SIDE:
The Guild Master and His Mentor
Pov: The Mentor
“Hey there.”
I opened the door to find Alumi organizing a heaping pile of documents. Gotos was hunched over on his desk beside her.
“Hello, sir. Have you finished?”
“Yeah. You, too?”
“I finally reached a stopping point, yes.” There was a bit of snark in her voice.
She’d finally finished the mountain of work that Gotos had let pile up. But dang…how did that guy even manage to fall so far behind?
“Guild Master, once we’re done, please actually ask for help when you need it from now on. You’ll only make things worse if you don’t.”
“Yes, ma’am… Thank you for all the help… Can I please go home now?” Gotos’s voice was hoarse with fatigue.
“Yes, I suppose you can go home. Enjoy a well-earned rest. But you’re going right back to the grind tomorrow!”
“Ah…yes, ma’am.” The guild master looked like he was going to talk back to her, but he thought better of it. He simply shut up and smiled.
“Well, Master, if you’ll excuse me…” Alumi said.
“Make sure ya rest up good, too, Alumi. Sorry ya had to deal with this blockhead.” She was always a star among my apprentices, and she still never ceased to impress me.
“Oh, I have my baby to soothe my soul, so I’ll be fine.”
“As it should be. Say hi to the husband for me.”
“You’d better get home and rest up, too, Master.”
There was a spring in Alumi’s step as she left—she must have been excited to see her baby. I sat down in a chair across from Gotos.
“So…are those crazy kids gone now?”
“Yeah. Ivy left a message saying Good luck with your work. Please don’t push yourself too hard.” Gotos tried to mimic Ivy’s tone with his own gravely voice, and the results were rather gross.
“Cut that out. It’s giving me the creeps.”
“Rude.”
I showed Gotos the bottle of hard liquor I’d brought with me, took out some cups, and poured the wine.
“To the two travelers,” we said, raising our glasses and gulping the wine down in one swig. The burning sensation tickled my throat… Damn, I love that.
“What a strange child Ivy is,” Gotos said.
I thought of Ivy…and yeah, definitely a strange kid. I took my magic item out of my bag and activated it so nobody could hear us talking.
“So, how much do ya know?”
“What do you mean?”
“About Ivy.”
“I suppose you mean that Ivy’s a tamer who has two rare slimes named Sora and Flame, has memories of a past life, and has no stars?”
Aha. Not clear if he has all the info, but he at least knows as much as I do.
“Oh, and Ivy also gave me potions and magic stones.”
“Oh… What?!”
“Sparkling blue and red potions. And some very powerful magic stones—Level SSS, I think?”
“That damn fool! Did you actually accept them? Did you pay?!”
“I tried to pay but got turned down. Was told it was a donation.”
Wait a minute, red potions? I thought Flame was the slime that ate illness-healing red potions. So this means it can also make potions now? Wait, yeah, I think Ivy did mention once that Flame cured illnesses… Things were so hectic back then that I forgot to ask for more details. But still…why more magic stones and potions?
“Did the slimes want them to be donations?”
“No, no, according to Druid, the slimes made those things when they were at the dump gathering what they needed for their travels, and they were too nervous about taking such valuable stuff with them on the road, so they donated them.”
So that’s how it went. Sora and Flame might’ve made those items to sell for the travel fund, then.
“Okay. Well, don’t use them just any ol’ time. Only in extreme emergencies.”
“Of course I won’t. And I told Ivy and Druid to get in touch if they ever needed money. If I ever do use any of the magic items, I doubt I’ll be able to reimburse them what they’re really worth, but I do intend to pay.”
“Okay. I guess that’ll do.” Arrrgh. Still, it’d be real nice if they didn’t have to drop a big bombshell right before they left.
“Oh, wait, Master! One more thing. Those fools who tried to bring blessed incense into our town have been sentenced.”
Ah. The blessed incense. “So, what’s the verdict?”
“The eighth-generation shopkeeper—the one who tried to smuggle the blessed incense—was sentenced to fifty-five years as a slave, and the seventh-generation one got the same punishment for collaborating. The remaining criminals were sentenced to thirty years of slavery.”
