"Phew, got a nice long contract there, eh? Pretty sure they'll jump at the chance. Fall's just rolled around, so most hunters have their next gig lined up already, otherwise they can end up with nothin' to do through the whole winter. Most hunters would sell their soul to get a contract that'd carry 'em through to spring."
In fantasy games, the characters just went from adventure to adventure as the whim took them, but real life wasn't so cushy. From what Fez had said about winter contracts being hard to find, I had a suspicion that monsters hibernated in the winter, on account of the decreased food supply.
"That so. About how much would I need to pay a mercenary, for this contract?"
"Well, lessee. These folks are as good as they come, so yer payin' for quality, but on the other hand, the work ain't so hard."
Fez folded his arms and nodded to himself as he ran the numbers.
"You could hire the four of 'em for ten thousand DL per day. That'd run you about nine hundred thousand for three months."
Far cheaper than I'd expected. Cheaper even than employing the villagers. I glanced at Ann for confirmation, and she gave me a furry thumbs-up and a nod.
"Please do ask them. I'd like to start the work as soon as possible. How long do you think it would take for them to get here?"
"No time at all."
"I beg your pardon?"
Surely he'd have to go find them, talk them into it, and then come back. I wasn't aware of any long-distance communication in this world, let alone teleportation. If people could teleport around, peddlers like Fez would be out of business. Obviously there was the Tundra system, and the communication system the labyrinth managers used, but that was exclusive to the labyrinths. More an exception than the norm.
"Remember what I said about work being hard to come by? They had less than nothing to do around the city, so the sad sacks followed me out here to try their luck in Milt."
Wow, reduced to looking for a job out in the sticks. Life wasn't easy for hunters.
"There ain't much work in remote villages, but I'd guess they're at the mayor's place right about now, tryin' to scare up any job they can."
We must have just missed each other.
"I bet he won't have anything for 'em, and they'll come around here before long with their ears droopin'. While we're waitin' for 'em, what say you and me discuss the steep discount on the magic potions you'll be sellin' me tomorrow..."
Fez produced a piece of vellum, and the two of us set to making a deal.
"Say, Ann, perhaps I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that Aoi and Fez are rather friendly. Do you know how they became so close?"
While Fez and I negotiated prices and quantities, Mary and Ann gossiped about us.
"I dunno! I guess they're just like, best friends."
"Hmm, I see. What a strange sight. I never thought to behold a human labyrinth manager and a Daemon peddler who'd built such a rapport. It's somehow soothing."
◇
"Oh, so you're Aoi! Fez just won't shut up about you. My name's Carla. Nice to meetcha!"
The leader of the hunters Fez introduced me to was a cheerful girl with short silver hair and foxlike ears on top of her head. She seemed about the same age as Mary, maybe? Older than Sara, at least. Asking a lady's age was rude no matter what world you were in, and between the variety of Daemon races and the different ways they changed as they grew older, it got hard to guess how old they were just by looking. I decided to stop fretting and just think of her as being the age she looked. You could tell at a glance that she was a hunter. She wore form-fitting leather armor, reinforced here and there with bits of metal, and had a wicked lance strapped to her back. If this were a game, maybe she'd have been a lancer class? That leather armor looked like it'd be good for mobility. They were probably better suited for hunting monsters than plate or chain mail. I mean, it was basically a staple in games. Wearing heavy equipment bogged you down, lowering your agility in exchange for defense.
"Get yer shit together, girl!"
Carla gave me a two-handed wave by way of greeting, a big, goofy grin on her face, but Fez was having none of it. He rapped her on the head with his paw.
"Ouch!"
"How many times have I got to tell ya, first impressions matter! Act ladylike! Be polite!"
"Aww, gimme a break. It's just us cute girls in the group now, so we might as well work with what we got!"
"Now see here, little missy. You can make bank with that airhead act in damn near any other line o' work, but consider what yer doin' here! Ya think this guy's gonna want to hire a buncha scatterbrains to protect his people from monsters?"
For all the world, he looked like a caring older brother scolding his little sister. What a touching sight.
"..."
"..."
I shared a knowing grin with three more girls, all of whom were wearing armor similar to Carla's and standing off to the side, watching from a safe distance. The rest of her party. You could tell from the way they nodded at each other and rolled their eyes that scuffles like this between Fez and Carla were common.
Two of the girls had dark eyes, cat ears, and lustrous hair, both exactly the same shade of black. Probably sisters? The last looked more doglike, perhaps. She was more human than the cat sisters or Carla---kind of a middle ground between normal humans and beastmen like Fez. Her short, tawny hair and her physique were more human, but she had a few distinctly animal features as well, particularly the gray fur covering her skin. I marveled once again at the variety of Daemons around. Even within a single race like the beastmen, there was so much variety. None of them, not even Carla, really had the muscles you'd expect from someone who fought monsters for a living. If anything, they looked rather frail. But perhaps the kind of lithe strength you saw in a cat or a wolf was simply a trait of their race.
