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Chapter 392: Troublesome Comrades
Translated by Zzonkedd
Edited by Gumihou
Gumi: … I’m going to experiment. I’m going to just edit without putting the footnotes in the text. We’ll see how it goes.
The next morning, we set out for Hirschfield Adventurer’s Guild.
The building was considerably smaller than Carelina’s and was rather noisy, even for the usual morning rush.
I looked around and decided to speak to one of the nearby Adventurers.
“Hey, so, uh, what happened?”
“Hm? Oh, I expect you just arrived in the city with… woah, you have some rather impressive friends with you. Is that a dragon!!?”
“They are my familiars,” I said.
“A Tamer, eh? That’s rather rare. Well, everyone here is upset because of the entry ban to the Southern Forest.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, the Guild sent a B Rank party to the forest to look for a party that was reported missing. This morning, the B Rank party returned, making a big fuss about some monster called the Tyrant Forest Python in the Southern Forest.”
“A Tyrant Forest Python?” I said. “That’s quite a mouthful.”
“Eh, it’s a snake type monster. Though not venomous, it’s a huge beast and known for being a glutton. I heard that when other monsters started disappearing in a forest, there’s probably a Tyrant Forest Python in it.”
“I see, so the missing party…”
“Eaten, most likely,” said the Adventurer with a shrug. “I’m surprised to see the party that investigated the forest came back in one piece, to be honest.”
“I heard they saw a part of its tail before, hehe, deciding to high tail it back here,” sniggered someone else.
It was not really a good pun.
Do I somehow have some connections with giant snakes? After meeting with Fer, who captured big snake monsters for me, encountering the sea serpent, other snakes in the dungeon and now forest-related giant snakes? Well, other snakes were already pretty huge in my opinion, just how big is this ‘huge beast’?
Well, the best person/legendary beast to ask is right next to me.
“”Hey Fer, do you know anything about Tyrant Forest Pythons?”
“”Umu, of course, they are giant snakes with big heads and tiny brains.””
Woah, that’s ruthless.
“”That fool tried to eat me without taking into consideration our power difference,””
Erk, yeah, I can imagine the ending for that kind of move.
“”One actually swallowed me. It pissed me off so I called Thunder Magic down and made a hole in its belly. It didn’t die though, just slunk away like a giant idiot.”
““Woah, it actually survived a Thunder Magic from you?”
“”Mu, they can be quite resilient. I took off the head of one and its body still kept moving,””
“”Ugh, that sounds terrible.”” I’m sensitive against creepy things like that.
“”They are also useless with bad meat,”” was Fer’s final assessment.
I guess, for Fer, that would be one of the most important reasons…
“Ahh!!!”
We all looked up at the shout. It was made by an older looking man with barcode hair, a pronounced hunch around the shoulders and an oddly familiar air of stress hanging about him.
“Y-y-y-you are Mukouda-san, right?!” Barcode Head Man cried.
“Eh? Yes, I am Mukouda…”
“We’re saved! The Gods have yet to abandon us!!!”
The man howled before seizing my arm and dragging me to the stairs to the second floor.
Ah, looks like I have encountered the Guild Master.
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“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Isaac Shelven, Guild Master of Hirschfield Adventurer’s Guild. Pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you too,” I said as I studied the man before me. Unlike other Guild Masters who looked like veterans of the Adventuring ilk, this guy reminded me more of the middle-management people from my previous world
“Well, I shall get to the point. We have an urgent request.”
His eyes looked very shiny and emotional.
I think I could guess-
“Please subjugate that Tyrant Forest Python in the Southern Forest!”
“Rejected,” was Fer’s immediate reply.
“Eh?? Whyy??!!”
“Tyrant Forest Pythons tasted bad.”
“Ah, the Fenrir talked!” Isaac-san jumped, but then his mind registered what Fer just said and he nearly shrieked, “T-t-tyrant Forest Pythons tasted bad?! J-just because of that y-you, er…”
I saw the moment he realised he was yelling at the Legendary Beast Fenrir.
“Ahem, that is, the meat’s no good but the skin and fangs are very valuable. They fetch very high prices!” Isaac desperately tried his best to appeal to Fer.
