Aloy was forced to wait two entire hours before the group came out of the Dungeon. The desire to bring others into the cave to order a retreat had been considered but the men required to make it safe weren't there. The [Fire Mage] had been out of energy so it would have required a fight with the tree outside that wasn’t worth taking. Ronda could have done some form of damage to it but anything lethal would have required her to take an [Mana Potion]. With the funds currently available for emergencies, there was no chance of that action being taken.
There was some desire to put her hands to her face and just shout for a good few hours. The frustration of a leaderly role was not something the hunter had been prepared for throughout her life. Sitting in a tree and hoping to shoot some free food was her ideal living and it was what she had done for so many years. Now, she had to sit patiently as a [Scribe] she had met twice slowly read out thirty pages of pure garbage as if she was meant to understand it. Half the words were foreign to her and the other half couldn’t have been words, to begin with. The guttural noises required to speak them couldn’t have been done with any human mouth. Aloy was sure she would have to swallow her tongue before she could do that many syllables without taking a moment to breathe.
“Are there any changes you require yet, sir?” the [Scribe] asked, bringing the hunter out of her state of thought? If a few minutes had been spent not listening at all, Aloy wouldn’t have been surprised. The amount of recollection about what had been said was as close to zero as possible. “The opening agreements heavily favouring the merchant have been listed. I was wondering if you were going to request any additional ones that would favour us.”
“... I trust that you can make additions which will benefit our side,” Aloy started with a professional tone while knowing full well that she couldn’t make the slightest thought come out without embarrassing herself. The hunter that loved trees inside a room with paper? On a fundamental level, it was wrong. On any other level, it was wrong as well. Every single level, dimension, plane, and whatever nonsense the crazy world had was showing just how wrong her current lifestyle was. And she was forced to go through with it because that was the will of the [Warden].
The [Scribe] nodded thoughtfully, starting to write down a few long words on a separate sheet of paper. It didn’t seem like the woman was expected to say anything for a few minutes, thank the holy ones for that, leaving the hunter to ground herself in reality. It was important to keep up appearances no matter how much a desire there was to return to her original post. It wouldn’t work. Nobody here would let her demote herself. She didn’t have the authority.
She had the power to control a hundred men, however, each trusted that she had the best intentions in her heart. ‘For her word was the word of the [Warden.’ What kind of nonsense was that meant to be? She had no experience, had no information that was valuable other than the brief initial look she had gotten into the dungeon, and she certainly had no skills which were meant to be good for leading the people. The [Commander] had things like that, the larger man having spent a good two decades doing just that. Yet for whatever reason, that aforementioned soldier had been put in a lower ranking than the [Level 12 Hunter].
The will of a world-known strategist was perhaps to be respected yet it couldn’t make sense in any real way. There had to be some secret, some flaw, something which explained why the [Warden] had thought it a good idea. Was it some form of the test? Did the man think that nobody would question him no matter how ludicrous his ideas were? Was the woman meant to ask why he would do such a thing?
That last line of thought kept her busy for a good couple of minutes until the [Scribe] cleared his throat, the man’s armour grinding a bit against each other at the movement. Looking towards him, Aloy found nothing but to move his head slightly to the side. Following that small movement, the woman found herself looking right ahead at a certain Alexios.
“I see that the [Merchants] have started to come along,” the similarly ranked leader commented. With a simple move of his hand, the [Scribe] knew to vacate the small room, allowing the more important one at the current moment to have a seat around the small table.
“There was only one for now,” Aloy responded, looking on as the man took a few of the pages from the table to read. Or maybe he was just doing the same as her, acting as he could. “It’s a man by the name of Moshu. Have you heard of him?”
“Indeed I have,” Alexios slowly said. The man’s eyes looked strained as he skimmed a few of the pages. “He mainly works a few villages away from the prison, selling wares and goods to the hunters and smaller adventures. There have been rumours about him killing a few himself but… Sorry, I have to ask. Have you read through this yourself yet? He’s playing us for a fool with these terms.”
“A few bits have been read up to me but I haven’t read through them myself just yet,” Aloy answered with the same speed as the man in front of her. Narrowing her eyes, she couldn’t help but imagine just what the merchant had written down. “For now, why don’t you give me the important parts?”
“Well, I haven’t read it all myself but he is very heavy on his demands just from the start alone,” Alexios said. “He wants a prime spot if there is ever to be made a street using stone-work or above materials. He wants a reduced tax rate when we get that going and some items he doesn’t want to be taxed at all. There are a few requirements that we value his shop above others if thievery starts up and there are a few where he demands that we give him floating-value if the Dungeon closes up for longer periods. It’s crazy to think he wants this much for what he’s giving us.”
“And what does he give us again, other than selling his wares to people we aren’t affiliated with?” Aloy questioned. Even with such a small part heard, it was becoming clear just what form of man the Giant was meant to be. Yes, there had been clear hints of it during the initial meeting yet this was just icing on the cake.
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“Nothing. There are a few emergencies where he can give us an undefined amount of supplies if it benefits him to do so, but that is all we can expect,” Alexios said. Leaning back in the chair, the piece of word creaking heavily at the move, some clear murmurs were coming out of the man. “We need this thing to be rewritten immediately. Though, I guess you were already on your way to do just that. Has there been any notable ideas yet, other than cutting down on just what he can demand?”
A bit of time had to be spent looking into the empty air, trying to formulate any words that could describe just how much Aloy didn’t want to deal with her current life. It was what she had been doing these last days and it was what she would be doing for the next few as well. There was no honour in this, no worth to be proven. It was just her improvising so others wouldn’t lose their respect for her.
