Arlen City.

  Surprisingly, unlike the other cities throughout the Schengen Region, Arlen was less devastated by the ongoing refugee crisis. Panic had been largely subdued in Arlen, as the current ruling noble—Countess Helene von Stuttgart, kept the monster hordes largely contained in the Arlen Dungeon.

  Unfortunately, right now, it is still in lockdown. The adventurers who normally ventured underneath to obtain high-demand magic crystals and monster cores to power the city’s industries weren't allowed to venture inside.

  The concentration of monsters was simply too high for it’d be suicide to venture below.

  As a result, as of now, the economy of Arlen is not doing well. Even the farmlands around it were struggling a bit, as they were reliant on specially ground monster cores as catalysts for water magic, which was heavily used to speed up crop growth.

  In any case, at this rate, while law and order were holding things together, it was still not an ideal situation. So by the time Alexa and her team arrived, they went straight to the office of the countess.

  She was an old woman, already sixty years of age, with graying hair and aged skin. Still, she seemed like someone proper, unlike the various noblemen and leaders that Alexa usually saw in other places, who were extremely rotten.

  She bowed upon Alexa’s entrance.

  “Your Highness,” Helene greeted. “I hope the County of Stuttgart and Arlen welcomed you warmly. None of us expected visitation from royalty, but I hope my people did well regardless…”

  “Raise your head,” Alexa commanded, and the countess followed. Alexa looked around the room, before turning back to the countess. “Lady Helene, I require your assistance. Behind me is my knight, Sir Alfred von Gottfried, the leader of the Fuchs Brigade, Major Wilhelm von Eisen, and of course, the saintess, Phoebe d’Lumiere. We’re here to clean up the Arlen Dungeon.”

  “I…see,” the countess eyed the three people behind Alexa. “So those are the people said to have confronted the Sin Archdemon of Sloth, and won.”

  The countess then looked straight at Alexa, before smiling.

  “And you. You were there, weren’t you?”

  “W-well,” Alexa chuckled as she looked away, her earlier cool composure breaking a bit, before her head suddenly inflated itself. “Of course I was! Hah, in fact, I led all of these fine men and women to a complete, decisive victory. That’s what I seek to replicate here!”

  “And what do you require of me, Your Highness?”

  “Simple. Considering the size of the Arlen Dungeon, I believe I’ll need not just more hands for this mission, but also, a well-made map. We seek to clear out most floors, reach the core, and have Phoebe here purify the miasma it emits.”

  The noblewoman looked at Phoebe, who so far remained sleepy at the side. The moment her gaze bore on the timid girl, Phoebe immediately snapped back and stood straight.

  “That girl is the one prophesied to save us, no?” Helene asked.

  “U-um,” Phoebe spoke up. “I try, Lady Helene.”

  “She does more than ‘trying’,” Alexa said, quite proud. “She completes it. Under my direction, I am confident it’s no different here. If we can dispatch an entire demon horde pouring out of a portal, then I will clean up the dungeon below this city, and end this city’s problems.”

  Alexa stepped forward, suddenly taking the countess’ hands.

  “So please, provide me with four hundred adventurers, and every resource this city has, and I’ll get it done.”

  “...I see,” Helene didn’t retract her hand, instead, she touched Alexa’s hand reverently. “I will do my best then. My, to think that I’ll see a true hero’s party form in my lifetime…it is an honor to witness it alone.”

  At that, Alexa tilted her head.

  “Hero’s party?”

  +++

  “Look, if I’m adventuring in a fairytale ‘hero’s party’, I’m not doing it with this creature!"

  “One day, someone will punch your face hard enough to make you shut up.”

  “Hey! What’s that?!”

  “Will you two manchildren shut it?” Alexa chastised, looking back at Wilhelm and Alfred. They were bickering again. “Please, I have a speech to make, so don’t ruin it.”

  “Will do, Your Highness, I shall seal my lips at once,” Alfred bowed submissively.

  “You should try punching his face, but I suppose that works,” Wilhelm said, before taking a sip of his whiskey.

  “Egging the princess, the most virtuous maiden out there, to physically punch someone. You really are a product of the gutter,” Alfred said, frowning.

  “Did you just insult our mother?”

  Alexa ignored them, going straight instead to the main hall of the Arlen branch of the Continental Adventurers’ Guild. Most adventurers, who had been out of commission since the Battle of Perlenstadt, were waiting in the hall after they were given a summons notice.

  Unfortunately, there was not a single mission they could take from the mission board, and the receptionist was absent, so they were clearly agitated.

  Until Alexa appeared. Immediately, all eyes turned to her, as most of them didn’t expect a noblewoman to suddenly appear here.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Alexa smiled smugly, as she raised her voice.

  “Everyone! May I have your attention please?” She waited, until, in five seconds, everyone stopped chattering or moving. “That’s good.”

  She placed her hand on her chest.

  “I am Crown Princess Alexa Theresa von Wolgast, and I have a special mission for all of you!”

  +++

  After Alexa broke the news to the adventurers, all of them quickly joined her with her promises of good pay and rewards. Their mission? To clear out the Arlen dungeon, as fast as possible.

  Most of them quickly organized themselves into their respective parties, while Wilhelm used his platoon to barge a hole open to the Arlen Dungeon by using them as a spearhead.

  Naturally, Alexa and her team were a part of this. She prepared well for it, as she had around sixty paper glyphs this time, all readied for battle. She’d learned earlier from Wilhelm how to draw a basic ‘heal’ spell on paper glyphs.

