The guild receptionist's name was Priya. For five years, she had manned the front desk of the Varundal Adventurer's Guild, and she had seen it all: S-Rank heroes returning bloody but triumphant, arrogant nobles demanding quests above their station, and F-Rank newbies crying after their first encounter with a goblin. She was unflappable.
Until today.
Her declaration—"That F-Rank... he's a monster"—hung in the air, charged with a mixture of terror and revelation.
Arjun, whose ears were still ringing, heard only a garbled mumble. He saw her terrified face and immediately assumed the worst. She's here to take my license. And probably charge me for the property damage. Oh gods, how much does a secret dimensional wall cost?
He needed to explain. He had to make her understand this was all a terrible, slime-related accident.
He took a step forward, his boot squelching in the goo. "Wait! It wasn't me! It was the slime!" he exclaimed, his voice cracking with desperation.
The crowd gasped again.
He's giving credit to his familiar? one adventurer whispered.
No, you idiot! 'The Slime' must be the code name for his attack! his friend hissed back.
Priya flinched as if he had swung the demonic dagger at her. She saw the crazed look in his eyes, the dark purple aura pulsing from the weapon in his hand, and the shimmering green viscera covering his body. His words hit her not as a plea, but as a chilling, humblebrag.
He was saying an enemy as formidable as the Nightfire Syndicate was no more significant to him than a common slime.
Her blood ran cold. This wasn't a man; this was a force of nature wearing a human face.
"I... I understand, Sir," she stammered, bowing so low her forehead nearly touched her knees. It was a level of respect reserved for kings and guild masters. "Your... your message is received. I will report it immediately."
Before Arjun could ask what "message" she was talking about, she turned and fled, shoving her way through the stunned crowd with the urgency of someone escaping a dragon's lair.
Arjun stood there, utterly bewildered. "Message? What message? The message is my boot is ruined!" he shouted after her, but she was already gone.
He was left alone in the center of a wide, silent circle. The people of Varundal stared at him, their expressions a cocktail of fear and reverence. They parted for him as he began to walk, mothers pulling their children away, merchants bowing their heads.
'Great,' Arjun thought miserably. 'Now they all think I smell. And they're probably right.'
He glanced down at the cursed dagger still clutched in his hand. It was heavy, ornate, and felt deeply wrong. It was obviously valuable. Keeping it would be trouble. He spotted a trash bin overflowing with refuse. Perfect.
He made to toss it in.
"H-He's discarding it!" a nearby knight-aspirant shrieked, pointing dramatically. "He considers a demon-class weapon disposable! The sheer arrogance! The absolute power!"
The knight dropped to one knee, bowing his head in reverence. "Forgive my insolence for witnessing your greatness, O mighty one!"
Arjun froze, his hand hovering over the bin. Tossing the dagger was now apparently an act of profound philosophical significance. With a groan of utter defeat, he shoved the blade into his belt. It clanked awkwardly against his hip.
Meanwhile, in the highest tower of the Adventurer's Guild, Guildmaster Rudraksh Vora moved a carved ivory elephant across a Chaturanga board. He was a man in his late forties, with sharp, intelligent eyes, a perfectly trimmed mustache, and a black monocle that gave him an air of calculating intensity. He preferred order, strategy, and control. The chaotic rabble of adventurers he managed were merely pieces on his board.
The door to his office burst open. Priya stumbled in, pale and breathless.
"Guildmaster!" she gasped. "An incident! A catastrophic incident!"
Rudraksh didn't look up from his board. "Calm yourself, Priya. Did another A-Ranker get drunk and try to wrestle the city-gate griffin again?"
"Worse, sir! The Nightfire Syndicate... their headquarters... it's been obliterated!"
Rudraksh's hand paused over a horse piece. He slowly raised his head, his monocled eye fixing on her. "Obliterated? By whom? The Royal Knights? A rival faction from the North?"
