There's an old saying that hits the nail on the head: the more you put in, the more you value it.
In Sean's hometown in Baharuth, there was a neighbor—a middle-aged man who'd fought on the battlefield for years before retiring to the countryside, with a weird and reclusive personality. When Sean was a kid, he was just as naughty as the other boys his age, so naturally, the neighbor couldn't stand him.
But one time, Sean's parents weren't home, and it just so happened that a gnoll tribe from the nearby forest raided the village. Sean didn't make it back to lock the door in time, so he got grabbed by gnolls right at his doorstep and dragged off into the woods.
In that desperate moment, the neighbor—who'd never once given Sean a kind look—grabbed the long sword that had been gathering dust in his wardrobe for ages, picked up a round table as a makeshift wooden shield, and charged solo into the gnolls' spear line to rescue Sean.
In the days that followed, the neighbor, who'd nearly given his life to save Sean, treated him like his own flesh and blood.
After Sean turned twenty, he decided to leave the longbow unit and become an adventurer, with no guarantees for his life or future. Sean's birth parents didn't say a word about it, but the neighbor blew his top. After all, he'd risked everything to save Sean, and seeing him slack off like this drove him up the wall.
Thinking back on that reclusive old man who could no longer heft a long sword or a round table, Sean still felt a warm glow in his heart. But he had no choice but to become an adventurer—his father had failed in business, and the family's farm and cows had all been mortgaged to the miller. Relying solely on the paltry salary from his knight order officer post, even the old family house would probably end up mortgaged too.
Luckily, he had a decent knack for archery; without grinding through practice day after day, he'd already reached the point where he never missed a shot.
His buddies all joked that he must have some elf blood in him, but he knew he was just the only son of a washed-up farmer. After earning his first bounty and barely managing to save the old house, he kept on with the adventurer's journey.
Thanks to his top-notch archery skills, he worked his way up to platinum-level adventurer, which put him squarely in the mid-ranks of the huge adventurer crowd. Years of roughing it as an adventurer—eating in the wind and sleeping under the stars—turned the boy into a young man, and his heart got forged tough in the fires of the real world.
Sean figured he'd keep drifting from place to place like this forever, just like his admired senior Barrett, becoming a steady and low-key high-tier veteran adventurer.
Then he met Stella, a gentle and kind-hearted silver-level teenage cleric. Sean couldn't quite put his finger on what drew him to Stella—whether it was the subtle hint of sorrow in her light brown eyes, or the focused look on her face when she strained to cast healing spells.
He didn't know; he just quietly tailed her, got close to her, and pulled out all the stops to join the adventurer team she was in.
The young archer didn't dare spill his feelings. He knew full well that Stella came from a fallen noble family, with a brother who gambled like his life depended on it, her frail frame carrying debts even heavier than his own.
Right now, he couldn't offer Stella any kind of future, so all he could do was desperately keep his hair and looks neat and tidy, kick his habit of smoking to stay sharp, and try his best to come off as an honest and dependable guy.
He saved up money on the sly, secretly mapping out a possible future for the two of them in his mind, while his heart raced with worry that Stella might say yes to someone else's confession before he got the chance.
After a bunch of ups and downs, he and Stella joined the current adventure team, the Last Defender of the Way.
The team had a truly steady and reliable adventurer senior in Barrett, plus a captain EeDechi who always wore a stiff expression, with a quirky personality that made her tough to get along with. The captain was only orichalcum-level, but from the terrifying power she'd shown, Sean was convinced she could already qualify for the top-tier adamantite-level.
The captain was powerhouse strong, but she had this odd fixation, constantly obsessing over taking out the king of the Sorcerer Kingdom—Ainz Ooal Gown.
But Ainz wasn't someone you could mess with lightly. A few years back, when Re-Estize was gearing up for war against the Sorcerer Kingdom, Ainz Ooal Gown unleashed an unprecedented Super-Tier spell that wiped out tens of thousands of the kingdom's troops without breaking a sweat.
