Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10:

The First Job Completed 

N ow then…time for a little interrogation. 

Who should I try first, the man or the woman? 

The bug-eyed lady was clearly terrified at this point. She was making muffled “Mmm!” sounds and trying desperately to squirm away from us. If I took off her gag now, I had the feeling she’d start babbling a bunch of frantic nonsense. Seemed smarter to wait until she’d calmed down a little. 

As for the lizard-man… I couldn’t really tell if his expression had changed much, what with the reptilian face and all. It did kind of look like he may have gone a little pale, but it also seemed like he was watchfully observing his surroundings. His eyes flitted from Eris’s face to Ruijerd’s, then to mine. I had the feeling his mind was completely focused on the question of how he could get out of this alive. 

It really was a shame Ruijerd had killed their buddy. A short-tempered tough guy like that would’ve been the easiest nut to crack by far. 

At this point, maybe we should just take off both their gags at once? We could take one of them into a different room, interrogate them separately, then compare their answers afterward. 

Yeah, let’s give that a shot. 

“Eris, stay here and keep watch on the woman for us, okay?” 

“Got it,” Eris answered with an energetic nod. 

I pulled the lizard-man to his feet and promptly marched him out of the room. Once we were far enough down the corridor that our voices wouldn’t carry back to his friend, I stopped and removed his gag, making sure not to give him any chance to bite me. 

“I’ve got some questions I’d like you to answer.” 

“Sure, sure! I-I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! Just don’t kill me!” 

“Fair enough. As long as you talk, I’ll let you go.” 

“Eek!” 

I’d smiled brightly in an attempt to reassure him, but for some reason the lizard-man flinched back in fear. Maybe he wasn’t quite as cool-headed as I’d originally thought. 

“Why do you have so many animals caged up in this building?” 

“We…p-picked ’em up off the street.” 

“Hmm! That’s really impressive! And where did you find them all exactly?” 

“Uh, well, I mean…” The man’s eyes darted between Ruijerd’s face and mine. Was he really planning to continue lying at this point? “J-Just…around town…” 

Okay, that barely even qualified as a lie. The guy had a clever-looking face, but maybe he wasn’t that bright after all. 

“Wow, no kidding! There must be animals lying around for the taking all over the place, huh?” I paused for a moment, then fixed him with my fiercest glare. ”Look, buddy. Do you think I’m stupid just because I’m a kid?” 

“No, no! N-not at all!” 

Yeah, that didn’t really work. With this body, any attempt at intimidation seemed to come out kind of ridiculous. I was only ten years old, after all. Ah well. Guess I’ll have to scare him a bit. 

“Explosion.” 

With a sharp snap of my fingers, I set off a small fiery blast right in front of the man’s face. 

“Gaaah! Yowch!” It singed the tip of his nose nicely. “Wh-what the heck are you doing, man?!” 

Naturally, I chose to ignore this question. “Do us both a favor and think a little harder about your answers. You don’t want to die, right?” 

The lizard-man shuddered, presumably remembering the moment Ruijerd murdered his partner. 

At this point, it finally occurred to me that our whole conversation back there had been in the Demon-God tongue. I had blathered on about Ruijerd and the Superd in a language these people could obviously speak. 

Ah well. If they know, they know. Might as well try and use that to our advantage. 

“This is no joke. My friend here’s dying his hair blue, but he really is the one and only Dead End. And I’m not as young as I look either.” 

“S-seriously…?” 

“We’re the same type of people as you guys, all right? Just be honest with us. Maybe we can even help you out.” Maybe not, but let’s see what happens. 

“B-but… Eeek!” The lizard-man glanced over at Ruijerd, only to look away immediately. He’d probably gotten a nasty glare. 

“Come on, just spit it out already. What were you doing here? ” 

“We… We were catching people’s pets…” 

“You don’t say. Why was that?” 

“We’d wait until their owners filed a request…then bring the pets back and act like we’d just found ’em…” 

“Hmm. I see.” It was probably the truth. I didn’t have any proof of that; it just made sense and seemed consistent with everything we’d seen. 

