Chapter 2: Traveler
1
In a hall where the air was thick with the aroma of oil and spices, People of the Earth waitresses dashed back and forth. The Knights of the Black Sword kept pelting them with a veritable storm of orders.
They weren’t used to training People of the Earth, and it might actually be more tiring than training Adventurers. Everyone knew that good food was the best way to soothe fatigue. The appetites of the members of the Knights of the Black Sword were as hearty as the vigor with which they polished off raid enemies.
The guild master, Isaac, was no exception. Get lots of exercise, then eat lots of good stuff: Even in this world, where physical performance was influenced by level, he thought that was a fundamental part of keeping your strength up.
Just as Isaac stuck his knife into a thick slab of meat, documents landed on his table with a loud thump, and the beer on the tabletop sloshed.
“Top of the evening to you, Isaac.”
“Huh? Uhn. If it ain’t Calasin.”
“There we go.”
With no sign of compunction, Calasin, the guild master of the production guild Shopping District 8, sat down across from Isaac.
The din in the hall suddenly hushed. The Knights of the Black Sword were mostly sports types, and as a group, they tended to value hierarchical relationships. Any member who sat at the guild master’s table without permission would get a severe telling-off from a sharp-eyed senior member.
On top of that, Calasin was an “outsider.” Even if he was one of the Round Table Eleven, by the Knights of the Black Swords’ standards, he was a wimpy, dandyish man.
Several of the guild members got up from their seats, but Isaac stopped them with a hand, looking bored.
Whether or not he’d registered the atmosphere around them, Calasin kept his usual business smile trained on him. Isaac pointed at him with his fork, which had a piece of meat impaled on it.
“You’ve been acting real familiar lately.”
“You’re not the type who cares about these things, are you, Isaac?”
“Well, yeah, but we’re not talking about me. This is about you.”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha. Even I choose who I do it to.”
“Tch. You and your dumb grin. I don’t get you at all.”
Of all the production guilds, Shopping District 8 was putting particular effort into commerce with the People of the Earth. Its guild master, Calasin, was a superficially polished, wily individual who competed on even terms with crafty, experienced People of the Earth merchants.
Removing his trademark cap, Calasin called to a Person of the Earth who was passing near them. “Ah, get me a cold one, too, and some fried rockfish.”
The uniformed waitress jotted down the order on her notepad, bowed, then headed for the kitchen. She seemed to be well versed in Adventurer etiquette.
“That fried rockfish is real tasty.”
“Isn’t it, though? I’ve been looking forward to it. It’s practically why I came here.”
“Out doing migrant work again?”
“Come on, don’t call it that. This is Shopping District 8’s first branch trading house. I just came to check up on it. Besides, I need to look over the books.”
This dining hall was an annex of the trading house that was Shopping District 8’s branch office in Maihama. There had apparently been all sorts of troublesome negotiations involved in putting a branch office right at the feet of Duke Cowen, the leader of the League of Free Cities, and Calasin had been a central figure in them. Lezarik had told him that that was why there hadn’t been any complaints about Shopping District 8 getting a branch office here, instead of the Marine Organization, the largest player, or the Roderick Trading Company, which had a variety of cutting-edge technologies.
“Besides, it’s not far from Akiba.”
Lezarik offered Calasin some water, then sat down beside the two of them.
Because they worked together to get raid materials ready, Lezarik and Calasin had known each other for a long time. After the Catastrophe in particular, Isaac had heard they’d exchanged all sorts of information on a personal level.
“Right. Not if I’m by myself anyway. It’s just a jump away by Giant Owl.”
“What, you ride an owl?”
“It’s not as if every major guild has griffins, you know. Only raid guilds do that.”
Compared with griffins, Giant Owls had poorer speed and flying distance, and their recast times were long. Because you could get them outside of raid quests, more people used them than griffins, but to Isaac, they were wussy rides.
“Yeah, because you people are weak.”
“That’s right, we’re weak. We’ll charge your group a hundred times more for your food,” Calasin warned him casually. He still had that smile on his face.
“Damn you…”
“Nobody really cares about that sort of thing though, huh?”
Lezarik calmly interjected: “Heeeey…”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No.”
This guy’s like Lezarik, Isaac decided. The jerk dodged back lightly, right before Isaac blew up, and it was impossible to tell whether he was dense or fiendishly gutsy. Isaac’s opinion of people like that was beginning to improve.
The waitress set a steaming plate down on the table. The white plate, toast-colored fried rockfish, shredded cabbage, and round heap of tartar sauce looked very appetizing.
“Whoa. That looks good. Hot!”
When he stuck his fork into it, the fried coating split with a light crunch. Calasin added a sauce bursting with onions, then dug in with a will.
Calasin polished off his fried fish in short order, nodding the whole time. Isaac, who’d been watching him, snorted. Lezarik ordered two more plates from the waitress.
“Seriously, did you come here just to get in my way?”
“Of course not. This is work, technically. Here.”
Calasin took a single paper from the document case at his waist. Isaac accepted it and handed it to Lezarik without even glancing at it.
“The Round Table Council, is it?”
“Well, eventually.”
At his adjutant’s words, Isaac sent a question at Calasin, snitching a piece of fried fish from his plate as he did so.
“Then what is it right now?”
“For now, I guess you’d say it’s about monsters called Geniuses.”
As Calasin responded, he speared a piece off the fresh plate of fried rockfish that the waitress brought over.
“Yeah, I’ve heard the name. What are they?”
Passing his half-empty dish to Lezarik, Isaac pulled the nearby plate of piping hot fried seafood over to himself. Lezarik sighed, then parceled out a few pieces of fried fish from the half-empty plate to Isaac and Calasin.
“I don’t know, either. On top of that, the People of the Earth are looking rather bellicose.”
“…You mean those troops mustering in the west?”
One of the outstanding issues on the Round Table Council was the information that the Adventurers of Minami had joined forces with the Holy Empire of Westlande, the People of the Earth organization that governed Western Yamato, and were building up their military strength.
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