6 – Episode 6. When Five People Gather (1)
Ultimately, I couldn’t become a merchant.
– Excuse me, Robin? It’s great to have passion, but you can’t even do simple calculations. How can you be a merchant? The other girl is fine, but it seems tough for you, Robin. Even if we support you as beginner merchants, if you don’t know anything at all…
– Hey, hey, it’s not possible. Go away.
– No, seriously? A blind person as a merchant!? It would be easier for the boss to become an inspector. What? Jatoichi? Ha… Bertholdt! Get out!
In this world, filled with discrimination and hatred, it wasn’t easy for a ninja with a literary brain to find a job.
When Orpheus, who had been rejected for the 30th time, got tired first, he suggested becoming an adventurer.
Orpheus is the alias I made for the Yakuzaslayer.
I tried to shorten Yakuzaslayer to Yasu, but for some reason, I didn’t like it, so I decided to use the number 568 from my candidate days and create a name from it.
Orphia also hesitated for a moment, but she passed because she felt like she had heard it somewhere before.
I didn’t feel like making a pseudonym, so I tried to go by the three letters “Shin No Bin,” but Orphe questioned how Shin No Bin could be a person’s name, so she just decided to arrange it in a different way and chose the name Robin.
So, my external name is now Robin.
Anyway, it turns out that being an adventurer is a more convenient job than I thought.
It’s like being a typical freelancer who gets work from a guild, fills their body, and earns money.
Not much different from manual labor on Earth.
I thought I could be an adventurer in the morning and a runaway ninja at night, so I immediately ran to the guild with Orphe and became an apprentice adventurer.
“You said your name is Robin?”
“Huh?”
This frail bespectacled old man’s name is Setton, a team member who took on today’s quest as a group project.
In this world, there is a rule that apprentice adventurers who have not completed more than five quests must always go in groups of five.
“Do you know a genius who became an adventurer?”
“Huh-huh.”
How the f*ck would I know?
Originally, you shouldn’t show any signs of being a ninja among ordinary people, but according to Orphe, there doesn’t seem to be a concept of ninja in this world.
Well, then maybe it’s okay to use “Huh-huh” to refer to it?
Anyway, the only people who will hear it are either good people or dead people.
Since she’s a candidate for a tough woman to kill, it’s okay to consider her already dead.
“…I think this is the right place, right? It’s the same location as the map, right?”
The archer, who is in charge of navigation and long-range attacks, paused while watching Bonita, the team leader of the group project.
She seems strangely unsure of herself and lazy.
“Yes, that’s right. But as the guide, you should speak with more confidence. Please say it more confidently next time.”
Bonita, a kind and friendly girl armed with leather armor and a halberd.
She is the only guild member in our party of aspiring adventurers.
Being an adventurer doesn’t mean only doing dangerous things.
The guild also introduces tasks like washing grandma’s feet at a nursing home or cleaning up goat dung on a farm.
The problem is that the apprentices who try to make money by taking big risks often end up wiped out in quests to exterminate monsters.
So the guild had no choice but to intervene.
Their solution was to insert one guild member among the four apprentices to prevent trolling and increase the survival rate of the first quest.
You might ask if it’s enough to just forbid the apprentices from exterminating monsters.
Well, the benefits that monster extermination brings to the guild are quite significant.
After all, those who know they won’t die even if they fail are the ones who take the risk, and if they succeed, it raises the performance of the guild employees.
It’s a world where the life of a single commoner is worth less than a salaryman’s meal.
This is information I heard from Orphe, so it’s reliable.
Since the guild has set up its own safety measures, the apprentices also took advantage of them.
Those who came only to exterminate monsters have no interest in anything else.
The point where a party of five becomes optional is from the sixth quest, so they gather people who will only exterminate monsters for the first five quests and form a party of five.