The request that brought us here was filed by an innocent young girl, but you’d probably get the occasional wealthy lady desperate to find her little poopsie Christine. Although guild tasks seemed to pay out within a set range depending on their difficulty, maybe clients like that sometimes offered special bonuses on the side. With a bit of luck, you might be able to make a good living “finding” pets all day. 

“What do you do if the owner never files a request though?” 

“After a while, we just let the things go…” 

“Hmm. Why not sell them to a pet shop for some extra profit?” 

“Hah! That’d be a great way to get ourselves caught, kid.” 

The instant the lizard-man snorted derisively at me, Ruijerd struck the floor with the butt-end of his spear. Our captive flinched back at the sound. 

Beautiful, man! Seriously beautiful! Just when the guy starts to feel a little cocky, you remind him exactly where he stands here! You’re a born interrogator! 

“Sounds like you had this racket all worked out, huh?” 

“Y-yeah, pretty much.” 

“Personally, though, I still would’ve turned the extra animals into money. You could always chop them up and sell the meat to a butcher, right? No real risk of getting caught that way.” I mean, people seemed to enjoy eating monster flesh around here. They’d probably be just fine buying mystery meat from some miscellaneous animals. 

Oh. Now the lizard-man’s looking at me like I’m some kind of serial killer. Come on! People eat Great Tortoises around here, don’t they? How’s a pet turtle any different? 

I turned back to glance at Ruijerd, hoping for confirmation that I wasn’t crazy. 

“Rudeus,” he said solemnly, “do you intend to dispose of these people in the same way?” 

What an alarming question. 

At least our captive’s reaction made sense now. He’d probably been wondering something similar himself. 

“Hmm, now there’s an idea…” The lizard-man’s face twitched as I smiled ominously at him. Ah, now this expression I could recognize. It really brought me back. People used to look at me that way all the time in my first go-round. 

“Rudeus…” 

Ruijerd, please. You don’t have to glare holes in my back like that. I’m just kidding around, okay? I wouldn’t actually do that. 

“Well, we only came out here to find a specific cat. It’s not like we’re a roaming band of vigilantes or anything. We could always walk away and pretend we didn’t see anything.” 

“R-really?” 

“Only problem is, you two know that Ruijerd here really is a Superd. Hmm. Now what are we going to do about that?” 

“I-I won’t tell anyone! Hell, it’s not like anyone would even believe me if I told ’em Dead End was wandering around the city!” 

“I don’t think that’s true. Ugly rumors always find a way to get around.” It’s best to assume that anyway. Especially when it’s a rumor you don’t want spreading. “From my perspective, the single easiest thing would be to kill you all and bury your bodies somewhere, you know?” 

“C-come on, man, don’t talk like that… I’ll do anything you want, okay? Just don’t kill me…” 

Those were the words I’d been waiting to hear. Time to wrap up the intimidation phase. 

Hmm. What am I going to do here though? These people were petnappers, which made them criminals, a.k.a. “bad guys.” But they were clearly small-time crooks with no connections to the local underworld. Letting them off the hook wouldn’t put us in any real danger. 

That said, they’d seen Ruijerd kill a man, which meant they may eventually disrupt our plan to make him into a local hero. I’d really prefer not to have that risk hanging over our heads. 

Murdering them in cold blood was off the table. I mean, I’d just given Ruijerd a lecture on this very topic. Maybe I could hand them over to the city watch or whatever? 

No. All they’d really done was steal a bunch of pets, and that was hardly the gravest of crimes. The cops might let them off with a big fine or something, and they’d be right back out on the streets, possibly nursing a grudge. No matter how submissive they were being right now, once my foot was off their throat all bets were off. 

Ideally, I wanted to keep them somewhere I could keep an eye on them…and periodically threaten them again. At least until I knew they weren’t going to cause us any problems. But that would carry certain risks as well. If we kept leaning on them, their resentment might fester into hatred. We’d already killed one of their friends after all. For now that was fueling their fear of us, but someday it might drive them to try and take revenge. 