"No, sir," she said, her voice trembling. "It was... it was one of ours. An F-Rank. A man named Arjun Nath."
The name meant nothing to him. Rudraksh turned to his massive, magically-indexed filing cabinet. He muttered the name, "Arjun Nath," and a thin, pathetic-looking folder slid out into his hand. He opened it.
His brow furrowed. The contents were not just unimpressive; they were a litany of failures.
Subject: Arjun Nath.
Quests Attempted: 14.
Quests Completed: 0.
Notes: Lacks courage, strength, and basic situational awareness. Suspected of being cursed with cosmic levels of bad luck. Once scared into unconsciousness by a training dummy.
Rudraksh stared at the file, then back at Priya. "This is a joke."
"I saw it with my own eyes, sir! A crater where their guild used to be! And he walked out of it, covered in... something green... holding Vritra's Fang as if it were a toy!"
Rudraksh leaned back in his chair, his mind racing. The pieces on the board in front of him suddenly seemed to rearrange themselves. This wasn't a random act of violence. This was a move. A calculated, brilliant, terrifying move.
His paranoia, the very trait that had kept him in power for so long, flared to life.
'No one is this weak,' he thought, his gaze hardening. 'This file... this entire identity is a fabrication. A masterful cover. He has operated under our noses for months, building the perfect disguise as a harmless fool.'
But why? Why reveal himself now?
The Nightfire Syndicate controlled the city's underworld. They were a chaotic element, yes, but a predictable one. Their removal would create a power vacuum. Chaos would ensue. And in chaos, a shrewd player could seize control.
'He isn't just a warrior,' Rudraksh concluded, a chill running down his spine. 'He's a strategist. A deep-state agent. A mastermind.'
He looked at the final notice on his desk, the one he had signed that morning, threatening to revoke Arjun's license.
'Of course,' he realized with dawning horror. 'This was his trigger. Our ultimatum forced his hand. He took out the Syndicate as a message. A display of power directed not at the city... but at me.'
The slime Priya mentioned... a code. The casual way he held the dagger... a warning. Everything fit.
"Priya," he said, his voice dangerously calm. "Upgrade Arjun Nath's adventurer rank."
"To what, sir? D-Rank? C-Rank?"
Rudraksh Vora looked out the window, his gaze falling upon the pillar of smoke still rising from the alley.
"No. Mark his file as Rank SSS. Classification: World Anomaly. And put him under 24-hour surveillance. I want to know every move this 'F-Rank' makes."
From a rooftop across the street, Kavya Deshmukh watched Arjun's pathetic, slumped retreat. She had seen him try to throw the demonic dagger away. She saw the fear and confusion in his eyes.
But she didn't interpret it as weakness. She interpreted it as pain.
'He despises his own power,' she mused, her heart beating faster. 'The destruction he causes... it pains him. He wields a cursed weapon not because he wants to, but because he has to. He walks the path of a lonely, burdened genius.'
His every clumsy action was, in her eyes, a deliberate piece of a larger puzzle. He didn't want attention. He didn't want glory. He simply... acted. And the world reshaped itself around him.
She clutched the shaft of her crimson spear.
"Arjun Nath," she whispered to the wind, committing the name to memory. "I will understand the truth behind your strategy."
Arjun finally made it back to his tiny, rented room in the poorest part of the city. He slammed the door shut, leaning against it and sliding to the floor in exhaustion.
The cursed dagger clattered beside him.
He was alive. He hadn't been arrested. He still had his license (probably). But his boot had a hole in it, his clothes were ruined, and he was covered in the ectoplasmic remains of a creature that had somehow started a small war.
He stared at the ceiling, his mind a complete blank.
"What a day," he sighed. "I just wanted to kill a slime."
His stomach rumbled.
His final, most pressing thought before succumbing to a stress-induced nap was: 'I wonder if I have any leftover dal in the kitchen.'
The legend of the 'Demon-Slayer of Varundal' had been born, and its protagonist was worried about leftovers.