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nCh. 52: Encounter After Arrival

nAlthough the carriage was stopped at the city entrance, it was sent into the city without much of a search.

nThe other travelers were searched thoroughly, and when Loren traveled to different cities when he was a mercenary, they would be searched and examined very strictly and took a very long time before they could enter, but they were let in so easily it was quite anticlimactic.

nAccording to Lapis, the carriage itself was prepared by the adventurer’s guild, and the driver was a guild staff as well, so it pretty much meant that the guild vouched for them, so they were able to enter without harsh examination.

nAlthough one may think that if you disguised your carriage as the guild’s or steal one you could enter and leave any city you want to, but Lapis explained that there were pa.s.swords and keys that linked the carriage to the driver, so if one of them were wrong, the carriage would not be considered one of the guild’s.

nAlso, there was a heavy regulation that anyone caught disguising his carriage as the guild’s or using it illegally would receive the maximum penalty, regardless of who it is.

nIn any case, after they safely entered the city and were swayed by the carriage a while longer, they reached the city’s adventurer’s guild.

nAfter thanking the driver and getting off the carriage, they realized that they forgot to wake up Klaus and the girls, but they told themselves that they would wake up on their own, or the driver would wake them up, and went to take care of their work.

nTheir actual job was to be at the school, so all they had to do right now was report to the guild that they arrived, and hand them the certificate they had received when they accepted the quest back in Kauffa, so they were done in no time.

n“Let’s ask one of the staffs about rooms, and let’s take a good night’s rest.”

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nIt was already dark outside, and the school was already closed, so if they were to go there the next day, all they had to do was rent rooms and rest.

nLapis wasn’t one that liked to go to noisy places, and although Loren had been taken to the entertainment district by his fellow mercenaries when they visited cities like this, currently there was no one to invite him, and he didn’t know the city well anyway, and if he wanted to drink he could do so at the guild, so there was no reason for him to go out.

n“For tomorrow, is it fine to go to the school after breakfast and meet our client, the princ.i.p.al, for instructions?”

n“It’s fine with me, but is it okay for us to be so laid back?”

n“I heard that they choose teams to enter after the accompaniment arrives, so they don’t enter the dungeon all at once.”

n“That…could be troublesome.”

nHearing Loren’s opinion, Lapis gave him a curious look and asked him a question.

n“What’s troublesome?”

n“There’s going to be a few teams that enter the dungeon, right? If all of them go in at once, I don’t know how large the dungeon is, but they would know that a few allies would be in there with them.”

n“Ah, so if only one team enters, they would be in there alone and unaided, so the difficulty could increase.”

n“Exactly. Well, for your own goals, would it be more convenient if only a few of them go in the dungeon?”

nEven though the job was to accompany the testing group that entered the dungeon, they also had to search for Lapis’ body part, and they would have to move around the dungeon without anyone else noticing.

nLoren thought that if there were other groups near them, it meant a higher chance of Lapis getting seen while moving on her own and wouldn’t be favorable for Lapis.

n“Well in that case, there’s other ways of doing things.”

n“Give me an example, just for reference.”

nLoren asked her, knowing that she would give him a good-for-nothing answer, and Lapis answered him in a matter-of-fact way.

n“Disable all of them…”

n“Right, got it. Only a few of them going in would be more favorable to me than you.”

nThe thought of rendering students unable to move, even if it was for the sake of Lapis, made Loren’s heart ache.

nLoren was willing to help her if she was going to try to be secretive, but when the thought of ‘when it comes to disabling students’ crossed his mind, he realized that he was a.s.suming that she would make him do it somehow, so he shook his head to chase those thoughts out of his head.

n“You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of it easily in secret, without them even realizing it.”

n“Don’t. They’re students taking an exam, you know? How are you going to take responsibility if they fail?”

n“There’s always next year.”

n“You know I won’t help you with that, right?”

n“I bet you won’t.”

nLapis stated without any disappointment.

nAs Loren thought that if she did attempt to do so, he would have to stop her, Lapis gave him a nonchalant smile and waved her hands in front of her chest.

n“I’m just joking, okay? I’ll fine some other way when the time comes.”

n“You’re jokes make my blood run cold, you know that…?”

n“Then let’s warm it up with some drinks and food, shall we?”

nLapis invited Loren to the guild’s bar, saying that it was a good time to get dinner.

nUnlike the guild in Kauffa, the staff in this guild had no way of knowing about Loren’s situation.

nAt Kauffa’s guild, the waitresses would take Loren’s order even if he didn’t have any money because they knew that Lapis would come afterwards and pay for it, but it didn’t work that way at other places, so Loren’s only options was to find some way to pay for food with the money he had or eat with her.

n“You’re not going to say that you want to eat all alone, right?”

n“Of course not.”

nMeals eaten alone didn’t taste that good.

nLoren possessed enough sentiment to feel that.

n“Then let’s eat together. It seems that we don’t have to worry about rooms, either.”

