Chapter 122
A New Land
KER-SLASH!
Ka-shunk!
Slish!
Ka-splash!!!
The four girls sent the four sea serpents’ heads flying. The heads landed neatly on the deck of the ship.
“Pauline, tend to the injured! Everyone else, take care of the serpents!”
“All right!!!”
Reina had decided to strike with water this time, instead of her preferred fire magic; there was already water all around them, after all, and it would have been a shame to set the ship ablaze. Of course, just because fire was her specialty did not mean that she was not skilled at other varieties of magic, so this posed no problem in terms of the power of her attack.
Mile and Mavis, meanwhile, relied on their swords.
Slash, shunk, smash!
“That’s all of them,” the three fighters sighed.
“Hey! Slow down a minute! I haven’t even gotten started!” Pauline wailed impotently, turning to the injured crew.
“U-u-u-umm…”
One of the sailors who had been fighting against the sea serpents turned to the members of the Crimson Vow. He had been frozen in place, but now, he began to speak, voice trembling. “Wh-who are you all?”
“Oh!”
The four of them had traveled all the way to this new continent so that they could start over again as normal, unremarkable hunters, and yet here they were, showing up on the back of an elder dragon and cutting down sea serpents…
“Hmmm…”
The four thought deeply, lowering their voices to discuss the matter.
“We haven’t given them our names yet, and there’s no way for them to accurately convey what we look like. Let’s just not tell them our… Wait! Let’s just tell them something cryptic and then take our leave! We aren’t heading to wherever these people are from, so it should be fine!” said Mile.
“I see!”
Mile, apparently forgetting that she had just shouted Pauline’s name a few minutes earlier, proceeded to offer a false name.
“We are the apostles of truth and justice, the Four Dragon Priestess Sisters! All who are brave and righteous of heart may offer their devotion. Now then, fare thee well!” she decreed, before hoisting herself and the others up into the air with gravity magic. They landed easily on the back of a waiting Kragon. Then it was shields up and roll out!
The passengers of the ship gazed up at them from the deck, awestruck.
“Did they just…save us?”
“The Dragon Priestesses…”
“The Four…Dragon Priestess Sisters?”
“H-hooray! Hooray for the Dragon Priestesses!”
“Hooray!!!”
“The Dragon Priestesses! Hip! Hip! Hooray!!!”
The sailors began fishing up the sea serpent corpses that now floated in the water around them. Not only would they sell for a monumental price, but they were also proof of their vessel’s miraculous rescue by an elder dragon and his priestesses. The profits they would gain from this haul and the money they could earn from going place to place telling this story would be enough to feed them for the rest of their lives. Which was a good thing, since such good fortune rarely visited twice.
Of course, the passengers who had been hiding down in the hold had not borne witness to this, nor would they be receiving a share of the profits. It all belonged to the crew, who had risked their lives to protect their passengers.
The Dragon Priestesses… they all thought in awe.
On that day, a new religion was founded.
***
“That didn’t look like a proper seafaring vessel, so we must be close to the shore,” said Mile.
“Wouldn’t they be keeping within sight of the coast if that were the case, though? There’s no reason for them to travel out so far and risk losing track of where land is,” Reina commented. “There are a lot of larger monsters farther out at sea. It’s dangerous!”
“Maybe the better fishing spots are farther from the shore—or it’s a transport vessel headed for some kind of strait…” mused Mavis.
“Well, it didn’t look much like a fishing boat,” said Pauline. “I wonder if they had some special reason for heading out this way, and this wasn’t just business as usual. Maybe a trip to some outlying island…”
“All we can really do is speculate, so there’s no point in dwelling on it,” said Mile. “Anyway, we should be seeing the shoreline pretty soon. Kragon, please ascend again, so we don’t cause any commotion down below. When we reach the coast, we should observe from above for a little bit and figure out where all the nearest towns and villages are. That way we can pick out a proper landing spot and decide where our ‘starting village’ is going to be!”
