The guild was seething with restlessness.

Despite only being a member for less than a day, both Matthias and Manna could feel that there was an unusual excitement in the air. For Soleil, who had been a member for a slightly longer period, it was much more noticeable.

After they had surrendered the bags to the receptionist, they headed towards an empty table in the waiting room to discuss their experience and give each other feedback. It was an important meeting, and should be done often, in order to gradually improve and eventually perfect their teamwork.

But before they even had the chance to speak, the tall, handsome guy from the day before approached them with a friendly smile on his face.

“Hey there!” he greeted. “How was your first job together?”

He seemed like the inquisitive, nosy kind of guy, but he didn’t seem to be anything else other than a friendly peer. Matthias decided to tolerate his handsome face for a bit out of respect for his senior.

“It went well. The miners were quite happy about it. They had gathered quite a bit by the time we came by.”

The issue with the glowstone mine was that it was located between a monster-infested forest and the city. To address that problem, a road was already being constructed that bypassed the woods completely, but it will take time to finish. The mine had only been recently discovered after all. And though the strength of the monsters was low, the job itself was fairly unpopular since they would only receive the commission stated in the contract, which was only the labor cost of their delivery. They didn’t receive any money for the sale of the stones regardless of how much they carried back, and surrendering it to the guild was simply for auditing reasons.

There were very few opportunities within the guild to earn more than a given commission, such as collecting monster parts from subjugation quests. However, sometimes, the commission would require them to surrender certain materials, which reduced the money they could earn from it. Fortunately, those instances almost always meant the commission paid higher than normal.

“Yeah, we saw. Those bags were quite large. Good job! Did Miss “Demon Lord” give you any trouble along the way?”

He was obviously teasing Soleil. The corner of Matthias’ mouth twitched. But Soleil, who appeared to not have the ability to understand a joke, looked proud of herself instead.

“No. She’s very strong and flexible. We’re lucky to have her.”

Matthias, who still felt bad about what he had done earlier, couldn’t help but shower Soleil with praise. It appeared to have quite an effect on Soleil’s ego, as she sat straighter with her chest pushed out.

“Oh, by the way, my name’s Nail; leader of the Blue Wolves party.”

The man introduced himself to the party, but only shook hands with Matthias. Not only was he friendly, he was also tactful. Matthias’ impression of him improved.

He was still in the negative, though.

Then, he thought he could ask about what was bugging him since they came.

“What’s all the commotion about? Everyone seems excited for some reason.”

Nail looked back to the crowd and immediately realized what he was referring to. With the air of an experienced teacher, he told the party.

“We’re going to war again. The news came a few hours ago. The advance party from the army passed through here earlier.”

The expression on the three’s faces turned grave. Soleil in particular looked more upset than the other two.

“Against which country? Didn’t we just finish the war against the Empire?”

“I heard it’s against the Theocracy.”

“Why?”

Nail froze. He hesitated for a long time, as if troubled by the words that he was about to speak. All the while he kept a wary eye on Soleil.

“Well... you’ll probably hear about it later anyway. The Theocracy is calling us heathens for allowing... “non-human” refugees to reside here...” he replied, stressing the last few words very carefully.

“What the hell?”

The absurdity behind the cause completely baffled Matthias. Behind him he heard the sound of creaking wood, like it was being squeezed hard enough for it to start crying out. He didn’t need to turn his head to know who was doing it.

The real reason behind the kingdom allowing beastkin to settle in their land was to gain access to cheap labor. That they would prefer being exploited and ridiculed in the territories of their former enemies told tales of the state of their homeland. While they did have opportunities for success, the amount of adversity they had to fight to achieve it was second to none. By that time, most of them were beggars, vagabonds, or had even resorted to stealing. Some of them managed to work modest jobs. Even fewer of them managed to make use of their physical advantages and became adventurers.

... Because for some reason, almost every beastkin refugee had developed a trauma of fighting.