He'd also heard from other adventurers that Ainz Ooal Gown's subordinates had slaughtered tens of thousands of Quagoa in the north, leaving their population in ruins. Baharuth, Re-Estize, and the dwarf kingdom had all submitted to Ainz Ooal Gown one after another.
With a captain whose ideas were so pie-in-the-sky, Sean's past adventuring experience told him he should bail out quick, before this know-it-all boss pulled him straight into the pits of hell.
But the captain was generous as they come; she never held back on spending her gold coins, and she always landed some fat-paying orichalcum-level quests.
The cash Sean had raked in during this stretch was already equal to his whole last year's haul. Just a few more jobs, and he'd have a hefty pile of gold stashed away—enough to head back home, buy back the farm and fields, and even set up a water mill in town.
And most importantly, Stella showed no signs of wanting to leave; she seemed to be on the same page as Sean, aiming to pocket more rewards to clear her family's debts.
Sean looked over at Stella beside him, and Stella's beautiful light brown eyes were gazing blankly at the three blurry figures fading away down the distant stone-paved road.
On the stone road, a blonde adventurer girl held hands on either side with a pair of twin sisters who looked like two peas in a pod. The twins kept turning back to wave at Stella, but their feet didn't slow, and bit by bit, the three silhouettes—one big and two small—vanished at the road's end.
Those three figures were no doubt Arche and her twin sisters. A few years back, Arche had been killed by Ainz, and her two little sisters had been stuck with their deadbeat parents, somehow winding up in a brothel. Later, EeDechi torched the brothel, rescued the twin sisters, and had been dead set on finding Arche ever since.
It was a shame that EeDechi only knew how to rescue folks, not look after them. On their long trek from Baharuth's capital to Re-Estize's capital, roughing it through all the bumps and sleeping under the stars, it was Stella who poured her heart into healing and tending to the twin sisters.
Under her tender care, the pair of twin sisters—who'd endured brutal abuse and were utterly drained in both spirit and body—bounced back with new life. The kind-hearted teenage cleric was over the moon about it, no doubt; she poured all her budding maternal instincts into Kuuderika and Ureirika, treating them like her own flesh and blood, basically as if they were her little sisters.
But now, the twins' real big sister Arche had shown up, taking the twins away—and snatching a warm chunk of affection from Stella's heart right along with them.
Stella kept staring off into the distance until she couldn't spot the well-behaved blonde twin sisters anymore. She squatted down, hugging her shoulders with both arms, her eyes brimming with emptiness. Sean got how Stella felt, but he had no clue how to cheer her up. He wasn't exactly tongue-tied, but in a farewell moment like this, Sean couldn't spin poetic lines like a bard, dishing out those heartwarming words of comfort.
The young archer could only squat down next to Stella, hoping it'd show he felt the same way.
As for Barrett from the same adventurer team, he'd been itching to dump those twin sisters—the real dead weight—for ages. In this goodbye scene, he kept his mouth shut, but inside, he was overjoyed.
Meanwhile, EeDechi—who'd pulled out all the stops to rescue Arche—let out a breath like she'd just checked off a quest. She handed Arche three hundred gold coins and told her to beat it quickly with the twin sisters in tow.
...
The teenage cleric buried her chin in the crook of her arm, staring at a withered stalk of foxtail grass on the ground. A dark figure stepped up beside her and gave her shoulder an encouraging pat. Stella and Sean looked up together and saw it was their captain, EeDechi.
EeDechi crossed her arms, glanced toward where Arche had gone, and smiled softly. "Still thinking about Kuuderika and Ureirika? Those little rascals are pretty adorable, I'll give you that."
Stella, her thoughts read like an open book, stood up, mumbling with her head down, too shy to speak. Sean next to her scrambled to his feet too.
EeDechi patted the cleric girl's shoulder again, but her eyes fixed on Sean. "Once you're hitched, just pop out a pair of twins yourselves. These days, they're all for having a second kid, haha haha."
"Captain... cut it out..." Stella's face flushed beet red, looking downright adorable. Sean jerked his gaze away, his expression a bit flustered.
EeDechi stroked her chin and added, "But you'll have to submit a marriage application to me, and get my stamp of approval first..."