n“What do you mean by that?”

n“This guild runs an inn in the floors above. I went ahead and rented two rooms, so we don’t have to worry about sleeping outside.”

nLoren was familiar with bars running inns in the same building, but he didn’t expect the adventurer’s guild to run both a bar and an inn.

nOne would think, how many things the guild was dealing in, but both bars and inns were facilities that adventurers needed and thinking about how some guilds ran weapon and equipment shops as well, it wasn’t that surprising.

n“We don’t know how long we would be in the dungeon until we hear the details tomorrow. We might have to live off rations for a while, so let’s treat ourselves to some good food.”

nEven Lapis couldn’t get her hands on details such as how long the exam was going to be, but when adventurers went to explore dungeons, they would be in there for days, even weeks sometimes.

nIt was almost impossible to find food or water inside dungeons, and the food and water they bring with them had to be compact as possible, so they would end up eating rations the whole time.

nThis time they were going in with students, so Lapis guessed that it wouldn’t be that long, but also guessed that the school might limit food to rations to let the students get used to it.

n“Well, I don’t think there is a need for us to do the same as them but eating good food right next to students eating rations doesn’t feel too good either, though.”

n“I agree with you on that one.”

nLoren sat down at the corner of the bar, but he pushed the menu towards Lapis without even looking through it.

nLapis, who was looking through the menu, trying to decide what to order, saw the menu that Loren pushed towards her and gave him a puzzled look.

n“Order mine too. You’re paying anyway.”

n“You can order what you want, you know?”

nLapis said so, without denying the fact that she was paying, but Loren shrugged.

n“I’ve eaten at bars often when I was a mercenary, and the only thing we’ve said when ordering was ‘give us meat and alcohol’, and we would get our food. I don’t know what I should order.”

n“That’s interesting…What did you do say in Kauffa?”

n“The waitress gave me recommendations.”

nSince Loren was at the guild’s bar very often, he became acquaintances with the waitresses that worked there.

nAt first, Loren asked them to give him food and drinks, but after getting friendly with each other, they started giving him recommendations and told him which dishes were good and to try them at least once.

nLoren was thankful for the information, as he didn’t really care about food, but it was the first time he’d been in this guild’s bar and didn’t know any of the waitresses.

nHe guessed that he would just have to order food and alcohol, but since he was with Lapis, he decided to leave everything up to her.

n“You should show some interest in this kind of thing too, you know?”

n“On the battlefield, if you have food, that’s more than you could ask for. You’re lucky if it tastes good, but as long as it filled your stomach it’s fine if it doesn’t, right?”

nNot having any food wasn’t uncommon, so it was quant.i.ty over quality.

nIt wasn’t once or twice that eating wasn’t something to enjoy, but instead it was an action to keep you from starving.

nAfter going through such experiences repeatedly, you would stop caring what went in your mouth.

n“That’s pretty dull, but then again, it was when you were a mercenary.”

nWhile muttering under her breath, that she just needed to slowly reform him, Lapis started thinking about what to order for Loren.

nLeaving that to her, Loren looked around the bar.

nThe atmosphere wasn’t much different that the bar in Kauffa.

nA fun atmosphere that was sometimes noisy, sometimes unruly, and a bit dirty.

nAs Loren thought that the atmosphere shouldn’t be too different because it was used in the same way, he narrowed his eyes at a group that was out of place.

nIt was a very young group.

nThe group seemed unbalanced, with three men and one woman, but they seemed quite friendly with each other, and were talking too each other in hushed voices, glancing around the bar with curiosity. In front of them was a simple meal and cups, they didn’t look like they contained alcohol.

nHe started observing them, thinking that it was rare for adventurers to come to a bar and not drink alcohol, but his sight immediately blocked by a group of rough-looking adventurers.

nOne of the adventures from the group began to bother the lively looking girl with short black hair.

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nHer companions, the three young men, stood up to stop him, but the rest of his group blocked them and couldn’t help her.

nAfter confirming that the girl looked uncomfortable and her companions were getting blocked by the other adventurers, Loren stood up from his seat, not saying anything to Lapis, who was still looking at the menu.

nBothering waitresses and employees was common among mercenaries as well, and it was laughed off if it didn’t go too far, but if a mercenary did that to a customer, as he was, he couldn’t complain if he got beaten up by the rest of his group.

nTo Loren, who had been taught that by his former companions, couldn’t ignore what was happening in front of his eyes.

n“Loren?”

nLapis stopped Loren, who had started to move towards the quarrel, without looking away from the menu, and told him.

n“I don’t mind you doing it, but don’t kill them, okay? You don’t want to go to prison before we even start the job, don’t you?”

n“Don’t worry, I know. I’ll go easy on them.”

n“It’s disturbing other customers, so go shut them up quickly.”

nLapis told Loren that she would order the food in the meanwhile, not worried about him at all, and Loren told her to leave it to him, and continued walking over to the quarrel that was still going on.

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