We couldn’t kill them…and we couldn’t hand them over to the cops. 

How about taking them in then? That would keep them close at hand, and they could help us earn money and rise up the ranks. We’d make them gather information around town and run random errands for us. Hell, we could even take over their pet abduction racket. 

Of course, Ruijerd probably wouldn’t like this plan one bit. He’d already classified these people as villains, evil enough that they deserved to die. Somehow, I doubted he’d want to work with them. 

Hmm. Let’s run down the risk and return of all our options: 

1. Murder them 

RISK: Ruijerd will get seriously confused.

We might pick up a bad habit of killing our way out of trouble. 

RETURN: Prevents any potential future problems.

We can take whatever cash they’re carrying. 

2. Hand them over to the city watch 

RISK: They might hold a grudge. 

RETURN: A bit of good PR, maybe? 

3. Leave them be 

RISK: They might hold a grudge. 

RETURN: Nothing in particular. 

4. Take them in 

RISK: Won’t go over well with my buddy.

People might think we’re involved in some shady business. 

RETURN: Easy way to keep an eye on them.

Provides us with some extra help. 

Number one was easy to eliminate. It felt like we’d be heading down the wrong road. I wasn’t a soft-hearted sap or anything, but murdering people left and right would just be foolish. I had the feeling it’d come back to bite us in the end. 

Numbers two and three were low-risk, low-return plays. Even if our new friends did try to get revenge on us somehow, Ruijerd could track them down easily enough…but then we’d probably end up killing them anyway. That would be a lousy outcome and a waste of effort. 

Number four seemed like the winner then. It might ruin Ruijerd’s impression of me, but…putting everything else aside, we also had a pressing need for money at the moment. 

Yeah, that’s right. Money has to be our top priority right now, doesn’t it? And some extra help should make that much easier. 

Helping out with their pet-abduction racket was an option, but we could also add them to our party, then split up to tackle multiple F-rank jobs at once. That would move us up the ranks faster, and moving up the ranks was huge. Once we could take on rank C tasks, our lives would get so much easier. 

…Hm? Wait a second. “Come to think of it, if you guys were taking lost-pet jobs, wouldn’t that make you adventurers?” 

“Y-yeah, that’s right.” 

Oh, hey! Us too! What a coincidence. 

“What’s your party rank?” 

“Uh, D…” 

Not only were they adventurers, they were a couple rungs up the ladder from us. 

“So you’re doing rank E tasks even though you’re rank D?” 

“Yeah. We could go up to C at this point, actually, but the lost-pet stuff was steady money, you know?” 

Once you hit rank C, you weren’t allowed to take on rank E tasks anymore. Maybe some people deliberately stayed put at D so they could keep working simpler and safer jobs…or so they could keep running a scam, in this specific case. If we were in their shoes, we’d jump up to C immediately and start grabbing B-ranked monster-slaying missions, but maybe some adventurers preferred avoiding combat altogether. 

Hm. Maybe we could have these two take some C-rank jobs, then help them out with the fighting part? Even if we split the money evenly between us, that should solve our cash-flow crisis. 

No, no…we’d never move up the ranks that way. 

“Ah…” All of a sudden, a light bulb went off in my head. I’d just found the perfect solution. 

“Hey, could you two keep doing this job without the guy who died?” 

“N-nah, we’ll just quit this racket and go legit…” 

“Be honest, please.” 

“Yeah, we could! That guy saw the two of us catching a pet and blackmailed us into giving him a cut!” 

Whoa, seriously? Guess we got lucky… 

It was a one in three chance, but Ruijerd apparently killed the right guy. Maybe the Man-God was watching out for us or something. 

“Okay then. Why don’t you team up with us?” 

“You want to join forces with them?!” Ruijerd shouted from behind me. “You can’t be serious!” 

“Ruijerd, can you be quiet for a minute, please?” 

“What?!” 

