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We reached a town (3)
Summary of the previous chapter:
After finding an inn, the 3 bought miscellaneous items needed for adventurers and headed towards the adventurer guild.
The adventurer guild was located near a gate in a different direction from the one we entered through.
Judging from the position of the sun — according to Haruka, there’s only one sun in this world as well, and it rises from the east and sets in the west — we entered from the eastside and the gate we’re close to right now is the southside.
The building for the guild itself was very normal, about twice the size of the inn we are staying in. On the front, a board was hanged with letters on it instead of any drawing.
We obediently followed behind Haruka as she led us without any hesitation. When I asked her about it, I got to know that she had made sure of the location properly at the general store.
As expected of Haruka, very reliable.
When I said “As expected of someone who has general knowledge”, she scolded me with “that’s more common sense than general knowledge”.
Hmm, I guess we’re relying on Haruka a bit too much.
Thinking that, when I looked to the side, Touya was looking right at me.
We exchanged glances and nodded.
“Alright, leave this one to us, Haruka!”
“Right! We can do at least this much. They might make light of a woman, after all!”
“Wait, wait, you two!”
As we went ahead of her saying that, Haruka pulled us back and stopped us.
“It’s fine! Just leave the negotiations to me for the time being, alright? You guys just need to work hard on everything else, okay?”
Saying that, Haruka pointed at the sack Touya was carrying on his back.
…..In other words, manual or physical labor, is it, Haruka-san?
“Besides, you two just standing behind me has more than enough meaning. I am just a beautiful, frail elf, right? Probably…. I haven’t actually seen my face yet.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You look like you could be easily kidnapped—your appearance, that is.”
“A beautiful frail elf–leaving aside the substance.”
“…..What are you getting at?”
Haruka glared at us, looking somewhat discontent, to which we shrugged our shoulders and laughed.
“Nah, there’s no way Haruka is frail. Even in Japan, you were talented and now you also have more skills.”
“I don’t think you’re manly but it’s a bit different than frail, don’t ya think?”
After all, this girl was learning Aikido saying it was for self-defense.
She’s strong willed and I have also heard stories of her saving younger classmates from playboys.
“Kugh, I can’t deny it! ….No, no, that’s not what it’s about. The problem is the appearance, alright? I will let you guys be my bodyguard.”
“Understood~. I will do my best to be of use.”
And as such, we ultimately entered the guild with Haruka as the lead but the contents inside were anticlimactic.
About two-thirds of the huge hall beyond the entrance was taken up with work stuff like counters and what not, which gave the impression that it was a public office at first.
In the remaining space, there were tables lined up like in a cafeteria and people who looked like adventurers were drinking and having fun conversing with each other.
Surprisingly, there were no dead drunk adventurers and it wasn’t chaotic inside.
When I asked Haruka about this later on, she told me that the guild decreases one’s rank without mercy if they do something stupid and in extreme cases, they also excommunicate and put those adventurers on the blacklist. As such, in the guild where there’s a lot of employees looking, there’s next to no one who would do anything out of order.
For example, is it like drinking heavily in front of your boss and doing stupid things?
Well, I guess if you really wanted to drink heavily, you would normally go to a pub rather than the guild.
“Hello. We wanted to register as adventurers, is now a good time?”
Haruka headed towards one of the counters.
One where a smiling, nice looking lady was in charge.
“Yes, of course. The two at the back as well? You would need 900 rheas for 3 people, is that okay?”
“Yes, please.”
In exchange for the 9 big silver coins Haruka handed over, the lady passed over 3 pieces of paper.
“Please fill in those forms and submit them. Do you need an explanation?”
“No, it’s alright.”
There was only 1 pen so I waited for Haruka to be done with her one before starting on mine.
Although I say that, we only had to write our name, race and PR.
Haruka wrote “A little magic and archery skills” so I imitated her and wrote “A little magic and spear skills”. Seems Touya went with “Swordsmanship”.
