"By the way, how did that matter go?" The girl helplessly changed the subject.
Fully aware of what she meant, the prime minister answered. "Not very smoothly. Those below mithril rank are manageable, but adamantite-ranked adventurers are not so easy to recruit. Other countries will also do their utmost to prevent their own adamantite-ranked elites from leaving."
"So we got nothing, then." The girl frowned.
The Dragon Kingdom had an urgent need for powerful adventurers, for a very simple reason: near this country lay a nation of beastmen.
Beastmen were a demi-human race that resembled carnivorous animals such as lions or tigers walking on two legs. Obviously, they ate meat, and they thought nothing of eating humans.
Man-eating races were not actually rare. Of the six great powers competing in the center of the continent, three treated humans as food. For example, in the man-eating ogre nation a little farther from the central region, the finest ingredient served to guests was a—six-month-old human baby still in its mother's womb.
In the eyes of those nations, human countries were simply concentrated feedlots. It could be said that the beastmen had always been eyeing the Dragon Kingdom like prey.
And recently, unlike before, when they had regarded this place as something that could automatically produce food, the beastman nation seemed to intend to launch a full-scale invasion.
Faced with an enemy invasion aimed not at conquest but destruction, with whom negotiation was impossible, the entire nation would naturally unite and resist to the death. But there was a vast difference between the basic abilities of beastmen and humans.
Though their culture was quite backward and they suffered severe internal tribal conflicts, the beastman nation was still a major power in the center of the continent. From that alone, one could roughly judge