Right…if I recall correctly, the guy he just called “the eighth generation” used to run Oll’s number one shop.
“Why were they messing with blessed incense, of all things?”
“When the eighth generation took over the business, sales plummeted, so he set his sights on blessed incense to bring his business back to life.”
But…how could blessed incense possibly do that?
“So the seventh generation heard about this and decided to help the eighth generation to get back at the sixth generation.”
“Are they braindead?”
Gotos smirked at the word. The sixth-generation shopkeeper was the innovator who had made his business the most acclaimed in town, but he hadn’t achieved that success overnight. He’d started young, promoting his shop all over town until it had caught on. I remembered this well, since he’d spoken about it so passionately when we’d had a drink together once.
“Well, no matter. By the way, what were they gonna do with the blessed incense once they got it into Oll?”
“Huh? Didn’t I tell you?” he asked, tilting his head. That gesture was always adorable when Ivy did it, but Gotos’s version made my eyes bleed.
“I ain’t heard nothin’.”
“Oh. Well, he wanted to get monster meat and magic stones with it.”
“What?!”
“He would lure the monsters into town, then hire adventurers to hunt them. See, the further adventurers have to go out to hunt, the more they cost, so he figured it would be a lot cheaper to bring the monsters to town instead.”
What kind of stupid-ass plan is that?
“Also, freshness is important when it comes to meat. He said he could sell the monster meat at higher prices if they were killed close to town. After all, meat is an exception when it comes to magic bags. You have to put it in there immediately after it’s hunted, or it gets less fresh and the price goes down.”
“Yeah, all of that does actually make sense…” I sighed.
So they were going to use blessed incense to lure monsters to town. Meanwhile, the monsters had gone berserk, which made them far more dangerous than normal, and those were the monsters they were luring to town. They were genuine blockheads, the lot of them. We were seriously lucky that Ivy discovered the blessed incense.
“So what’s gonna become of those blockheads’ shop?” Is anyone in line to take it over?
“The sixth generation is still alive, so he’s running things for now.”
“Aha. But I’d heard rumors that the eighth generation was full of promise …Unless those were lies?”
“Oh, the rumors definitely weren’t lies. But it would be better to say he had the potential to be full of promise.”
Potential?
“He had two skills related to business and three stars in each.”
“Three stars, eh? Yeah, ya would expect great things from him.”
Well…it doesn’t matter if ya got one star or three stars unless you’ve got the experience to back it up. Ya can’t possibly get good at something without putting in any effort… The world ain’t a fairy tale.
“I’ve noticed…more and more poor bastards are relying too much on their stars and failing as a result.” Does this mean it’s become more common to think that more stars mean less work? Damn stupid if ya ask me.
“I think you’re right, Master, though at one point I believed there was an advantage in having more stars.”
“Ya whaaat?”
“Please don’t get angry! It’s just that Alumi does her job flawlessly, and she has more stars than me.”
Oh, does she? I forgot.
“But meeting Ivy made me realize how wrong I was. Ivy insists it’s because she has these memories from her past life to rely on, but memories and knowledge aren’t enough. You have to be able to use them wisely.”
Damn straight. The more ya read, the more ya know. But if ya want to use any of that knowledge in real life, ya need experience and intuition. And those are things no number of stars can ever improve.
“Looks like you, Druid, and I all met a valuable ally.”
“Indeed we did.”
She really is an enigma. “I only hope she comes back while I’m still alive.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll still be alive, Master.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not the type of person who’d let himself die, no matter what happens. Ha ha ha.”
Was that a compliment or a dig? Gotos was pretty hard to read when he got all drunk and happy.
“Master…Guild Master…why are you both like this?!”
Alumi’s screeching voice rang through my hung-over head. We’d gotten carried away with our drinking last night, and before we knew it, the sun was up.
“Are you even listening to me?!”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry,” we squeaked in unison.
There were more than ten empty liquor bottles strewn about on the table. Funny. I don’t remember drinkin’ that much…
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