Three days had passed since I arrived in this world. On the first day, I assisted in stopping a monster horde. On the second, I had offended a Duchess and became an Adventurer. On the third day, I rested my body.
While I rested my body, the day was a subtle kind of hell. There was nothing to keep my thoughts at bay. Moving would help. Helping with some administration would help. Anything would have helped, but no. I wasn’t home anymore. I cooped myself in the room in the lower ward for most of the day. I didn’t like unraveling in front of others… So… Instead of resting mentally, I spent most of the day putting myself together.
Today was the fourth day.
I contemplated future plans as I left the lower ward. A rough floor plan was in place. First, I had to establish areas and people of danger to me. One person of note was on the list already - Duchess Riveria. If my experience with people like her held any fruit, it was that she would concoct something to get even for opposing her openly. That was one person of note.
Anything connected to the Duchess would have to be vetted thoroughly. I no longer ate at the castle once Hembree tipped me off that the Duchess was still angry. The was fine. As I noted earlier, I would just have to be careful about where and what I did. That just lead to my first move, money. I would need money.
Money - the physical manifestation of time and labor. People loved it, then cursed it in the same breath. As of right now, the only things of worth I had were my equipment and body. The latter I was keenly aware was worth a lot of money. Several lesser nobles, per Hembree, had their eyes on me. It was disgusting but it was a last resort. I had access to the Adventurer’s guild, and possibly the Mercenary guild. As I had no wares nor money, the Merchant’s guild was out of the equation.
My goal today was to accept a job from the Adventurer’s guild and go from there.
The aforementioned organization’s building was… Kinda dead. Stepping into the guild’s hall, only around 23 people were inside. Three of them were clerks, and four more were support staff from the uniforms. A few gathered around the job board, but ten
were gathered at the counter.
“Maybe if you fucking paid more, we’d go!” A woman raised her voice from the counter. “We’re one of the last C-Ranked teams in town, and you’re still paying shit? On top of that, ya’ want us to go to the Northern Iron Valley?! Eat shit, ya’ fucking bitch!”
The rest of the people around the voice murmured their agreement.
“Ms. Rennel!” The clerk spoke up. “I wish I could pay you more, but the Duchess was the one that set the job rate. Not the guild. I cannot change the rate!”
“Then issue a secondary job on top of it!” Ms. Renel screamed. “We’ve been handling one fuckin’ job after the next for the Duchess and we’re barely getting by as it is! We’re a team! Not a single fucking person! Its good pay for one person, not a team! Can ya’ understand that?!”
I walked to the job board while I kept my ear on the situation.
“Ms. Renel.” I heard Olly’s voice now. “I understand your frustration. However, this is not the way to handle your grievances here.”
I turned and spotted him coming from the hall I’d been led down before. He looked tired, with dark circles under his eyes.
“Maybe if you paid us more, I’d be more fuckin’ civil!” Ms. Renel slammed her hand on the table. “Ten fuckin’ crowns! Ten fucking crowns and that bitch of a Duchess wants us to go to the Northern Iron Valley - the one with the dungeon break! Ten fucking crowns is one crown for each of us!”
Olly nodded his head. “I understand. You can turn down the request, Ms. Renel, and -”
Renel threw the parchment in Olly’s face. “And have points put against us?! All because that no-good cunt requested us personally to handle this?! We got every request this week done, but we have to all sleep in one fucking room just to afford to maintain our equipment!”
I sighed. I thought maybe it would be some cliche event, but it turned out they were more than justified. I was done looking at the job board. It wasn’t like I could read them anyways.
When I turned to walk to the counter, Olly saw and gave me a small respectful bow to me. The team turned to look at me with hostility. I nodded back before I turned to the team. “Would be an acceptable rate?”
“At least fifty fucking crowns for us to go out there! At the very least, we’d break even on costs to do the request!” Ms. Renel said. She was a short woman with curly brown hair and a fire in her eye. In one hand, she held a staff with a deep red jewel and gripped her faded purple robes. I could see that they were worn. There were many stitched places and patches made. She looked like she had hit the end of her rope.
Olly spoke up. “We can offer you our repair services at material costs to complete the request. As well as provide the food, if you can please bear with us just a little longer —”
“If we break a wagon axel, that’d be two suns ya’ daft fucking idiot!” Ms. Renel exploded. “And if we don’t use the wagon, the request will take more than four days to complete! Either way, her fuckin’ 10 silvers is only worth one person and half a day’s time!”
“Olly,” I interjected with my most level tone, which made both the clerk and Olly flinch slightly. “Are you really trying to take advantage of them like this? I had thought that since you were a branch manager, there’d be some compassion for the people who carry out the grunt work…”
“Lady Xu,” Olly turned to me. “The request came from the Duchess. I cannot manipulate rewards per guild regulations.”
