Maybe he is the odd one...

Just the next day, Zorey ventured out of the Southern gate again with the new cart, but this time he had Belinda with him.

"Huh, I have a feeling that this kid will make it big someday."

Seven, the guard that the orange-haired girl pestered the whole time that Zorey was missing, looked after the pair getting further and further away and smirked.

"He sure does seem lucky enough, doesn't he?"

The other guard nodded with a laugh and...

"... THAT'S YOUR LEVEL...?!"

"...!"

"...?!"

Both of them became startled as the high-pitched voice of the orange-haired girl who stood up on the cart pulled by the black-haired boy reached all the way back to them despite the distance.

"...what did she mean by that...?"

"Maybe his level is lower than she expected...?"

The two guards looked at each other and wondered, staring at each other awkwardly.

….

There still was a time before sunset and the time to close the gate, so the guards were quite busy surveilling the visitors.

"...?"

The commotion at the end of the line made Seven furrow his brows and lean to the side, but the only slightly suspicious thing he saw was a small cart with some goods stacked at least eight feet up, covered with fabric for the sake of inconspicuousness... and therefore getting all the attention that the owner must not have wanted.

"...haaa..."

Seven let out an annoyed groan, already dreading the ordeal of inspecting dozens upon dozens of useless trinkets that some peddler or young naive merchant got cheated into buying after getting fooled by the promise of making a fortune after selling it in the big city.

There were at least a couple f people like that a month – but why did this particular one have to show up at the very end of his shift?

It was simply unfair...

"...huh...?"

But as the line moved, Seven realized that the cart wasn't being pulled by some docile tamed monster, but by the black-haired monk, and the tiny orange-haired girl was sitting on the edge of the cart, staring into the distance with stunned expression while clinging to her oversized backpack she was resting on her knees.

"...Beli has been level 5 for two years, but now Beli is level 13... was... was Beli wrong about leveling up...? All of Beli's skills leveled up, too, because she leveled up so much... Beli is dreaming, isn't she...? Beli was so worried about the nice monk that she collapsed and is now dreaming it all..."

"...?"

At one point, Seven stopped paying attention to the visitor he was inspecting and just kept glancing over at the tiny girl who seemed completely out of it and kept muttering something to herself while clenching her hands on the sides of her backpack.

"Hello again. You sure got a lot of... what exactly?"

Seven gulped down his saliva and asked as it came the turn of the pair of youngsters.

"Because of the Stone Fang wolves moving in, the Stone Fang dogs had to run away, and most of their packs ended up breaking apart, which made singling them out one after the other rather easy."

Zorey said and smiled rather proudly before untying one corner of the fabric covering the large pile on top of the cart and revealing two corpses of the rank F canine-type monsters with many others beneath and above them.

"Whew! You sure know how to use an opportu..."

"Yes! Beli is sure that they are only Stone Fang dog corpses! Nothing else! Nope! Definitely not! Only Stone Fang dogs! Beli swears that there are no Stone Fang wo-mpfh...?!"

Seven whistled with an impressed expression but then got suddenly interrupted by Belinda, who flinched, and her eyes widened as she realized that they were already at the city gates, ad she started talking really fast, only to have her mouth blocked by Zorey's hand.

"Sorry for that. I thought that if she sees me hunting down the dogs, she will forget about the time when one almost killed her, but as you can see..."

"...yeah... yeah, I get it."

Zorey pulled Belinda down from the cart and held her like a large stuffed toy – while still covering her mouth – which made Seven slightly suspicious...

"Alright. We know that you two are fine, so go in. Have a good day."

...but it wasn't enough to make the guard commit to actually going through the entire pile of monster corpses right before the closing of the gates, so he just nodded and waved his hand so that the black-haired boy would just go through.

"Thank you~! Have a nice day, too~!"

Zorey parked up and called in delight, using just one hand to start pushing the cart with the heavy-looking cargo.

"Sorry for that, but you were the one to advise me to put the few Stone Fang dog corpses on top of the Stone Fang wolves because otherwise, the guards could make a scene... and then you almost spilled out the truth back there.

"..."

Inside the city walls, but only when they were close to the place that Belinda was renting out, Zorey released the girl and apologized, but she didn't say a word back, instead looking away with a completely red face.

"Umm... Belinda...? Miss Belinda...? Beli...?"