Hmmm, it’s a weird feeling — being able to write other characters just like how I could write Japanese. As expected of a God’s prowess.
Leaving normal conversation aside, only a minority of the people can write, and so being able to normally write like this might just be a huge service from the Evil God, just as he claimed.
“Yes, it’s all right. Please wait a moment… By the way, are you people healthy?”
The lady brought out 3 cards and asked while doing the work.
Having no idea what this sudden question meant, we just tilted our head in confusion.
“Eh? Yes, I don’t think we have any problems but, why do you ask?”
“No, it’s just that, weirdly enough, several people around your age suddenly passed away today… Even in this guild, 2 people passed away, which caused a little disturbance.”
Suddenly passing away… around our age.
I feel like we have an idea of what it’s about……
“O-ohh? That’s certainly scary. Do you know of the cause behind their death?”
Haruka asked while her gaze wandered.
She was weirdly failing at maintaining a poker face but probably because the lady was concentrating on the work at hand, she didn’t quite notice and answered right away.
“That’s the thing, we have no idea. 1 of them just suddenly fell on the table and died. The other came in through the door, looked around and then collapsed. Neither of them had external wounds or any poison in their system. The disturbance was about it being an infectious disease but there are no signs of that either.”
Letting out a sigh, the lady passed the cards which she had just completed filling up.
The cards had our name written on them. They were made of metal and were about as thick as an ATM card.
Other than that, there were some decorations and “Issued by Raffin Adventurer Guild” written on it. It looked like a very normal metallic plate.
Judging from the way it’s written, is this city’s name Raffin?
“Yes, and that completes the registration. It seems like similar cases are occurring throughout the city so please take care, alright?”
“Thank you very much. However, what should we be looking out for, exactly?”
“That’s true…. I guess, your health?” said the lady, now tilting her head a bit in confusion as well.
“Right, thank you very much.” replied Haruka with a bitter smile, expressing her gratitude.
And then, as if she had just recalled, Haruka added,
“Ah, right. Is this city also accepting the collecting of medicinal plants?”
“Yes, of course. Here, the forest in the east and south are the places to collect. It’s a bit far but I recommend the eastern forest for newcomers. That’s because there’s not many monsters there–But I guess there’s no need to worry as you have two elves.”
The lady pointed towards the entrance through which we entered while talking about the eastern forest.
I mean, sure, there was a forest but it was quite far, right?
“Ah, no, thank you for the advice. We plan on progressing with caution at first so that kind of info is really helpful.”
“Is that so? That’s a relief. Good luck.”
“Yes.”
““Thank you very much.””
Touya and I also expressed our gratitude to the smiling lady and left the guild afterwards.
Now that I think of it, although she wasn’t exactly beautiful, she is the first woman we talked to in this world.
—No, I mean, it’s not like one would frequently meet beautiful people just because it’s an ‘isekai’.
This ain’t a harem light novel or anything, after all.
“Now then, let me explain some things about the guild on our way back to the inn. Although I say that, it’s not really that different from what you two are imagining so I will keep it simple.”
After walking for a while, Haruka stopped at an edge of a street and brought out the card given to us a while ago.
“This is the guild card. It’s somewhat firm since it’s made with some alloy but it serves no special purpose. Just works as an ID card. Your name and the guild’s city’s name is written.
Although there’s nothing written on the back now, after we start accepting quests from the guild and our credibility starts increasing, we will get stamps… like, seals? And the more we get those, the better we’ll be treated and the more quests we can take.”
Hmm. So, I guess it is just how it looks. Although I didn’t know the purpose of the backside till she said so.
“Does it not have any hi-tech feature, like, ‘can not be used by others’ or ‘shows the status’ or something?”
“Nope, none. There’s no way one can add features like those to a card which costs about 3000 yen. Anyone can register, after all.”
Haruka readily negated Touya’s question.
So no standard light novel function, eh?
I mean, I can understand the part that it would definitely cost a lot if those features could be implemented.
