By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 9

Chapter 4 Episode 9: Training Begins

Three days later, it was time for the training meetup. I visited the guild an hour early and saw some restless adventurers, most likely the students, starting to gather. I walked past them and headed to the second floor.

“Excuse me.”

The instant I stepped into the designated meeting room, eight sets of eyes turned toward me. I didn’t know any of these people, and some of them looked confused.

“Hey!” one of them shouted at me.

I thought I was about to get in a fight, but no.

“Aren’t you Ryoma?!”

“Huh? Yes, why do you ask?”

The middle-aged man approached me with a carefree smile. He looked quite friendly. Well, I should have expected as much. These people were being trusted to act as teachers, after all. They wouldn’t act like hoodlums, presumably. But that didn’t explain why he knew my name.

“I’m sorry, have we met somewhere?”

“Haha, can’t blame you for not remembering. I’m Roche. You actually saved me one time. Hey, guys, come over here!”

Next to Roche, there were two more boorish middle-aged men and two middle-aged women. It did feel like I had met them somewhere before. Their faces triggered something in my memory. But I still didn’t know exactly where I met them.

“Can’t remember?”

“Of course he can’t, we were far from the only people there.”

“You can’t remember every single person you see, can you? That was the only time we ever saw each other.”

“I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re all talking about.”

“It was back in spring, at the abandoned mine in the north. There was an outbreak of goblins that you slayed, remember?”

“That?!”

Now I remembered them.

“Were you the patient I treated?”

“You do remember! That really helped, seriously. Without you and your healing slime, I could’ve died.”

“He and I got some more minor wounds healed by you, by the way.”

“I’m Howard, and this is Lucas.”

The other two men pointed at each other. And when I looked at the women closely, I could tell that they were the ones tearfully thanking me. Now I felt bad for forgetting.

“It’s no big deal. So are you here because you’re a teacher?”

“Yes, at the guildmaster’s recommendation.”

“Really?! Then let me introduce myself properly. I’m Roche, the leader on this job. I’ll give you a rundown later, but if you’ve got any questions, you can ask me.”

“Thank you. I’m good at camping, but I have virtually no experience teaching anyone. I look forward to learning from you.”

Thankfully the job was starting without any incidents. It was strange how we had met before, though. The two women, by the way, were named Lucy and Mimir. They were both magicians.

■ ■ ■

“Attention, students!”

Once all the teachers had gathered, we had a quick briefing session, then got moving. As soon as we popped into one corner of the guild, Roche shouted in a somewhat different tone than he used with me. Presumably, this was his teaching voice.

From what I was told, he and his allies had semi-retired from adventuring work over the last few years to shift their focus to training new talent. They were veteran adventurers, but like Worgan said, they had plenty of experience as teachers as well.

When Roche finished going over a list of precautions with the students, it was time for all fifteen teachers to introduce themselves. It started with Roche’s party and ended with me.

“Hello, I’m Ryoma Takebayashi. Before I came to this town, I lived in a forest called Gana for three years, where I survived by camping and hunting. That’s why my rank is only E, but the guildmaster decided I know enough about camping, procuring food, and distinguishing between medicinal and poisonous herbs. I’m sure I look young to some of you, but don’t worry about that. My weapons of choice are bows and katana. I also know the fundamentals of magic, and I can use up to High Heal when it comes to healing spells, so if anyone gets hurt, feel free to tell me. We’ll be together for five days, so I hope we all get along well. Nice to meet you, everyone.”

“Nice to meet you,” the group replied. Nobody complained about me openly, but they didn’t react with much enthusiasm either. I guess I should have expected as much.

“That takes care of all that,” Roche said. “There are five carriages waiting outside, so split up into groups of six and get on them! Three teachers will join you on each carriage! We’ll be leaving town in ten minutes! You can take that time to decide who’s sitting where and get whatever other business done! Got that? Ten minutes! That’s all for now!”

The whole group got moving. There were fifteen teachers including me, and twice as many students. Everyone tried to go outside at once, so the exit to the guild was crowded. I figured I would use this time to go to the bathroom, and when I went outside a few minutes later, most of the students had boarded the carriages. I thought about which carriage to pick for myself when someone called to me.

“Yo, Ryoma.”

“Huh? Beck’s party? You’re joining too?”

In one carriage, I saw six familiar faces.

“Jeff told us all about it, and we somehow managed to save up enough money for each of us.”

“And Jeff’s got a job to do, so...”

“We decided that when he’s away because of his job, we’ll take lessons.”

“I see, neat.”

“But why are you here, Ryoma? You a teacher?”

“The guildmaster suggested I join as a teacher, yes. Good luck, everyone.”

Leaving it at that, I parted ways with them. They seemed to have some empty seats, but as a teacher, I thought it would be best not to play favorites with students I knew personally. I ended up in a carriage with Roche and some boys I didn’t know instead.