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing here.” 

I turned back for a moment. Unsurprisingly, Ruijerd was looking none too pleased. The idea sure felt like a good one, but maybe I needed to reconsider. It was just so…perfect though. We could earn money, increase our rank, and work on Ruijerd’s reputation, all at the same time. 

Yeah. Unless I was overlooking something, there was nothing but upsides all around. 

I turned back to the lizard-man and looked him in the eyes. “You said you’d do anything I want earlier, right?” 

“S-sure. I can g-give you money, if you want. Just don’t kill us…” 

“I don’t need your money. But I do want you to rank up at the guild.” 

“Uh, what?” 

Okay, let’s explain this nice and slowly. 

“Look. Everyone in our party is a combat specialist, as you can probably tell. We can hunt down lost pets if we need to, but it’d be way more efficient for us to go out on monster-slaying jobs.” 

“Yeah, I bet… S-so, er…why are you on a lost-pet job right now?” 

“It’s a bit of a long story, but we only just became adventurers.” 

“Uh, o-okay…” 

It felt like we were starting to get a bit off-topic here. “Anyway! The point is, we want to take on combat jobs, but our rank’s too low. You guys, on the other hand, aren’t really capable of slaying monsters. You follow me so far?” 

“Y-yeah…” 

“Well, here’s a nice, simple solution. We’re going to start swapping jobs.” 

The lizard-man tilted his head to the side in puzzlement. “What do you mean?” 

“You two are going to take on C- or B-rank monster-slaying missions at the guild. We’re going to grab more lost-pet type jobs so we can get our rank up. We’ll handle your jobs for you, and you’ll handle our jobs for us.” 

“W-wait a second, what? The guild isn’t gonna let you turn in our job for us…” 

“Don’t be stupid. The party that took the task will also be the one to report in once it’s complete.” 

“Ah…” 

I could see comprehension dawning in the lizard-man’s eyes. 

The concept was simple enough really: 

DEAD END: Takes E-rank jobs; performs B-rank jobs 

Reports in on E-rank jobs and receives the rewards 

THEIR PARTY: Takes B-rank jobs; performs E-rank jobs 

Reports in on B-rank jobs and receives the rewards 

Afterward, of course, we’d meet up and swap the rewards we’d received. 

There might be some issues with the concept in terms of the guild’s regulations, but I’d heard high-ranking adventurers sometimes helped out low-ranking newbies with their tasks. We’d just be doing the opposite, more or less. It probably wasn’t against the letter of the law. 

“We want money and a higher rank. You people want to make a nice, steady living. Seems like we can help each other out, right? We’ll even give you a cut of the B-rank rewards as your commission, if you want.” 

“A c-commission, huh…?” The lizard man swallowed audibly. 

B-rank jobs paid out nicely. This was the carrot we’d dangle in front of them; we couldn’t rely entirely on the stick, or they’d betray us eventually. Our arrangement had to be a sweet deal for everyone involved. 

“However, there is one condition.” 

“Wh-what’s that?” 

“You need to spread the word about Dead End all over town.” 

“What…? Uh, I think everyone already knows the name…” 

Sure seemed that way. “Yeah, but we want them to think he’s a nice guy. Tell everyone about our good deeds, even if you have to make stuff up. You can even call yourselves ‘Dead End’ while you’re dealing with random F-rank jobs.” 

“Is there…some point to all this?” 

There certainly was, but…if we gave this guy a long explanation of Ruijerd’s tragic past, was he even going to buy it? 

No, probably not. He’d just witnessed Ruijerd kill a member of his party in cold blood. It didn’t sound like the two of them had been too friendly, but his impression of the Superd was probably set in stone at this point. 

“There are some things you’re better off not knowing, friend.” 

“F-fine… Fine, whatever.” 

I ended up going with a half-assed non-answer, but the guy accepted it readily enough. 

“Basically, you just want us to talk you up, right?” 

