I Stayed Loyal When My Teacher Was Betrayed

32 – Catastrophe of Matop 2**

Bernie, raising his hand as if satisfied with her words.

The moment he saw the black sphere emerging there,

Intense emotions began to bloom in Brunhilde’s heart.

Fear, revulsion,

And… more than that, desire,

Brunhilde slowly opening her mouth as she looked at it.

Inside that hole, a sticky and viscous liquid was dripping, making her taste buds twitch.

Bernie, slowly. Began to put what he held in his hand into it.

It had quite a big and thick shape for it to enter her completely.

Seeing Brunhilde tears streaming down as she forced herself to swallow it, Bernie gave a deep smile and said.

“Endure even if it hurts… You’ll feel better soon.”

—

“Hmm…”

Documents piled up throughout the room.

As Ovelin looked at them, she felt her head throbbing.

“…Argh, I’m already busy enough, what is all this…”

The requests from the adventurer guild have been increasing enormously over the past few weeks.

The documents before her were all related to them.

Requests like “Defend the upper levels against monster attacks.”

Requests like “Escort me for protection against monster invasions.”

The requests themselves were relatively simple for adventurers to handle, but in other words, it meant that the demand for adventurers has grotesquely skyrocketed throughout the continent.

Originally, most of these tasks were handled self-sufficiently by each city.

Trivial matters related to security and law enforcement that were handled automatically by the troops and mercenaries stationed in each city.

Things that the adventurers, specializing in hunting monsters, would not be bothered with.

However…

“But the problem is, the people who were supposed to do these things in this war are all dead…”

A situation where countless troops were literally annihilated.

Only a quarter of the troops under Rokia’s command managed to return, but even they were in a state where a significant number of them were mentally and physically devastated, making normal life impossible.

From the alliance’s point of view, they tried to use the valuable troops to deliver a decisive blow, but instead, they suffered a fatal blow.

As a result, a tremendous gap in manpower was created.

The guard forces that protected each region were decimated to less than half.

On top of that were knights and magicians that were not easy to handle…

The critical loss of specialized personnel was very likely to cause problems on all fronts for a while.

But there was one more serious problem here.

As a result of this incident, people’s fear of monsters and demons, and even the demon king, had skyrocketed.

The demon king who had even killed powerful heroes.

The feeling that they couldn’t win no matter how hard they struggled, and people naturally began to fear the monsters even more seriously than before.

And as a result, this fear naturally led to a very unnecessary increase in the demand for adventurers, whose names were high as monster hunters.

People began to naturally hire adventurers at the slightest hint of danger from monsters.

If they were there, they were used; if they weren’t, they were’t.

Some merchants even went bankrupt because the cost of hiring adventurers was more than their profit.

With supply cut in half and demand almost tripled, the adventurers’ guild, which could be called the kingpin of this industry, welcomed an unprecedented boom.

However, Guildmaster Ovelin’s duties had become so uncontrollably chaotic given the situation.

Even though they had been struggling with a shortage of manpower in the Adventurers’ Guild, now the situation was such that there was almost a drought of workers.

Even apprentices who would normally have a hard time getting a job were now officially receiving unexpected work, so much so that it was being reduced to a pile of documents in front of her eyes, from the perspective of Ovelin, who had to manage all of them, one way or another.

‘This is barely helping, though… I wonder if it’s more likely that I might collapse from overwork first.’

With such thoughts in mind, Ovelin forced herself to move her hand once again.

Whatever happened, in this insecure time, it was clear that if the Guildmaster didn’t pull herself together, the situation would only worsen.

With the army weakened, the only thing people could look to was truly the Adventurers’ Guild.

The only thing that had been on a similar footing to the Adventurers’ Guild up to now, the Maetap, had suffered greatly due to the death of the owner, Beo Olf, and the large number of magicians, including his two colleagues, in this battle.

Ovelin, the Guildmaster of the Adventurers’ Guild and the mainstay of the free tribe that had become indispensable, Bahlala, had fallen.

Thanks to this, her influence was now soaring even higher, but it only ended up being in the midst of an unwelcome gift called a pile of documents.

A situation that made her wonder if she really became the Guildmaster to do this.

That’s when…

“How’s work going?”

“!…Hee …Teacher…”

When the waiting teacher Rosetta appeared, Ovellen clung to her as if she were crawling into her arms.

With a familiar feeling, she buried the girl’s face in her plump chest.

The soft and smooth sensation felt immediately afterward.

While enjoying the unique ’embracing power’ from the teacher, Ovellen felt as if the fatigue that had been accumulated was disappearing.

“Even at a glance, it looks like you’ve been through a lot. Seems like it’s been this way since morning.”

“HEE… I actually dealt with most of that then… but it’s all piled up again.”

“It really is a tough job, being the guildmaster. When I was there, it wasn’t as intense.”

“Hm? You were at the tower too? When?”

“For 10 years during a break period. Changed my name and appearance, so no one recognized me.”

“Oh… I’ve never heard that story before. The tower… It seems you were a good fit, the way you were an adventurer.”

“Haha, I certainly liked that. Especially compressing the magic crystals with quadraceliometer gave a great feeling.”

“Oh, I wanted to try that too, but they wouldn’t sell it at the tower. Said they were too busy using it themselves…”

She had quite a few high-level magic tools, but they didn’t compare in scale to the tower’s original magic tools.

While talking, one person came to Ovellen’s mind when talking about the tower.

“Come to think of it… There was that person at the tower, right? I remember the name of the former leader was… Rosemary.”

“Cough!… Um… Why?”

“Why are you acting like that? Do you know that person?”

“No… I didn’t know her as well, but… do you really think things would have been better if she had been at the tower?”

Known as a great sorceress with incredible abilities, Rosemary. Ovellen was never actually convinced she had seen her after she became the tower’s owner, despite her policy of distancing herself from the adventurer guild.

However, at least she was sure that if she had been at the tower, things would have gone much better than they are now.

“But, didn’t she betray the free race and sided with the demons? It’s a bit much to miss a traitor…”

“Well, you always say, ‘You can’t believe everything you hear.’ Honestly, it’s just my personal speculation, but I’m thinking it’s not just Beovolf’s master who betrayed him.”

“!… Wh-why…?”

Rosetta asked, surprised.

Ovellen nodded as if it were obvious.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? That person who worked so hard as the owner of Matap suddenly gives up everything and joins the side of the Demon King? In our view, it means that a Grand Master adventurer has betrayed us out of nowhere, so it will be more realistic to say that the woman was a demon from the beginning.”

“Well…”

“Clearly, that Beovolp guy became blind to his duties and betrayed his master. If he had really been qualified in this punitive battle this time, he would not have failed so badly, right?”

“That’s true…”

At Olivia’s words

Rosetta smiled broadly at some point.

With a deep regret, Ovelin said, looking at her face.

“Anyway … regardless of whether they are adventurers or mataps, as witches, I personally wanted to see someone once. Thanks to avoiding us over there, we failed, but still, I didn’t know that I would miss a person whose face I didn’t even know like this.”

“Yeah? The person you miss is… that woman?”

“Yes, if that woman had been there, I wouldn’t have suffered this much even though I had to share the pain.”

“Haha…”

Ovelin’s words with sincere feelings.

After that, Rosetta gently touched her disciple’s head and asked, “Thank you, Ovelin …”

“What? What is it?”

A teacher who expressed gratitude with a significant feeling.

Did Ovelin feel slightly puzzled by the fact?

As an answer to that, the master just touched her head softly and spoke again.

“…Just. Thank you… for everything.”