Let's Live Kindly (4)
The guild's beginner adventurer support leather armor set costs 10 silver. The wrist crossbow appraised at 22 silver. Even after Vanessa knocked off 2 silver out of sheer generosity, my debt had still ballooned by 30 silver.... With that kind of money I could've rolled the gacha thirty times!
"Isn't this way too expensive? Think about everything you could do with 30 silver, and all I get is the cheapest armor set and one backup weapon?"
I grumbled the entire way from the guild to the labyrinth entrance. Rydia shook her head at my complaints.
"No. The equipment sold in Labyrinth City is..."
"Special, right? I already know that."
Long ago, the Pang continent lived in peace under the rule of the gods. The gods cherished their followers, and the followers revered their gods, each living for the sake of the other in a world that was almost a paradise. Unfortunately, that era ended a thousand years ago.
The Divine War. Its flames of madness consumed the entire continent. What probably began as a minor dispute between followers grew until the gods themselves took the field. Naturally, the ones who suffered most were the mortals caught between divine combatants.
It was also the first time people began to deny the gods, and the first time the supposedly eternal rulers died in great numbers. But the real problem wasn't the slaughter that words could never capture, nor the chaos that followed the gods' absence.
The world broke. Not as a metaphor or exaggeration—literally. Mountains were cleaved in a single stroke, seas evaporated by falling meteors, and even death itself lost all meaning on that battlefield. The world simply could not withstand the authority of transcendents who each overturned heaven and earth.
The God of Light's final struggle kept the sun from setting. A colossal tsunami swallowed an entire nation. Truth itself was so thoroughly inverted that nothing could be trusted anymore. Only after the world had been half-destroyed, both physically and conceptually, did the gods realize the truth: soon, everything on this land would vanish.
Even so, these were gods who had worked for the sake of the Pang continent and its mortals. No one opposed the idea of ending the war. The problem was that it was already too late.
Too many gods had died, and even the survivors were barely clinging to their divinity. The only god left unscathed was the Goddess of Love, who loved everyone and was loved by everyone; she alone had never joined the fighting, nor had anyone attacked her.
The remaining gods lacked the power to restore a world that had already been ruined beyond repair. So they made their decision. The Goddess of Love, who had never participated in the war to the very end, would be spared. Everyone else would sacrifice their own existence.
They each took on one of the scars of war scattered across the world, then quietly faded away. Every time a god fell asleep, one calamity disappeared. Another divine corpse would be laid atop the last, and another calamity would vanish with it. How many times did this repeat? By the time every god except the Goddess of Love had disappeared, peace finally returned to the Pang continent.
Of course, it wasn't exactly the same as before. The divine powers once granted only to the followers of the God of Magic and the God of Knights—magic and aura—spread throughout the world. Anyone with talent could now become a mage or a knight. The remains of the God of Life were torn apart and scattered so thoroughly they couldn't even be recovered, allowing couples of different races to have children. Races that failed to resist the God of Madness's final curse fell into monstrosity. In places where the traces of elemental gods like the God of Earth or the God of Fire remained strong, spirits were born.
The reason this world became a gender-reversed one was the same. The God of Lust and the Goddess of Chastity perished together, twisting both chastity and sexual desire between men and women.
Anyway, the Pang continent regained peace in a slightly altered form, but the biggest change was something else entirely.
At the center of the continent lay the tomb of the gods who had repented their sins, a monument where countless calamities and past glories were gathered together. That was the Great Labyrinth, Pangrave.
The war had ended, but those left behind in a barren wasteland thought: Let's at least find something useful in the labyrinth. The Goddess of Love, the only one remaining on the surface, decided to help those brave souls. Her church founded the guild, people began calling themselves adventurers, and with all of this, civilization—reset to a blank slate—began to regenerate at an astonishing speed. The fact that it could reach a medieval level again in just a thousand years was all thanks to the labyrinth.
However, the labyrinth was never a gentle place. The original labyrinth was literally chaos itself. Space-time was twisted, absurdly powerful monsters appeared right at the entrance while weak ones lurked in the depths, and the difficulty was completely inconsistent. Eventually, the Goddess of Love, unable to watch any longer, poured her power into reshaping the labyrinth's structure over a long period. Thanks to that, weaker monsters now appeared on the lower floors and stronger ones on the deeper floors, creating an easy-to-understand balance patch.
But there was one thing she could only fix halfway: the distortion of space-time. Events like entering the dungeon for a moment only to find decades had passed outside, or emerging after just a few days only to discover you'd become an old man, no longer occurred. However, that was only true for living beings. Inanimate objects like equipment or food still frequently became unusable in an instant.