“Mu, not interested.”
Seeing that he was not getting anywhere with Fer, he switched targets and tried his persuading tactics with me.
“M-Mukouda-san, please! If this goes on, our guild will suffer, people will continue to die and eventually avoid our guild!! ” he wailed.
Well, I say persuade, but this is closer to pleading.
“Please, please, I beg of you!! I don’t want the feudal lord to come down on me!!”
“Ugh, I understand, don’t come so close to my face!”
Really, my initial impression must be correct, from the way Isaac wailed and complained about his superiors, he really did look like an exhausted manager who had suffered complaints from the customers and still faced discipline from the bosses.
“Also, why are they blaming me of all people? That’s too unreasonable, I never even wanted to be a Guild Leader in the first place!”
“Haah…”
I have no idea whether it was my Japanese corporate background or something, but something must have snapped with the Guild Master and he began to pour out his troubles to me.
“Won’t you listen to my tale? As my name indicates, I am noble-born. Not that a fourth son of a baron is worth anything, but it’s still good enough to send me to a school for wealthy merchants and minor nobilities. The school provided a wide variety of lessons, swordsmanship, magic and more.
Unfortunately, I am mediocre in both magic and swordsmanship, which meant my future remained uncertain. Moreover, with medium grades, the best I could hope for was a job as a civil servant.
Anyway, all I wanted was a decent job with a decent salary to support a decent life. Somehow or other, I ended up working as a Guild Master. As you must know, the main issue with Adventurer’s Guild is getting a leader who could manage things. It is rare to have Guild Masters who are both good at killing monsters and tackling paperwork.
In the end, a lot of the paperwork is usually dumped on the Vice Guild Master. In fact, I had been applying for the position of Vice Guild Master but eventually somehow ended up being the Guild Master! Which was not a bad thing since the higher position meant better money.
To make a long story short, I ended up fixing the Adventurer’s Guild so well that I became the Guild Master at 28. I was fine with this, I was applying my paperwork skills properly and was promoted. I thought of settling in the village and finding a wife but three years later, the upper management people moved me to a different city to a different Adventurer’s Guild.
They want me to ‘rehabilitate’ that Guild. Anyway, whatever, I fixed up that place in just two years, but I was moved again! Mukouda-san, this is my fourth Guild!” Isaac-san howled. “I am already 37 years old!”
“Eh? What?” I blinked. Then, my eyes irresistibly travelled to the top of his head…
“You thought I am much older, didn’t you? Well, I don’t blame you, the exhaustion is getting me, I am dying…”
This… this… isn’t this the very definition of a black company?!
“Hey, Mukouda-san… should I just quit?”
Err…
“Sure, the salary’s decent, but I have no time to spend it. No time to court a woman. The only other single person I know at this age is a priest. A man of the cloth who had devoted his life and body to the church.”
37 and single, sounds like a comrade, alright. I am a bit younger but I can imagine the horror of being single at a late age. Suddenly, I felt very sorry for him. This poor overstressed guy.
“Hey, you guys.”
“…Mu, what? Is it over? Are we leaving?”
“…no, in fact, we are accepting the Tyrant Forest Python mission.”
“Oi, didn’t you hear me? The meat’s no good.”
“Yes, yes, but we should help out Isaac-san. He’s going through some life crisis now.”
“Humph, why should I care?”
“”Well, would it make you care if I let you have Dragon meat?””
“”Nanu?””
“”Did someone say Dragon meat?””
“Ah, well, it all depends, of course…” I was acting all coy now.
“Accept, on the condition that the meat served must be thickly sliced. None of that paper-thin things. I want my meat thick and juicy!”
“Yes, yes, so you want thickly sliced steaks. So long as you fulfil your end of the deal, we will eat well tonight.”
“Good, let’s go.”
[Gumihou: Ending has been scrapped. More than 500 words deleted]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change passive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repetitive or Pointless Information… starting to delete pointless scenes now
Deleted small talk scene.
Deleted Mukouda’s lengthy deduction of Barcode Head = Guild Master
Deleted extra ‘it taste bad’ scenes (it makes Fer sound whiny instead of legendary)
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag
[8] Creative Licence Taken