"I'm Carla's partner, Ruth. Don't be fooled by the way we look. We're all Rank 7 hunters; you can count on us."
The puppy girl walked up to us with a wry smile on her face, the two cat girls trailing behind. Hunters have ranks?
"This is the first time I've heard of hunter ranks. Mind filling me in on the details?"
"Oh, of course not."
She explained to me that a hunter's rank determined the kind of work she could accept. Hunters improved their rank through a combination of completing jobs and passing examinations. Apprentices were Rank 10, novices were Rank 9, and newly recognized fledgling hunters were Rank 8. Carla's group being entirely Rank 7 meant they were all veterans. You could find hunters from Rank 10 to Rank 8 wandering all over the place looking for work, but from Rank 7 up they were almost exclusively attached to a specific town. The world was a hard place, so they were quick to jump at the promise of stability, once they found a steady job and a long-term residence.
"Gosh, Fez, is that how a gentleman talks to his sister-in-law? Show me a little respect here!"
"Don't you dare bring that up. Acceptin' a brat like you as family was the absolute worst part about gettin' married, I swear."
Well, that certainly clarified their relationship. I did remember hearing how he'd had to retire and get married when he got a girl pregnant. So apparently that was when he'd married Carla's sister.
"Anyway, Aoi, it's awfully nice to meetcha."
As she shook my hand, she turned and stuck out her tongue at Fez.
"Uh, right."
Hmm. Being polite was just good manners at a first meeting, but these were Fez's friends. Maybe I should make an exception.
"Nice to meet you too, Carla. I'm Aoi."
In the end, I decided to be casual.
"That's the spirit! Now, Fez here was tellin' me you wanted to hire us. That true?"
"Yeah. It's a little complicated, though."
So I told them about the labyrinth, the construction, the monsters. Basically the same spiel I'd just given Fez. And when I finished...
"Oh man, you're a lifesaver! We'll be set for winter! I was gonna have to crash at my parents' place if I didn
't find a job soon, and man was that gonna be embarrassing."
"Huh. So, you don't have to answer if this is a touchy subject, but what's so bad about staying with your parents?"
Carla turned to the side, then looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
"Well, it's just a little awkward ever since my sister had her baby. They're not pushing me to get married or anything, but, you know..."
They sounded like nice parents.
"It's just like, the way they look at me, like half worried and half resigned. It bugs me, you know?"
"Oh, I see. Yeah, I know how that feels."
I was familiar with that look. Like, when they were wondering if you were really okay. I remembered it well, from when I'd been hunting for a job.
"All right, then how about we talk details?"
While Fez returned to his cart, looking worn out from his discussion with Carla, the rest of us sat down and discussed the job. In the end, we agreed I would pay the first month's rate in advance, and Carla's group would live in an unoccupied house in Milt and commute with the villagers.
◇
The next day, I went to the market, along with Jenny and the housewives. Barry had suggested I ask a woman from my household to act as mediator and manager for the women who would be preparing and distributing food, but I wasn't exactly from the area, so I didn't have any relatives I could ask to fill that role. Ann was all the family I had, and she simply wasn't qualified. So I'd decided to ask Ann's aunt, Jenny, to take on the management role.
"Aoi, we'll want five sacks of dirt onions. Can't make a good hot soup without onions!"
Jenny enthusiastically ordered me around. Ever since I'd told her she was the only family I could ask, she'd been in a very good mood. I paid the farmer for the sacks of dirt onions, and the housewives started loading them up on the simple wooden carts they were dragging along. Only a few months ago, bartering had been the only system in Milt, but these days most items had price tags on them, which made it much easier to shop. The way seasonings like salt and fish paste had become an indispensable part of their diet ever since I'd started selling them never failed to bring a tear to my eye. I wondered, was this really a positive change for the village? They hadn't seemed particularly inconvenienced by bartering with goods and livestock. The only business that had used currency in those days was Fez's stall.
"Next, we'll need eight sacks of demi corn flour. C'mon now, hop to it."
The housewives loaded up the goods Jenny ordered, one by one. I couldn't believe the first time I saw one of those housewives hauling around a forty-pound sack of produce like it was nothing. They filled up three whole carts with grains and vegetables, and we continued our circuit of the market, eventually reaching the village's communal warehouse.
"Oh, hi, Aoi! I'm almost all sold out here!"
