The Heavy Smoker and the Reaper of the Wheat Fields (1)
Autumn is the season of harvest. That truth held just as firmly in this isekai world—a cheap medieval knockoff of the old saying that farmers are the foundation of the realm.
When the wheat fields turn golden, work springs up everywhere. It’s prime season for temporary jobs.
“It’s really busy today,” Franc said, eyeing the unusually cramped street.
The day after I got back from the Mage Guild, Franc and I had headed out early to find a quest we could tackle together. Now that my dick problem was finally sorted, we figured we might as well work side by side like a proper couple.
“It’s harvest season, that’s all. Everyone’s got their hands full.” I pulled Franc closer by the shoulder so she wouldn’t get jostled by passersby.
This world was crawling with unemployed people. Twenty-first-century Korea? At least you could flip burgers. Here, if you didn’t inherit farmland or a shop from your parents, finding steady work was a nightmare. No wonder so many hopeless idiots dreamed of becoming adventurers. Anything beat starving in the slums or getting knifed over a loaf of bread.
There’s even a rumor that the guilds started charging membership fees just to filter out the endless tide of trash. Interviews were pointless—too many applicants, too few worth a damn. Testing them all would’ve been impossible when only one in a hundred actually passed. So they set a simple cash barrier. Made sense. If you could scrape together the fee, you probably had at least some survival skills. Of course, it didn’t screen for personality, so every once in a while a complete fucking psycho still slipped through.
Anyway, in a world with scarce jobs, harvest season was a godsend for the poor. Suddenly there was actual work to be had.
“I like the energy, but I’m worried we’ll get lost,” Franc grumbled, rising onto her tiptoes.
With her short stature, the crowd must have felt twice as overwhelming.
“I’m right here. Want me to hold your hand so you don’t wander off?”
“Hand? No way. I’d look like a little kid. I want people to see me as Nord’s lover.”
Franc puffed her cheeks, sulking. She had a habit of dropping these blunt, heart-piercing lines without warning. Every time, it left me completely disarmed.
“Got it. Still a little disappointing, though.”
“…Then how about we hold hands later when no one’s around?”
“Heh heh. Your wish is my command.”
We kept flirting like that, all lovey-dovey, until we reached the Audumla Guild. Sargadis’s three-lane roads were always narrow and miserable thanks to all the carriages and street stalls. Watching tax-dodging merchants block the entire street made my blood boil sometimes. The city’s main avenue was wide enough for multiple carriages, but on these side streets getting shoulder-checked was just part of the daily commute.
Still, with my size and gear, I projected enough presence that the crowd parted naturally around us.
*Murmur murmur.*
We cut across the street and arrived at the guild. The place was far more packed than usual. It was probably only this bad in the morning—by lunchtime most people would be out on jobs and the crowd would thin. Adventurers who skipped work during harvest season wouldn’t survive the brutal winter that followed. A few months from now the freezing cold would hit like hell itself, and how much coin you saved during this period often decided whether the poor lived or died.
Source: Professor Brammaton’s book, obviously.
I moved toward the request board and spoke to Franc.
“You’ve never worked during autumn before, right? Let’s look for a decent quest together and talk it over.”
“Yeah. But there are way too many people.”
Franc muttered as she stared at the mob surrounding the board. She wasn’t exaggerating. It looked like the crowd at a street busker performance, but tripled in size.
“Want to wait until it thins out a bit?”
“Let’s do that.”
We rookies with zero seniority ended up standing far from the board for quite a while. Even from a distance I tried to scan the postings. Franc the rogue and I—with my mana-enhanced senses—made a hell of a scouting combo. Distance was no obstacle.
*Murmur murmur.*
But those damn idiots glued to the front of the board refused to budge. Every time one left, two more took their place. All I could see was the color of the damn board. Fuck, did they rent the whole thing out?
“Hmm? Aren’t you two familiar faces?”
Just as I was debating whether to force my way through, a voice called out from behind us. It was the slightly hoarse voice of an old man.
“Well, if it isn’t Mister Gentric! It’s been a while.”
When I turned around, there stood old man Gentric—the veteran warrior who had run through the sewers with us during our very first quest together.
“A while? It’s only been a week or so. You’re exaggerating,” Gentric chuckled heartily when I greeted him.
Apparently our long wait had given us enough time to run into someone we knew. Franc smiled brightly and greeted him too.
“Hello, Mister Gentric. Do you remember me?”
“Of course I do. You’re the little rogue girl who got tossed at that friend of yours, aren’t you?”
“Whaaat? That’s a really mean way to remember someone!”
“Heh heh. Sorry about that. But it looks like the two of you have gotten quite close, eh?”
Gentric looked at us with the sly playfulness of an old-timer. In this world, commoners’ lives were worth less than an ox that dropped dead pulling a cart. A poor old man who had survived this long had to be someone who’d learned to read people just to eat. True to form, Gentric seemed to instantly grasp the situation between us.
That’s why I answered confidently, without hiding even the slightly lewd glint in his eye.
“Heh heh. A lot happened. We came to work together today, actually. Though there are so many people we can’t even get near the board.”
When I said that, Gentric stroked his beard with a pleased expression.
“Just watching young people makes me feel good. Now then, let’s see… Today…”
Gentric turned his gaze toward the board and immediately frowned. Even a veteran adventurer couldn’t do anything about server overload.