I shook my head. “First off, what is the Duchess wanting them to do?”
Olly was about to answer, but Renel spoke up first. “The request is to go reinforce the detachment of troops guarding the valley entrances. But the payout is ten crowns, one for each of our members. The normal rate for each monster slain. However, we’re not stupid! There’s no mention of equipment or accommodations! Which means we’ll have to pay out for that!”
“If you give me some time, I will speak with the Duchess about this.” Olly said before putting the paper back on the table. “However, can you please just go there - for a few days?”
“Give us money then!” Renel growled and gave Olly a fierce glare. “80 crowns!”
“Ms. Renel, you know we can’t–” I cut Olly off by placing a golden sun coin on the counter.
The sound quieted both parties. Everyone eyed the coin on the counter. Renel and Olly looked up to me afterward. I then slid it over to Renel. “One sun. How many days?”
Her eyes went wide. “A-At least four days, that’s if Olly throws in his offer for the r-repairs…”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Olly?” I smiled at him.
“I’ll have Mrs. Tay write up a voucher form.” Olly did so.
I assumed that was the clerk since she immediately went to work with the paperwork. Olly then looked at me.
“Thank you. Really.” Olly said.
“Since I’m footing the bill, I actually have a request for these adventurers.” I waved him off and looked to Ms. Renel. Whom I assumed was the leader.
She bit her lips. “Fuck… I knew there would be strings attached.”
I laughed. “Actually, it might be more favorable than you think.”
“If you say so.” She sighed. “What is it?”
“Take me with you,” I said. “You had transportation, right?”
“Yeah, a wagon to ride in and transport monsters back.” She nodded.
“Great! I actually wanted to go back there. I need more monster cores.” I said.
She looked confused. “Why do you need cores?”
“If you needed cores, that golden sun would’ve gotten you plenty of F-Ranked cores or a few Light-blue cores.” Olly said.
I tapped the counter and smirked. “A girl’s secret”
“If you want to hire us as protection, then you’ll need to take it to the Mercenary guild, Lady.” Ms. Renel said.
“I don’t need protection, I really just want a ride over there.” I admitted. “I have a few new tools I have to try out.”
“New tools?” Renel asked.
Olly spoke up. “Lady Xu may look like a noble’s child, but she’s an Artificer. She also signed up with us the other day. Word with the refugees and Baron Hembree is that she is quite a capable fighter. She played a pivotal role in fighting back the initial horde.”
“Oh…” Renel said. “When did you want to leave?”
“In an hour,” I said.
----------------------------------------
“That’s… A strange golem.” Renel said as I loaded Yang onto the back of the wagon.
“I guess. I need to do a lot of bodywork on him. But I can do that out there. Right now, I got to test this new weapon.” I said and pointed to the rifle in Yang’s hands.
After Yang was situated, I pointed to the PSA AR15 in the robot’s hand. I’d neglected to buy a sling. It’d come to my attention when I spent some time yesterday setting up my gear. I had nowhere to put the rifle other than to hold it. Then I remembered Yang could do so. With his mantis blades messed up, I could fall back on using him as a second shooter. It was their primary role anyways. Across his dented metal chest plates was the chest rig with 4 30rnd magazines.
“What is it?” She asked.
“A Palmetto State Armory Armalite-15 with a 16-inch barrel. Chambered in 5.56 NATO. Nothing special, just old tech.” I said before I climbed in after Yang.
“I… Don’t even know what to say.” She shook her head.
“Lady Xu.” Hembree was there as well. “Are you sure you don’t want me or one of the other men to come with you?”
I waved him off. “I’m not a helpless little girl. Also, aren’t you a baron? Don’t you have paperwork or something?”
He shook his head. “Since my town burned down, I’m just sitting around for the Duke to come to assign me a new position - remember?”
“Ah…” I tapped my forehead with two fingers “Forgot… Also, check with the Duchess about the situation I mentioned, please?”
“Definitely,” He nodded. “Matters concerning adventurer contentment with our requests are important.”
With that, we left around lunch. We didn’t arrive at the outpost just before sunset. Renel and her team, Snow Badgers was the team name, set up tents within the outpost. I was given a noble’s accommodation with an introduction letter from Hembree. Since there were no other nobles expected to come, they said I was free to stay there as long as I liked. Still, It wasn’t much in my eyes.
The outpost was a newly established addition to the duchy. It was set up the morning after the attack by the new wave of reinforcements. From what I gathered, the soldiers were recalled from all edges of the region. It also explained why the Snow Badgers had been requested so much. With less troops, the officials leaned more on the Adventurers to deal with monsters and pests. That was on top of the fact Hembree had mentioned that adventurers are already in short supply.