Nobody understood why. None of the beastkin would talk about it. It was like they feared that merely mentioning anything about their homeland would endanger their lives. But for a race that was known for their pure love of bloodshed and conflict, suddenly becoming pacifists turned the heads of every single logical person.

Perhaps Soleil could shed some light to the mystery?

He looked back. She had on a... well, she just looked a bit nonplussed, actually. He expected a much more agitated response. It was actually Manna who was more irritated about the news.

“We’ve finished counting the stones. Here’s your reward.” As Matthias pondered Soleil’s lack of a more substantial reaction, the receptionist came and placed three small pouches of money on the table after she excused herself for intruding. It wasn’t much money, disregarding Matthias’ skewed sense of value as a noble. At most, it was enough for the three of them to support themselves for a day. In order to have any savings, they would need to work in the afternoon as well.

They had already discussed how they were going to split every reward among themselves – they were splitting everything between them equally. The receptionist had been informed beforehand, so the guild had taken the liberty of splitting the money evenly in three parts.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Different quests demanded different talents, but the rewards for monster subjugation and other risky tasks were much higher. If they didn’t adapt such a rule early on, then once they started becoming confident in themselves and take more of those kinds of jobs then it wouldn’t be nice for any non-combatants they may take in the future, such as clerics or apothecaries.

Once the pouches hit the table, Soleil immediately took one and excused herself in a rush.

The four watched her back as she left the guild.

“... It’s understandable that she’s upset,” Nail murmured, slightly embarrassed. “Even though the guild never discriminates against the races, everything else here seems like they’re all too eager to wipe them out.”

Matthias nodded in agreement. Since they’ll be meeting later for lunch anyway, he decided to ask her about it by then. After a while, he said, “What else is there?”

He took a pouch from the table and threw it nonchalantly towards Manna, who caught it midair easily. He kept the third one after roughly weighing it with his hand.

“I don’t think the guild, which rarely if ever participates in state wars, would be this excited over just some news about a new conflict.”

Wars were common in that world. Because every country held a different philosophical and religious belief, it was near impossible for the people of that backward era to hold each others’ hands without a much larger enemy. That was even more obvious between different races, who each occupied a major piece of land in that planet.

Of course, Matthias dreamed of ending the constant wars himself one day. But that was far into the future.

Upon hearing his question, Nail’s mouth twisted into a large smile.

“We found a new dungeon!”

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The world had many names, depending on which race one asked. For humans, they called it Gren Averun, which meant “Verdant Paradise” in an old language. It was a large planet with four major landmasses distributed between five major races; the humans, the dwarves, the elves, the beastkin, and the demons. However, only the dwarves and the elves share a continent, while the humans, beastkin and demons all have land exclusive to their rule.

There were some defining characteristics between each continent. For example, the land of the demons suffered under eternal frost. Thick clouds and heavy snowfall plagued the country incessantly, and even in the middle of summer, the sun never shines. This fact was used in propaganda where the demons were labelled as the deities’ rejected creations, doomed to spend their days in darkness. Meanwhile, the territory of the dwarves encompassed a stretch of land completely covered in mountains.

It wasn’t as if these characteristics were exclusive to those areas. The beastkin territory, which was mostly desert, sometimes also experienced snow, while the elven lands, which were mostly forests, also had gigantic mountains. But similar to hills, rivers, canyons and the like, dungeons existed like a sort of natural landform. They were underground or underwater areas where monsters spawned in great numbers. Like volcanoes, they could suddenly appear somewhere without any warning.

Depending on the dungeon’s size, it would sometimes release what was known as an “Upheaval”. This was caused by large dungeons which could spawn larger quantities of monsters inside it. They crowd the interior until the dungeon’s growth allows a passage to break through to the outside world and release the monsters inside.

“How big is the dungeon?”

“Big enough for a small upheaval to be released. I was there to fight off the few monsters,” Nail said with a somewhat proud expression on his face. “So it should at least be D-rank.”