  And that was exactly what she did. Because she engraved each of the papers with the finest mana ink (she wasn’t going to waste demon blood on this), the universal healing glyph paper she produced for this occasion was only worth two light magic circles.

  It wasn’t much, definitely nowhere near a healer worth their salt was capable of, but it was something that she could apply to so many people easily.

  As the adventurers charged forward, defeating powerful monsters left and right with Wilhelm’s shieldguards and Alfred’s knights leading the charge, Alexa and Phoebe got to work. Phoebe healed the folks who were most badly injured, while Alexa focused on those with more minor injuries, lightening up Phoebe’s job significantly.

  On the other hand, Adele kept herself close to Alexa, assisting the two with their healing work, or protecting them from the occasional minor monsters like a dungeon rat that managed to sneak in to attack them.

  “Y-your Highness,” one of the adventurers, piled on the side of the walls of the dungeon, watched as Alexa tore another glyph paper, and a glow healed a stab wound on his shoulder. “This…I can’t thank you enough for this. I almost thought I was a goner. My party doesn’t have a healer yet.”

  “That’s why we organized this healing area,” Alexa chuckled, as she watched the man’s wound close itself. It wasn’t enough, so she tore another paper, and the golden glow from it quickly stopped the bleeding on the adventurer’s shoulder fully as his tissues grew back. “There, that should be good enough for you to rejoin the battle.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” the adventurer gratefully bowed after standing up, then he ran back into the deeper areas of the dungeon.

  “Next!” Alexa shouted, as a small line of people with minor injuries shambled toward her. She felt Adele tapping her from the back though.

  “Lady Alexa, you’re running out of paper glyphs,” Adele warned. “There are only six of them left.”

  “Is that so?” Alexa asked, slightly worried. “I thought I prepared enough…”

  “You got lazy last night—”

  “Grr, don’t remind me.”

  Alexa pulled out a vial of mana ink from her purse. She remembered she bought four of them when they rode out. Now she was down to half a vial of mana ink. Now that sucked. Still, with how many people were getting hurt by an operation she organized, Alexa couldn’t accept to stand idly by.

  “Adele, you treat them, I’ll produce the paper glyphs,” Alexa ordered.

  “Okay,” Adele replied, taking over Alexa’s post. On the other hand, Alexa got to work on another batch of paper glyphs using an empty book, taking one of the finished paper glyphs as a reference. She began drawing rapidly with her fountain pen, making sure there was adequate thickness and with her strokes to make the healing effect more potent.

  Adele worked tirelessly in her post, taking each batch of paper glyphs that Alexa produced to use them on the lines of the injured. Alexa briefly glanced at the people being treated by Phoebe.

  Some of them had stab wounds straight to their organs, others lost limbs, and some were on the verge of death. But all the same. She diligently used her holy magic, which was essentially a superior version of light magic, to heal them all. Considering Phoebe’s awakening, her mana reserves were so massive, they probably rivaled those of the strongest Archdemon.

  She essentially now had a fully formed, ‘Ascendant Stage’ manaheart. Well, she always had that, apparently, it was just that her holy magic was all inactive, so she had to rely on an inferior version of the three light magic circles she formed herself by studying magic again.

  Now though, she had sixteen holy magic circles around her heart. Although she hadn’t fully mastered using them all yet, Alexa expected that soon enough, she’d be able to heal an entire town’s worth of people.

  And that was a problem!

  I…I need to use this opportunity quickly to improve my understanding of healing glyphs.

  Alexa wanted all the XP she could possibly get, and that would be harder if there was someone who could do so many things better than her. This was a limited opportunity, so she sped up in her work.

  XP!

  XP!

  XP!

  And so, as Alexa’s glyphs improved significantly as she chased improving her glyph drawing skill, so many adventurers also breathed a sigh of relief, as their wounds and injuries were healed easily by Adele.

  +++

  “Oh…so that’s a minotaur?” Wilhelm asked.

  “There are three of them. Those are A+ class dungeon monsters. Look at that, they’re almost like golems too based on their stone-like build. Now that I think about it, they might be an S-class monster,” Alfred said.

  The two were now at floor ten of the dungeon, getting deeper and deeper into its core. Ahead of them was a wide hall with a massive, locked door, guarded by three stone minotaurs.

  The ones at the frontmost position of their spearhead platoon were Wilhelm’s shieldguards, all of them standing in a disciplined formation that would make it impossible for their enemy to get through.

  On the other hand, moving to other hallways were Wilhelm’s crossbowmen, all of them trying to find formations on the flanks of the powerful monsters to support an assault.

  “Alright, here’s the plan,” Wilhelm said, as he leaned close to his brother. “You send your knights to poke those things, my men will open fire from that position up there, and we stay here on the main hallway as a blocking force—”

  “If you’re planning to use that foolish no-step-back policy you barbarians use to yourselves, you are mistaken!”

  “We’re not. It’s just that…” Wilhelm smiled. “Aren’t you trying hard to prove yourself to your master? Well, now’s your chance. Ahead of us is a mana condenser, and I think that’s something that Alexa will appreciate if you, err, conquer it for her.”

  “Do you think I have no brain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. I am not having you or your men look down on us Royal Guard knights. We’re the best of the Empire for a reason.”

  “Sure. Prove it then.”

  “We’re going in.”

  Heh, it’s so easy to make glory hounds work for you.

  Wilhelm took his pocket watch as Alfred and his knights prepared to charge forward. Then, when they ran past his shieldguards, he pressed the timer button.