The carriage was oppressively silent. It was situated in the middle of the line of carriages, and I could hear fun conversations from ahead and behind, but everyone here seemed to be strangers to each other. Even an hour after we left, nobody had uttered a word.

“Ryoma,” Roche broke the silence, as though he couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Yes? What is it?”

“You don’t have a whole lot of luggage. Will you be alright?”

All I brought along was a fur knapsack. The other participants had multiple knapsacks or even camping gear and sleeping bags, so I had relatively little.

“I’ll be fine. I’ve stored enough supplies for five days using space magic.”

“You can use space magic?”

“Yes. I wanted to travel as lightly as possible, so this knapsack only contains the absolute necessities. I’m confident that I could camp for two or three days with what’s in here alone, but if you include what’s in my Item Box, I can easily go for five days.”

“Guys that can use space magic would have an easy time with that, I guess. We tried it a long while back, but none of us could use space magic. Then we tried finding magic items enchanted with space magic, but they were too expensive for how much storage space they offered, so we gave up on that. You know, the rest of you kids can talk too. Talk about whatever you want, you won’t lose points or get penalized or whatever, that’s not the kind of lesson this is.”

“You’ll wear yourselves out if you’re this tense on the carriage ride,” Lucy added. “Try and take this time to relax.”

That seemed to get the students to lighten up somewhat. However, they didn’t know what to talk about. It’s not easy to just start a conversation on command. I knew how that felt painfully well.

“Roche, can you think of any topic that we could all discuss?”

“I think I’ve got one. What abilities do you think are important for an adventurer trying to move up the ranks?”

“Strength, I guess?” one of the students said timidly.

That got the others to start talking. Some more specific answers were skill with a weapon or with magic. One even suggested that patience was the most important ability. Roche agreed that those were important, but put them aside and gave his own response.

“The correct answer is the ability to cooperate and communicate. The higher your rank, the more difficult that jobs are going to get. And when it comes to monster-slaying jobs, they’re also going to get more dangerous. That’s why adventurers form parties. I won’t say that’s strictly necessary, but you don’t see nearly as many adventurers working alone once they hit D Rank. And when you look at C Rank and above, there are only a handful of them. At that point in your career, it turns out that what you really need is cooperation and communication.”

“Ideally each party member makes up for the faults of other members, but don’t expect to find the perfect teammates right away,” Lucy said. “When you’re working with someone, your compatibility and capacity to coordinate is even more important than your individual abilities. Most adventurers repeatedly switch between parties in search of one that fits.”

Party members could also leave due to retirement or injury. Situations could also arise where an adventurer would need to argue with their party over how a reward was to be divided between them, or with a client making unreasonable demands, so negotiating could be a surprisingly vital skill.

“When it comes to jobs, the guild generally talks with the client over what’d be an appropriate reward,” Roche said. “But a decent number of clients directly negotiate with adventurers to try and convince them to work for less. The higher an adventurer’s rank, the more you have to pay.”

“And it’s not like it can hurt to have those skills in any profession,” I interjected.

“Ryoma’s right. But your answers about strength weren’t wrong either. Reaching the upper ranks without strength is pretty much impossible. Not without a lot of luck. But if you did luck into it, you’ll probably have a lot more trouble than someone who made it there the hard way. Any questions?”

“Have any tips for how to form a party? Where should you go? Should you look for members at a bar or something?”

The students started to get more proactive.

“I’d just go to the guild, that’s your best bet,” Roche answered.

“Right,” Lucy agreed. “You can get introduced to other adventurers if you ask at the reception desk, which is safer than teaming up with strangers in any old place. If someone’s a rude and violent adventurer, the guild will at least tell you first.” That reminded me of how in Lenaf, there were people who teamed up with someone at a bar and ended up getting used. “When you’re picking a party, pay attention to how frequently they need to recruit new members. If they go through a lot of members, there must be a reason people aren’t sticking around. I’d also watch out for any parties that have gone a long time without being able to recruit a new member. If a party doesn’t have problems, they’ll usually be able to recruit someone right away.”

“Oh, right,” Roche seemed to remember something. “You should also pay attention to who these other adventurers associate with. Adventurers should value their connections with fellow adventurers, but sometimes you’ll see folks form groups outside the guild. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but these groups tend to commit crimes. Even in Gimul, there was a group of criminal adventurers called the Fang of Obtemo back in spring.”

I almost forgot about that, since it felt so long ago. Roche and Lucy explained that situation in more detail to the students. The six students on this carriage presumably weren’t present for that incident; they were captivated by the story.

“And that’s how the tables were turned and their plot came to light,” Roche concluded. The students had grave looks on their faces. Hopefully, they would remember this when it came time for them to find party members. “By the way, the young adventurer who beat them was none other than Ryoma here.”

“What?!” the six students gasped and looked at me. They asked me all about the incident. I was barraged with questions until the carriage finally stopped.