Proofreader: Xemul

To strike while the iron was still hot, the group went to Ivy immediately after they had secured the participation of Nim, a silver rank adventurer, and went through the procedures for accepting the commission to explore the area around Mt. Fire Flute.

Ivy did not think there would be any problem with their party accepting the commission as long as they met the conditions set forth by the Adventurers’ Guild, and she registered Nim as the party leader.

“I’m the leader?”

“Please understand that this is a necessary step in the process.”

Lapis quickly gave a short explanation of the situation to Nim, who sounded puzzled as she pointed to herself. She was collaborating with their party to receive a share of the rewards in return, so suddenly being assigned the role of party leader, something she had not expected, was probably perplexing to her. However, after listening to Lapis’ explanation, she patted her chest as if she felt a little relieved.

The main contents of the commission request were to explore the area around Mt. Fire Flute and to confirm the existence of a dragon that was said to live in the mountain. There had been no reports of encounters with dragons in the past, so if they did not find any, they could simply report so.

“Are there really dragons?”

Loren questioned as they prepared to leave.

The 40% non-returning rate meant that exploring parties were wiped out at a fairly high rate, but another way to look at it is that as many as 60% of the parties returned without encountering any dragons.

If the only reason for non-returning was encountering a dragon, then the rate of dragon encounters could be considered fairly high. However, no one could say for certain that dragon encounters were the cause .

Although reports of a dragon living in Mt. Fire Flute might be no more than a legend, and there were no reports of monsters in the area, adventurers who had explored the place had reported that there were other types of monsters living there. If the parties of silver rank adventurers had been wiped out by those monsters or some other accidents that they might encounter on the way to the mountain, the likelihood of dragons being there instantly decreased.

“Unless Emery gave us incorrect information, they should certainly be there.”

Stroking the horse pulling the wagon they had hired to calm it down, Loren shrugged at Lapis’ answer, then tossed the luggage he had packed into the back of the wagon.

Nearby, Nim, who was packing up her belongings, was muttering something with a rather complicated look on her face. Listening more closely, Loren found that Nim was muttering something along the lines of regretting her decision to participate in the exploration of Mt. Fire Flute when he heard that it was an easy money-making job.

Loren thought it was not unreasonable. At least, if you looked at the numbers, there was no way that a job with a non-returning rate of 40% was an easy money-making job.

“Just like Ritz said, ‘I’ll get married when this job is done’ are words of death. I may never be Chuck’s wife.”

Hearing Nim said such things in a somewhat hollow voice, the corners of Loren’s mouth turned down. But there was no guarantee that they would make it out alive, so no words of comfort could come out of his mouth.

“Don’t jinx it.”

Despite having such thoughts, Nim hadn’t given up the commission, and as Loren felt grateful for her integrity, he recalled his mercenary days.

As Nim said, there was also a jinx among mercenaries that those who said things like ‘I’ll quit the mercenary’s life and get married in my hometown when this job is over’ were likely to die on the next battlefield. Or at least it was rumored to be so. But if you had lived on the battlefield for a long enough time, the impression you had of those who said such a thing would be somewhat strong in your memory, making it seem as if only those who said such a thing died. In reality, those who died would die no matter what they said or did the day before, and those who did not die survived no matter what they did.

“That’s right. In fact, if it is only about dragons, there are items at hand that can help us avoid a battle.”

“There are such convenient things too?”

Even though encounters with dragons were rare, if there were tools that could help them avoid a battle with dragons, Loren thought that it surely would not hurt to have one as a talisman.

Just as he was thinking about how expensive such a tool might be, Lapis rummaged through her luggage and pulled out a scroll from inside. Curious as to whether it was a tool that would allow them to avoid combat with the dragon, he looked at Lapis’ hand, but the scroll she was holding, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be nothing more than a scroll. He wondered if there was some generally unknown dragon-repelling magic recorded in there, but Lapis’ answer was different.

“Actually, this is it. I got this scroll from a certain Ancient Dragon.”

Nim’s eyes widened at the mention of an Ancient Dragon. It was the type of creature that never seeing one in your whole life would not be surprising for the average adventurers, even silver rank ones. That was why Nim’s reaction was natural.

