The Heavy Smoker and the Reaper of the Wheat Fields (2)
I cut through the crowd, ignoring the grumbling adventurers who whined behind me. “Hey, watch it!” “Don’t push, asshole! You think you’re the only one who needs work?” Whatever. I wasn’t about to waste time on their bitching. The adventurer world runs on survival of the fittest. Whiners get ignored.
─Slide.
I reached the request board and scanned for the pest extermination posting. Sure enough, one notice sat front and center like it owned the place.
Farm Pest Extermination
Farmland outside Sargadis West Gate
Daily wage: 5 coppers
“Oh, five coppers. Not bad.”
“What? Five coppers? Where, where?”
Some random adventurer next to me perked up at my muttering. I didn’t bother answering with words—just pointed at the notice. He followed my finger, then clicked his tongue.
“Tsk. What the hell? This isn’t even proper monster hunting.”
“Something wrong?”
“Huh? You really don’t know what this is? Heh. Well, going once wouldn’t hurt. Consider it experience.”
The way this guy talked pissed me off. In my experience, any quest dressed up with fancy euphemisms like that was never normal. I headed back to the others with a slight sense of unease.
“Found it. Farmland by the west gate, five coppers a day.”
“West gate? That’d be Hotulusil’s fields. He’s a self-tenant farmer. Decent fellow, all things considered.”
“Self-tenant farmer?”
Wait, more importantly—what the actual fuck kind of name is Hotulusil? Sounds like a Kitai person or something. Who names their kid that?
“Self-tenant farmer means someone who works both the lord’s land and their own plot,” Gentric explained. “The lord picks skilled farmers he trusts, lets them work the fields, and shares a portion of the harvest. Back in my younger days, I got picked for something like that once…”
Gentric trailed off, lost in old memories for a moment, then let out a short sigh and chuckled as if shaking off the past glory. “Heh heh. Anyway, since you found us work, this old man just needs to go register it. Thanks for the help, Nord.”
“Wait, what? Hold on—did I just get used?”
“Used? I gave you a good recommendation in return for the favor, didn’t I? Hope to see you out in the fields. Heh heh heh.”
The crafty old pro pulled a classic veteran move and headed straight for the reception desk. Franc, who had been watching, poked me in the side and giggled.
“Nord, you totally got played.”
“Eh, whatever. We were gonna check the request anyway.”
I answered the tongue-sticking-out Franc without much heat. I wasn’t even mad. Gentric had helped us out last time, after all. Arms crossed, I thought back to the day we’d paid for the inn and asked, “So, Franc? How are you doing on inn fees? My renewal’s tomorrow.”
“Same here. So maybe we should do a different request today and start the pest extermination tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.”
After talking it over, we decided to stay at the inn one more night. Pest extermination was an ongoing request that lasted the entire harvest season. It was basically short-term gig work, so there was no rush.
“Oh, right. Franc? Want to switch to the same inn? I’m not saying we should share a room yet, but staying in the same place would be better. Going back and forth to see each other every time is a pain.”
Franc thought about it for a second before answering. “Hmm… Let’s talk about that later. If we change inns, I need to say goodbye to Miss Beynya, and we should compare which one is better anyway.”
“Fair enough. Then I guess we should… look for today’s request.”
Fuck. Right back to square one.
When I slumped my shoulders, Franc covered her mouth and laughed. After that, Franc and I sorted through the board and picked up a herb-gathering request. It was a regular delivery job for the Mage Guild. The herbs I picked might even end up in Tirse’s lab. The whole thing felt like I was riding Franc’s bus—she was an absolute monster at foraging.
Franc practically turned into Bear Grylls, combing through the forest and digging up herbs and all kinds of wild plants. I started seriously wondering if my girlfriend was actually half-elf, half-dwarf or something.
“Nord! Look at this! Amberi mushrooms! If you grill them, they’re super sweet and delicious!”
“Mushrooms that taste sweet? Why the hell would a mushroom like that even exist?”
Anyway, the herb gathering request went smoothly and felt like an actual date, so it was pretty fun. The swarms of flying bugs were a little annoying, though.
The next morning, Franc and I accepted the request and headed out. There were four adventurers total on the pest extermination job: me, Franc, a middle-aged guy, and a young man.
“Nice to meet you. Let’s work well together,” I said, stepping forward.
Normally a Bronze Class adventurer would lead extermination requests, but today’s job was different. Pest extermination was like daily gig work—adventurers came and went constantly. There was probably one Bronze representative waiting at the farmland.
“Since we’ll barely see each other while working anyway, how about we skip the introductions?”
“Fine by me.”
“Works for me.”
The middle-aged man and the short-haired youth both agreed. Honestly, we weren’t even a real party. It was like showing up for a one-day delivery gig—you don’t exchange life stories with every random coworker. We weren’t trusting each other with our lives, so knowing faces was enough. Besides us four, there were probably other adventurers already staying and eating at the farm. Introductions were pointless.
After a quick greeting, we headed straight for the farmland. In this world, farms were usually located outside the city walls. Building walls all the way around the fields would cost too much.
“Iron Class adventurer party? Pass through.”
We reported to the gate guard as usual and headed out through the west gate. Our group didn’t even bother with formation—we just strolled along like we were on a picnic. None of us were cowards who’d get scared of trouble near the gates.
Shaaaa—.
Once we stepped outside the west gate, wheat fields came into view not far away. They looked like golden meadows enclosed by stone walls and wooden fences, stretching all the way to the horizon. The scale was enormous.
