Goblin Slayer - Volume 15 - Chapter 3.5

Interlude - Be Careful Of Your Contacts

“Senior! Senior! You have to trade with me!”

“Who, me…?”

The red-haired elf sounded particularly flummoxed as the other girls came rushing into the cabaret. The elf wore a very revealing leather outfit, rabbit ears that bobbed over her head, and even a puffy white tail on her behind. She’d just been checking herself out in the mirror—most inconvenient timing.

Even I have to admit…

Her body really wasn’t much to look at. But she was on a run, so there was no choice. If there was one silver lining, it was that it seemed to please the boy who’d been running with her for so long.

In any case, the reason for the blush on the face of the adventurer who served the Supreme God wasn’t the costumes.

“I’m not sure I can stand to be seen this way…!”

“Can’t say I think lookin’ like this is any cause for concern,” said another girl who had been all but dragged into the room. White ears floated above her head, too, but she wasn’t wearing any gloves—the fur on her bare legs and arms proved that she was a real harefolk.

She’d hopped through the casino with such enthusiasm, the elf had worried she might bump into a customer.

She sure proved she could dodge people with the best of them, though.

The red-haired elf couldn’t help being impressed—although she didn’t think she’d been in business so long as to warrant being called “Senior.” She covered for herself with a discreet cough.

Trying her best to sound like the kind of trustworthy, more experienced operator the others could count on, she said, “What’s the matter? Didn’t that last customer tell you to follow him?”

“Yeah, he did, but…”

“He was just a young guy. Did you fight?”

“He was just relaxing out back. Forget him! Hmph!” The cleric of the Supreme God folded her arms, her voice turning sharp in an attempt to hide her embarrassment.

Pretty sure it was a three-person party, the elf thought, flipping the pages of her mental notebook. A warrior, a cleric, and a harefolk girl who was presumably a scout or a ranger. Security at the casino. A party of adventurers from the frontier, hired on a temporary basis.

Get someone local, and there was a good chance they would be a customer themselves. Wouldn’t want them giving any breaks to any of the other players. So it wasn’t unusual to occasionally look for security staff from outside Adventurers Guilds.

Anyway, that’s what I hear.

From that perspective, she was something of an irregular herself. The red-haired elf smiled. “What, then? Did he try to pull anything? You could have called one of the enforcers…”

“He was a friend of mine…”

“…Oh.” That was the one answer that could bring her up short.

I mean, I guess I understand how she’s feeling…

The elf was the same way; if that man had shown up here as a customer, not knowing she was around, she wasn’t sure how she would have reacted to him. It didn’t even have to be him. If any of her other friends—the cleric of the God of Knowledge or that white creature—had shown up, she would have been frozen in place. Thankfully (she thought), they were each handling their own thing right now, so there was no chance they would stumble on her.

“It’s just a job. Not like you’re doing anything wrong. And I guess I’d be happy to meet an older girl I knew here,” the harefolk girl said.

“I guess… It’s true that ensuring fairness in gambling is one of the duties of the Supreme God.” But this, the cleric averred, was entirely different from the outfit worn during the offertory at the harvest festival.

“Huh, that right?” the harefolk girl said, her ears bobbing merrily. “Well anyway, I’m hungry!”

“You padfoots seem to have it rough that way.”

The red-haired elf muttered a self-motivating “okay!” and then stood up from the mirror. “You can have the baked treats here in the greenroom. I’ll go out there for you.”

“Hooray! Thanks a bunch!”

“I’m sorry, Senior. Thank you very much…!”

It was all right. It was fine. The senior (it stung a little to be called that) waved the girl’s apologies away and exited the dressing room. Gotta get out there eventually anyway, she thought, but she refrained from saying as much to the other girls.

In any event, bedecked in her harefolk outfit (why did they dress that way around here?), she prepared to take that first step out into the casino.

The instant she got on the floor, she could feel the collective gaze of everyone in the casino slam into her.

It only feels that way… It only feels that way, she told herself.

This was a place of amusements, after all—probably 80 percent of the eyes here were focused firmly on some game or other. The games were classy, social; no one had to bet their lives or their livelihoods. The well-appointed ladies and gentlemen were probably most interested in the person hanging off their arm anyway, and besides, the elf was just one among many “harefolk” girls.

I need to look like I belong here.

Scampering around looking anxious would only serve to draw attention to her. With a scrape of the unfamiliar high heels across the floor, the red-haired elf set out, her elegant chest leading the way.

Okay, now, where was the seat of the customer she’d been instructed to find? She thought she remembered the number; it was— Oh, there she was.

Huddled there was a girl in cleric’s vestments who looked distinctly out of place—not afraid so much as deeply interested in her surroundings; she sat in a chair provided for people to take a break and was looking avidly at everything going on around her. There was a sounding staff laid across her knees, which were in a perfect row. A priestess of the Earth Mother. An adventurer, no doubt. Golden hair. Cute.

“Wait…”

“Oh!”

The elf had never imagined the adventurer in question might be someone she knew, but she saw the flash of recognition in the face of the other young woman as she sat blinking at her.

“Er, we met out east, didn’t we?” the cleric said.

“Yeah, fancy seeing you here. An adventurer, right?” The red-haired elf somehow managed to keep her face from twitching and smiled instead. She wasn’t sure if she was blushing from embarrassment—she hoped the makeup, which she wore only rarely but was wearing today, would help if she was.

