First Achievement Completed

I don’t know exactly why neither cats nor cat beast people should eat chocolate.

There’s no reason to experiment whether eating real chocolate would kill me.

What I do know is just one thing:

As long as I’m classified as a beast person rather than just a human, there’s absolutely nothing good about putting substances classified as poisons for beast people in <Another World> into my mouth.

For now, I decided to just accept the sentiment.

But I couldn’t keep just receiving things forever, whether it was chocolate, sentiments, or desire-filled touches.

-Tap.

I gently grasped a hand that was just approaching me. And then I asked.

“Um, I’d like to try doing requests too… Do you have anything I could do?”

“Requests? You, Lua?”

“Yes. Since I’m a guild member now, I want to do requests and such.”

Because from now on, I need to pull my own weight too. When I deliberately muttered this not-really-to-myself statement loud enough to be heard, the eyes of the staff members opposite me changed slightly.

To touched. Proud. Something like that.

So, using the eternal truth of give and take.

Using the excuse that if you receive something, you should give something in return, I took my first step toward completing my first achievement.

Well, I couldn’t start on a request right away because my schedule was about to be filled with private lessons with Ord.

Still, I wouldn’t be stuck with just private lessons 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Thinking I could make time separately on days like holidays, I asked them to find requests that even a young child like me could perform.

“Okay, wait just a moment~.”

Finally, from a staff member who had gone to one of the request office counters for a moment, I was given the herb delivery request I had so longed for…

“Is this a rock?”

“Yep, it’s a rock.”

No, it was some kind of rock chunk that was handed to me.

Looking closely, it was closer to a mineral grain-like thing rather than just a rock, but anyway.

Only after I filled my eyes with question marks did the explanation of my first request begin.

“It seems everyone’s attention is focused on the newly discovered dungeon. No one is available to do this impoooortant request.”

After all, it was just a trivial errand-like request.

But with that flowery eloquence, it was transformed into a tremendous mission that would determine the fate of the world.

It ended up making me accept a request that only I could do, not a trivial request that anyone could do.

…Why don’t I feel that good about it?

It’s a much simpler request than the herb delivery I had originally planned.

I don’t even need to make time separately later, I just need to take this small rock to a research lab at the [Smeltery] just 10 minutes away from the Lunatic Guild headquarters, and that’s it?

“Fighting!”

“Fi-fighting…”

However, because the request office staff’s vigorous encouragement was a few seconds faster than my realization of the identity of this ambiguous feeling.

In the end, after receiving a simple map, I moved my small steps toward the outside of the guild headquarters with something feeling off.

Not long after that. Really not long after, I arrived at the request location.

As expected, all kinds of noisy machine sounds characteristic of a smeltery greeted this new visitor a bit excessively.

In other words, the possibility of having mistaken the place converged to 0, so.

“Excuse me─”

After stopping a man who was about to enter the factory, I asked where Research Lab A-4 was.

Perhaps because my appearance was far from suspicious, when I said I was just running an errand, he told me the location of the elevator without any particular suspicion.

The Lunatic Guild exclusive device that had been serving as my ID wasn’t entirely irrelevant this time either.

Anyway, somehow following what I had just been told, I found the research lab located right next to the factory. When I handed over the rock covered with small minerals to a bespectacled researcher.

“Ah, so you’re that Lua!”

Just as I turned around to go back to the guild headquarters, my existence was once again made known to the surroundings by someone who recognized me.

Thankfully, it seemed they were more amazed by the fact that a cute child had appeared in such a place rather than me being the child Asha cherished… but can that really be considered fortunate?

As expected, this time too was followed by numerous handshake requests.

Unlike the request office staff who seemed to number at least twenty, there were only about five or six people, relatively fewer than at the request office, so it wasn’t that burdensome.

Even if you repeatedly experience this kind of thing—one-sided desire fulfillment disguised as patting and fiddling—you develop a tolerance…

But accepting and understanding that such things happen almost unconditionally wherever I go was difficult in many ways.

Therefore…

“Ah, goodbye!”

As soon as I received the miscellaneous snacks that were in the form of request rewards, I quickly turned and left.

I was concerned that there were a few snacks mixed in that were classified as poisons for beast people, but it’s not like I was going to eat them anyway.

These are, after all, my ‘first request completion rewards’ that I need to distribute to the request office staff for achievement completion.

Those people probably didn’t know that there were things mixed in that beast people shouldn’t eat.

After all, they just grabbed a handful of snacks from a drawer and put them in my hand.

There was no problem until I returned to the request office and said I had successfully completed my first request.

It was really smooth even as I distributed the snacks I received from the researchers to the request office staff.

Of course, there were staff members who refused to accept them, saying they couldn’t take away my first request completion reward…

“You… don’t want to accept what I’m giving you?”

“L-Lua?!”

Every time staff members who rejected my gift appeared, I showed an extremely disappointed and upset face. With slightly teary eyes as a bonus.

So, as expected.

“Wow… I didn’t see Jenia-san that way.”

“How could you so coldly… when a child wants to give you something…”

“I’ll take it, I’ll take it! I’ll take it!”

Other staff members around instantly turned the staff member who had rejected my kindness into human garbage, so I ended up forcibly giving them the snacks.

So, the result of going around among the request office staff until I had no snacks left was.

-Ding.

[The milestone of a feeble first step has been distributed without omission.]

[To you who have created another kindness with given kindness, a token of altruism is bestowed.]

[You have acquired the title『The Giving Tree』.]

-Ding.

[『The Giving Tree』Get the title]

[1/1]

“…!!”

As you can see, the result was most excellent.

Actually, it might be called a request, but in reality, it was an errand disguised as a request, so I was a bit worried. Fortunately, it seems to have been treated as a normal request.

So, somehow managing to suppress the cheer that was about to burst out, I was savoring the joy only inwardly at that moment.

“It seems something good happened to you.”

As always, Tana approached without making even a grain of sand’s worth of presence and asked me to accompany her.

The reason being that Asha had decided whether to accept Ord as my private tutor or not.

Only then filled with belated anxiety, I tried to read Tana’s expression, but from someone who maintains a poker face almost every moment, there was really nothing I could read.

“…Big Sister Tana doesn’t like it when Big Sister Asha overexerts herself either, right?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Then, could you help me just once more later?”

“Well… if there’s something I can help with.”

“Y-you agreed to help! You can’t go back on your word later!”

Only after setting up a contingency plan for any case did I enter the office where Asha was waiting.

What I faced then was an atmosphere and expressions not much different from before.

In the ambiguous atmosphere that was neither noticeably good nor noticeably bad, I kept looking back and forth between Asha and Ord, waiting for one of them to open their mouth.

Not even a few seconds later, the form of the voice that finally came was somehow a question mark rather than a period.

“Lua. Do you really like that person?”

“Yes, yes. I like Teacher Ord!”

“He said he’ll only choose difficult lessons. That he won’t go easy on you no matter how hard it gets?”

“I already heard that!”

“Ah, you already heard… huh?”

Even after several more questions from Asha that followed, I kept insisting that Ord was the only person who could be my teacher.

Was that why?

“Instead of having that person as your teacher, I’ll have a separate space made for you to take lessons, not in this building but somewhere else. Is that okay?”

“Ah, yes! …Huh?”

She did inform me that she had decided to accept Ord as my teacher.

The problem was that I didn’t know she would create a separate place rather than designating one of the guild headquarters facilities as the place for me to take lessons from Ord.

My mind became a little.

No, quite a lot dazed by the slightly unexpected words.