“As you wish, Lady Mile!”
Apparently, the expanse of sea between their former continent and this one, to the west, was not as vast as the waters between Japan and North America. By that comparison, the distance was actually relatively short—at least when you had the benefit of an elder dragon’s flying speed. It was still not the sort of distance that a smaller vessel on its maiden voyage could be expected to cross, not with the many sea-dwelling and flying monsters in and around the ocean.
How long might it have been since intercontinental travel had ceased? Would the shift have been due to the loss of more high-performance vessels and navigational technology? Or had the monster incursion come first? Either way, it seemed that many years had passed since methods of travel and communication had been sophisticated enough to make such a voyage.
***
“There it is…another continent!”
With the coastline finally in sight, everyone surveyed the continent before them. Not long after, they were flying over land, at which point they began a wide-radius aerial survey of the area.
“It doesn’t look much different,” Pauline mused.
“Well, we all agreed that we didn’t like the hot or the cold that much, so I tried to find somewhere around the same latitude. Plus, this world used to be populated by a single civilization, so as long as the climate isn’t too different, we should expect to find the same kinds of plants and animals all over. The flora here shouldn’t be that strange to us. If we want to see different sights, we’ll have to go toward the equator, where it’s hot, or to the polar regions, where it’s cold. Would you like to?”
“Uh, no, I, uh…” Pauline stammered, silenced by the incontrovertible logic of Mile’s explanation.
“I’m not interested in dripping with sweat or shivering with cold every day! I’ll take the normal weather, thanks!” Reina crowed.
“Agreed!” The others were all on the same page.
***
“That looks like a good place over there,” said Mile, pointing down at a town below them from her position on Kragon’s back, still high up in the sky.
“Hmm,” said Reina, her tone mildly disapproving. “That might work, but wouldn’t it be better to come in somewhere closer to the middle of the country, or near the capital or something?” There would be far more jobs in the capital than out in more remote towns, which meant more difficult (read: more interesting) options for them.
Mile had pointed toward a seaside town. It wasn’t some little fishing village, by any means. It looked to have a harbor that would be considered sizable in this world, with space for not just tiny fishing vessels but also larger freighters to anchor.
The reason that Mile had chosen this particular location was only natural for an ex-Japanese citizen: She wanted to eat fresh fish. In fact, she wanted to dine on all sorts of sea life. A large harbor meant a variety of rare ingredients pouring in from all over and multiple culinary traditions being shared. Plus, vessels from distant ports would be carrying intel from all over the continent with them.
To Reina, however, this place was nothing more than some regional city, not even a major royal or imperial capital, and so, it simply did not interest her. True, there were countries where the capital and the largest or most prosperous city in the country were two separate places, as well as countries where there were numerous capitals (or at least where the centers of government were distributed between several different locales). There were even countries that did not have any large cities at all, but this did not seem to be the case in this instance.
No matter how you sliced it, though, this port city was no metropolis. It was hard to be certain when they were viewing it from so far above, but it did not seem to have any of the architecture that would indicate a capital. As much as Mile appreciated the strategic benefits of a maritime center, in this world, where there was still not much in the way of long-distance trade by boat, it made more sense in terms of politics and trade for the capital of the country to be located near its center, not at the edge.
Obviously, capitals were much more useful to hunters, both in terms of opportunities for pay and for building their reputation.
“We’re not in a hurry to build up our savings or get our names out there right now, so shouldn’t we just kick back, relax, and try to have some fun?” said Mavis.
“I’d object to that assertion about our savings,” said Pauline, “but being out in a backwater instead of near the capital will at least make it easier to contain the situation if Mile slips up—far fewer nobles and merchants to come flocking around. And if anything does happen, news will spread much slower than it would from the capital, which might help if we have to flee and change home bases.”
“Wha…” Mile seemed to want to protest, but thankfully, the two of them had no real objections to picking this city.
