NOVEL NEXT Chapter 97: A Noisy Group
"..."
"Eve, I officially hate this city," I say, kicking a pebble as we arrive at the door of this city's guild, which I've found out is called [Pristion].
Ever since we got here, I've almost been robbed five times. Each time, Eve caught the thief. It wasn't just adults; even kids tried to rob me by bumping into me like it was an accident.
There were three kids, one older woman, and one young guy... these five tried to rob me. And out of the five thieves, four of them actually managed to grab a bunch of my stuff with minimal contact before Eve restrained them and got everything back.
And with a few of the ones who robbed me, Eve instantly stole everything back from them and even took all of their own stuff without them noticing, so I didn't lose anything. Thankfully, no one tried to steal the storage ring, since generally, unlocking it without the owner is pretty difficult.
The ring's owner needs to hand over the ring to release the lock, or you have to hire someone really skilled to pick it. At least, that's how most of the magical locks on rings work.
"Why the hell are there so many thieves!! It was just a walk down the street! How the hell did five different thieves try to rob me in broad daylight?" I know I have bad luck because fate hates me; this luck has screwed me over many times, but even so, this is ridiculous.
"Well, calm down, Evelyn-sama. We arrived safely, and no petty thief will be able to steal from you with me here or with Syl'Vyr using her magic," Eve says with composure.
"I know! It's a good thing you're both here! I honestly don't know what I would do without you, I mean it! I'd be seriously screwed without you two helping me!" I say, pushing open the guild's door as if I owned the place.
The nervousness of being an adventurer ended after the first time. Now the guild has become a common, easy-to-handle experience, so I just head to the counter to look for someone to formalize my request.
"Well, but let's grab a mission and—"
Splash, Plaf! Smash!!
As I take a few steps forward, talking to Eve, a pie hits me square in the face, slowly dripping down before plopping onto the floor. I wipe my hand over my face and see the pie cream covering my mask.
"..." I look at Eve, who averts her gaze, and then at Syl'Vyr, who is holding back the urge to laugh. I promptly run my hand over the mask, scraping off as much cream as I can with my fingers and flicking it onto the floor.
'Good thing I was wearing a mask...' I look around for the miserable bastard who threw a pie in my face and notice a guy and a girl arguing at a table. The guy is speaking calmly while the girl yells at him, throwing things from the table trying to hit him.
"..."
'Forget it.' I don't want to get involved in that fight, especially since they seem like strong people, and I'm not going to step in. If they're already arguing and no one is doing anything, if I get involved, they'll just turn on me.
I take a handkerchief and start scrubbing the cream off my face, cleaning it skillfully, and see that luckily my dress didn't get dirty because the mask absorbed almost everything from the pie shot to the face.
"Here, Evelyn-chan, let me clean that... just a moment..." Syl'Vyr murmurs and then quickly cleans the cream out of my hair completely.
'Tsk!' I walk right past those two noisy people, heading straight for the counter without looking at them. I see this city's counter is different; I can't see who the receptionist is on the other side.
'Okay, I know this is a fortress city, but first there were bandits, and now a guild counter reinforced to withstand attacks? What the hell is going on in this city?' I feel frustrated as I tap on the glass, which is so frosted you can't see through it.
"Hello, could you introduce yourself and place your guild card in the slot down below?" A neutral voice that doesn't tell me if it's a man or a woman emerges, and I just do as asked.
"I'm Evelyn. My group is Twilight Bloodline, and I want to go to a dungeon, so I'd like to know which dungeons are around the city," I say, sliding my card through.
"...One moment," the voice says, and everything falls silent, with the only background noise being the argument between the girl and that guy. She keeps throwing small things at him while he talks calmly.
"Eve, what are those two talking about?" I ask, puzzled.
"Apparently, the girl is furious because they can't go on a mission that requires a minimum party of five, and they are a duo. The man is trying to remedy the situation, but the girl is furious because she needs... money? I didn't quite understand that part," Eve explains briefly.
"Oh... I see." It's a really annoying problem if they could do the mission alone but need a group because of the rules.
"Well, it's not our problem! Getting involved in other groups' trouble is stupid," I say, turning my attention back to the counter. After receiving a fine for theft even after saving Darian, I realized that helping is complicated even when done in good faith.