The girl's silence worried the boy, and he picked her up and put her back on the edge of the cart, leaning in and trying to have eye contact calling out to her in different ways.

"...Beli didn't know that the nice monk is perverted like that..."

The girl glanced at him and grumbled, pulling up her backpack and hiding behind it bashfully.

"Huh...?! Per-perverted? ME?! What did I do?!"

The young priest of death gasped, taken aback, unable to understand what he did wrong, but nothing came to his mind, so he asked, shaken by the accusation.

"Perverted! A pure maiden like Beli can't even say it out loud! Papa...! Mommy...! Beli is not sure if anyone would want to marry her...!"

"...wh-wha...?"

Belinda kicked up her feet in anger and declared, sounding actually distressed, so Zorey really didn't know how to act...

"Umm... Beli... d-don't worry, whatever happened, it will be okay as long as no one knows, right? And, umm... in the first place, you still have a few years before you even could get married, so..."

The black-haired boy showed his innocence and tried to assure the girl the best way he could think of, but...

"EXCUSE YOU?!"

"!?!?!"

His words enraged the girl to the point of her tossing her backpack on top of the pile and standing up on the edge of the cart s she could tower over the black-haired boy.

"BELI IS ALREADY EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD! ACCORDING TO ANTERLLEN KINGDOM'S LAW, IT'S ALREADY BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE SHE HAD HER COMING-OF-AGE CEREMONY AND COULD GET MARRIED! STUPID ZOREY! WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT BELI IS TOO YOUNG TO GET MARRIED?!"

"...huh...?"

But then, as the tiny girl roared furiously, it turned out that her actual fury was sparked by Zorey's misunderstanding about her age.

"Wait! Belinda, you are an adult?!"

The black-haired boy called out in shock, staring at the girl who could not reach four feet tall even if she climbed on her tippytoes.

"You...! Of course, Beli is an adult! Even though Beli's papa established Blinda's company, after his death, Beli would not have been able to run it if she wasn't an adult and would have been arrested if she tried to sell her goods in big cities like Grand Hebral or even in towns!"

The orange-haired girl shook her head and scoffed, crossing her arms and glaring down at the black-haired boy lowering his head apologetically.

"...hmph... alright. Since you thought that Beli was still a kid, Beli will give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you didn't want to do what you did."

The tiny peddler pouted and looked to the side, breathing out and sitting back down as all that shouting helped her calm down.

"Because I didn't! And I don't even know what I did in the first place! Ah, but I apologize for it anyway, and thank you for your forgiveness, Miss Belinda!"

Zorey pointed out but then hurriedly changed his tone and bowed his head before addressing Belinda with proper honorifics.

"...haaa... in the first place, how old did you think that Beli was?"

"...!"

The orange-haired girl breathed out and asked, and her eyes became colder once more, putting Zorey in an alert state.

He could already tell that it was best to tread carefully...

"...please don't be mad... but I just thought that you were twelve, like me..."

"Twelve? You thought that Beli was the... eh... wait... like you...? Like you, as if in... eh...? NICE MONK IS TWELVE?!"

Still, he ended up telling the truth, although he fidgetted in shame over his awkward mistake – but it turned out that he wasn't the only one in the wrong about age as Belinda raised her voice again, but this time in pure bewilderment.

"Y-yeah... Do I not look like I am...?"

Zorey looked to the sides feeling kind of lost, and asked, raising one arm and asking.

No matter how one looked at it, his height, build, and proportions were perfectly within the average for a human in their early teenage years.

"Beli... umm... Beli thought that nice monk was looking rather young, but she thought that he was also a half-human of some sort and that he was around sixteen... well... Beli was sure that you at least had your coming of age ceremony..."

The orange-haired girl revealed as it was her turn to get embarrassed over the same mistake she admonished the black-haired boy over so harshly.

"Wait..., but that means that it's less than a year since you were registered in the System, but you already are level..."

"In two day's it will be a full month."

Belinda furrrowed her brows in realization and muttered, having the helpful boy who learned from his mistakes instantly chip in with the correct information.

"...you got your Class less than a month ago, and you are already level... fuaah..." *thump*

"Miss Belinda?!"

The correction seemed to shatter whatever was left of Belinda's worldview, and the orange-haired girl swayed and lost consciousness, falling back onto the cargo, causing Zorey to call out and rush to her side.