Not long after she’d answered his question, Suimei passed through a set of doors as prompted by Dorothea. Appearing before his eyes was an enormous indoor training field.
“No wonder the guild takes up so much room. There was something like this here.”
Suimei’s muttered words elicited agreement from Dorothea.
“That’s right. This is the largest adventurer’s guild in the three kingdoms, after all. Of course we’d have facilities like this prepared.”
A training field. Given what he knew of the strength of the guild’s members, something like this was necessary.
But—
“It’s empty?”
Just as he’d said, the field was currently unoccupied. Although there did seem to be someone behind the doors located within.
“Before noon, this second training field is reserved for assessment purposes. No one else is allowed to use it. Those who have already finished their assessment should be in that room there, finishing up their registration.”
“Ah…” Suimei replied calmly.
Suddenly, noticing that the feeling transmitted by his feet was somehow strange – or rather, the entire room gave him a strange feeling – he looked down.
“Excuse me, but this material…”
“Good job noticing that. This training room was constructed with a newly-discovered, magic-resistant material. Even if you use magic in here, the building won’t be easily damaged,” she answered proudly.
“Magic-resistant material?”
“Right. It’s still very new, so it’s only in use here. Awesome, right?”
“Yeah. So something like this exists…”
Suimei’s calm response completely ignored Dorothea, who was nearly bursting with pride.
His nonchalant tone notwithstanding, his gaze remained fixed on the floor. The floor and walls were, as far as he could tell, simply a mix of wood and stone. Could this really be the so-called magic-resistant material? Back in his world, magic-treated materials were quite common, but from his inspections, this material bore no traces of magic treatment. If its magic resistance was an innate property, then that really was something worthy of interest.
As Suimei looked around interestedly, Dorothea interrupted.
“As I mentioned earlier, the match will be held here. Suimei-san, we’ll have you fight against guild members of our choosing, and your rank will be based on our assessment of your performance during the match. Is that okay?”
“Well, it’s not like I have a problem with that… but, speaking hypothetically – just as an example – is there any other assessment method besides battle?”
“Hah… That’s a bit of a difficult question. Actually, let me ask you a question in turn: if not a battle, then what?”
Yeah, there wasn’t anything else, was there?
“…Okey-dokey.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, I’m just saying that I understand.”
Dorothea not understanding his answer, Suimei explained that he’d been answering in the affirmative. Even though Japanese translated without difficulty, apparently loanwords didn’t work. As he ruminated on the inefficiency of communication, he raised his head to gaze up at the wooden ceiling. Looking back, Dorothea still looked a bit confused. (In the original, the term Suimei used that she didn’t understand was “おーけー,” i.e. “okay.” I thought about using an equivalent from another Romantic language as it makes more sense relative to English… except that “okay” is essentially a part of every language on Earth by now >_> so I went with a less-known form.)