Pauline continued, “Plus, if we stay here, Mile can cook us all sorts of delicious seafood dishes!”
“And also,” said Mavis, “starting from a distant town and working our way to the capital, earning a reputation one city at a time, makes for a much more fun adventure than going straight to the capital. By the time we get there, the people will already know our names and cry out, ‘Oh, it’s you! I’ve heard all about you!’”
On their former continent, they’d been so well known that it was a hindrance to their daily lives. Still, it did feel good to be known as a skilled hunter. Every single member of the guild thought the same—and the members of the Crimson Vow were no exception.
“Anyway! We should check out this town. If we don’t like it, we’ll just up and leave!” Reina really was a softie.
At any rate, the Crimson Vow was a hunting party. While they might like to settle in one place for short periods, they’d be on the move most of the time, taking advantage of their youth to relocate from one place to another. There was no need to overthink their selection of starting town.
“Well then,” said Mile, “let’s get going. Kragon, please find somewhere in the forest nearby to land, somewhere without any people!”
“As you wish!”
And so, the Crimson Vow had decided on their new base of operations.
***
“Well then, shall we get going?”
The Crimson Vow, having touched down in a forest near the port town, bid farewell to Kragon, who informed them that he was going to introduce himself to the elder dragons on this continent before heading back home.
They decided to walk not toward the town but to a village a short distance away. It was far too risky to head straight into a large city in a country whose language, customs, and etiquette were foreign to you. Even if this continent had once shared the same language as their homeland, the meanings of words might have changed over the many years. What they considered a friendly wave of the hand might be interpreted as an insult, much like how a white flag raised in surrender might be taken as a declaration of war or a threat to decimate one’s forces…
Besides, walking uninformed into a big city was a good way to get mixed up with idiots and swindlers. The Crimson Vow were not known and feared here as they were back home—to the casual observer, they were nothing more than four little girls. Plus, they intended to turn some of the goods from Mile’s inventory into coin for their living expenses, which increased the likelihood of them being targeted by petty crooks. They would be easy marks, since they didn’t even know what kinds of goods were considered most valuable in this area.
For all these reasons, it was best they do a trial run at a small village. That way, even if they messed up somehow, it was unlikely that word of their exploits would get any farther than the bounds of that village.
“Not that I think we’ll mess up that badly,” Mile chirped optimistically. “We all used to be one big, happy society in the past, with the same language, practices, and customs… Boat travel and communication would have kept up until civilization declined, and most technology and knowledge would have been lost as well by that time, leaving things much the way they are now—so it should be pretty similar to our home continent!”
“Well, I sure do hope so…” Mavis said dubiously. Thankfully, this was not merely baseless conjecture—Mile had confirmed most of her assumptions with the nanomachines before their departure. Much as she liked to refrain from relying on the nanomachines for every little thing, she would prefer not to invite disaster with a bungled first contact. She had made sure to do her research this time.
***
“Well, that was pretty easy,” Mile noted once they were inside the village. In fact, there had been no gates to pass through nor gatekeepers to answer to. This really was just a small hamlet, so it was no surprise that anyone might be able to walk in or out.
Located about a two or three hours’ walk from the larger port city, the village clearly specialized in fishing. There appeared to be some small patches of vegetables the residents cultivated for their own consumption, but there were no signs of any large-scale grain production or ranching. They likely sold the sea life that they harvested here at the larger port city and other places farther inland and then used the profits to purchase their grains. It was no doubt rare for them to eat red meat, with everyone subsisting mostly on grains and seafood. All exactly as would be expected for a village of this type.
“Doesn’t look like there’s an inn…” Just as Reina said, there was no sign of any such establishment. This was no surprise, either—what would be the point with a much larger town so close at hand? Anyone who would come to this village for any sort of business would head right back home that same day. Being this near to town, they could never hope to command enough visitors to support an inn.
