Chapter 99

Whether they had been infected by her manic laughter or not, her comrades began to chuckle along, “Eheheheh!” as they rushed forward like madmen, hacking and slashing with swords and axes.

When they were hit, they simply took it. Defense was not even an after-thought.

“Drop dead!”

“Die!”

“Get lost!”

“Shut up and crawl!”

“Kiyooooooooot!!!”

Wait, what happened to the tactical precision that was operating like gears just a moment ago? why is everyone suddenly running wild in a frenzy?

“Charge! Army of Molten Iron!”

“Forest of Ice Thorns!!”

“Wind Slasher—128 Successive Strikes!!”

Even the mages, who had been focused solely on defense, began grinning as if they were all on drugs, unleashing a barrage of offensive magic.

“Why are those people suddenly acting like that?”

“Ah, I don’t know. It’s always like this when that girl joins in. Just ignore them. They’ll manage on their own. They might lose a limb or two, but that’s their own responsibility. Who cares? Worry about yourself instead. Since they’re all going all-out right now, if you don’t produce the results you bragged about, a few people might actually die.”

“Mmm…”

“Seriously, what a mess…”

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After confirming that the aggro of the giant snake—the Horned Black Snake or whatever—was perfectly fixed on Kelly, I immediately threw myself forward.

Clang!

As I drew Astraphe and charged toward the serpent, several guild combatants who were grappling with the snake screamed in horror.

“A civilian!?”

“Hey! Who’s supposed to be controlling the civilians!?”

“Tanker! Protect that man! No, grab him and throw him out of here!”

“Get out of here! Are you crazy! You’re going to die!!”

I grabbed the arm of a dwarf who was running toward me while yelling at the top of his lungs, lightly spun him around once, and instead of slowing down, I actually increased my speed.

Letting the curses and screams erupting behind me go in one ear and out the other, I lightly swung Astraphe toward the belly of the creature, which hadn’t even spared me a glance.

Shing.

Skrrt!

The seven layers of barriers covering its soft underbelly were sliced clean through in a single stroke.

“What!?”

“Wh-what…!?”

Before the barriers could even begin to recover, I lunged into the gap I had cut and delivered two more strikes, one to the left and one to the right.

Slash! Squelch!!

A solid sensation in my hand. It was the feeling of splitting bone exactly as I had aimed.

Only then did the snake, which had ignored me as a mere fly, slowly turn its head toward me.

Grrrrrrrrr….

“What are you looking at with such an aggrieved expression? Do you want another taste of the blade because one wasn’t enough?”

Thwack!

As a result, with just three sword strikes, the snake’s spine was split. Unable to support its own body weight any longer, it finally collapsed sideways.

Ku-kwa-aaaaaaaaaang!!

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As I’ve mentioned occasionally, the further an enemy’s form is from humanoid and the larger their size, the worse the compatibility is for me.

If it’s not humanoid, my strength in anti-personnel martial arts loses its meaning, and if the enemy is massive, there aren’t many methods I can use since I lack wide-range attacks and high raw power.

However… things are a bit different now. This is a situation where, if I can just create a weakness, there are plenty of people who can deliver the finishing blow in my stead.

Furthermore, a snake is a creature with a glaringly obvious weakness. If you cut the spine, it becomes a semi-paraplegic. That was something I could easily achieve with just Astraphe in my hand.

And the result of executing that plan without a single error was exactly what was happening now.

Amidst the rising clouds of dust, I gestured with my chin toward the combatants who were staring blankly at the scene.

“What are you doing? It’s still alive. Go and finish it off.”

“Uh, uh-huh…. Right.”

“L-let’s do that.”

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An old dwarf, carrying a shield larger than his own body, came stomping over as soon as the guild members took the snake’s head.

“Yo! That was incredible, brother! Right? Wahahahaha!!! How on earth does a man knock down a fifty-meter monster with just a single sword? Ah, it’s okay if I speak casually, right? Since we’re both aging together, let’s not stand on ceremony! And you’re joining the guild, right? I really want to see how we sync up in a real fight.”

“Ah… I saw you too. You were the one standing in the center of the tank line, taking almost all of the snake’s attacks by yourself, weren’t you? Even considering the buffs from the priests and mages, your skill is truly remarkable.”