There were two ways to deal with this. One was to apply fixed magic to resist the labyrinth's distortion. The other was to simply reuse things that originally belonged to the labyrinth. That was why every piece of equipment sold in Labyrinth City was so expensive. They were either made from materials obtained inside the labyrinth or crafted with the help of high-ranking mages.
"Right?"
"Yeah. You sure know a lot. Were you raised in a temple, Yona?"
"Not exactly. I just studied hard whenever the temple handed out free bread."
"...Ah."
Rydia nodded awkwardly, as if she'd only just remembered my background. There was really no need for that. It wasn't some hard-earned trace of survival—it was just a setting I'd spun up overnight while riding the momentum.
Smiling brightly at the now-dejected Rydia, I brought up a topic I knew she'd like.
"By the way, Lady Rydia. Isn't the relationship between an adventurer and their baggage carrier basically the same as a knight and their squire?"
"...A squire isn't just an errand boy."
"Come on. I've seen enough to know. In terms of attending to someone, they're pretty much the same, aren't they... or not?"
"Similar, but different. Squires don't get paid. They follow a knight purely out of respect and loyalty. The knight does the same—taking responsibility for the squire..."
Rydia's eyes sparkled even as her face remained expressionless. She launched into a lengthy speech about what a knight truly was and how a squire should serve one. At this rate, the conversation would never end. I had no choice but to cut her off at a good point.
"Aaaah~ I can't hear you, I can't hear you!"
I plugged my ears and shook my head. Rydia looked exasperated.
"Yona. Are you a child?"
"I am a child, aren't I?"
"Then listen to your elders."
"I'm perfectly willing to listen to you, Lady Rydia, but that last part was a bit much."
"...Haa."
Once I unplugged my ears and started walking beside her again, Rydia let out a deep sigh.
"Anyway, we're heading into the labyrinth now. Aren't you nervous?"
"Why would I be? I'm just the baggage carrier, and you're the one fighting, Lady Rydia."
"......?"
Rydia blinked blankly for a moment before her expression shifted to one of realization.
"Ah, I was planning to see just how far you can fight. I won't be stepping in."
"...I've never heard that before."
"I just said it now."
"Not stepping in means I have to fight alone, right?"
"I'll help if it's dangerous."
"Just to be sure, which floor are we going to? The first floor, right? Please tell me it's the first floor...!"
"Calm down. We'll start from the first floor and work our way down gradually. All the magic stones from the monsters we hunt will be yours."
"Thanks for that! But can't the test start tomorrow?! I didn't bring any weapons because I thought I was just a baggage carrier!"
"Too bad. You should've picked something up at the guild forge we passed earlier."
"I didn't know I'd be fighting back then!"
"You're going into the labyrinth without even one weapon? Are you an idiot, Yona?"
"H-hey, a crossbow is a perfectly good weapon, you know?"
"It requires reloading after every shot. It's excellent as a backup thanks to its portability and surprise factor, but... it's problematic as a main weapon."
"Ghh..."
How cowardly of her to hit me with sound logic! Actually, thinking about it, isn't this whole situation a little strange? I knew Rydia wasn't taking me into the labyrinth just to squeeze money out of me. The numbers didn't even add up for that. If money was her only goal, I could've paid her back with the cash I'd swiped from the back alleys or by selling Elly something like an all-you-can-touch belly pass for a day.
But Rydia had wanted to give me an opportunity. I could feel it—she wanted me to gain experience in the labyrinth, to build strength even as a baggage carrier, and to show me that becoming an adventurer was an option instead of a life of crime.
...Even so, the favor she was showing me right now felt excessive. Promising to watch my back so I could fight without worry? This was more like a mid-tier clan raising a rookie adventurer. No matter how noble Rydia was, she wouldn't just throw away this much time and effort.
"...So you really do want my body, don't you, Lady Rydia?"
"No. Elly would have a meltdown if she found out, so stop with the delusions."
Rydia let out another sigh, her face still blank.
"Haa... Do you really want to know the reason?"
"Yes!"
"It's a secret from Elly. Can you promise that?"
"I don't know what kind of shocking truth you're about to confess, but the condition is keeping it from Elly, right? That's fine. I'm a man of few words, so rest easy!"
I mimed zipping my lips shut. Only then did Rydia nod and whisper softly.
"Elly asked me officially. She wanted me to teach you. So taking you on as a baggage carrier comes after I've taught you."
"E-Ellyyyyyyyyy!!!!"
When I get back, I'm letting her touch my belly for free.