Chapter 411: What Happened to the Tanuki

[…Who would’ve thought I’d end up like this?]

Mirul’s actions today were a far cry from the days when she had hawked her Magic Stones at the highest price she could fetch from third-party exchange stalls, desperate to scrape together enough for daily survival. She was standing at the Guild’s appraisal desk, not out of necessity, but to curry favor, offering up her loot as a gesture of goodwill. Her aim was not profit, but to help ensure that the orphans, for whom clawing their way up through the ranks of Explorers was nearly impossible, would at least have a path laid open before them.

Such a gesture would have been inconceivable to her former self two years prior. Now, clad in clean clothes and no longer bearing the grime and stink of desperation, Mirul the Tanukichi could hardly recognize who she had become.

Back then, after the Solit Company’s morning paper ran a front-page exposé accusing its own staff of falsifying reports, Mirul, whose Job just so happened to be White Mage, had sworn to rise through the ranks as an Explorer. She had vowed to surpass the insufferable Tsutomu, who had ruined her, and one day join a party with Amy, her idol and personal goddess.

“Shit, I think she’s broken, guys,” she’d once heard a teammate mutter.

“Ugh, Goddamn useless… Well, guess she’s still good for something else,” another had said with a leer.

Reality had no interest in entertaining her fantasy. It was still a time when Tsutomu’s efforts to legitimize the role of Healers had barely begun to bear fruit. And with the taint of the Solit Company’s reporting clinging to her name, forming a proper party was out of the question. The best she could manage was to be thrown into matchmade groups as a disposable White Mage.

She was killed again and again by monsters, and verbally flayed by those parasitic bottom-feeders who called themselves Explorers. She made no progress and achieved nothing. The pressure finally cracked her spirit. It was not long before the same good-for-nothings she had once looked down upon turned their well-practiced predation toward her, and she, broken and numbed, allowed herself to be used. She drifted from party to party in a fog, each time falling into the same traps.

In Dungeon City, when someone spoke of ‘hell,’ they meant a life forsaken by God. And Mirul… she had lived through it.

[Miss Amy… and Tsutomu. Tsutomu. Tsutomu…! I won’t rest until I drag that bastard down. I can’t die. Not like this…]

Any normal person would have shattered beyond repair, their mind broken and their body discarded. But Mirul clung to her obsession, to Amy, who was a divine presence to her. And to Tsutomu, her personal devil. Even if she had to sell herself to keep going, she would remain an Explorer.

But not even her madness-born tenacity could withstand the weight of the truth. The public disgrace wrought by the Solit Company’s exposé had been too deeply etched into the world’s memory. No matter how desperately she clawed upward, every effort was crushed before it could bear fruit.

By then, the three-role composition theory had become well known even among novices. The status of White Mages had risen. But it meant nothing when no decent Explorer was willing to touch someone with her reputation. The stench of scandal never left her.

Her once-attractive face had withered with the abuse. Gone was the charm that once drew men to her. Now, only the bottom-feeders came calling, gathering like flies to refuse. Her prospects had died the moment she’d slipped into that vortex of rumor and failure. There was neither recovery nor redemption to be had.

[…Was he right, after all?]

She remembered the look on Tsutomu’s face when he had told her: “You are the one who started this. You tried to rob me of my livelihood as an Explorer.” At the time, she had written him off as being too dramatic. She believed that if one had talent, even lies could be overturned with results. A proper White Mage could claw their way back.

But she had been wrong, and she knew now, knew it in her bones. Once a stain like hers had been printed by a media giant like the Solit Company, there was no coming back. No party wanted to step on a landmine in plain sight. And for White Mages, who could not level up efficiently alone, that damage was fatal.

An Attacker or a Tank could at least kill monsters solo. But White Mages severely lacked offensive skills; their grinding was a slog. Even at higher levels, their status ratings did not scale in any meaningful way. There was no boost to STR, no hidden power spike. And without a party, even maxing out their level meant nothing.

From the twentieth layer down, no White Mage could solo a layer boss. To break past that wall, she needed help… help from the very good-for-nothings she despised. Worse, she had to approach them as the lower party member, the desperate one.

Still, she paid her price in sweat, in blood, in dignity. Crawling through the filth, she somehow reached the new cap of level forty. But to break past that was to face the Queen Spider, the gateway boss for those seeking legitimacy beyond the bottom of the barrel… And that was where her journey ended.

The good-for-nothings she relied on had long since given up on getting past the Swamp Layers. The Queen Spider’s lair was their final stop. Anyone foolish enough to enter would be cocooned and devoured.

Even with her intellect, her fierce will, and her once-promising skills as a journalist, none of it mattered. She was not Tsutomu, armed with encyclopedic knowledge from another world’s game and the raw talent to back it. Her efforts were valiant, but they barely scratched the surface of the wall before her.

That was it; her road was blocked. She had reached a dead end. She thrashed and struggled and refused to give in. But in the end, just like the rest of them, she became one more trapped in the Queen Spider’s web.

It was only after the second large-scale Stampede that her fate began to shift.

When the people of the Royal Capital bore witness to the true strength of the Explorers, they were quick to recognize their value. In the months that followed, migrants flooded to Dungeon City in waves, swarming the Guild in such numbers that the overseers and staff could hardly keep up. It was during this influx that Mirul, still an outcast among outcasts, saw her opportunity.

