Kays Translations

Chapter 11: A Strange Commotion

Nearly two months had passed since Tauro became an adventurer, and the adventurers at the guild were beginning to grow accustomed to seeing him there.

Even so, he was still only eight years old.

Most of the adventurers didn’t think of him as one of their own. To them, he was simply a child who helped around the guild, ran errands, and occasionally handled the chore quests assigned as punishment to novices and rule breakers.

The guild offered Tauro nothing but errand quests, and his rank remained G+.

Advancing to F- would make him eligible for quests outside the city. Although the guild rated his literacy, arithmetic, and judgment highly, it had decided that he wasn’t yet physically capable of taking on such work.

“Tauro Satou, report to the training yard.”

Daz, the guild’s combat instructor, called to Tauro as he studied the quests posted on the wall.

“Huh!?”

Tauro was startled. Until then, Daz had never paid him any attention.

He hurried to the training yard.

“Take off your shirt and turn around.”

Tauro did as Daz instructed.

“You’re still a little thin, but you’ve put some meat on your bones over the last two months. All right. You can join the training.”

Because Daz had kept him out of the martial-arts training for novice adventurers, Tauro had assumed that the instructor disliked him. In truth, Daz had merely been waiting for Tauro to gain enough weight and stamina.

“Yes, sir! Thank you!”

Tauro answered with a delighted smile.

From that day forward, his schedule grew even busier.

He cleaned the guild, helped the staff, completed errand quests, and attended martial-arts training.

“I’m having fun, but I wish I could spend less time on chores…”

Then an idea struck him.

Every night before bed, Tauro used [Purification] on himself to wash away the day’s grime. Perhaps he could use it to clean the guild as well.

That raised another question: just how much mana did he possess?

He normally cast [Purification] only once at a time, so he had never discovered his limit.

“First, I’ll expand its range and purify this room…”

Tauro pictured the entire room in his mind and cast the spell.

“[Purification]!”

The dingy gray walls and ceiling—which he had always considered reasonably clean—turned pure white.

“Oh! It worked! Wait…were these walls white to begin with?”

He smiled at the result. His mana still felt completely untouched.

“Then I’ll widen the range again. This time, I’ll picture the entire guild building…”

“[Purification]!”

Silence.

“Oh, right. I won’t know whether it worked unless I go and look.”

Tauro tried to open the door, but his legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed.

“Huh!? I can’t stand up! I feel completely drained. Is this what happens when I cast it over such a wide area?”

As he struggled to rise, hurried footsteps sounded in the corridor.

“Tauro! Was this your doing!?”

Leo, the branch manager, burst into the room.

“I’m sorry… It was probably me.”

The guild was in an uproar. Years of grime had vanished from the walls, ceilings, exterior, and roof of the entire building. Even the adventurers inside had been stripped of dirt, sweat, and body odor.

The change was so dramatic that almost everyone had noticed it at once.

Seeing Tauro sitting helplessly on the floor, Leo groaned.

“You’ve exhausted your mana, you fool! Don’t waste [Purification] on something as trivial as cleaning. That spell is normally used against the undead or to dispel curses from cursed objects. [Clean] is more than enough for ordinary dirt.”

Leo lifted Tauro from the floor and laid him on the bed.

“Go to sleep. Your mana will recover while you rest.”

With that, the branch manager left the room.

The commotion eventually subsided after Leo claimed that a member of staff had cast [Clean] over a wide area.

Tauro decided that, from then on, he would use [Purification] on no one but himself.

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