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nCh. 98: Concluding after Reporting

n“So, did you tell the guild girl that you’ll take the exam?”

nIt was currently night time.

nAs Loren told Lapis what happened during the day while they were having dinner at the bar in the guild, Lapis asked him that question.

nAs she sat across from him, with a plate of sausages and a glass in front of her but not touching either of them as she listened to Loren’s story, Loren put down his glass and slowly shook his head.

n“I told her that I’ll talk about it with my partner first.”

n“That’s good. I’d say you handled it pretty well.”

nEven though Lapis praised him, Loren wasn’t sure what he did well.

nAll he had done was postpone his answer until after he had asked for Lapis’ opinion, but Lapis continued as she poked the sausage in front of her with her fork.

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n“In these cases, if you don’t have the materials that are worth basing your decision on, it’s best to avoid answering immediately. If that isn’t possible, make sure your replies can be interpreted in different ways, while not saying anything that could be used against you, and try to buy time to ask for someone else’s opinion.”

n“You just want to make things complicated, don’t you?”

nIf he were to do that every time something similar happened, the conversation would go nowhere and only time would be wasted.

nAs he glared at Lapis while thinking that, she stuck her fork in one of the sausages, and averted her eyes in the most natural way as she brought it up to her mouth.

nSeeing Lapis take a bite out of it, letting out a good snapping sound as she did so, Loren slightly regretted not giving a definitive answer earlier, and started pouring himself another glass.

n“Anyways.”

nSeeing that Loren’s focus turned from her to the bottle of alcohol, Lapis continued the conversation.

nAlthough he wanted to question her further, he had a feeling it wouldn’t go anywhere, so he decided to listen to what Lapis had to say.

n“So, the adventurer’s guild wants us to take the rank-up exam, am I right?”

nLoren nodded slightly.

nAfter seeing him do so, she made an unexpected suggestion in a confident manner.

n“Then how about we tell them that we’ll do it if it’s the rank-up exam for silver?”

n“Jumping past iron? Does that mean anything?”

n“Not really. But if the guild wants us to rank up so badly, I thought maybe we could take advantage of that and try to push some demands that usually wouldn’t go through on them.”

nAs he thought he could understand why Ivy had made sure that Lapis wasn’t with him when she came to talk to him, Loren asked her another thing.

n“You think it would go through?”

n“Most likely not.”

nAlthough she was the one who proposed the idea, she easily denied it.

nAs Loren sighed, not sure what she wanted to do, Lapis swung her fork as if it were a baton and continued.

n“If they refuse, we just act like it can’t be helped, and then ask them to waiver the rank-up exam for iron this time.”

nAs she said they should make new demands without giving up, Loren looked at Lapis with a frown, not sure if he should be exasperated or impressed.

n“You know…”

n“If that’s not possible either, we ask them to waiver a portion of it. Since they are the ones who want us to take it, trying to take as many freebies we can is the smart way to do it.”

nLapis way of thinking was pushing demand after demand, anticipating that the other party would give in somewhere.

nShe didn’t seem satisfied with just the fee being waivered, but Loren thought maybe she was being a bit too greedy.

n“What about when you can’t come to a compromise?”

nThe guild should have a firm line that it couldn’t cross, so if they couldn’t come to an agreement, the whole thing might be cancelled.

nIf that happened, they would be losing the perk of not paying the exam fee, but Lapis responded coolly.

n“Then we decline taking the exam itself.”

n“But then…”

n“Loren, I don’t think there’s an advantage for us to become iron rank right now in the first place.”

n“What do you mean by that?”

nIf they became iron rank, the amount of rewards they receive would increase.

nLoren thought that was a good enough reason, but on top of that, there were more information you could access, fellow adventurers would look at you differently, and you would be raising your status slightly.

nThe cons would be the jobs getting more difficult, and the responsibility coming with it increasing as well, but Loren thought it was a trivial matter compared to the pros.

nThat was why he couldn’t understand why Lapis said there were no advantages.