I guess in one way, it makes things easier.

She knew she wouldn’t have to worry about any unfamiliar rules of etiquette with this person. Breathing a private sigh of relief, she sat down next to the priestess. “Here for fun?” she asked.

“No, business. Oh, um, not me personally, I mean. A member of my party.”

“Oh yeah?” the red-haired elf said diffidently. She might have sounded disinterested, but she thought she had a pretty good sense of what was going on. After all, when they ran into each other in the desert country, she’d been at that shop. Much like now.

Guess they’ve got dealings with the underworld.

Well, so did she. Maybe it was only natural—or unavoidable—that they would find each other again.

“What brings you here, if I may ask…?” the priestess said.

“I guess you could say business, too. This and that.”

The red-haired elf smiled ambiguously. It wasn’t a lie, not really. Anyway, she didn’t think most clerics would be suspicious enough to go around brandishing Sense Lie at everyone, even as a bluff. How could a cleric who didn’t even trust people ever trust the gods? That went double for her friend the cleric.

At the same time, runners needed to be able to tame their private obsessions.

And practically speaking, expenses are a real problem…

It inevitably cost a great deal of money for a sorcerer to arrange the cards in their hand, even if a black lotus wasn’t the first thing they drew.

“…This place is really impressive,” the priestess said, politely refraining from inquiring further into the elf’s personal situation as she cast her eye around the casino. At some point, a huge glass tub full of water had been brought out from somewhere within the building. “I’ve never seen such a large box made of glass. Is that what they call…an aquarium?”

“Yeah. A mermaid dancer is gonna do a show. Tonight’s performance should start in a few minutes.”

“Wow…!”

That was why they called this place The Mermaid, the red-haired elf volunteered. She kept up the bland conversation as she let her eyes scan the clientele. Looking for… Looking for…

Anyone out of place.

Someone who didn’t normally come here, like this priestess. But unlike her, someone unrefined, impolite, whose only serious distinguishing attribute was their money. Someone drunk on the pleasure of the very fact that they could come here.

“…So you’ve got a quest in the water town?” the elf asked.

“Uh-huh! Although, er, I’m not sure how much I can say about it.”

Even as the elf looked, the talk continued. A little chatter while she searched.

It’s a real help, in one way.

It would have been awfully strange, after all, for one of the harefolk-costumed servers to simply stand around doing nothing, staring at the customers. She certainly liked this better than walking around looking like she had nothing to do. She didn’t know what had brought them together here, Fate or Chance, but she was grateful…

“Basically, we’re looking for someone who was abducted.”

“Kidnappers, huh?” The red-haired elf’s ears laid back reflexively. “They’re such scum. The lowest of the low.”

“Er…?”

“Oh! Don’t mind me. Sorry. Can’t be having that!” The elf reproved herself, trying to pass the whole thing off with a smile. The tendency for her hatred of traffickers and kidnappers to appear at the drop of a hat was nothing more and nothing less than a vulnerability that could be exploited.

Gotta build up that karma.

Just like the girl, the one who was now looking at her with—was that suspicion? No, something closer to genuine concern. Maybe when this run was over, the elf could find her way to a temple of the Earth Mother.

She saw a man with a hard glint in his eye appear in a corner of the room, and she nodded briefly in his direction.

“Oh, it’s starting!” the priestess said.

With a flourish, the lights in the casino were extinguished, darkness descending on the place. Instead, there was a spray of water from the tank on the stage, accompanied by an exclamation from the spectators.

The red-haired elf, totally ignoring all this, tsk’ed to herself and gave her feet an order. No one around her would have noticed the shadows by her toes writhing and slithering before making their way outside. And they certainly wouldn’t have seen that the shadows were in the form of some kind of beast—no, they were much too enraptured by the spectacle onstage.

Now all she had to do was not take her eyes off the man. She couldn’t relax, but the first act was coming to a close—

“Oh!”

“…!”

Thus when the priestess suddenly called out, the red-haired elf’s shoulders shook with surprise. Had she been noticed? That was her first thought, but when she glanced at the priestess, she found the young woman looking somewhere she would never have predicted—namely, toward a distractingly scruffy-looking adventurer in a cheap metal helmet.

Did he come out of the inner room?

But, she thought, that would mean—but the red-haired elf threw the thought away. Between cats and runners, curiosity had probably claimed at least 50,000 lives in the Four-Cornered World.

“Um, I’m afraid I have to get going,” the priestess said.

“Yeah? Stay safe out there.”

Hence the elf wished the priestess good fortune as she stood to leave. A personal remark.

A runner who sped through the city’s shadows and an adventurer who moved boldly across the hexes of the Four-Cornered World: Sometimes they might be at cross-purposes, but other times they might work together.

“I thought I saw your friend at work around here,” the priestess said, adding wistfully that she would have liked to say hello, but he’d looked like he was busy.

The elf offered a crooked smile. “I’ll give him your best.”

“I’d appreciate that. Um, good-bye, then…” The priestess pattered several steps away, but then she turned back, her face flushed with concern, and asked, “Why are you all dressed like rabbits anyway?”

“Please,” the elf said, covering her face, “don’t ask.”