“Ayy, brother. Didn’t we agree to be friends? What’s with that stiff way of talking? Are you looking down on a wrinkly dwarf just because you’re a bit handsome?”

To be honest… setting aside his skills as a meat shield, he’s not the type of personality I want to get involved with. So I’d like to decline if possible, but thinking about how I’ll be indebted to this guild for a while, it’s hard to do so.

“Fine. Let’s do that then.”

Honestly, he looks much older than me, so I feel a bit awkward… but since he’s the one insisting on dropping formalities, well, what can I do? Maybe he just looks like that and is unexpectedly young. Long-lived races are always hard to gauge by age, after all.

“Oh. Good, good! Today I’ve made another friend with great potential! Hohohoho!”

It was then. From a distance, the general store part-timer—no, Kelly—came running toward us.

“Orabeoni! I’m so glad you’re safe!”

“Ah, Kelly.”

Kelly shared a smile with me, then immediately turned around and kicked the dwarf in the shin.

Whack!!!

“Ack!!”

“You… you thoughtless old geezer. What are you doing pestering someone who’s busy?”

Huh? Was I busy?

“What did I do!?”

“Whatever. Old man Sang-soon, go back and take care of your squad. There are four injured in the tanker squad, so why is the squad leader wasting time over here?”

“I get it! Seriously, what an ill-mannered girl. I’m over three hundred years old and just waiting for my day to die, yet I get such harsh treatment from a girl whose blood hasn’t even dried on her forehead. Oh, my goodness….”

“Day to die, my foot. I heard from a priest the other day that you’ll outlive an elf. Anyway, just go!”

“Fine. Fine. I’m going. Sheesh…”

After chasing away the old dwarf, she grabbed my arm and started pulling me along.

“Huh? Where are you taking me?”

“Where? You’re asking the obvious, aren’t you?”

“The obvious?”

“Obviously, you need to sign a contract with our guild.”

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Kelly, who personally drove a magic-stone car to bring me to the guild headquarters, dragged me straight to the Guild Master’s office on the second floor.

There, Chel, who was sitting at her desk, brightened up when she saw me.

“Ah, you’ve arrived. I heard from Kelly… that you want to save up money quickly to return to the Eastern Continent through a sanctuary?”

“Well, if all else fails, I’m thinking of taking a ship, but my primary goal is indeed using a sanctuary.”

“If that’s the case, we can offer you quite a good deal.”

“What kind?”

“You heard from Kelly, right? We Merina Elves have a sanctuary in both the Western Continent and on the moon. The Western sanctuary is a one-way trip to the moon, but the one on the moon connects to all continents, just like the sanctuaries of other denominations. We can let you use that. And at half the market price.”

“Oh…”

“Usually, intercontinental travel has various premiums attached, so the market price is about 100 billion Mil… but I’ll write you a recommendation letter so you only have to pay 30 billion Mil.”

“That is… truly, truly an incredibly attractive condition.”

Chel gave a slight smile at my admiration.

“Right? And since you don’t seem to have the intention of staying in a guild for that long and need to save money, let’s sign a freelance contract instead of a regular guild membership. The base salary is low, but instead, I’ll give you incentives on a case-by-case basis depending on your performance—up to 10 percent of the profit earned from that specific case. Oh, and I’ll throw in priority purchasing rights for artifacts as a bonus.”

“…Hmm. The conditions are almost too good. Are you sure about this?”

“Well, if we want to use a Master-class as a guild member, shouldn’t we at least pay that much?”

I had no intention of hiding it, but she recognized it easily enough.

“Honestly, I was truly impressed watching you take down that Black Snake. Those things aren’t caught that easily, yet you did it with just a few sword strokes… and with a real blade that wasn’t even imbued with mana.”

“Mmm. I’m flattered.”

“No. As a fellow warrior, how could I not be impressed seeing such a high level of mastery?”

“Mmm…”

“Anyway. I’ve proposed these terms with our own profits in mind as well, so you can accept without any burden.”

“I appreciate the consideration. There’s no reason to hesitate. Let’s sign the contract.”

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After handing me a copy of the contract, she began to explain more about her guild in detail.

