Chapter 366: Name of the Clan

I sent Gad to the 18th floor of the Dungeon Ruins through teleportation.

The Floor Boss over there will drill Gad’s mind and body. That guy’s a monster who caught the eye of the Demon King herself, so I'm sure it'll go well.

“Thanks, Halt.”

“No prob, Cai-Nii.”

Gad was Cai-Nii’s colleague, so he seemed relieved that he didn’t have to deal with the guy himself.

“Alright. Since the captain of the order of the knights of the kingdom who’s supposed to be your proctor isn’t here any more, I’ll be his proxy. By the way, this is permitted by his Majesty, so we’re going to deal with this formally.”

Yup. Cai-Nii already knew that things would turn out this way.

Cai-Nii and His Majesty showed up before we took the advancement exam. At that time, he probably felt that the future would play out like this because of his <Extreme Intuition> skill.

He responded way too fast, after all.

It would be impossible if he hadn’t foreseen that things would turn out like this. Usually, Gad would make trouble, which would turn into a large-scale commotion, before the kingdom would deal with it in response.

However, Cai-Nii showed up right in the middle of the exam, with Gad’s discharge notice from the order of royal knights.

Maybe the King also had his eye on this event right from the start. The kingdom was also troubled about how to deal with Gad, after all…. It felt as if they purposely appointed Gad to be our exam proctor to break his spirit and dispose of him. My intuition also told me that I wasn’t wrong about that.

“You realized it, Halt.”

Cai-Nii grinned at me as I stared at him.

“Oh, well. But that also means you trust us a lot, right?”

“Yeah. Your intuition’s becoming sharper. It’s a lot easier now for me since I hardly need to explain.”

“...But you’re not gonna explain anything in the first place if I didn’t realize it, right.”

‘We sent the unnecessary staff that we wanted to get rid off to Halt and the others so they could beat them up’ — no way they could say that to the citizens, right?

“Isn’t it fine? Didn’t we manage to work things out in the end? Alright, let’s quickly wrap up all the stuffy formalities first.”

Cain walked towards Irina until he’s beside her, then he turned to us.

"I, Cain Vie Silverlay, Supreme Commander of the Order of Royal Knights, in place of Gad, Commander of the 20th Unit. Today, we officially acknowledge the advancement of Halt Elnor and eight others to the rank of C-rank Adventurers."

Cain declared with an extremely stern expression.

This might be the first time ever that I’ve seen my brother be so serious, so I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“C-Rank adventurers are eligible to receive commissions from the kingdom, such as acting as the kingdom’s proxy for transporting goods for export to other countries. Thus the strength and grace — oy, Halt, listen seriously, will you.”

“S-Sorry. Can’t help it.”

“Sigh… Oh well. Anyway, you guys are C-rank adventurers from now on.”

Cain returned to his usual light-hearted self.

“I tried imitating His Majesty’s <The King’s Majesty>skill but it didn’t turn out well, huh.”

Ahh, so he was using a skill.

Right, Father-In-Law, the Alheim King, also has that.

Oh, maybe it’ll be very awkward if somebody who isn’t royalty were to use that skill, and maybe that’s also the reason I laughed. Alright, let’s leave it at that.

“Just as Sir Cain declared, you guys are now C-ranked adventurers moving forward. Did everyone bring your guild cards with you?”

Irina told us to hand our guild cards to her.

She returned it to us right away.

“Oh, is it okay now?”

“Yeah, check your ranks.”

When I looked at the card, the ranking had changed from C to D.

“Ohhh! It’s already changed! So you can do it so easily just like that?”

“Only the guild masters are permitted to do that. They only have to infuse a little bit of mana to change rankings, not only to promote, but they can also lower it.”

Cain also explained.

“That’s right. By the way, I don’t think C-rank is suitable for you guys… How about it? If you want to, I can promote you to A-rank — no, ask the Guild Federation to promote you to S-rank.”

Irina could also promote us up to A-rank. By the way, advancement to S-rank require having tertiary occupations and the approval of the international association of guilds all over the world.

“However, it’s said that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down*...”

We just rose to C-rank and we don’t have any significant accomplishment to our name, so eve if we did climb up to A-rank thanks to Irina, I don’t think the other adventurers would acknowledge us.

“We will gain experiences and take the advancement exams.”

The process might be slow, but we’d be moving on steadily — B-rank, A-rank and finally, S-rank.

“I-I see… By the way, you can get promoted as long as you accumulate enough guild points, okay? That idiot is the only one who refused to recognize you guys despite fighting with all you got, alright?”

I see. Ah, but it’s fine even if that’s the case.

Well, maybe Gad is also an amazing person in his own right if we consider that. His spirit didn’t broke despite dying so many times. He won’t die in the dungeon ruins too, of course. If Gad, the guy with the indomitable spirit and immortal body was trained under the ogre teacher… It’ll probably turn into something awesome. I hope he works hard.

“Okay. You guys are now C-ranks. One of the privileges that you have as such is being able to establish your 『Clan』 —”

“We’ll do it!!”

I replied a tad too fast.

Actually, it won’t be wrong to say that I registered as an adventurer just so I could make my own clan.

My goal is to make the world’s strongest clan.

I wanted to build a group with bonds as strong as that of a family.

It would become a place to return to, a place to go ‘home’ for the people in it.

That’s the kind of clan I wanted to create.

“You’re already deadset on doing it, huh. If you apply to me right here, right now, we can have it register. Do you have a name for you clan?”

“Yes. It’s already decided.”

Actually, I already had a name in mind before taking the advancement examination. I discussed it with my family and other people who wanted to join, such as Lilia and Sally.

“Our clan will be called『Familia』.”

It’s a name that means ‘family’.

It carries the hope that it will become something everyone can come home to, something that would tie us all with a strong bond.