“Well, that’s not a problem,” said Mavis. “That just means we make camp somewhere a bit outside of the village. Much more pleasant than staying at some tiny village inn or at the chief’s house.” She was right, of course. It was a different story for most hunters, but the Crimson Vow preferred somewhere with beds and baths and toilets. So, they planned to chat with the villagers for a little while, gather some intel, and then head toward the port city, making camp somewhere along the way.
On that note…
“Okay, ladies, allons-y! Time to make first contact!” cried Mile.
“Sure, sure,” Reina sighed.
Having been trained by Mile’s tales, the other members of the Crimson Vow understood perfectly what allons-y meant, along with “Let’s-a go!” “Liberty or Death!” “Pegas, let’s fly!” and other such similar phrases.
***
After finding an elder who seemed to have a bit of time on his hands, Mile produced some liquor and snacks from her inventory, and they all sat down to chat. The old-timer was more than happy to talk. He was well past the age where he could keep up the hard labor of a fisherman’s life, so the choice between staring dazedly at the horizon or socializing with some young ladies who offered him not only conversation but food and drink was an easy one. Being approached by strangers would put some on their guard, but a man of his age would much rather have the company of young ladies than worry about his own safety. He had already lived out most of his years, and perhaps even made peace with the reality that the end might come at any time.
…Not to mention the booze and snacks.
The man was none too bothered by the fact that these girls’ accents were a bit strange, that they sometimes used words he was unfamiliar with, or that they seemed oddly uninformed about common matters. It was not unusual for visitors from other countries or from domestic-but-remote mountain regions to have different dialects or be ignorant of local matters. It might be different near the capital, but folks around here weren’t usually bothered by such things. Though the village was relatively close to a large port town, it was still quite far from the capital, on the country’s outskirts, in the sort of region that folks in the capital might call “backwater.”
In other words, the man took them for fellow country bumpkins.
As the members of the Crimson Vow gathered their information from this man, something else began to gather as well: other elders. The younger men were all out fishing on their skiffs, and though there had been no sign of any other elders previously, apparently they had sensed that one of their brethren was drinking booze with some young women. As such, they had abandoned their tasks of repairing nets, gathering shellfish and kelp, or processing seafood. And soon…
“Drink! Drink! Let’s drink! Up with the cups! Down with thuh meat!”
There was plenty of food and drink in Mile’s inventory. Perhaps there were more storage magic users on this continent than where the Crimson Vow had come from, because while the elders seemed mildly surprised by Mile producing more and more provisions from her “storage,” it didn’t cause much of a fuss. All they had to say was “Hear, hear!” and “That’s amazin’!” and “I’m so jealous.”
Mile was always sweet on young girls and elders.
“These snacks are all-organically processed ogre meat—they’re all-ogrenic!”
Of course, Mile had made this claim only for the sake of the wordplay.
Naturally, the old-timers were the only ones drinking liquor. The members of the Crimson Vow stuck to fruit juice. There didn’t appear to be any minimum drinking age in this country, but the Crimson Vow were not ones to imbibe in such situations, nor were they of the age to actively enjoy the taste of alcohol. They only sampled a sip or two by way of an aperitif.
“Oh, so you’re saying that all of the young men who can’t stand fishing have gone off to the nearby port city or the capital to try and make names for themselves?”
“Yes sirree, young lady. ’Course, if some thick-skulled bumpkin from nowhere could ever make a name for himself in the big city with no money and no connections, there’d be no thugs or crooks or slum dwellers or other poor folks in those places…”
“Right?!”
It wasn’t exactly unusual for rural youngsters to hang all their hopes and dreams on the idea of urban life.
“Most those fellas can ever hope for is to have those dreams busted ’fore they come crawlin’ back here, same as me…”
“You went to the city, too, Gramps?!”
Clearly, this man had had his own youthful indiscretions as well…
As the members of the Crimson Vow chatted with the old men, they gradually began to notice something odd.
