Mushoku Tensei:Web Chapter 30 - Baka-Tsuki
On the second day when we were outside the guild, a lizard-faced man's voice reached out to us.
[Ah, hello. We have raised our rank.]
Who is this guy?
Just when I am thinking of that, the bug-eyed woman stands up and I finally remember they are the kidnappers from yesterday.
I think their names are Jaril and Veskel.
Recognizing faces is difficult because there are many lizard-faced people in this town.
One of the reasons why I did not recognize them is also because they are wearing different clothes from yesterday.
Yesterday, Person A wore clothes that were ordinary.
Today, Adventurer A is wearing leather armor that is ordinary.
Even though these two attires are ordinary looking, the impressions they give to others are very different.
[Ah, Jaril-san, thank you for your efforts.]
[W-what's with, the way you're talking, this is uncomfortable.......]
[It's keigo. Should I not use that?]
[N-never mind.]
He stares at me for a moment and moves his eyes away.
[Veskel-san, please give me your guidance from today onwards.]
[Ah...... Yes.]
Veskel is still afraid of Ruijerd.
Ruijerd is still glaring at them.
Well, that cannot be helped. Just to add on, she is also wearing an adventurer's outfit.
[Then let us go in.]
[Ah, sure.]
Jaril displays an uneasy expression and nods at my words.
When we are about to enter the guild, the sharp eyed Horse-faced man sees us and walks over.
[Hey!]
[....... Hi.]
This guy is also lurking at the guild today......?
He's really not doing any work at all, right?
[Ara, today you're with ?P-Hunter?.]
[Y-yo, Nokopara, it's been a long time.]
It seems the horse-faced guy and lizard face know each other.
[It certainly has been a long time. I heard about it, Jaril. You raised your rank to C. Are you fine with that? If you are Rank C you won't be able to find pets anymore right?]
Nokopara says that and compares us together with his eyes. The horse-faced man neighs.
[I see. No wonder you did well with the job, your request was done with ?P-Hunter?'s help right?]
P-Hunter seems to be Jaril's party name.
I see, this is good!
[Yes! We met each other yesterday when we were searching for the pet! They also taught us the technique to search for the pets!]
I randomly throw in a few lines of lies.
[Ha, ha, the cowardly Jaril finally has his own student! And it's the fake Supard, hahaha.....!]
This misunderstanding is really good for us.
This fellow is really simple.
The horse-faced man laughs for a while and suddenly looks behind Jaril.
[I say, where's Roman, what happened to him?]
[Ah, hm... Roman is... dead.]
[Is that so, that's really a pity.]
Roman should be the guy's name whom Ruijerd killed yesterday. Nokopara only reacted faintly after hearing about that guy's death.
Among the adventurers, it's probably not a big deal when someone dies. Could it be only me who is finding it to be a big deal?
When it comes down to it, Jaril and Veskel were not particularly concerned when Roman got killed as well.
[But since Roman is dead, why are you raising your rank up? Isn't he the strongest in your party?]
[T-that's...]
Jaril looks at me once.
Nokopara neighs, no, he snorts and nods.
[Ah----- Hoh-----, I see, you don't need to say anymore. So it's like this----. Since you have an apprentice, even if it's just a little it's still pride!]
Nokopara arbitrarily comes to an understanding on his own, noisily pats on Jaril's back and returns to the interior of the guild. Jaril sighs with relief.
But what's with that guy, sticking to us from day to night. Could it be possible that he likes me...?
No, maybe in his eyes there's only Ruijerd, meaning...
No, I am just kidding.
[Well, let's take a look at the requests.]
When we enter the guild, there are still people who cast curious glances at us.
I should just ignore them for now.
It is better to behave like we are apprentices. I ask Jaril as we both look at the requests from D to B ranks.
[What's the difference between gathering and harvesting?]
[Eh? Ah, hmm, harvesting is pointing to plants, gathering is most likely pointing to magical creatures...]
Jaril gives a vague reply, but it certainly seems to feel that way.
Gathering refers to living creatures, and non-living creatures is harvesting.
As examples, the request for gathering is written as,
=======================
C
- Job: Gather fur pelts
- Reward: 6 Iron coins
- Job Contents: Pack coyote fur pelts * 20
- Location: Outside of town
- Duration: None
- Time limit: None
- Name of Requester: Adventurer's guild.
- Notes: The fur pelts are running low. Please assist us. Do not take down this request, just bring your gathered fur pelts to the counter.
==========================
As I read I suddenly remember, the materials that were sold to the merchants are 4 iron coins. They really underpaid us...
No, perhaps this request's rewards are overly high, usually the transactions for such materials are not that high.
[Ruijerd-san.]
[What is it?]
[I must apologize, I think we should earn money and raise our levels at the same time.]
[... Why are you telling me this?]
[If we do this, we need to postpone that matter for a while.]
Even though I informed Veskel and Jaril to spread Ruijerd's name, I do not have much expectations for them.
I have considered about it.
They have courteously received the missions with respect, and so I will basically not interfere with their actions.
Without interfering, I will not be able to oversee their actions.
If someone sees them do any criminal acts and their claims are that Ruijerd forced them to do the acts, they will be laughed at because their ranks are higher than him, as well as the fact that he is also seen as a fake by others.
[I see. I got it.]
After receiving Ruijerd's assent, Jaril and I discussed the requests that we received.
After greeting the gatekeeper, we walked outside of town.
