In the morning of the day after Ren and Queen Raya left the town of Akud and headed to the town of Elk, Soma, and Marina headed out planning to start fulfilling Leona’s request only to find Rimi and Alice waiting for them by the front gate of the Academy.

“…Soma-san, you and Marina are headed to the mines to start working on the headmaster's request, right? As a party I mean…”(Rimi)

“That’s right”(Soma)

“Can we go with you? I want us to officially join your party!”(Rimi)

“Are you sure of your decision? Don’t forget that you are the princess of this country, and joining my party will make you a whole lot of enemies. Are you prepared for that?”(Soma)

“Of course, I am! My whole family is doing their best for the future of our country… no, for the future of the whole world! I want to do my part as well!”(Rimi)

“And your honest reason?”(Marina)

“I want to be with Soma-san more!”(Rimi)

Rimi answered Marina’s question without any hesitation which caused Soma to grimace, and Alice to burst out laughing. Hearing that answer, Marina high-fived Rimi, and they both started to cheer “We are not gonna lose to those two~!”. While massaging the bridge of his nose, Soma looked at Alice expecting an answer to his question, but she was still holding her stomach and laughing out loud. After having her fill of laughter at Soma’s situation, Alice finally looked at Soma and answered him.

“Haa… haa… haa…for me, I want to be useful as much as possible for Ren-sama’s sake. And Rimi is my best friend and I made an oath to follow her for as long as I live. Besides, there is no safer place than being with you, being the God Of Death and all, and being part of your party will help me become stronger and more useful to Rimi and Ren-sama in the long run. Are those reasons enough?”(Alice)

“Yeah”(Soma)

With that out of the way, the group headed to the Mercenary Guild and registered Rimi and Alice as party members before finally heading to the mines.

“Soma-san, what are the specifics of the request?”(Rimi)

“Some time ago monsters were sighted in one of the mines by a guard who was on patrol around that area. At that time he heard a beastly howl from the mine and went into the mine to confirm what he heard. After going into the mine for some time, the guard caught a shadow of what seemed to be a monster. Prioritizing the delivery of that information to his fellow guards over confirming it, he retreated from the mine and reported it back to his superiors and they arranged an investigation party and went into the mine to confirm it”(Soma)

“I’m surprised the superiors responded that way, and by the guard giving priority to delivering the information over confirming it first”(Alice)

“After the scandal concerning the Archiving Manager, Leona instructed her soldiers to give priority to the flow of information over confirming its validity and this is the result of that”(Soma)

“Won't this cause problems? Doing things this way will lead to them acting on unvalidated information”(Rimi)

“Nothing to worry about in that regard. Any unvalidated information will be investigated before taking any actions. It’s better this way than the guard shrugging it as his imagination or him going too far trying to confirm it by himself and end up dying without anyone learning about what's really happening”(Soma)

“I see, that’s certainly true”(Rimi)

“Yeah…”(Alice)

“Continuing, the investigation party consisted of 15 guards and 5 mercenaries and they went into that mine to see if there really is a monster inside. The mercenaries were able to right away find trails left behind by the monster, that alone was enough to confirm the information. But finding a monster inside the mine which is located inside the town and is daily populated by miners and workers was beyond the limit of being bizarre. Again, they decided against going any farther and returned to report back on what they found. After that, Leona came across a piece of information about people related to the nobles and the Love Church visiting the town but never leaving. That piece of information wasn’t anything important, but those people can’t be found anywhere in the town”(Soma)

“They disappeared?”(Rimi)

“That’s suspicious”(Alice)

“And recently, the whole town learned that one of the goals of the nobles and the Love Church was the mines of Akud which contains a lot of Mithril and Adamantite”(Marina)

“It all screams ‘something is going on in the mines!’”(Rimi)

“And that’s why we are going to thoroughly investigate all the mines and eliminate any danger we might encounter”(Soma)

“Are we gonna go at it in one full swoop or do you have some kind of plan?”(Alice)

“We will start with checking if all the mines have monsters or if it was that one mine alone. After that, we will report back to Leona and see if she found any more clues. We will go into the mines in the morning and will leave in the afternoon before coming back the next morning to continue with the investigation”(Soma)

“Got it!”(Rimi)

“Roger!”(Alice)