“Huh. They’ve got to be exaggerating a bit, right?” Reina said under her breath.
“I’m sure they’re mostly telling the truth, but either the monsters around here are really strong or the hunters and mercenaries and soldiers are super weak,” Mavis whispered back.
Indeed, many of the anecdotes that the old man had regaled them with so far involved the humans struggling against monsters they should have been more than a match for. They’d expected his tales to feature the sort of boasting that hunters were so known for—triumphant stories told upon their return to town, bragging about their own prowess and the many monsters they had bested. Instead, they were oddly gloomy. Enough to make one wonder how many in these losing fights against the monsters had even made it home alive…
***
“So, what do we think?” asked Reina. The other three thought hard.
They had spent about three hours with the old men at the shore, talking and drinking, before making their exit. If they’d kept going much longer, the younger men would have returned from work and wanted to join in, at which point the whole thing might get out of hand.
The old-timers made no moves to keep the party going themselves. It was obvious what would happen if the young men of a fishing village laid eyes on a gathering where they could eat and drink as much as they liked in the company of young ladies. Based on what the Crimson Vow had observed, it seemed most of the young ladies from the village had already made their way to the port city, their parents apparently unable to stop them from relocating to somewhere that was only a scant few hours away. The village was neither far enough away to keep the young woman at home, nor close enough for them to reasonably commute back and forth. Sadly, this was a typical plight for a village of this description.
The Crimson Vow left all of the food and drink that had already been set out as a gift for the old men, then walked about halfway to the port city before setting up camp for the night. They had already eaten more than enough during the afternoon’s socializing, so they decided to pass on dinner.
Neither Mavis nor Pauline had anything to say, but Mile finally replied to Reina’s question. “First off,” she started, “it seems like there are fewer linguistic differences than we anticipated. There are some slight variations in intonation and names for things, but not enough to put anyone on their guard if we just explained that we came from a remote area or some far-off country. We shouldn’t have any problems getting our meaning across. There are no changes in mannerisms or gestures, and any missteps can just be explained away with a ‘This is how we do things back home, apologies.’
“Besides that, the varieties of monsters and the structures of aristocracy and government in the surrounding countries seem pretty similar, and even the Hunters’ Guild is more or less the same. We will have to watch out for any smaller differences in the regulations, though. They must have been part of the same organization before trade between the continents halted—and it’s possible a boat arrived from one side or the other even afterward, bringing various customs and institutions with it…”
In truth, Mile had already consulted the nanomachines on these matters, but there was no reason to go blabbing about that to the others when they could draw the same conclusions on their own. In terms of communication, their situation was far better than it would be even in modern-day Japan, where one might travel from the city to the country and find the dialects of the older population utterly incomprehensible. Here, there were scarcely any barriers to communication.
“What bothers me the most about what they said, though, was…”
“The monsters are really strong!!!” the other three cried.
“Exactly! Or else the humans here are very weak. Though there is also the possibility that they’re overestimating the strength of the monsters based on what others have told them. They’re just fishermen, after all. They aren’t out fighting monsters for a living.”
Hunters tended to exaggerate the strength of the monsters they had faced in order to make themselves seem more powerful. This was the norm back on the Crimson Vow’s home continent, too, but compared to the sort of stories the Vow were used to hearing, the monsters in the tales the old men had told them sounded way too powerful.
“Well, even if they’re a little stronger than usual, a goblin is still a goblin, and a kobold is still a kobold. A goblin is never going to be stronger than an ogre, or an ogre stronger than an elder dragon, so this really isn’t that big of a worry,” Reina said optimistically.
“I suppose that’s true…” Mavis replied, though she sounded uncertain. As a party leader, she could not afford to ignore even the slightest possibility of danger.