“Exactly. Make sure you don’t use our name in a way we wouldn’t like, of course. Keep in mind, we’ve got a guy who could track you down to the ends of the earth.” 

The lizard-man glanced fearfully over at Ruijerd and nodded several times. 

“All right then,” I said. “Looking forward to working with you, friend…at least until we get our rank up.” 

“R-right. Sure.” 

“Let’s meet up tomorrow morning at the guild. Don’t be late.” With a smile, I thumped the lizard-man on the back. 

Just to be on the safe side, we questioned the woman as well to see if her story lined up with her friend’s. 

According to her, the two of them were lost-pet specialists before they became criminals. It had been their livelihood for some time. One day, they’d preemptively scooped up an animal that was clearly a lost pet, which got them thinking about how much easier their jobs would be if they could catch their targets before the requests were filed. Things escalated over time, and eventually they found themselves in the pet-capturing business. 

At first, it had been a small-scale operation, but then Man A caught them red-handed in the middle of an abduction. He’d forced his way into the party as their “bodyguard,” started acting like the leader, and quickly ramped up their activities. Apart from taking a huge cut of the profits for himself, he’d also coerced the woman into sleeping with him as part of his “fee.” As a result, they weren’t too upset with us for killing them. Especially the woman. 

We really had gotten lucky. 

Incidentally, the lizard-man’s name was Jalil, and the bug-lady was Vizquel. 

After a quick group meeting with both of them, I finally removed their handcuffs. 

*** 

As we left the building with our client’s cat, Ruijerd glared over at me and broke his silence. “Rudeus! What’s the meaning of this?!” 

“The meaning of…what, exactly?” 

At this, he grabbed me by the lapels, lifting me a few inches off the ground. “Don’t play dumb! Those people are villains! Do you really expect me to join forces with them?!” 

Okay. The man was genuinely furious. His face was…scary to look at right now. I couldn’t help remembering the fact that he’d casually killed a man only a little while ago. 

“W-well, granted, they’re not great people. But they’re only small-time crooks…they weren’t doing anything that  evil.” 

“A villain is a villain! The scale of their evil is irrelevant!” 

I’d known this was coming, hadn’t I? For some reason, my legs were still shaking. My voice was trembling, and there were small tears forming in the corner of my eyes. 

“B-but look, this lets us kill two birds with one stone…” 

“What does that matter?!” 

Ruijerd really wasn’t buying this, was he? This wasn’t good. I was too afraid to think straight. The chattering of my teeth echoed loudly through my head. 

“Villains will betray you in the end!” Ruijerd shouted, his eyes narrowing. 

It was true. I’d taken that possibility into account. But this plan offered some juicy benefits from their perspective, and we’d just scared them pretty badly. It probably wasn’t going to be a problem in the short term. 

“What were you thinking? Why must we conspire with such people?!” 

Now that question…gave me pause. 

The man had a point. It wasn’t like we had to join forces with those two. We could always have taken things at a more leisurely pace—taking on tasks from the guild when we could, hunting monsters outside the city when we needed cash, and slowly moving up the ranks. That was a perfectly viable alternative. And it wouldn’t involve relying on some shady people. It would be a bit of a detour, but that wasn’t the end of the world. 

Maybe this was a bad idea. Should we call it off, turn around, and kill those two right now? Have ourselves a nice bloodbath? 

Was I even in the right here? I wasn’t so sure anymore. 

“Ruijerd!” 

At this point, my inner debate was interrupted by a fierce shout. Ruijerd’s body swayed once, then twice. 

“Get your hands off Rudeus!” 

Eris was kicking him in the backside…repeatedly. 

“What are you even complaining about anyway?!” 

Her voice was loud enough to make my ears ring. A few passersby looked over in our direction, wondering what all the fuss was about. 

“I dislike the idea of joining forces with a pair of villains.” 

“Oh, boo-hoo! So what if you don’t like it? He’s doing this for your sake, stupid! And mine!” 

