BXBX NOVEL Chapter 23: Let’s Get a Job
Chapter 23: Let’s Get a Job
Translator: ShiroiKaze/Soyokaze Translations
Today is the day of our departure!
I’m really excited about my first family trip. To the point where I’m waving about the hem of the dress I’m wearing for the trip, and even spinning around?
“You’re pretty lively, Yuuri. Are you that excited?”
“Yuuri barely ever leaves this cottage after all. She’s normally filled with curiosity by nature, so it’s no wonder she’s frolicking about.”
“Miss Yuuri, you’re so cute.”
“When Yuuri is this lively, she’s definitely gonna mess up somewhere…”
“Shut it, Alec!”
I stick my finger out at Alec, who’s being disrespectful again, as a warning, and then check our luggage.
Change of clothes, check. Wallet, check. Weapons, check…
“Yuuri, leave that here.”
“Eh? Weapons are important though?”
The one my Master is pointing out is the “second” weapon I developed, the “Cleaver”.1
With a full length exceeding 2 meters, and with a mass of iron—way too huge a mass of iron—fixed to the end of the handle, it’s… a war hammer.
Originally, rather than my weight, this lump of metal far exceeded my master’s weight. There are four enchantments, [weight reduction], [toughness], [acceleration], and [smashing] (incomplete), applied to it.
This mass of iron was constructed by layers with silver in the middle, and iron covering it. It’s a test project which increases the number of enchantments that can be applied.
Even though it’s light, with its super acceleration it can beat the snot out of things, so I feel that it turned into a super weapon.
It’s just, the way it looks is… the absurdity of a nearly 100 kilogram mass of iron is not stylish in the least.
“Well, if you insist. Then I’ll just go with this one.”
“I would very much appreciate that. There’s just too much wrong with seeing a little girl walking around carrying such a heavyweight object.”
That said, what I have equipped is a mantle with [maintenance] and [connection] on it, and a bracelet with [body reinforcement – strength] on it.
These were developed as countermeasures to deal with the unwieldy aspects of [body reinforcement].
With the mantle I took advantage of the huge surface area to fulfill the role of a supplementary magic power tank. The bracelet is an auxiliary tool to easily multitask [body reinforcement], which can’t be multi-cast. Even so, right now I’m the only one who can use it through parallel activation of spells.
And then, a bow and quiver. This is the “third” that I developed in these two years.
“Well then, let’s get going.”
“Yeah—!”
According to our plan, we’ll take our carriage from the cottage to Mareba.
At Mareba, we’ll leave our carriage in Mr. Halt’s care, and switch over to a carriage heading to Comb that we’ll meet up with.
And then, from Comb we’ll switch to a carriage heading to Novelius, and after bumping along for 10 days, we should arrive at Solkalis.
Along the way we’ll pass through the border checkpoint, but my Master and Alec have passes, so there are no problems. For the record, I have one too.
“Now we just need to pray that Yuuri doesn’t mess anything up!”
“Alec, you’re not getting lunch.”
~*~
“I’m sorry, I really screwed up.”
My shoulders drop in dejection.
After 3 days, we got to the City of Comb. I’ve been in this world for 5 years, but this is the first big city I’ve seen other than Lilith.
There are bustling crowds of people, stalls, and various sounds and smells.
Nobody would blame me for being somewhat excited by it all… if only my wallet wasn’t stolen.
“Well, I didn’t notice it either, so there’s not much we could do. Fortunately there wasn’t much money in it.”
“Master, ya know 100 gold coins is what most people would call a large amount in this world?”
Since it’s a trip, we took a fair sum along with us.
Now the only money we have is the 10 gold coins that Alec is carrying. With this much we can only barely scrape by going there and coming back.
“If I must, then I can sell this ring…”
“I’d like to leave that as a last resort.”
Before we left, just in case, everyone was given a ring of mental resistance (improved).
For if I carelessly remove my glasses.
“Should I go back and get more? I should be able to get there and back by tomorrow.”
“No, that would be if you used [body reinforcement] to go all out on flying.”
I can control the [flight] spell now, so I can now move with a full agility reinforcement.
And if I do that on the ground, then I end up destroying the ground with every step.
With the effect of my mantle, I should have enough for a round trip.
“Well, there’s no need to overdo it by going back and getting more. Having things like this happen is the real thrill of traveling.”
My Master finds this preferable to having his house blown away… is what he muttered under his breath. Please don’t open old wounds!
When I stared at my Master with teary eyes, he averted his gaze.
“You’re taking this comfortably, Master. Anyway, what we need is money, so… then, after I submit our theft report, want to try finding a job?”
“A job?”
Marle tilts her head as she asks that. I would also like to hear more about this.
“In a city like this, there are all sorts of jobs around. A lot of those are run by the guys at the adventurer’s guild or other such places, though…”
“Of course, that would be the place we can trust the most, but registration and the like will be a pain. Since we’re headed to Novelius, I’ll see if I can find us some freelance work.”
“Thanks for that, Alec.”
“I think registering would be just fine though. Is registration that big a deal?”
“It’s not like we’d be taking jobs very often. Things like the annual fee, and renewal are annoying.”
“Moreover, Yuuri, you’re “A Great Sage” and I’m a “Former Sage.””
The Sage of Wind becoming an adventurer… that does sound like a pain. Mostly psychologically.
“At this time of year, there should be some escort jobs. If we play our cards right, we could be hired on as luggage carriers for some adventurers headed to Novelius.”
