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nCh. 49: Hearing about Destruction

nA rumor was going around, that a city had been destroyed.

n‘They’re probably talking about Hanza, right?’

nAs the winged girl floating in the corner of his sight pointed out, Loren, sitting alone in the Adventurers Guild’s bar, was staring at the cup of cheap alcohol in his hand.

nA village being destroyed wasn’t that uncommon, but a whole city falling was bound to be a ruckus.

nUnlike villages, which popped up and disappeared all the time, a city was there for a long time and was more advanced, as well as have a name for itself. If something like that were to be destroyed, there would be many casualties of people and a.s.sets.

nOn top of that, Loren wasn’t completely unrelated when it came to the city of Hanza, and during his last quest, it was destroyed by a certain someone.

nThere wasn’t a public announcement, and it was under investigation from neighboring nations, but the city of Hanza and the villages around it were destroyed completely. Although it was on a small scale, a city-state had been destroyed, and the other city-states in the region glared at the remaining land.

nAll of them saw it as an opportunity to expand their territory, but Hanza shared borders with several of them. People at the guild were betting on which one would attempt to seize it first.

nOf course, if they do it poorly, they will receive the label of an aggressor nation, and for now, none of the nations were too keen on getting their hands on the land, where the citizens all disappeared for an unknown reason, at a moment’s notice. Apparently, the race to investigate and check out the empty land had developed to where bloodshed had started, but that was something Loren wasn’t aware of.

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n‘Liquor tastes pretty weird. This is the first time I’ve had any.’

nThe girl who was curiously looking inside the cup in Loren’s hand was the daughter of the president of Hanza, who Loren was supposed to take back to the city.

nThe girl named Shayna, during the quest that Loren was on, was turned into the highest ranking undead, a >, by whoever it was that destroyed the nation, and was defeated by Loren.

nOf course, no matter how experienced of a mercenary Loren was, there was no way he could defeat a > on his own, and there were different reasons why he was able to, but anyways, this girl who had been defeated by Loren, cut off her spirit from her body and escaped death by possessing Loren’s body, and has been doing so until the present.

n“You can taste it?”

nShayna raised a finger to her lips when Loren unthinkingly muttered out loud.

nLoren was the only one who could see the girl.

nAt first, Loren thought she was a ghost floating around, but when he asked her, she said that she was just information reflected on his eyes, and it wasn’t that her spirit was right there in front of him.

nWhen he asked her why, she said that if she let her spirit out, people who could see spirits could see her, and her existence would be exposed.

nShayna’s spirit currently existed within Loren’s spirit, and when looked at from the outside, although they might feel something strange, Loren’s spirit acted as a cloak and made hers hard to find.

nLoren did have some complaints about how his body was being used, but it didn’t seem like there was anything weird happening to him, and there was no way he could tell Shayna to leave, since if she did, she would die completely, so he decided not to think about it.

n‘Our senses are linked, so I can sense what you’re sensing up to a degree.’

nAt her response, Loren couldn’t help but think that there would be a problem or two that would emerge from that.

nIt felt like it would be fine if he could discuss with his partner, who seemed to know everything, but although his partner was supposed to be a woman who was going by as a priestess, if he tried to tell her that he was sharing his body with an undead, he knew for a fact that it wouldn’t bring anything good for him.

n“A normal priest would try to exorcise…but I can’t help but think she’ll treat me like a guinea pig…”

nLoren knew she wouldn’t do anything that might kill him, since they were in fact partners, but it also meant that as long as he didn’t die, she could do anything she wanted with him.

nLoren decided that while there was nothing wrong, he would keep quiet about it, but when he thought about the fact that there was the spirit of a young girl inside him, an inexplicable feeling washed over him. A slight creepiness, an uncomfortable feeling.

nNo need to worry. I usually have the sense sharing turned off, and I sleep early and wake up late.

nLoren wasn’t sure how to express her current state, but he did think it was kind of strange for an existence that became an undead say that she slept early.

n‘I’m also happy that you talk to me…but I think it is better if you don’t talk out loud. People would look at you funny.’

nNow that she mentioned it, Loren looked around slightly, and although there was quite a bit of people in the guild that day, he couldn’t find anyone that was looking at him or making notice of him.

nIt was unknown to him, but when he was there at the bar before, some adventurers had called him a freeloader.

nThat time Loren had beat one of them up pretty bad, and Lapis, who was treated like his wallet, had injured the other one pretty bad as well.

nThat incident had spread around quite a bit through the bar’s waitresses, so unless the person hadn’t heard about it, no one wanted to mess with him.

nOf course, if they saw the size of the great sword he had beside him and had sense to their mind, they would realize the strength and skill Loren must possess to be able to use it, and would keep from messing him with him, but there are always exceptions.

n“Huh? Loren? Starting the morning with a drink again?”

nThe person that called out to Loren was a girl wearing the clothes of a priestess, with her black hair tied up in a ponytail swaying behind her.

nThe girl, whose looks would make eight, nine people out of ten look back at her if they walked past her, walked up to Loren’s table with light footsteps and eyes sparkling with curiosity about pretty much anything, and without asking for permission, naturally sat down in the seat in front of him.

n“Drinking without any food to go with it isn’t good, you know? Ah, excuse me, could I have a cup of the same thing he’s having?”