She aligned herself with a group of orphans, those at the very bottom of the hierarchy, just as she had once been. Though her social status was low, she possessed something they did not: education and literacy. In their eyes, she was someone to look up to, who knew the world in ways they did not. While those capable of reading between the lines avoided her due to the lingering stench of scandal, these orphans did not even know the words in which her sins had been printed.

The Solit Company had a branch in the Royal Capital, and its name was well known, but none of their local newspapers had published the articles that had ruined her. The worst of her reputation had simply never reached these children. And so, Mirul successfully formed a party. It was her first in years that was not born of desperation or coercion.

From that point forward, the layers seemed to melt away beneath her feet. The long, bitter stagnation she had endured gave way to steady progress. Perhaps it was the countless hours spent watching Tsutomu on the Monitors, studying his movements, his timing, and his judgment. Perhaps it was her own raw talent, finally allowed to breathe. Among Healers in her level range, Mirul’s abilities were outstanding.

She knew how to curry favor with those above her, and just as importantly, how to avoid drawing resentment from those below. Her years at the Solit Company had taught her how to navigate human politics like a practiced swimmer cutting through rough seas. But more than anything, she was driven by the searing desire never to return to that living hell. This was her final chance, and she seized it with all her might, earning her a place among the orphaned Explorers from the Royal Capital.

[…I really did something awful, didn’t I?]

The thought came to her one quiet evening, for the first time in years, as she sat reading the Solit newspaper without needing to glance over her shoulder. She had reached a point where she could finally sleep without fear.

There, printed in black and white, was a photo of Tsutomu. He had been formally commended by House Babenberg for his heroics during the recent Stampede. The article went on to explain that it was his reputation, as the one who had saved dozens of lives from the Devourer Dragon’s assault, that had convinced many Explorers to follow him to the defense of the Royal Capital.

Without that, the Capital might never have realized the true might of Explorers, and Dungeon City might have never gotten its subsequent influx of migrants. And had that been the case, the great tide of manpower Mirul had ridden to climb out of her pit would never have come.

The more she thought about it, the colder she felt. Her own achievements amounted to little more than riding that current, clinging to it like driftwood in a storm. She had been destroyed by him… and in the end, had been inadvertently saved by him.

Of course, the sight of him on the Monitors still stirred a dark knot of emotion in her chest. If she met him face to face, that old loathing might well return in full. But now, the hatred has changed direction. It was not the blind, choking thing it used to be.

Later, when she heard that Riki, the de facto leader of the orphans, had spoken with Tsutomu directly, she had nearly gone cold with dread. She braced herself for some kind of fallout, for one of the ever-watchful shadows trailing her to step forward at last.

But nothing happened; the watchers, whoever they were, remained silent. Her party remained intact. And so, quietly grateful, Mirul continued her work as an Explorer.

Then one day, she read the headline: Tsutomu and Amy had retired, at the same time.

[What…?]

The words struck like a blow to the gut. Even now, though she stood more firmly on her own feet, the twin pillars of Amy’s radiance and Tsutomu’s shadow had been the structure she leaned on.

She was relieved, yes. No longer having to live in Tsutomu’s shadow felt like a release. But there was something hollow about it, too, like a story left unfinished. And if the phrasing of the article was to be believed, he had not retired completely; there was every chance he would return to Dungeon City someday. And when that happened… would she simply return to hiding in fear again?

The strange gaze she had always felt observing her had vanished. But that did not mean the root of the problem was gone. What would she do when the time came to face him again? What could she do?

“Hey! Daryl’s making some kind of Clan! And he invited us!”

“Seriously!?”

The excited shouting echoed through the circle of orphans. Daryl, a former Tank of Absolute Helix, had officially left the Clan and declared that he was forming his own organization to support the orphans. He was not a stranger to them; he had been helping them on the side even while he was part of Absolute Helix. His trust among the orphans ran deep, and Riki and the others were eager to join him.

[He’s in way over his head…]

That was Mirul’s honest reaction. Even adults with proper education and years of experience could not avoid constant friction in groups of large numbers. The disasters plaguing Ealdred Crow were proof enough of that. Trying to do the same with a band of uneducated orphans was a recipe for chaos.

And yet… Daryl was not stupid, not entirely. He had been trusted by Tsutomu, and had proven himself within Absolute Helix. If there was even a sliver of a chance that helping him could lead to a solution for her lingering fears, Mirul was willing to take the gamble.

As it turned out, her instincts were not wrong. Daryl, for an orphan, was surprisingly astute. But his Explorer mindset clung to him like old armor, and he lacked the organizational sense to truly lead. Recognizing that, Mirul advised him not to mimic an existing Clan structure, but to build something new from the ground up.

The result was a hybrid: a loosely aligned coalition that functioned more like a network of Clans in contact than a traditional group. And to keep it running, she and Daryl worked themselves to the bone. It was in this role, as part administrator and part caretaker, that she began once again negotiating with the Guild. She even prioritized the sale of Magic Stones to grease the wheels of favor.

[It’s probably for the best that Daryl doesn’t know what I’ve done, but that won’t last forever. Eventually, someone will put it together. I need to be careful not to get too close…]

Her hair was longer now, dyed a different shade, and her appearance had changed just enough to make recognition difficult. But all it would take was one curious inquiry, and the truth would come tumbling down.

Still, Daryl had never questioned her. He seemed content to see her as a well-meaning adult offering guidance. And for that reason, Mirul stayed, not in the light, but in the shadows, and was determined to protect what they were building.