Ruijerd’s eyes went wide, and my feet thumped back down onto the ground. Eris promptly stopped kicking him, but she wasn’t quite done with the shouting. “In the first place, what’s the big deal about them stealing a couple animals?!” 

“You misunderstand me. The sort of people who would kick a child can’t be—“ 

“Oh, come on! I kick people all the time!” 

“…Still, evil-doers can’t be trusted.” 

“You did some evil things in the past yourself, didn’t you?!” 

Well, now she had him at a loss for words. 

Miss Eris… I’m very grateful that you’re sticking up for me here, but maybe we shouldn’t poke the guy too hard where it hurts… 

“Rudeus is really smart, okay?! He’s gonna make everything work out fine! So just…shut up and do what he says!” 

“…” 

“Don’t start whining every time you feel a little bit unhappy!” 

“But—” 

“If you’re going to complain about every little thing, then just go home now! Rudeus and I can manage on our own!” 

Ruijerd faltered, taken aback by the raw emotion on Eris’s face. 

“…Very well. I’m sorry, Rudeus.” He apologized to me after a moment. The man had been overwhelmed by Eris’s vehemence. But that didn’t mean he was actually convinced , of course. 

“Th-that’s all right, Ruijerd…” 

The bar I needed to clear had just gotten much higher. After all that, I couldn’t very well admit that I was feeling uncertain myself. 

Teaming up with those two may have been a careless move. But now that it had come to this, I had to stick to my guns, no matter how anxious I may feel. 

I’d thought it was a brilliant idea at first. I’d just have to trust myself on that one. 

…Not that there were many people I had less faith in. 

*** 

When we reunited her with her cat, Meicel was absolutely overjoyed. She came running over the moment she laid eyes on us, threw her arms around Mii, and burst into tears of joy. 

The girl obviously adored her pet. The cat was surprisingly tolerant of her affection…given that it was a panther. 

“Thank you! Thank you! Uhm, here you go!” After a while, our happy client handed Ruijerd a small metallic card. There was something that looked like a job number on it, along with the word “Complete.” 

“What’s this?” I said. 

“You don’t know?” the girl asked disbelievingly. “Aren’t you adventurers?” 

Well, I guess I’ll let you tell me, if you insist! Harumph! “W-would you mind explaining, miss?” 

“Okay! When you take this to the Adventurers’ Guild, they’ll give you money for it. It’s not complete to start with though! But if you stick your finger on the blank part and go ‘task complete,’ that makes it all complete-y!” 

A liberal translation: “If you place your finger on the card and speak the words task complete , the card will indicate that the job is done.” Hmm. Was that a failsafe against the possibility of someone stealing the card? But what if I did the “task complete” part myself? Would that work? If so, you could just swipe the cards and turn them in for some easy cash… 

Naaah. Even if it worked, the Guild would catch on in no time. And they probably had some measures set up to prevent that sort of thing. 

“Uhm…it looks like this one already says ‘complete’ though.” Normally, you’d wait until the job was actually done to do that whole step, right? 

“Yeah! I just knew Ruijerd was gonna find Mii, so I did it in advance!” 

Oh my goodness. Too cute! A child’s trust is a beautiful thing! 

Squatting down, Ruijerd patted the girl gently on the head. “I see… You had faith in me, did you? Thank you, Meicel.” 

“Yeah! I didn’t know there were any good devils, but now I do!” 

For a moment, Ruijerd’s face seemed to freeze in place. I know how you feel, man, but that’s just where your reputation stands right now. 

“All right then, miss. Don’t forget about Dead End and your friend Ruijerd, okay?” 

“Yeah! Come help me if she goes missing again!” 

The girl’s final, cheerful words made my chest ache just a little. 

*** 

By the time the three of us made it back to the Adventurers’ Guild, it was already twilight. If every job took us this long, we’d be bankrupt in no time. 

“Hey, what the hell? They’re back!” 

“Whoa! Did ya find that lost pet already, kiddo?!” 

The moment we stepped into the building, that same Horseface guy started goading us again. He was easy enough to recognize, since his horse-head contrasted oddly with his minotaur-like body. Did he just hang around inside the guild all day or what? 

