It had been roughly a month since Mika started visiting the otherworldly town of Acid twice a week. Against the now-familiar yellow sky of this world, a large bird soared, its feathers glistening in the sunlight.

“The crows here are huge.”

“That’s a Karura. Are the Karura in Mika’s world smaller?”

“Karura… It wasn’t in the monster encyclopedia.”

“Ah, right. They’re considered sacred beasts. Since they’re beasts, they’d be in the animal encyclopedia instead.”

According to Dada, the difference between monsters and beasts lies in how they come into existence. Monsters appear seemingly out of nowhere, and their origins remain unclear. One theory suggests they emerge from areas dense with magical energy, but no one has ever witnessed the moment of their birth.

Beasts, on the other hand, reproduce normally and give birth to offspring. Karura are said to build nests high up in the trees of the forest, where their chicks—adorable, angel-like creatures with rainbow-colored feathers—wait. Given how secluded their nesting spots are, their ecology remains a mystery, making them enigmatic creatures.

Over this past month, though only visiting twice a week, Mika had gradually been learning about this world while also memorizing the locations of several Doors. Just as she had grown accustomed to this world, the people in the vicinity of Acid had also grown quite used to her presence.

The Door guards no longer checked her tag and simply wrote her name in the logbook.

Normally, they would regroup here and immediately jump to the next Door to reach the monster outbreak site, but today was different.

It was time for the monthly report at the Adventurer’s Guild.

This world’s way of counting time and dates was nearly identical to that of the human world—likely due to long-standing interactions with people like Mika and Takayuki. For Mika, this made traveling between worlds much easier, sparing her unnecessary confusion.

Following Dada as usual, she walked alongside Zurah and Gatt, practically skipping toward the guild.

Today was her first payday in this world.

Since they usually spent every last minute fighting monsters, they never had time to stop by the guild on the way back, leaving the cleanup to Dada and the others. So, they decided to take one day off each month to visit the guild, submit their reports, and receive their rewards for the monsters they had slain.

At the Adventurer’s Guild, they were treated as VIPs. After checking in at the reception, they were immediately escorted to the Guild Master’s office on the second floor.

“Ah, Mika! Good to see you.”

The cheerful Guild Master cackled—gyah, gyah!—as he waved them toward the sofa.

“Though we call it a report, Dada and the others already update us after every request, so today is just confirmation. This month, you went out on monster subjugation missions for six days across two locations.

“For the Iblieth swarm in the mines, guild personnel accompanying you confirmed the extermination of over 500 Iblieth and one Succubus. The mines are now operational again. Since there were no harvestable materials, the reward is solely the request fee—500,000G split among the four of you.

“As for the Antlion swarm at the other site, the collected materials confirmed the extermination of 16 Antlions. The request fee is 100,000G, plus 160,000G for the materials sold.”

The Antlions were the second request they took after the mines. The village nestled in the mountains would have been only about four hours away if they had gone straight from the mines, but since they first checked the Door locations in the villages along the way, the first day was spent entirely on travel.

Mika had never seen Antlions in her world, but she was sure they looked completely different in size and shape here. Still, they shared the same behavior—digging large, bowl-shaped traps in the ground to drag their prey underground.

After much deliberation on how to catch them, she settled on fishing them out. Despite their massive two-meter bodies, they were surprisingly light, so Mika brought a fishing rod from home, attached some meat as bait, and tried reeling them in. She had used what seemed like sturdy fishing line, but they kept escaping, much to her frustration. Still, they bit the bait almost immediately.

As a fishing experience, it was honestly underwhelming. But once she hooked them and fought them on flat ground, she managed to defeat them—though not without difficulty, since insecticide didn’t work on them.

In the end, it took three days to systematically eliminate all 16 nests, one by one.

And so, the fruits of their six-day labor were now laid out before them—760,000G in total.

Mika wasn’t entirely sure whether that was a lot or a little, but since everyone else was nodding in approval, she nodded along for the time being.

I never asked about the currency’s value…