“Well, it’s not like we’re jumping immediately into slaying monsters, so we can put that question on hold for now,” said Mile. “I’m sure they’ll explain it to us when we make it into town and register with the guild. If we ply some of the veteran hunters with a bit of ale, they’ll be happy to give us the eyewitness accounts we want.”
“That’s true,” said Reina. “There’s no point in speculating wildly. We’ll just start off by questioning the local hunters.”
Reina was not typically fond of socializing with their fellow hunters, who too often belittled her on account of her age and appearance. To defend against this, she maintained an aggressive, haughty attitude and tended to keep her distance at the guild. That said, she was neither stupid nor needlessly reckless, and therefore happy to agree with Mile’s plan. Besides, it wasn’t as though the Crimson Vow weren’t already accustomed to “stronger than usual” monsters.
After that, they discussed their plans and general goals going forward—followed by a round of folktales, as was their custom.
***
“We’re here…”
The next morning, the Crimson Vow arrived at the port city.
“Well, it’s certainly no metropolis,” said Mile. As previously mentioned, it would have been quite unusual to find a citadel positioned on the shore of a city like this one. That might change in the future, should maritime technology and warfare advance such that the nation in question saw an increase in ocean-based attacks. However, at present, most attacks would be coming from the land side, which meant that port cities were relatively unimportant from a military standpoint. Thus, at present, there was no point in this town making the vast expenditures that would be required to fortify it against attacks—not when it was at the farthest possible point from enemy countries. Even the capital would have to fall before any invaders reached its borders.
For the same reasons, there was no reason for an enemy to send spies out to a town like this, so anyone was free to enter or leave the town as they pleased. It was a dead end, with nowhere to go but the sea, so no merchant caravans passed through, either. The only merchants who came here did so to offload their goods before picking up goods from the town to take back to the capital or other fiefs, or to countries farther inland. As such, the taxes were enticingly low, and there were no inspections, with no smugglers daring the risks.
“Everything here is so laid-back and serene. It really feels like a seaside town…”
“Yeah, and besides, it seems pretty eclectic—like a stranger would have no problem living here.”
“Even someone a little odd would fit in fairly well.”
“Not a bad choice for our ‘starting village.’”
Currently, it was only around the second morning bell. The four were standing brazenly in the middle of what constituted the sidewalk, their arms crossed, interrupting the paths of people on their way to work, but everyone only gave them pleasant smiles and walked around them. No one seemed to have the heart to be unkind to these cute little girls, who had clearly just arrived in town.
“I know it’s only morning, but should we go ahead and secure an inn? I don’t want to wait until evening to start looking and find out that all the rooms everywhere are booked up so that we have to room at some shady place,” said Mavis.
“Good idea. It would suck for our first inn on this continent to be a miss,” Reina agreed. The other two nodded, very much of the same mind. Mile in particular was very picky when it came to inns—or rather, the receptionists at said inns—and so intended to do a thorough survey. The other three, of course, knew this all too well…
***
“This is it! This is the one!” Mile shouted excitedly.
“Yes, all right…” Reina sighed.
There was no way to know the quality of an inn without actually staying there. One could attempt some judgment calls based on the cleanliness of the front entrance and the sort of characters coming in and out of the door, but there was no way for a first-time guest to know the quality of the food, the service, the decor, the bedding, et cetera before they had actually spent the night. And so, naturally, Mile focused her decision on the only criterion she could assess accurately: whether or not the receptionist was, as she put it, “a young girl, or at least a girl younger than myself.”
Her idea of a jackpot would have been a fluffy young beastgirl, but there were incredibly few inns that could provide this particular perk—and certainly none within a reasonable radius of the Hunters’ Guild.