Apparently, the Mercenary Guild had offered to alleviate the situation if the Kingdom allowed the guild to accept monster-related contracts.
I liked how I didn’t have to speak to anyone to gather this much information. I only had to sit in the dining area. A few greeted me, but I only nodded and tended to a bowl of veggie soup. It was bland.
The next morning, we left on the wagon until we reached the ridge path. I parted ways with them there - much to their worries. I promised them that Yang was quite the fighter, and so was I. It was only after a few promises to be careful did they leave towards the blockade.
[A: Free to talk?]
“Yup, just walking up this mountain again.” I said.
“We got a big problem,” Avery in my head.
“Does it involve me getting more freebies?” I asked.
“Depends.” Avery said.
“And that depends on if that’s our problem or your problem.” I smirked.
“Tsk. So stingy.” Avery huffed.
“So, what’s going on?” I asked.
“I finished investigating the dungeon break.” She said. “Well - More like I was investigating several dungeon breaks. This isn’t the only one happening, which is why it took me some time to get to you with this. We got something toying with the dungeons. Some deity who doesn’t understand how important dungeons are.”
“Enlighten me.” I said.
Over the course of about an hour of hiking, Avery info-dumped on me. The long of which are as followed:
Dungeons operated similarly to air purifiers, but for the world’s magic. Mana in the air is absorbed into all sentient beings that can use magic. Mana spent when using magic was transformed into a different form. Miasma. Miasma was comparable to our world’s greenhouse gas issue for the climate. Miasma, while on its own, was just a toxic form of mana. But paired with negative emotions, or negative spirits, it can form monsters; or even disasters, such as turning forests into monster dens.
With that, Dungeons was Avery’s counter to Miasma. Dungeons would capture the miasma, and let it create monsters within it. Because once the Miasma offloaded the negative energy, it somehow returned to being mana. Thus, completing the cycle. Which meant, dungeons had sort of been a thing offhand for mana since it’d create monster dens on their own. Aka, natural dungeons.
From Avery’s investigation: there were a fixed amount of dungeons, and each dungeon was already discovered. But somehow, more dungeons are forming, upsetting the balance in the cycles. The Northern Iron Valley dungeon had actually somehow gained a second dungeon behind it.
This was where the problem began. Since each dungeon worked to minimize the number of monsters spawning in the wild - there was a sort of magic that kept the monsters from wandering out. This function also had a limit to how many it could hold back. And Adventurers were the humans’ solution to keeping that limit from being reached.
She theorized that the second had connected to the first. Then, the monsters from the second dungeon poured into the first. Thus causing a dungeon break, overloading the barrier, and allowing the monsters to pour out. It would explain why there had been such an unexpected amount of monsters. She couldn’t confirm it either due to something blocking her vision around the second dungeon. To end, meant she wanted me to scout out the dungeon and figure out what the hell is being cooked up.
It was an even longer explanation on her part, so I had to boil it down to the most important points. Which was still a lot.
“Well, let’s talk payment first,” I said as I stood on top of the ridge.
The whole inner valley of it had been blown to hell and back. And it’d been left in a treacherous state At least, there wasn’t a trail anymore. There were still ways to reach the ridge from climbing the main body of the mountain and then coming down from there.
“You’ll do it for free? How sweet~” She cooed.
“No,” I said in a monotone voice. “How about 1 million points.”
“20k,” She replied.
“2 million points,” I said.
“500k.” She said.
“1 million and a handful of moons.” I countered.
“I can’t give you a handful of moons!” Avery shouted in my head. “This planet only has one, and I already handed it over to Morgan!”
I laughed. “No, not the rock. Platinum Moon coins. Apparently, they’re the highest denomination out here.”
She went silent for a few moments. “Oh… Wait, weren’t they finally moving to paper notes?”
“Not that I’m aware,” I shrugged as I looked into the shop and found the repair for Yang. It was still free for the Same Hour Delivery. I redeemed it and activated it.
[Jim Jim’s Express Repair: Request received! ETA 15 minutes, Boss!]
“Well…”Avery said. “Who’s handful are we talking about? Mine or yours?”
“Mine?” I asked.
“Tsk. Expensive.” She sighed. “1 million and I’ll fill one of your hands with Platinum Moon coins. Deal?”
“Deal!” I beamed. “Wait, what’s the time limit?”
“A month I guess?” Avery said. “I think the dungeon issue is related to why the Adventurer guild is being stretched thin as of late.”
“If the information you’re giving me is right, I suspect the same thing.” As I said that, a heavily modified Aerodyne uncloaked itself overhead and landed. It opened up to an automobile mechanical station.