“Whoa, could this mean that Alec is… reliable?”
“What the hell?! I’ve always been reliable!”
“That’s right, sir Alec is cool!”
When I unintentionally let what I was really thinking slip, not just Alec, but even Marle came at me for it.
I’ve failed. I just can’t get into a good rhythm today.
“But getting a job as an escort probably wouldn’t work.”
I state my rough opinion after taking one look at our equipment.
Alec and my Master are only armed with long swords on their waists. I have a bow, and Marle looks exactly like a village girl.
Alec aside, my Master only has a normal shirt and pants on this time. He’s not wearing his usual magician’s robe.
We don’t have nearly enough visual impact. Maybe I really should have brought “Cleaver” along?
“What, I don’t mind being a porter. I do have confidence in my strength.”
“Me too, me too.”
“I don’t have any such confidence.”
“Excuse me, I don’t either…”
“There probably aren’t many fellows who would expect even children to be escorts or luggage carriers for them. In exchange for our help would could ask them to let you tag along with us.”
“Are there no subjugation-ish requests? If there are, then we could immediate finish it, and earn money too, right?”
“The bulk of things like that are managed by the guild. The knights also go around for who knows how many of them, but I think they hardly ever have ordinary people handle those requests.”
That makes sense. That would be asking any random passerby to go kill monsters for them.
But, if that’s the case, does that mean there’s barely anything I can do?
“Don’t worry about it. It may surprise you, but I actually enjoy these situations, you know?”
“This reminds me of when I traveled to Cornus.”
“Then I’ll watch Yuuri and Marle. Alec, I’m leaving it all in your hands.”
“You can count on me.”
He gives the kind of crisp salute you would expect of an active knight. He has become a sir.
Ah, Marle is in a daze.
~*~
For now, we got a place at an inn, and after finishing a meal we listened to the results of today’s search.
By the way, we got two rooms for two people each, and we split the rooms with me and my Master in one, and Marle and Alec in the other.
You’re wondering why we didn’t split them into men and women? Because I can’t sleep if I’m not next to my Master!
“So, Alec, how did you do?”
“We’ve been hired on as porters for the escorts of a merchant headed to Solkalis. Taking the expenses of bringing two children along out of our compensation, one person gets 30 silver coins per day.”
“Hm, so with two people for ten days, we’ll get 6 gold coins then?”
“They said each of us will need to handle cargo around 40 kilograms. Can you manage that, Master?”
“I can handle that much easily.”
My Master’s muscle strength isn’t what you’d expect from a magician.
Alec’s muscles are also abnormally strong for his age. Apparently that’s because he’s always training to be able to hold two-handed swords with one hand.
By the way, where both Alec and my Master stand in terms of strength is roughly two times that of an ordinary person.
“The name of the merchant is Mr. Elric. He, along with his wife and a servant are the three people being escorted. It looks like they’ll be taking two carriages to Solkalis.”
“Two carriages? That’s quite a lot for a single person business.”
“I’ve heard there are a lot of volcanoes in the Solkalis area, and various veins of metal. For the people gathering up there, they’ll need food and water supplies, and they probably go through mining tools pretty quickly too.”
“Yes, the cargo is mainly fresh food, including vegetables. The rest is a bunch of supplementary shovels and pickaxes, and then some gold coins, probably for buying ore.”
Veins of metal… ah!
Dammit, if I just bought a ring, [enchanted] it and sold it, wouldn’t that have earned us plenty of money?!
—I can’t tell them I messed up again, so maybe I’ll just keep quiet about this little matter?
And so, I alone had a cold sweat running down my back.
“The escorts coming with are two parties named “Forest Bear” and “Vulture’s Nest”. Each has five people, so there’s ten of them.”
“How’s their record?”
“Forest Bear is still a newer party, with about two years of experience. Vulture’s Nest is about mid-level I guess? They’ve been associated with the guild for nearly ten years. Neither of them have any remarkable achievements.”
“But ten years you say?… Then do they have a lot of trust from the guild?”
“The Vultures have some, or maybe not too much? They don’t seem bad, but when they’ve had some drinks, it seems they’ll cause problems on occasion. For the Bears, “they’re powerful, but they’re still inexperienced” is what they said.”
“You even investigated the history of the escorts, Alec?”
For people who aren’t affiliated with the guild, like us, to be hired on as porters, he had to do something like negotiating with the merchant directly.
Fortunately, Alec’s face was recognized by Mr. Elric, and he seemed satisfied with that.
After that he looked up the escort party names, and even asked about their reputations… he really used his time well.
“Since it wasn’t a request through the guild, it would be dangerous if we didn’t at least investigate the past our fellow travelers. Master, and Yuuri, it looks like you didn’t think about that?”
“Shuddup.”
“No, I certainly didn’t consider it.”
“Sir Alec, you’re amazing.”
Ugggh, stock in Alec is soaring… well that’s just fine then.
“What we’re carrying is the water and food of the adventurers. With ten days worth for ten people, we’ll each end up carrying seventy days worth of meals,2 so it’ll be quite a large amount.”
“That sounds reasonable. If we’re transporting their preserved food, then the load will lighten as we go on. As a luggage carrier, I appreciate that.”
“Instead of that, we may have to carry any materials we pick up along the way, so I don’t think it’ll be that easy for us.”
“There’s only so much they can pick up.”
“We depart tomorrow morning at 8. We’ll need to turn in early today.”
And so, we went to bed early for our one night in Comb.
I wanted… to go sightseeing.