“The highest amount of seals you can get is 10 and it acts as your rank, alright? In other words, we’re currently ranked zero. Like, underlings.
You can’t remove the seals so if you were to ‘cause trouble, a penalty will be added to decrease your rank. Sure, you can raise it again but the penalty seal will always remain there so your credibility will decrease.”
“That’s like having a criminal record. A criminal record which you can’t erase sure sounds scary. Need to be careful.”
In a sense, it’s quite well thought out.
Precisely because there’s no need for any letter of introduction, the people who ‘cause trouble can be eliminated even though they can register with this system.
“Well, if it’s not anything too bad, it seems they do give out warnings and so rank drops are somewhat rare. And…. well, any question?”
This is comparatively quite common for adventurers, huh?
Although game-like elements are very few and far between.
“You asked about the medicinal plants, what was that about? Is it the standard medicinal plant gathering quest?”
“Yep. Most cities would normally take in medicinal plants if you were to collect them. That’s OK even if you’re not an adventurer. However, you can’t just simply collect medicinal plants just beside the city. There’s no one who would pay for that, right?”
Yep, that’s quite obvious. That remuneration would be equal to a child’s pocket money as even a kid could do that much.
“How much can you earn, on average? Can you maintain a living with it?”
“Right… Let’s put our hopes in Touya’s [Appraisal] and Nao’s [Hawk’s Eye]. After finding a target, we could use my [Dissect] and we can slowly save up.”
Haruka said, after pondering for a while. Judging from her way of speaking, it seems we have to work quite hard, otherwise it will be tough to maintain a living.
The reason why the income from a job anyone can do is low here is probably the same as the previous world.
I want to at least earn enough such that Haruka doesn’t have to hesitate to buy a change of clothes.
I mean, I also don’t want us to own only the clothes we are wearing right now.
“Even then, the rate would be slow, eh…? You said that physical laborers are also dispatched from the adventurer guild, how good is the income?”
“You might be able to earn some with that but it’s not suited for Nao or me. It’s a test of stamina, after all.”
It’s physical labor, after all.
It’s not suited for elves no matter how you think about it.
“There’s the option of us 2 collecting medicinal plants and you doing the physical labor jobs but you don’t want that, right? Besides, I think it’d be better if we were to stick together, thinking level-wise as well.”
“That reminds me, the Evil God said something about the level increasing but… is that only the skills?”
From the data listen in the status menu, we found out that there’s a level system for some skills but there was no such thing as a character level.
“Hmmm, the skill system itself isn’t really recognized in this world’s general knowledge. There’s no way to check, after all.”
Meaning, the reason we can acquire and check skills is because of the Evil God, eh?
Oho? It feels like the Evil God is about to level up to Evil God-sama, hmm?
“However, there’s this common knowledge that if you workout or beat monsters, you will get stronger.”
Yep, that’s natural.
Even in the previous world, one could become stronger if they trained.
I guess we have no choice but to check how that curve goes, huh?
“By the way, the lady before was saying monsters as well but, what are the monsters here like?”
“First, the creatures which are called monsters have a magic stone inside of them. Generally, it is recommended that they are exterminated. You can get a reward for defeating monsters but a proof of the subjugation is necessary.
Also, they won’t just magically disappear once you kill them so you have to dissect their body to get the materials or the magic stone.”
“Uuh.  My tolerance towards grotesque stuff is low.”
“Me too….”
“I haven’t processed anything other than fish either, you know? But we have no other choice, do we? I will be doing it for the time being but you two should get used to it as well, alright?!”
Right, that’s how it’s going to be, eh?
I would have been more surprised if she said “I have hunting experience” or “dissecting is my specialty” since our environment while growing up was basically the same, being childhood friends.
It’s no good as a man to leave dissecting to a woman, even though she has the [Dissect] ability and I am not good with gore….
“Yes…”
“We will do our best…”
As Haruka puffed up with pride, us men just nodded, being dejected.