In what was surely not the best display of manners, Mile repeatedly opened front doors, peeked inside, and then summarily turned on her heel and slammed the doors shut behind her once she’d seen who was at the counter. As far as she was concerned, there was no point in examining any establishment any further than that. The inn she had finally deigned to accept was a fairly smallish one, with a human girl of seven or eight poking her head up from behind the front counter. It was neither the sort of high-class establishment that nobles and other wealthy folk might stay at, nor the sort of unsavory locale where only those in the basest professions might lodge. It was, in a word, “normal.” It was the kind of place that might be used not by business owners but by their clerks and assistants who were traveling for work, or by fairly well-off hunters—perhaps higher-rankings Cs or lower-ranking Bs. Any higher than that, and they would stay elsewhere.
All of which was to say that it was about the same level of quality as Lenny’s inn, where the Crimson Vow had stayed on their original continent—the perfect base of operations for them to embark on a new adventure.
***
As it was still before noon, the members of the Crimson Vow headed right back out as soon as they had booked their room, making their way directly toward the Hunters’ Guild. Obviously, the first thing they needed to do was register as new hunters—but even more importantly, they needed to turn some of the materials from Mile’s inventory into provisional funds, since, as of yet, they lacked any of the local coinage.
The inn had not taken any payment on reservation, but they would have to pay before they returned to their room for the night. So time was of the essence. When they made their booking, Mile had, of course, also taken the opportunity to offer some of her homemade sweets to the little girl at reception (the innkeeper’s daughter, clearly). It was an act reminiscent of offering food to a wild animal, but at this point, the other members of the Crimson Vow could only shrug.
“Okay! Let’s go in!”
“All right!”
The party joined together in a little cheer in front of the guildhall. To any onlookers, the Crimson Vow would be a party of fresh newcomers, ready to make their registration. So, they decided not to fling open the door and shout a hello. That was what a traveling hunter did when stopping in—but it was not the action of a newbie. Instead, they gently opened the door and headed quietly for the reception counter.
However.
Staaare…
All eyes focused immediately on them. Really, it should have come as no surprise. They were on the outskirts of the country, and while this may have been a big town relative to others in the region, it wasn’t a place a hunter would go out of their way to visit. Most hunters in remote areas headed for the capital, not the same sort of rural town they had just come from. The local hunters and guild staff were already familiar with all the local children who were hunter hopefuls, popping in at the guildhall before they were even ten years old to try and pick up odd jobs.
Here, however, stood four unforgettable young girls in gear that was clearly well worn—not equipment that had just been purchased. No one could help but be curious. The members of the Crimson Vow, however, thought nothing of this. They were by now very much accustomed to drawing attention when they first visited a guild branch.
“We’d like to register, please,” Mavis said to the clerk. The room was silent, but all gazes focused even more fixedly on the four.
It was mainly their equipment, which seemed neither brand new nor like something a newbie might have purchased secondhand. Rather, it looked like something they’d already worn for years, well fitted to their bodies. And yet they were here as new registrants.
Of course all eyes would be on them.
“Register, you said?” the clerk asked, dubious.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Mavis cheerfully replied.
“Here you go, then.”
The clerk slowly handed over a stack of forms: four individual registration forms and one party registration form. Given the circumstances, the four of them had to be registering as a party. Of course, the clerk was just as dubious as everyone else about four people who were obviously not greenhorns registering as new hunters, but that was hardly reason enough to refuse them, leaving her no choice but to follow standard procedure.
At the very least, there was no reason to worry that such young and upstanding-looking girls might be registering illicitly. Given their ages, they probably still harbored naive hopes of a bright and successful future and would be unlikely to risk that future by doing anything illegal for coin and making an enemy of the Hunters’ Guild. Besides, with their youth and their looks, there would be far simpler ways for them to make a bit of money, if they so desired. The fact that they were choosing the path of a hunter rather than one of those other, safer avenues only spoke to the great merit of their character.
“Here you are,” said Mavis, gathering up the four completed individual forms along with their party form and handing them over to the clerk.
“Ah yes, thank you.” She accepted the forms and looked them over. “Um… Yes, these all look just fine. Now then, you may take the opportunity to look over the notice boards and job slips while we process your registration.”