Loren and Gula looked at the scroll Lapis had brought out without any particular surprise. The Ancient Dragon Lapis had mentioned was probably the one who lived in the demon realm, Emery, whom they had met before on a different job. The scroll was probably the one Emery had pulled out from her pile of treasures to show Lapis information about the Ancient Dragon living in the human realm.

But Loren had no idea how it could be used to avoid dragons.

“Some kind of valuable scroll?”

As Nim asked, Loren wondered if there was such a thing as magic to ward off dragons, but Lapis shook her head and explained about the scroll she had taken out.

“No. The scroll itself is imbued with an Ancient Dragon’s magic power, so at least we won’t be attacked out of the blue if we have it.”

It seemed that Emery, who thought Loren’s party might eventually visit her kin living in the human realm, gave Lapis the scroll to use as a talisman.

If the Ancient Dragon recognized them as intruders and attacked them, they would be killed in an instant without any chances to defend themselves. However, if the dragon understood that they were acquaintances of the other Ancient Dragons thanks to the nature of the magic of the scroll, the likelihood of them being attacked would be very low.

Lapis’ plan was that, once they could establish a conversation with the Ancient Dragon, they would be able to obtain information about the dragons on Mt. Fire Flute with little effort and accomplish the commission without too much trouble.

“Does it really work?”

If things went as well as Lapis thought they would, it might; but if not, they might end up being attacked by dragons. Loren looked at her with doubt, but Lapis answered in a matter-of-fact tone.

“It was given to me directly by Emery, and she personally endowed it with her magic power, you know. If this doesn’t work, nothing will.”

“So if we carry that thing, we can meet the dragon on Mt. Fire Flute, then our job will be done, right? Seems like an easy job to me.”

Even though there was information about monsters living around Mt. Fire Flute, monsters lived everywhere, and living in a certain place wouldn’t make them more dangerous than living elsewhere. The information that Ivy had given me beforehand indicated that the only confirmed monsters were orcs and ogres, which, while not weak, were not particularly powerful. Loren thought they could handle them. He knew that his outlook was rather naive, but the worst case scenario was that they all get killed.

“They won’t come out in droves again and make things unmanageable, will they?”

Gula was somewhat skeptical, but it was hard to imagine that they would encounter a mass outbreak of demons so many times, and Loren did not want to think about it. Even so, it was true that they tended to be chased by a large group of different things, from insects, undead, goblins, to humans.

“I don’t even want to think about a horde of orcs.”

Orcs were very extremely ugly to the human eyes, and stinky. The idea of a large number of orcs descending upon them was something Loren didn’t even want to think about.

“If there were such an outbreak, wouldn’t women in every single house in the neighborhood be taken away? And wouldn’t that be a terrible thing?”

The practice of using women of other races for reproducing was also observed in goblins, but the orcs went even further. Goblins attacked adventurers they happened to encounter or villages they happened to come across and kidnapped the women. Orcs, on the other hand, were in the habit of aggressively attacking female adventurers and underprivileged villages at all hours of the day and taking only women away with them. Because they were so aggressive and habitual in this practice, they were so hated by female adventurers that they were always at the top of the list of monsters that they found repulsive.

“Even in the Ancient Kingdom, breeding of orcs was the only thing not allowed. If they had meddled with it, it might have been the reason for their downfall.”

As soon as the word ‘orcs’ was mentioned, Gula, with a grin on her face, shared her knowledge.

Loren made a horrified face; the idea of a country being destroyed by an orc outbreak sounded bad enough, but it wouldn’t be impossible if the technology to breed orcs were to be established. But neither Loren nor Lapis nor Nim, who was working, took up the topic.

“Gula? You know a lot.”

“Eh? Ah, well, I’m a magician, so I had to learn about the Ancient Kingdom, you know.”

Nim stared at Gula with admiration, and Gula began to stutter some excuses. She might have meant it as a light-hearted remark, but in the presence of Nim, a so-called outsider, it was an imprudent one. Neither Loren nor Lapis offered her a helping hand; they both ignored her glances and continued with the packing work. Gula seemed very flustered by their attitude, which seemed to be telling her to clean up her own mess with a hint of annoyance, but she managed to fool Nim somehow or other.

In the meantime, the loading of the cargo was finished, and the group, with Lapis as the driver, Loren sitting next to her, and Gula and Nim sitting in the back, slowly drove down the streets of Kapha toward the south gate.