Ann waved a paw at me as I reached our stall. I'd begun selling seasonings to the village on a lark, but they'd quickly turned into an absolute must-have for the villagers. I never brought all that much, but my stock always sold steadily, week after week. I made a pittance off it, but the villagers would always tell me they'd be back the next week for more, so I couldn't let them down now. The villagers had been content to eat simple food for their whole lives, but going back to that insipid diet was unthinkable once they'd gotten a taste for food with more flavor. I hadn't yet shown it off outside the labyrinth, but I was considering introducing them to sugar. For the time being, I was holding back because I doubted their wallets could afford the temptation it would offer. It was much more expensive than salt.
"You okay, Mary?"
Mary, who I had entrusted with looking after Ann while she manned the stall, was sitting in a corner, her legs tucked up and her arms wrapped around herself in the fetal position.
"Aoi, is that you? I have learned that commerce is a foe utterly beyond me. Resilient though I may be, strong though my sword arm may be, I think that I shall never make a customer smile."
Yeah, in retrospect, I couldn't exactly see Mary as a waitress, delivering an order with a smile on her face.
"Nah, don't sweat it. To be honest, when Ann's here, all I do is sit and watch. She's a natural saleswoman."
Ann's ability to handle the villagers far surpassed what could be expected from an outsider like me or Mary. I'd gotten better with them over time, but it wasn't uncommon for someone to bargain for a little extra when they were trading for fresh vegetables from their own fields, or to try to lowball us on something. When they did, I really couldn't deal with it, so leaving everything to Ann was the best option. The problem was, I just didn't know enough. I was studying every aspect of Milt's economy as hard as I could, but I still wasn't up on all the details of the principal crops, especially analyzing their quality and recalling their value in each season. All told, it was probably more complicated than understanding the entire Japanese financial system.
"Even you find this difficult? Thank goodness. I'm not the only one."
Mary gave me a look of relief like I'd handed her a full canteen of water in the middle of the desert. I reached out my hand to her, and she took it firmly and let me pull her to her feet. I felt like we'd finally found some common ground.
"Jeez, you two would be lost without me, wouldn't you?"
Ann gently needled us, a smile on her face. We were quite a pair: a helpless labyrinth manager and his helpless guardian. As Ann looked at us fondly, I reflected on how far I had to go---no, how far we both had to go. Maybe it was just our human nature.
Chapter Two
"Timber!" Ann shouted cheerfully, followed by a crash that made my ears ring. As the tree fell, branches broke and tumbled down alongside it. The trunk was bigger than Ann's waist, and it must've measured five or six meters tall. When it landed, the twigs snapped clean off, and on the ground there now lay convenient piles of branches, leaves, and a single, perfect log, the remains of the massive tree. It seemed the tools created from the
Name: Minor Iron Axe ("The Logger")
Creator: Aoi Kousaka
Durability: 850/850
Special Abilities: Effective against vegetation. Turns target into logs.
The flat ends of the logs were as smooth as if they'd been sanded, and though the rods from the branches varied in length and thickness,, their perfectly round shape made them easy to work with. The axe wasn't particularly sharp, but Ann nonetheless managed to take down a whole tree with a single swing, thanks to her high stats. The villagers gathered around, lifted the neatly shaped log, and set it on a massive wooden rack for the giant and ogre Daemons to use.
A little ways from the lumbering group, Barry, the kobolds, and the dwarves were binding wood together with ivy to make more wooden racks for the giants to use, as well as looping ropes around the logs to pull them into position. Construction had begun, but we weren't ready for digging just yet. According to Barry, we'd need a lot of wood once we started working underground to reinforce holes and passageways, as well as to set up scaffolds. We'd also need it as a raw material for making normal pickaxes and shovels.
Wood was practically the first resource you had to gather in any game where you built stuff, so this seemed pretty reasonable to me. The sprawling forest that lay west of the Great Saredo Rift served as our initial gathering spot.
We'd planned to work together to chop down the trees, but it turned out I'd miscalculated. But that didn't mean I was going to let Ann do all the work alone!
"Timber!" I gripped the axe in both hands, holding it a little lower to the ground than you would a baseball bat, and then twisted my whole body into a swing. I fe
lt the impact ripple through me and watched the tree slowly tip in the opposite direction and fall, turning into logs and rods when it hit the ground.
I mentioned my miscalculation earlier. You see, we were so fast at cutting down trees that we could have easily overwhelmed the transport team. The soil in the forest was soft, and roots interrupted most of the pathways, so pulling things along in carts proved infeasible. Our only option was to load up the largest, strongest villagers with the logs tied to racks on their backs, lashed in place with rope. It took several of the smaller villagers just to load one of them up.
If we'd been using normal axes, we'd need to clean the branches off each individual tree, not to mention turning the trees into workable logs. But thanks to the
Strongest Gamer; Let's Play in Another World Volume 2 Page 13