Thankfully, it seemed there were no language barriers with this country’s written language, either. Granted, they had already confirmed this back at the fishing village, but they still had been slightly concerned that the spellings there might just have been a little bit off…
“Um, so as far as an aptitude test or skipping registration…” Mile started, hoping to avoid repeating her past mistakes.
“What? Aptitude test? Skipping registration?” the clerk asked, clearly confused.
“Er, well, I mean like a test to make sure that you have enough combat ability to be a hunter, or some way for promising newcomers to skip a rank or something…”
“Huh? Well, no. New registrants are all starting fresh, so of course they wouldn’t have much combat skill yet. We wouldn’t bar someone from registering just for that. It’s the experiences you accumulate after registering that make you stronger… Every veteran was a beginner once, you know? If we stopped people from registering just because they were weak, or on the basis of some arbitrary test, then only those who were already strong in the first place would ever become hunters…
“Plus, no matter how strong you already are, you’ll never be able to fulfill your job requirements as a hunter if you don’t know the basics of gathering herbs or how to hunt and process a jackalope. Do you really think we could let battle-hungry idiots who don’t even know how to forage or hunt small game register at a high rank?! You never know when one of your companions might be injured out in the forest or when you might end up unable to move and have to wait for help to arrive. There are, in fact, some idiots around who still don’t know this stuff!”
Several hunters shrank back at her words. Clearly, they had some black marks on their records, whether because they had made such a mistake in the past or because they had tried to convince her to promote them simply because they were strong. The fact that the clerk had raised her voice meant her rant was intended at least partly as a scolding or a warning to the other hunters, lest they get any funny ideas. Instructing rookies gave her the perfect pretense to do so without getting odd looks, and she’d taken full advantage of the opportunity.
“Uh…” The members of the Crimson Vow had no idea how to react.
There was no skip system, which meant they would be starting from the lowest rank. The shock of this revelation was almost too much to bear.
“But that’s so boring!” cried Mile.
“We have to start with herb gathering and jackalope hunting? I mean, I guess it would be nice just to take it easy and go back to the basics for a bit…” mused Mavis.
“It’s not like we can’t still hunt high-ranking monsters without taking normal jobs. We can hunt whatever we like for daily requests, and we’ll still profit from selling the parts,” said Reina.
“Grr. I resent the idea of working without a job fee, but I suppose it would make us more money to hunt and sell orcs as dailies than it would to take on the lowest-ranking jobs and do children’s work… We might even get a pretty good extermination fee, too, depending.”
Overhearing this, it was obvious to the clerk that these girls did have some experience hunting monsters, even if they had not registered before. They might appear to be tender young things, but from the sound of it, she could trust that they would not be sending these girls to an early death.
“Anyway, should we check out the info board and the job slips while we wait for our badges to be ready?” Pauline suggested.
“Oh, we better go sell some goods before that,” Mile pointed out.
“Almost forgot,” said Reina, suddenly remembering that they were lacking in local currency. “Mile, if you would.”
“On it!”
As indicated, Mile headed over to the purchasing counter. In this guildhall, this was not separate from the main building but merely a section of the same space separated slightly from the reception windows. Transactions were taken care of here, after which the goods would be carried out back. The purchasing counter consisted of a large surface that butchered and foraged goods could be heaped upon, though they could also be placed directly on the floor, as monster blood staining the ground apparently wasn’t a problem. All in all, the space looked perfectly suited to its function.
“Excuse me!” called Mile. “I’d like to sell some things!”
“Sure thing, missy, put ’er right there!”
Though it was doubtful a rookie would have much of value, the old man in charge of the counter didn’t seem unhappy to be doing business with a lovely little girl.
Ba-bam!
As directed, Mile placed her quarry upon the floor…since, had she placed it upon the counter, it might have broken it.
An orc carcass had appeared out of nowhere.
A deep silence spread throughout the room.
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