Pack Coyotes, Acid Wolves, Gran Tortoise and Giant Rock Turtle.
These Magical creatures are our targets at the outskirts of the town.
We are to gather the fur pelts of the Pack Coyotes, Acid Wolfs fangs and tails, the Grand tortoise's meat, and the Magical stone from the Giant Rock turtle.
First of all, we will ignore the Grand Tortoise as the meat is too heavy.
The priority will be the Giant Rock Turtle, as the Magical stones from them are small and it can be sold.
Even though our priority is on the Giant Rock Turtle's Magical stone (which is a pretty good conversion for money), but there are just too few. They will also not appear near the town.
In the end, the Pack Coyotes were chosen as our focus, since a single battle allows us to hunt them in a group, thus it's easier to earn money from them.
Our request is gathering the Pack Coyotes fur pelts. The advantage in hunting them is to allow us to gather the materials quickly, and considering the time to search for the enemies and skin them, hunting them is like hunting the Acid Wolf.
Of course, once we see an Acid Wolf we will also hunt it. Even if we did not receive requests related to the Acid Wolf, it is better to gather the materials first before waiting for such a request. When we do receive a request, we can simply bring it to the counter and finish everything.
The largest group for Pack Coyotes is at most 10 of them together, and considering the time to search and skin them, we can't hunt very many in a day.
At first I thought that it will turn out that way.
After we killed the initial batch of Pack Coyotes and skinned them, Ruijerd collected their bodies and brought them to one spot.
When I was contemplating what he was doing,
[Can you use Wind Magic to carry the scent of blood?]
Ruijerd's query answered my question.
It is to use the scent of blood to lure them.
I follow his request and use Wind Magic to change the wind directions to blow everywhere.
[Even though we can't hunt the Giant Rock Turtles in this manner, the surrounding Pack Coyotes will gather together.]
It ended up how he just said.
On that day we ended up hunting over 100 Pack Coyotes, and it feels like we have hunted all of the surrounding Pack Coyotes.
Well, that possibility should be zero.
But this is hard labor.
Ruijerd and Eris kept killing the endlessly approaching Pack coyotes, while I skinned them of their fur.
After 30 of them, my hands felt like lead and my shoulders started to hurt, and I was a little nauseous from the smell of the blood.
It will be much easier if we killed them and they all turned to Magical stones....
Even though I kept complaining, I still continued to work.
But after 70 of them I reached my limit and exchanged with Eris.
Using Magic to kill the Pack Coyotes was much easier than skinning them.
In order to take them down and not do any damage to the fur, I made a minor adjustment to lower the strength of the magic, and killed them carefully one by one.
As expected I am more suited to use my mind to do such work.
After skinning around 30 of them, Eris started complaining.
She is indeed unsuited to do this type of laborious work.
I considered to have Ruijerd skin the rest of them, but there was enough at hand, and we needed to separate them into batches to carry to town.
[Wait, we need to burn the bodies first.]
Ruijerd says before we started moving them.
[Burn? Are we going to eat them?]
[No, Pack Coyote tastes terrible. We need to burn the bodies and bury them.]
If we leave the bodies, other Magical creatures will eat them and increase in population. But if we just simply burned them, they will still get eaten by other creatures.
Also, if we simply bury them deep down in the ground, they might become Zombie Coyote.
In order to prevent such a thing, it is necessary to follow the procedure of burning first and then burying it.
Just cleanly take their fur pelts > Take the risk of letting them become Zombie Coyote > The guild does a request of suppressing them > Remove them.
I am thinking of this money linked process, but I am stopped by Ruijerd.
It seems that it is forbidden to intentionally increase the number Magical Creatures.
I wish that someone would write this local rule somewhere.
[But we didn't do this step along the way right?]
[If it's just a few there should be no problem.]
Even though I am uncertain of where to draw the line, the current amount of bodies here might be the start of a plague.
Since there is no special reason to refuse, I burn the bodies into charcoal.
The sun has already set when we finished transporting all the fur pelts. Today's hunt should end here.
I worked a lot today, and I really want to go back to the inn and rest.
But do we need to continue doing this endless gathering tomorrow?
Even though I really want to take a good rest tomorrow.
[We really earned a lot today! Let's keep at this pace tomorrow!]
Eris is full of energy.
I can't complain in front of this Eris.
Three days later, [Dead End] rose up to E rank. That was pretty fast.
[Good work.]
I say an appreciative line to Jaril, and handed 10% of today's earnings to him.
[T-thank you...]
I do not think it is a big figure, but this amount of money should be enough for them.
After I inquired about a few things from them, I got to know they are different from the other adventurers.
They seem to have a fixed job in this town.
[What kind of job?]
[It's a pet store.]
I see. To sell them and kidnap them later on.
They are really corrupted merchants.
[Don't do too many bad things.]
[I know.]
In the beginning, they captured the wild animals in the town and gave them a little training to become pets in their pet store.
His race, the Lugonia, seems to be quite good at training wild animals. Their training methods have been handed down from ancient times, and they are able to make everything from wild dogs to the most prideful beast submit.
Hmm, hmm. They are really an incredible race.
If Ruijerd and Eris are not here, I would not have stayed silent and would have certainly said [Please teach me this technique at any cost], nuzzle my head against him and become his apprentice.
Well, leaving that aside, the pet shop is certainly a good job that combines the job of removing harmful animals too.
The adventurer's guild should be their side job.
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