This way, they don’t have to wander around every day, looking for parties here and there to have elemental tutoring, which is more convenient for guild-affiliated adventurers and the guild itself doesn’t have to decide on party formations multiple times.
It’s a commonly known win-win strategy.
The problem is that there’s a high probability of meeting idiots when you do it that way.
From Noble mtl dot com
Since it’s a gathering of assholes, there’s no synergy effect like in a DPS-Tank-Healer setup, so it was impossible to strategize like that in the first place.
Still, I thought there would be some degree of competence, but I was a third-rate ninja.
“Let’s go, comrades.”
This otaku guy, Saten, seemed to have learned swordsmanship from manga, as he had a shortsword in reverse grip. And this girl, who seemed to be a passerby, came with just a bow and a quiver with three arrows, as if she was an archer without daggers.
Are you planning to shoot all three and then beg for mercy from the enemies to retrieve your arrows? That’s the extent of my imagination.
“As expected, you’re quite big.”
Orphe, checking her armor with a clinking sound. It’s the armor of the baldy who used to enjoy bondage.
As soon as she got permission from me, she went back into the cave and came out with a bundle, which turned out to be this armor.
It’s probably quite high-quality. Orphe, who is skinny but tall, seemed to fit the size roughly.
Ill-fitting equipment is a disadvantage in a fight against strong enemies, but I understand because I don’t have money.
I’m just wearing the quilted armor that the deceased instructor gave me.
“I’ll scout first and come back.”
Bonita, sturdy like a bowl of rice, stepped forward and pushed through the bushes.
Our party’s first quest was to go down to the village and deal with a group of yokai causing trouble.
The yokai that inhabit the vicinity of the river are said to invade the human territory after the concentrated rain passes to find food. They’re probably the gods of this world.
“Monster hunting is nerve-wracking for the first time, huh? Robin, do you have any experience?”
Saten spoke up, probably getting bored and wanting to talk.
Seeing him keep talking since earlier, it seems like he didn’t have any friends to talk to until now.
“I’ve caught some big caterpillars before. There were even ones bigger than my forearm.”
He was still a good person, so I replied politely.
I’m not sure if that bug is a monster. But it’s unpleasant to look at, so maybe it falls under the category of monsters.
“That big caterpillar is the larva of a thunderbug. It must appear often in books, so you probably didn’t know its name. Speaking of books, I’m actually a writer. I almost serialized a novel in the popular newspaper ‘Artists’ Hall’ for the nobles.”
I wasn’t interested in this story at all.
But it’s surprising that there’s a newspaper. Gathering information is a ninja’s virtue, so I decided to listen.
“I’m writing a romantic novel about the crossbreeding of monsters and humans. But it’s difficult to describe since I haven’t actually encountered any monsters. That’s why I decided to come here and see for myself, to get inspiration. If you’re curious about this young one’s work.”
I couldn’t hear another word.
This guy was a monster enthusiast!
Of course, there are also those monsters who have intimate relationships with humans.
The most prominent example is Jecheon Daeseong, who became an assistant to Samjang. But I know the truth about these damn monsters!
They provided humans with the opportunity to taste good and evil, manipulated dictators to implement the “improvement of human flesh” policy, and occasionally landed spaceships in the fields of kind farmers to ruin a year’s worth of crops. It’s all the work of monsters!
If the ninjas hadn’t stood up against them, the incineration of the Earth would have been inevitable!
“Should I kill him?”
The end of a monster enthusiast is ultimately worshipping monsters.
But it’s not the way of a runaway ninja to kill ignorant people based on uncertain possibilities.
Buddha, what should I do?
Is it right to cut the seeds of evil that haven’t committed any crimes yet!? Please answer!!!!
“The habitat of the Occul has been confirmed. Let’s go.”
Bonita came and I decided to think about it later.
Well, I can kill him anytime. Holding the Aming Sword, a drop item from the Ninja Supervisor, I followed Bonita.
“What?!”
A bizarre sight assaulted my vision!