“Oh, if it isn’t the horse-headed man from this morning… Did you take a break from work today?” It wasn’t too fun dealing with this guy honestly. He reminded me too much of someone who’d bullied me back in the day. They both made a big show of messing with you, basically inviting everyone else to join in. 

“Uh…what? Yer talkin’ awfully polite all of a sudden, kid. Kinda creepy…” 

Whoops! Forgot to put on my other personality. Guess I’ll just roll with it… 

“You’re a veteran adventurer, and you were nice enough to give us some advice. Why wouldn’t I speak to you respectfully?” 

“O-oh. Sure. Guess ya got a point.” Horseface actually got a bit bashful at that. What a pushover. 

“Thanks to you pointing us in the right direction, our first job went off without a hitch.” 

“Say what?” 

I flapped our task card in front of Horseface. The man seemed genuinely impressed. 

“Well, ain’t that something! It’s damn tough to track down a single pet in a city this big, ya know?” 

Yeah, I’m sure it would be ordinarily. All the more so when the pet in question was actually abducted. “Hey, no big deal when you’ve got Dead End Ruijerd on your side.” 

“Damn. For a total fraud, that guy ain’t half-bad!” 

“Shove it, Horseface! He’s the real deal!” 

Slipping into character for a moment, I stalked off toward the reception counters. There, I handed over the task card and our three adventurer cards to the clerk; after a while, she handed back our cards, along with a single rough, crude coin about the size of a 100-yen piece. 

When I made my way back over to the others, I found Horseface and Ruijerd engaged in conversation. 

“Hey, how’d ya find that thing, anyway? Just fer reference.” 

“The same way I track down prey on the hunt.” 

“Ooh. The hunt, huh? What’s the name of yer people again?” 

“…The Superd.” 

“Hah. Sure, sure. I know how it really is, man. That thing you’re wearin’ is a dead giveaway.” Horseface was staring down at Roxy’s pendant, now dangling prominently around Ruijerd’s neck. “I’m Nokopara. Rank C.” 

“Ruijerd, Rank F.” 

“Yeah, I know what rank you are, man! Ah well. If there’s anything ya need to know, feel free to ask. I ain’t stingy when it comes to helpin’ out the newbies! Gahahah!” 

Sounded like a good-natured chat, all things considered. It was kind of nice to see our party’s designated outcast talking to a stranger, but I was also pretty worried he might say too much…or suddenly flip out and start attacking. Hopefully the topic of children wouldn’t come up. 

Eris, seated at Ruijerd’s side, was a concern as well. I’d noticed people coming up to talk to her now and again, but since she couldn’t speak the language, she never responded to them. 

“Wow, that’s a nice sword. Where’d you get it?” 

“…” 

“Hey! Come on! Don’t just ignore me!” One female warrior in particular seemed to be getting irritated at the silent treatment. 

“Can I help you, miss?” 

I stepped in between them to intervene and she just grumbled, “Ah, forget it,” and walked right off. 

At this point, Nokopara turned his attention back to me. “Hey there, kiddo. Ya manage to get yer reward all right?” 

“Yep. One scrap iron coin! This is the first money we’ve ever earned as a party.” 

“Haha! Man, they sure pay peanuts at first.” 

“Come on. That’s no way to talk about a poor child’s life savings.” 

“It’s still peanuts, kid.” 

“Only in a monetary sense.” That sweet little girl had saved up her allowance for the sake of her beloved kitty-cat. When you held that fact in your mind, even a single crude coin like this didn’t seem so insignificant, right? “You obviously don’t understand the real value of this reward. Why don’t you get lost already, huh? Shoo, shoo.” 

“Man, talk about unfriendly. All right then. You keep at it, kiddo!” With a wave of his hand, Nokopara wandered off to a different part of the room. What the heck did that guy even do for a living, anyway? 

In any case, we’d managed to bring our first job as adventurers to a successful conclusion.