“I have to be honest with you about the fact that I have no real experience with this sort of thing,” Aloy said, knowing better to try and make up numbers or something like it. “The only form of contract I have ever held was the one I signed when coming into the prison and those that I had to sign when gaining this promotion of mine.”
“That is understandable,” Alexios said after a moment or two. “Most of us can’t read more than our name. I only know how to because my position required it and the [Warden] had an extra skill-stone ready for me to use. I can’t read per se but I can gain the truth from literary works in some sense.”
“And that’s why you should be in charge here,” Aloy uttered, leaning back more and more in that chair of hers. It would fall over in due time if she continued but there was no current care to give about that. “You are the one with experience in this field. You should be the one taking care of these things. I should be outside the fence, doing the same duties I’ve done for these last five years.”
“... You realise I wasn’t always in this position, right?” Alexios questioned. Aloy didn’t know whether the expression was a smile or a smirk but it was certainly not anything else than that. “I was in the normal guard get-up for nearly seven years until I got the promotion for this position. And even then, It was only because I saved another man’s life by accident. I didn’t deserve it, I had no real opinion to give about it. I was just handed a new uniform, a desk to sit in, and was told to do my best or fail to try.”
“Yet you’re still here,” Aloy finished it off, knowing where it would go. “Even after so long, you still haven’t failed.”
“Precisely. The [Warden] might not always make sense in his choices but he doesn’t make them because of stupidity. He saw worth in promoting you, trusted that you would do it right. The man is a living legend these days so I don’t think his eyes are that bad. Why not try and give him some trust? He might know more about all of us than we do.”
Aloy looked at the man in front of her, trying to decide whether that was a pep-talk, a way to comfort her, or somehow something else entirely. There was indecision, incomprehensible emotion, and a slight idea about how large an impostor she was sitting in the room meant for the higher-ranked. Her ankle ached, her lungs hadn’t been feeling right for a while, and a constant headache had been against her head for just as long. It was all because of that position.
“The [Warden] does what he does best but that doesn’t mean he can know everything. He can’t have known the merchant would come so soon before we had anybody close by who could handle the financing properly, he can’t have guessed towards the new additions to the Dungeon, and he most certainly couldn’t have thought it would all work smoothly with the new area,” Aloy said, increasing the pace of her words the further she got into the rant. Alexios just sat there, listening to it with no comment. “He is a smart man but I earnestly believe this role wasn’t made for me. I need to get myself back to my old position before this whole thing gets screwed up.”
…
“You know,” Alexios started up. “I would repeat the part of you just needing to trust your superior to have made the right choice, just as the men below you trust that you have done the same. But, for some reason, I don’t think that such words will get through to you.”
“Because they should be saved for somebody able to handle the position,” Aloy agreed, even if that agreement likely wasn’t on the same terms.
“Right. But there is no real way for me to get you to understand that you work fine in the role you have now,” Alexios said, even with the interjection made by the Hunter on the other side of the table. “With your ankle being what it is, there is no chance of you just getting back to that position which you love oh so much. And since you also don’t think you can handle the position you’re meant to have right now, perhaps it would be best if you return to the prison and speak to the [Warden] about it yourself?”
“You want me to… talk to him without being called in?” Aloy questioned. The words were foreign to her, the mere concept of just getting over and talking to the man not making sense. The average guard barely saw him, only the yearly speech doing much of anything, and here she was, meant to just go to his office and ask for a conversation to be had.
“Yes,” Alexios said with no hesitation. It was as if the man didn’t understand just how little his words made sense. “You don’t have the refined respect of a superior officer so why not make an example of yourself and just force your way into his office to have a chat? Perhaps the receptionist would even hold the door for you with that current rank of yours. As the leader of the new outpost, you do have some actual sway, you know.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. That’s why you should just accept your current role and try your best to fulfil it.”
“... Do we have any horses ready? Doing it on foot would only ruin my ankle even more than it already is,” Aloy said, the man’s words making her have no desire to sit still. “I can be there by tomorrow afternoon if I run it half to death.”
“I suggest you try to keep our esteemed horses alive, thank you,” Alexios said, before waiting a few moments to think. “And I do believe that we have been preparing the horses so we could get a courier over to the prison in a few hours. I believe it would be no trouble for you to deliver the parcel yourself, though I would be happy if you brought along a guard or two. A person of your rank shouldn’t be undefended out in the open, after all.”
A few hours until they rode out. Aloy would have preferred their immediate leave but any leave at all was amenable. The ones outside had heard the desires of their leaders as one of the guards had run to let the new orders be heard. Until then, what were they to do?
“Then it is in stone,” Aloy commented after a minute or two in silence. “I will ride out as soon as possible and make the [Warden] understand that I need to be demoted.”
A [Skill] has been improved!
You have understood [Leadership] more deeply
“I can respect that you want confirmation of your title but you should still look at your past achievements to understand why the [Warden] thinks of you so highly,” Alexios commented. Aloy barely listened to him at first, annoyed by a certain blue box in her field of vision “I am more than sure that you have done well these past years. At least better than what’s demanded of you. Aren’t there any memories that leave a certain impact?”
There were a few but none that should have made her deserve a full-on promotion. She didn’t understand.
“Nothing notable,” the Hunter had to say. Readjusting her position on the chair, she had to grimace as she felt the bandage on a certain ankle fall loose. “I think you have to get through that contract agreement by yourself. I seem to need reapplying some aid to the wound from yesterday.”
“Do you need any help with that?” Alexios offered. “I might not look like it, but I do have some practical [Healing-Mastery].”
“If you would be so kind,” Aloy stated, just happy that the contract could be ignored. And if things ended up on her terms, she would be one level too low to ever deal with them again in her life.