“Our guild consists of two 22-person parties. We operate on a two-shift, 24-hour work system. Ah, of course, for non-combat positions, it’s an 8-hour, 5-day-a-week system.”

“Two shifts? Chel, you’re the owner of this guild, right? Aren’t you working the guild members a bit too harshly?”

Seeing my cold, judging eyes, she raised her voice defensively. Ah, was that a sore spot?

“What are you talking about! Our main focus is ‘Raid Processing’! We’re not like some black company where people are buried in work and forced to do overtime every day!”

A ‘Raid,’ as mentioned before, refers to an event where monsters are summoned at a random location and go on a rampage. This is a method of attack that doesn’t exist on the Northern Continent; once a report is made, a professional raid-processing guild is immediately dispatched to quickly eliminate the monsters appearing in the city.

In short.

“If no raid reports come in, we essentially work only 8 hours out of 24, and the rest of the standby time is used as free time! If you look at it that way, it’s a dream job where you work 8 hours every two days!”

“But isn’t that free time only allowed within the guild headquarters? Besides, if a raid report comes in, you’ll have to go out and risk your lives whether it’s day or night, just like yesterday. And if one party can’t handle it, the off-duty party has to come as backup, right?”

“Ugh….”

“Evil employer.”

At my words, she clutched her chest with a pained “Gah!” Then, she started twiddling her fingers and mumbling excuses barely loud enough to hear.

“…It’s not like we’re the only ones doing two shifts. I want to do three shifts too. It’s just that because of one crazy junior who must be possessed by a ghost that died because they couldn’t break enough things, all our money went into compensation… We used to live in a proper, large building without worrying about the electric bill, not a rundown shack like this…”

“…….”

“Now that Kelly is back, we’re doomed… We still have debts left, too…”

Hmm?

I signaled to Kelly with my eyes.

‘What did you do? What did you go around breaking?’

‘Ehehe. Just a lot of this and that.’

‘Was your two-year wandering… not to cool your temper, but maybe you were kicked out because the guild was going bankrupt because of you?’

‘…….’

I looked at the equipment in the infirmary where I was lying and the curtains covering the walls, offering her some comfort.

“Uh, well. Setting the three-shift issue aside, the facilities here don’t seem that bad for a ‘shack’… though I think it would be better if there were at least one window.”

“You think so?”

She let out a gloomy laugh, “Hehehe…” and whipped back the curtain on the wall.

“Even after seeing this?”

“Ack…”

The sight behind the curtain was truly gruesome.

The wall was stained yellow from water seepage, and it was covered in cracks as thick as a finger running in every direction. A few plump ants that had been scuttling through the gaps met their end under Chel’s resentful touch, causing the remaining ants to scurry back into the crevices in shock.

Good heavens.

“This is the best-furnished room because it’s supposed to be the infirmary. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.”

“…At this point, shouldn’t you be worried about the building collapsing first? How many stories is this building?”

“Five. We can’t use the fifth floor because of leaks from the roof, and the basement is unusable due to flooding. It’s essentially an abandoned building. The owner wanted to tear it down, but we begged and pleaded to use it until they started constructing a new building. We even added a condition that we’d help with the demolition later.”

“But… hunting guilds make a lot of money. Just catching one monster should yield commission fees, magic stones, and monster byproducts…”

She stared into the distance with hollow eyes, looking somewhere far, far away.

“Because of this demon of destruction wearing an elf’s skin, we still have a mountain of debt piled up as high as a dung heap.”

“…Ah.”

I see. A foolish question met with a clear answer.

“We all worked so hard, tightening our belts and catching rainwater from the ceiling in rice bowls… and everyone was so happy because we thought we could finally clear the principal debt this year. Ha… but to think the calamity god that was supposed to return next year came back a whole year early…”

“Mmm….”

Both my gaze and Chel’s turned toward Kelly at the same time. Feeling the weight of our stares, Kelly scratched her head.

“Ahahaha…”

“Sigh… don’t laugh, you brat. I’m scared I might actually start liking you again.”

…Man, seriously, what on earth did you do in the past?

Chel muttered while staring blankly at the cracks in the wall.

“I wish it would just collapse already. At least then we could collect the insurance money.”