nThe girl that stopped a waitress and started ordering things right after she sat down was Lapis, who had been working with Loren from a little while back.

nShe was a priestess of the Knowledge G.o.d, and was the lender of his debt, but in fact she was demon kin, who were the black sheep of the world, and was currently was living far away from the land of demon kin.

n“Is it okay for priests to drink first thing in the day?”

n“Nowhere in the precepts of the Knowledge G.o.d does it say that you can’t drink.”

nShe said with a cool face as she took the gla.s.s that the waitress brought her.

nAs Loren raised his gla.s.s to his lips, thinking that she could’ve ordered something better, since she had the money to do so, Lapis held the gla.s.s that was handed to her with both hands, asked him wonderingly.

n“By the way Loren, did you pay for that?”

n“I paid before I got it. Got the hazard pay from last job, after all.”

nThe last job itself was the incident where Hanza was destroyed and Shayna became an undead.

nFor the job itself, Shayna was considered dead, the city was destroyed, so it was far from being a success, so it was considered a failure, and although it wasn’t because Loren fought a >, it was the cause of him weakening and getting hospitalized.

nThe job had him at a deficit, but he still received subjugation rewards for the zombies and revenants he defeated along the way, and although it wasn’t even close to being enough to pay back his debt, he did have some money on him.

nHe used that money to pay for his drink, but as soon as he said that he did, Lapis gazed at him with disbelief, dumbfounded.

n“Loren…actually paid!?”

n“Hey, why are you looking at me like that?”

n“But…It’s Loren we’re talking about you know?”

n“Don’t act all surprised like that. Shouldn’t you be telling me to pay my debt instead of using it on drinks?”

n“I told you I won’t extort.”

nThat was indeed one of the conditions for Loren to borrow money from her.

nBut if she actually wasn’t going to do so, it kind of thinned the feeling of reality that he had borrowed money from her.

nIn addition to that, Lapis wasn’t going to put interest on it, either.

nLoren thought that if she wanted to make his debt larger, she should put interest on it, but Lapis didn’t seem to be concerned about that at all.

n“I’m not trying to make money off of you, anyway.”

nLapis said as she took sips of liquor from her gla.s.s, but if that were true, Loren couldn’t understand what she wanted to accomplish by lending him all that money.

n“Thirty gold coins isn’t an amount that you could return easily, either.”

nSeveral adventurers sitting near them spewed the drinks in their mouths or choked on their food and started coughing when they heard the amount that rolled off Lapis tongue.

nLoren spun the gla.s.s in his hand lightly, knowing it couldn’t be helped.

nThe amount that Lapis just mentioned was the total that he had borrowed from Lapis, but if you think about it normally, it was an unbelievable amount.

nThree gold coins was enough for a family of four to live well for a year.

nThis meant that Loren borrowed the ten years’ worth of living expenses for a family of four.

n“I guess adventurers don’t make that much, huh.”

nIf they were surprised, Loren guessed that it meant thirty gold coins was a lot of money.

nBut when Loren was in the battlefield back when he was a mercenary, among the generals and well-known mercenaries, quite a few them had magic weapons and armor that costed hundreds of gold coins.

nIt wasn’t once or twice Loren had thought that if they died in battle, he could take those for himself.

nIt meant that generals and mercenaries could make that much and have connections that let them get their hands on such equipment, and Loren decided that compared to that, a debt of thirty gold coins wasn’t too bad.

n“It’s not that adventurers don’t make a lot, its that they don’t know how to make profit.”

nLapis said that with a cool face, but for the last quest, Lapis had the same treatment as Loren did, and would be at quite a deficit.

nBut since she said that with such confidence, his curiosity got the best of him, so he asked her.

n“So, you mean that you made profit out of the last job?”

n“Yes, of course.”

nLapis answered like it wasn’t a surprise, but Loren couldn’t understand what she did and where she went to be able to brag so confidently about making profit.

n“We didn’t get that much for defeating the zombies, right?”

n“It was only a little bit.”

n“You didn’t spend much for preparations so that was enough to be profit?”

n“About that…”

nLapis leaned forward onto the table and lowered her voice.

nWhen Loren followed her and leaned forward onto the table as well, Lapis covered her mouth with her hand and whispered.

n“I picked up quite a few things…”

n“Wait a second.”

n“Even if you tell me to return them, there’s no one for me to return them to.”

n“That’s…”

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nShe had a point.

nThe whole nation had perished, so as Lapis said, even if she took something from there, there was no one to give it back to.

n“It’s not a large amount. I was too focused on carrying you. I just took some stuff from the clinic and the shops around it. Oh, and I also brought the simple furnace that you made, so don’t worry.”

n“That’s not the problem…I guess it’s fine.”

nThere were no people in Hanza, and there wasn’t a government either, so it was basically a lawless area.

nPeople that go there would of course, take whatever they could find, and Loren couldn’t help but think that it was better for the stuff to be in Lapis’ hands than people like that.

nThat was why he stopped pursuing the matter, but he decided that he should still say something, so he declared.

n“This time it’s fine, but don’t make it a habit.”

n“You’re right. I’ll be careful about that.”

nLapis nodded obediently, but how much that meant would be unknown until the time came, so Loren gulped the rest of the liquor in his gla.s.s while glancing at Shayna, who had a troubled smile on her face.

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