Matthias nodded in understanding. As far as he knew, E-rank dungeons never released upheavals, and D-ranks would sometimes do so, but only the better ones that were too weak to be considered as C-ranked. The guild estimates that because of that, there should be a lot of undiscovered E-rank dungeons out there.

“The guild’s looking for where the entrance is now. And once they find it, they’ll certainly put up a commission for investigation.”

To the adventurers, dungeons were like an on-site workplace. For some inexplicable reason, treasure chests appeared in dungeons at random locations, which conflicted with the idea that they were natural formations. However, they never contained any finished piece of equipment like what games in Matthias’ previous world depicted. The contents were mostly magic gems and other valuable materials. Besides that, the monsters themselves could also be dismantled and sold for money.

It was one of the illogical things about dungeons.

As Matthias and Manna left the guild to return to their inn, they observed the town that was under the threat of war.

While there was definitely a change, it wasn’t very noticeable. But for sure, everybody looked gloomy. Perhaps it was because of the idea that their loved ones might die in the conflict or because of the idea of war in general. Matthias was sure that only crazed lunatics would enjoy the news.

As he pondered the plight of the common man, he suddenly felt someone elbow him from the side.

“Dude, look. Kids.”

Manna pointed towards the side, where a bunch of children had gathered in front of a bakery. They were wearing nothing but rags and their skin was smeared with dirt. They didn’t even have anything to put on their feet.

But what attracted his eyes the most was their ears.

Of the five children, three of them had animal ears, while the fourth had pointed ones. It didn’t take a genius to know that the former three were beastkin, the one with pointed ears was a dwarf, and the last was a normal human.

“They’re probably begging for food.”

“Why don’t you give them some money?”

Matthias thought about it for a moment before nodding. A small amount of charity goes a long way. At the very least, being able to afford bread for a few days would lighten their spirits.

They were one of the victims of war. When families lost their fathers, the mothers would sometimes abandon one or more of their children so they could reduce the mouths they had to feed. In other times, when the mothers remarry, the father would kick the children out of the house for the same reasons. For the other races, this was true even outside wartime, as their disastrous financial states could rarely allow them to support more than themselves.

“Wait! Look at that!”

Manna took his head into her hands and quickly rotated it towards the other direction. If it was anybody else, they would have had their necks snapped already. But Matthias was already used to this behavior of hers, so reinforcing his spine with magic was already a reflex by that point.

“Oh!” he exclaimed.

There were fried shrimp croquettes on sale at the far corner of the street to their right. Matthias and Manna shared a lot of favorite foods, and that was one of them. Unfortunately, shrimp croquettes were seasonal, since the shrimps themselves only appeared on the coast during autumn, and it was too dangerous to venture out into sea without massive military escort because of the gigantic underwater monsters. It was currently summer, so the price might go anywhere from double to triple the normal. But if it was on sale, then they might be able to nab some at the standard price.

“Well, whatever. Let’s buy some later.”

“Deal.”

They bumped fist in agreement. Sometimes, finances had to be sacrificed to enjoy the little things in life.

“Huh? They’re gone?”

When he turned his head back, he saw that the kids had already disappeared. Perhaps the owner had chased them away?

Missing his chance to do some small good, Matthias felt slightly down. But his mood quickly lifted when he bit onto the first croquette.

----------------------------------------

“You... don’t have any money left?”

“Correct. Why?”

“Didn’t you just get some earlier?”

“That’s also correct.”

When they met Soleil again at a restaurant, they found her eating nothing but a watery bowl of soup and bread. Since the money they obtained earlier was enough to buy a decent meal and lodging for a day, it was a wonder why she was spending so little of it. After all, they were going to earn more by the afternoon.

Well, Matthias planned to treat her to a meal anyway, so it didn’t really matter. But everybody was curious as to why she was already penniless after just an hour. Where did she spend it on?

“Oh. I gave the money to some kids after buying them bread,” she carelessly explained. “A proper demon lord wouldn’t let their subjects starve.”

Oh right, he recalled. That was her setting.