’ Kacper had left for us, mostly because she was absolutely outraged by the fact that Maira was kidnapped by that thieving pole, but I strongly suspected that it was also because she couldn’t help but feel distaste towards a crossdressing bear.

The moment we finally arrived at the town the rainclouds dissipated, and the winds calmed down, being replaced by blinding sunlight and a clear blue sky. The weather was just as chaotic as the rest of the day, completely out of place and very infuriating. Well, at least this unreasonable weather couldn’t further ruin our mood as it was already on the very brink of non-existence.

As soon as we entered town, we were welcomed by the villagers and adventurers, who were all very aware of our identities. Ignatius immediately went off to the guild to cash in the reward for the Ogre subjugation and to post a quest of our own.

The rest of us entered the first clothing shop we could find and forced the bear to change his clothes to a less disgusting set.

“B-but I like my clothes.”, he struggled a little, clearly unwilling to part with his cute outfit. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of some fetish or simply a cultural difference. That would actually be an interesting thing to explore at some point in time, but the current situation restrained my interest in cross-dressing bear cultures.

“You have the choice.”, I said with a calm face.

“Either you take off the clothes and wear something normal or I will burn them on your body, heal you and make you wear normal clothes after that.”, I wasn’t joking, this was literally what

I was going to do if he refused to take them off. Guess my sanity did go astray a little…

He sniveled a little before finally surrendering and changed his clothes into a normal set of brown pants, a white shirt and a leather coat. I also got him an additional grey rain coat as the weather was predicted to be quite shitty in the next few months.

Finally, I felt like it was time to ask his name.

“I’m Mika.”, he replied with a slightly teary look in his eyes as he saw his old clothes burn into ashes. I really couldn’t bear to keep them around.

“Well then Mika. Sorry for the rough treatment, but welcome to the party.”, since I had already got him as compensation, I figured that I might as well just keep him.

“Now, please give me your arm.”, he complied without any struggle and I chanted my favorite spell. His strangely effeminate face twitched in pain as the slave seal burned itself into his skin. Then I gave him the same set of orders I had given Maira when I enslaved her.

“With this done I can finally trust you.”, I didn’t have time nor intention to be polite, so I was very blunt to the bear boy.

“From now on you will work for me, this includes fighting for me, doing chores for me and most importantly being loyal to me. The last aspect is already ensured with the slave seal, but I want to make sure that you will be a useful member of my squad.

Unfortunately, I have no time to test your skills right now, so just tag along as we hunt down your former master.”, with that I felt like I had said enough, and we left the clothing store and joined Ignatius who had at this point already received our rewards for the ogre quest. To prove that we had killed them, we had to take the left ear of each ogre we killed with us, which had been quite the repulsive thing to do, but now we had finally gotten rid of our unappetizing baggage and gained quite a lot of money in exchange for it.

But getting the money wasn’t the most important task we had to do at the guild.

The clerk who assisted us was the same slim bodied, black haired clerk that had offered to be my slave almost a week ago. As result she was more than eager to help us with whatever we needed, even going so far as to raise our reward a little higher than usual.

But even she was horrified when she heard the details of the quest that I wanted to issue.

“Hunt down the thieving hero Kacper and return princess Maira to the hero of the Haelia kingdom.”, it said on the quest form that Ignatius had filled out.

“Reward: 1000 Gulds per person. There is no limit on the amount of people who can take the Quest. Reward can be cashed at the Haelia kingdom’s royal family “

THIS, is how you use money you stupid polish thief! Use the money of other people instead of your own and make them incapable to refuse through simple reason!

“T-this…”, the black-haired clerk hesitated with a blank expression. The whole quest was basically an affront to the common sense of this world’s people after all. A hero offering the money of a kingdom to hunt down another hero….

Nothing about this was normal.

In the end however, she just smiled wryly before nodding decisively and taking the form.

“We will make sure this quest will be spread out through the entire human realm. No matter where this ‘thieving hero’ hides, he won’t be able to escape the notice of the hundred thousand of adventurers scattered through the kingdoms and empires!”, having said this she herself seemed quite excited about the thought of having a manhunt like this happen through the guilds channels.

I smiled satisfied.

“I look forward to see the results.”, oh how I looked forward to see him cornered in a dark alley, surrounded by hundreds of adventurers and pleading for his life….

Ok, it’s time to stop this antihero act. I was going to use the adventurers to simply locate

Kacper either way, rescuing Maira and doing horrible things to him was something I had to on my own to feel any sort of satisfaction.

“Sir Hero?”, while we were waiting for the clerk to officially announce the quest on the quest board and make arrangements to spread it across the continent, a small group of well armored soldiers entered the guild hall and their leader came to greet me.

Naturally we all reacted quite cautious towards an unknown group of heavily armed soldiers, immediately reaching for our weapons and reading ourselves for a fight. It was only natural considering that we had almost been killed in this very same building only a week ago.

Still, the fact that I had to be careful with the soldiers of the kingdom that I belonged to was quite ironic.

The leader of the small squad saw our more or less hostile reaction and hesitated for a moment before lifting his arms in a calming manner.

“Please don’t attack Sir Hero. With your strength you would easily obliterate all of us before we can explain ourselves!”, he seemed quite nervous and anxious to keep his head.

Well he was right though…

We relaxed ourselves and waited for him to speak.

“I am here on behalf of Lord Meris, the lord of the Meris fortress that defends the kingdom from the invasions. The lord would like to invite the hero and his party to the Meris Fortress to discuss the necessary preparations regarding the approaching invasion of the demons.”, it seemed like this lord was slowly becoming nervous at the prospect of having to fight the demons with the kingdom being in the scattered state that it was in.

Well, I was the same, so it would be a good idea to finally have some talks with the nobles and begin preparations to hold the north until winter arrived. That would at least give us enough time to do something about the power struggle of the nobles and the royals.

“I am sorry, but Princess Maira has been abduced, so we have to rescue her befo-“, Ignatius was about to decline the offer, but I interrupted him with a sign.

“The matter with Maira will take some time. First the quest has to be distributed throughout the kingdom and beyond, then the adventurers have to become active. It would be foolish to expect immediate results.”, I gave the former royal knight a look that told him to be patient for the time being. With this I returned my focus to the leader to of the soldiers.

“Lead us to your lord. I will have a talk with him.”

I was just as anxious about Maira’s rescue as anyone else, but as heartless as it sounded, defeating the demons was way more important right now. And, well, we had to wait either way. So yeah, we followed these soldiers to that big ass fortress that defended the entire middle-northern area of the Haelia kingdom.