"Okay... Evelyn, then. I've just verified your license... everything is in order. Here is a list of dungeons in the area within a 2-kilometer radius outside the city wall," they say, passing several papers to my side along with my license, which I quickly put away.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," I say, taking everything and looking for an empty table, which I find easily since the place is pretty empty for now.
"Eve, Syl'Vyr, look through these papers and find something that looks interesting! But nothing with a high number of visits; I prefer emptier dungeons." In emptier dungeons, everything we find is ours, and there's no chance of anyone robbing us.
"Okay, Evelyn-chan." Syl'Vyr quickly takes some of the papers and starts looking them over. Eve also starts examining some while I look over the options.
'A submerged dungeon?... No.' I discard the first one. It's a dungeon where everything from the second floor down is underwater, and we have no means to explore that, so I discard it without reading further.
'A swamp?' A swamp dungeon seems interesting, until I realize that the start of a dungeon defines all the monsters and its style, and a swamp could be very problematic on the lower floors.
'The pay is good, but it's not worth the risk... I need to choose something Eve and Syl'Vyr can handle well...' I discard that one, looking for the next, but everything seems bad.
A stone dungeon is terrible for Eve since there will be lots of golems and their resistance will be a problem. A fire dungeon is another horrible one since we can't afford to buy many fireproof things.
A dungeon full of poisonous monsters is the next paper, and that's the worst of all. After all, even if poison is generally useless against puppets, those dungeons also have acid-type monsters.
'Ice... an ice dungeon will be hell in this current weather.' Some dungeons are affected by the outside climate, and we're in cold weather that's only going to get colder in the coming days, so an ice dungeon will literally turn me into a block of ice.
'What the shit! All these dungeons look like garbage!' I throw all the papers on the table, having lost interest. As the papers scatter, I see just how much crap is available.
"Did you two find anything good?" I ask while Eve shakes her head no and Syl'Vyr gives a strange smile.
"Well, there's this one, Evelyn-chan, but it's not exactly good," Syl'Vyr places a paper in front of me for a dungeon of tentacles and slime-type monsters, with octopus-type monsters as well.
"...I am not doing that!! It's clearly a trap!" I slap the paper while quickly refusing to go into that kind of weird dungeon.
"Sigh... They're all dungeons with conditions that disadvantage our group. If we had a healer, we could handle most of them, but without a healer, most have extreme conditions that depend on having money to buy items," I say, annoyed.
"Hey." I hear a voice, a bit too loud, with a pitched but strong tone right behind me.
"I heard you want to go to a dungeon. This city only gives out missions based on very specific rules. We want to go to a dungeon but need a minimum of five. It's a good dungeon, and it should be good for you." I look at who's talking to me and see that girl who was arguing before.
"You are?" I ask, confused by her suddenly talking to me.
"I'm Ylya," she says as I look her over. She's a tall girl with blond hair and pink eyes, with a strong, slender build that highlights her medium-sized chest and her sharp, rebellious gaze.
She's wearing light plate armor fitted perfectly over her white and yellow dress, which doesn't make her class and fighting style clear.
"And that fool back there is Yter," she says, pointing to the guy beside her, a man with a physique lacking bulging muscles but clearly strong, with short black hair and green eyes. He has a calm but clearly dangerous posture.
His black clothes and the daggers I see make me think he's some kind of assassin class, even if he isn't, he certainly looks the part.
"You want us to team up?" I ask, and she takes a paper and hands it to me.
"Just read it, you'll understand," she says impatiently, staring at me.
'Let's see... Fortress-type dungeon... minimum of 5 people in the party...' I look at the payment. The pay for dungeon missions depends on materials, so the guild always catalogs the basic monsters from the first floors to estimate the dungeon's worth.
"Oh, this is a good dungeon... and few people go because of the limit..." I murmur, looking at the girl, then I look at Syl'Vyr.
"Syl'Vyr... any strange smell?" I ask, and she shakes her head. Then I look at Eve, who just shrugs.
'No murderous intent... no direct scent of blood, and no murderous intent being hidden...' They seem honest.
"Give me 50 gold coins for the pie in my face, and I'll agree," I say, and the girl immediately looks indignant but stops herself from speaking and just pulls out a small bag of coins.
"Here. I really need the money from monster hunting, so I guess it's 'fair' to pay for the help. We'll split everything 50/50 between the groups. It doesn't matter that you're three and we're two; it'll be 50/50, no more, no less," she says quickly, and I agree with a smile.
"Of course, let's go register our groups for this mission."