*Bustling chatter.*
The area around us was packed with people chatting. It felt more like a marketplace than a guild. Some adventurers had already given up and were gathered elsewhere, killing time until spots opened up.
“Did you hear? The circus troupe from Romania is coming here too! I need to save up quest money and go watch!”
“Did they clean up the mess those Sekhmet bitches made? There are goblins everywhere. Can’t even leave the territory.”
“That’s already been taken care of. A Mythril-class adventurer came in person. The only problem left is that bug-eater bastard.”
“Bug-eater? Oh, the warlock.”
“I heard they found traces in his hideout and are putting together a pursuit team.”
“Your source is one of the bar girls, isn’t it? Real trustworthy.”
“Shut up, you idiot.”
Amid the noisy chatter, my ears picked out the important threads of conversation. It felt like my brain had multitasking voice-analysis software installed.
Is this because I can handle mana now?
Even Nefertiti from the Sekhmet Guild had found us instantly when we were hiding. It probably wasn’t that difficult for a mana-awakened warrior.
“Hmm. At this rate, it’ll be hard to find work today,” Gentric clicked his tongue.
If someone who’d been in this business for decades was saying that, things were bad. I started worrying we might not get any work at all today.
“Do we need to come out at dawn during this season?” Franc, who had been quietly watching the board, asked Gentric.
“That’s right. The fastest way is to strike the moment the guild receptionists compile the quests and post them. Looks like we’re too late today. Seems the harvest started earlier than last year.”
Gentric folded his arms after answering Franc.
“Still, once the busy farming period ends there won’t be any quests, so you won’t starve. Right around now, during the middle of the harvest… How about you two take a pest extermination request?”
“Pest extermination? You mean culling harmful animals from farms?”
“Exactly. Around this time, those pests are the farmers’ worst enemies.”
Tsk. Pest extermination, huh… I hesitated. It sounded like a higher-difficulty request. Some people might ask why you’d bother fighting animals instead of monsters, but a fully grown wild boar was far more dangerous than those pathetic goblins that barely qualified as threats. The kobold-goblin tier of trash mobs were the kind even rookies could beat in a fair fight. They were classified as monsters because they attacked first and couldn’t be eaten, but they were generally weaker than wild beasts.
If goblins were around level 5, wild boars were closer to 15. If monsters were truly weaker than animals, the beasts would have gone extinct long ago. The monsters would have eaten them all. That’s how the food chain works.
“Wouldn’t pest extermination be dangerous for Iron-class adventurers like us?”
“Not necessarily. The truly dangerous ones are usually driven off or killed in advance by the guards or professional hunters. At most you’ll be dealing with small animals like bonodeer.”
What the hell is a bonodeer? Some weird bug or snake only country folk know about?
Gentric rolled his stiff neck as he continued.
“Adventurers just go there, stay for a few days, and help with farm work. It’s a common method for landowners with lots of fields. There’s almost no fighting, but the results get logged as subjugation quests. Both the farmers and adventurers win.”
Oh ho. So it was a request with a bit of a loophole. A beautiful win-win agreement between farmers and adventurers. Whoever came up with it was pretty clever. The people of this world really couldn’t be underestimated.
“Sounds good. But won’t the competition be fierce?”
“Not at all. Farms don’t turn away willing hands. The more people who come, the faster the harvest goes, and that reduces their labor costs.”
I see. Whether ten people worked for ten days or a hundred people worked for one, the farmer’s expenses stayed the same.
“Besides, most adventurers come from farming backgrounds. Not many want to go back to the backbreaking work they hated.”
“Heh heh. That works out perfectly for us.”
I could relate. If there were a quest called “Be a Grad Student for a Day,” I’d rather die than take it.
“What do you think, Franc? Farm work won’t be easy, but it seems decent, right?”
“It depends on when the work is and how many days it takes. We have to calculate the inn fees we’d lose too.”
“Ah. You’re right.”
This fucking idiot Nord. Shame of every graduate student.
Franc’s sharp observation left me speechless. The pest extermination requests required staying near the farmland that posted them. Staying somewhere else meant losing three coppers per night on inn fees we’d already paid. No matter how much the reward was, it probably wouldn’t be high enough to cover losing three coppers a day. Paying for an inn and then sleeping outside would be infuriating.
“What? You two paid for the inn in advance?” Gentric asked, surprised after listening to us.
Franc and I nodded.
“Yes. Why?”
“That’s a foolish thing to do. From now on, pay day by day. Otherwise you’ll go out to work and not even break even.”
“Tsk… Thank you for the advice.”
It was wisdom that could only come from years of experience. It wasn’t some brilliant idea, but we hadn’t even considered it. We just hadn’t taken many long-term requests that required staying overnight somewhere.
Professor Brammaton’s book didn’t mention paying for inns daily either.
I regretted the past for a moment before correcting myself. Neither the professor nor I could possibly have perfect knowledge. It was fine as long as I knew now.
“Let’s check if there are any requests available first and talk more after.”
“Sounds good.”
Our opinions settled on taking a request. I pushed through the crowd toward the front of the board. The mob was thick, but there weren’t any adventurers strong enough to compete with me. The moment I stepped forward, the crowd parted smoothly to either side.
“Excuse me. Coming through.”