n“Well, we’re supposed to be copper rank adventurers, so we’ve been taking jobs for copper ranks…but I think that for some reason, we’ve been doing things that are well out of a copper rank adventurer’s capability every single time.”

n“That’s true…I guess?”

nIt wasn’t like they wanted it to happen or they made it happen, but ever since Loren became an adventurer, most of the jobs he took were things that would never be given to copper ranks.

n“What do you think would happen if we became iron rank adventurers?”

n“What do you mean by that…?”

n“I can’t help but feel that we’ll get caught in something that iron ranks wouldn’t ever be doing.”

nThere weren’t many people who would willingly walk towards trouble.

nIf the job were to end somewhere far from trouble, Loren was fine with that, and had no intentions of sticking his head into it.

nBut judging from his experiences up to that point, it resulted in troubles coming towards him, even though he didn’t want anything to do with it.

n“You might have a point there.”

n“Right? We’ve been doing jobs that make people wonder how we’re still alive. As a result, Loren’s success rate should be one of the lowest in the whole guild in Kauffa.”

n“Wait, if I’m one of the lowest, shouldn’t you be as well?”

nLoren stopped her as she said something that he couldn’t just let past.

nSince they were a party together, Loren and Lapis should have been doing the same jobs, so Loren thought it was weird that only his success rate would be considered the lowest, but after thinking for a moment, Lapis said something very heartless.

n“I’ve actually done a few jobs successfully on my own, so my success rate is higher than Loren’s.”

nAlthough the two of them were a party, they weren’t with each other around the clock.

nOf course, Loren had his and Lapis had her private time as well as things to do on their own, and Lapis had been using that time to do simple jobs such as collecting herbs and materials.

nAnd so her success rate was the number of times she had succeeded higher than Loren’s.

n“When did you…”

n“This is all for Loren, you know. Don’t make such a scary face.”

nLapis said to him, not afraid at all by his glare.

nLoren didn’t understand the logic behind her doing all those jobs behind his back and telling him it was all for him.

n“If both Loren and I have the lowest success rate in Kauffa’s guild, it would sound bad, wouldn’t it?”

n“That’s what you meant.”

nIf both of them were failing, they would be at the bottom as a party as well.

nLoren realized that Lapis doing some easy jobs on her own would make their success rate slightly better, so he interrupted her explanation.

nAlthough he wished that if she were going to do so, she could have invited him to go along, but whenever the two of them went on a simple job, there was a chance something that made it far from simple could happen, so when putting that into consideration, Lapis going on her own might have been the optimal thing to do.

n“Am I the jinxed one…?”

nIt seemed that Lapis’ jobs stayed easy when she was solo.

nWhich meant that the one who was pulling unnecessary factors around was someone other than her, which naturally meant that it would be him.

n“It could be that the condition is only when we’re together, so don’t worry about it.”

nAs Loren started falling into a loop of negative thoughts, Lapis followed up.

nIn fact, the prominent reason for Lapis was that it would be troublesome if they were denied from jobs because of a low success rate.

nBut she had no intention of upsetting Loren, so her follow up was a very quick one.

n“Anyways, going back to the rank-up exam. What do you want to do?”

n“As much as I would like to add and take off conditions and have fun negotiating with the guild, but if you don’t think well of it, how about just taking it?”

nLoren thought that the guild staff was wary of her because she said and thought those kinds of things, but instead of saying so, he asked her something else.

n“Aren’t you going to take it?”

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n“I’ll take it if you do.”

nShe seemed to leave the final decision to Loren.

nAfter thinking for a moment, Loren told her his thoughts.

n“I think trying it would be okay since it’s free.”

nIf they passed, they would receive the qualifications to be iron rank adventurers for free.

nEven if they didn’t it wouldn’t hurt their finances and wouldn’t bring any problems either.

nSo, Loren concluded that it was worth taking a shot at.

n“Then let’s go with that.”

nSince Loren made up his mind, Lapis had no intention of arguing, and since they were in consensus, they would be going along with the guild’s recommendations and taking the rank up exam.

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