“Whoa… These fields are huge,” Franc said as she walked the path beside the farmland.
I enjoyed watching her surprised face and replied, “Right? This size would take dozens of serfs weeks just to harvest.”
To get everything in before the end of harvest season, they’d need to mobilize serfs by the hundreds. No wonder they hired short-term help every year.
Whoooosh—.
The autumn wind blew, and Franc hunched her shoulders against the cold. When I held out my hand, she took it immediately.
“Heh heh heh.”
“Heh heh heh.”
Hand in hand, we walked along the path beside the wheat fields, grinning like idiots. The middle-aged man walking ahead gave us a look that said our PDA was disgusting, but I couldn’t care less. Couples were basically public nuisances that violated public decency. That was just how it was.
Seeing fields this ridiculously huge reminded me a little of home.
A farmer, huh.
What image did people in the 21st century have of farmers? To be honest, it probably wasn’t seen as that impressive a job. If your blind date said they were a farmer, the woman’s side probably wouldn’t think much of it, and the guy would shrink a bit while introducing himself. But farming was actually an amazing profession.
It was tough work, income completely dependent on good or bad harvests every year, but farmers were the ones who supplied the nation with its food. That’s why I always respected them. (It had nothing to do with my own family running a farm, of course.)
Precisely because I respected farmers so much, I could say this: farms were generally much larger than most people imagined. Big farms were seriously fucking huge. The scale was completely different. Just looking at rows of greenhouses filled me with awe. In places like the American Midwest, the farmland was said to be larger than the entire territory of Korea. Even without that, plenty of farmers were richer than a guy like me earning two hundred a month at minimum wage. My own grandfather had lived comfortably in a pretty big house, as I recalled.
The largest-scale farmers in America made more money than most businesses. Their farming equipment was insane too—massive, cool machines that were basically agricultural tanks. If a zombie apocalypse broke out and American cowboy zombies started running wild, you could probably just bulldoze them with a tractor and end the whole thing.
By the same logic, people who owned vast farmland in this other world held corresponding power. Sargadis was a fairly ordinary territory if you ignored all the ruins that kept getting dug up. Since its main income came from agriculture, the land-rich, real-estate-rich farmers were basically the other-world version of landlords.
Maybe that was why, before arriving at the farm, I had assumed the owner of these massive fields would look like a fat noble.
─But what the fuck.
The guy who showed up claiming to be the farm owner was an elf.
“I’m the farmer, Hotulusil.”
The male elf gave the shortest possible self-introduction, just stating his name. I was so stunned I couldn’t even respond. What the actual fuck? Why was an elf doing farm work? Weren’t elves supposed to love and cherish nature as a fundamental rule? Farming was basically raising plants just to kill them later, wasn’t it? To an elf, farming was murder. Or was this a Kitai elf who completely ignored nature worship?
“No need for you to introduce yourselves in detail. The request contents are exactly as written on the notice. However, you must report back by the evening before your last day. Failure to do so will cause issues with same-day wage payment, so keep that in mind.”
Hotulusil gave the instructions in a completely businesslike tone. A large straw hat sat on his head and he wore only a sleeveless vest. The very picture of a straw-hat fucker. Still, a tall, well-built guy standing with the wheat fields behind him actually looked pretty cool. Elves really were a race of facial geniuses. With a face like that, you could probably survive on looks alone without ever going hungry.
But the mismatch between Hotulusil’s flowing golden hair and his bulging arm muscles was so ridiculous it was actually kind of gay. Not that I have anything against gay people. I have no prejudice against short-haired women, but I do have some against long-haired men. This was simply the fault of him being born an elf. And what the hell was that stick strapped to his back? Some kind of whip for abusing slaves?
“The reason I hired you today is to exterminate the pests damaging the crops. That said, I’d appreciate it if you helped with farm work during your waiting periods.”
Although he phrased it as “I’d appreciate it,” if we tried to only do pest extermination and refused farm work, we wouldn’t get paid. Because harmful beasts rarely came all the way to the city outskirts to ruin crops. If the adventurers failed to catch the target pests, the farm owner could use that as an excuse.
─So? Did you catch the pests I asked for? No? Then no pay. Sorry~
It wasn’t technically wrong, so there was no way to argue. If it had been a farm guard request, we could’ve just stood around all day and still gotten paid. But this was specifically a “pest extermination” request. If you took an extermination request and caught nothing, it was only natural you wouldn’t receive the reward.
Of course, claiming you caught pests somewhere else and fulfilled the request didn’t work either.
─I asked you to catch the things ruining my crops. Who asked you to catch things in the forest?
If they said that, you’d have no comeback. No matter what tricks adventurers tried, farm owners had plenty of ways to screw over the bastards. People like us were in the position of the weak 24/7, all across the country.
Still, since they called us here to help with farm work too, they’ll probably pay us as long as we do our job.
Farm owners couldn’t pull that kind of stunt on adventurers who actually worked hard. If they did, next year they’d have to handle the entire harvest with just their family and slaves. So this request was closer to a win-win transaction.
A farm owner looking for strong temporary workers they could hire for just one season without feeding them. An adventurer looking to safely build up achievements and get paid. Neither side could easily betray the other. For guys like us, it was simple—just work hard without slacking, build up achievements, and take the money.
If only the farm owner wasn’t an elf.
I clicked my tongue inwardly. I was worried this straw-hat fucker might stab me in the back like Yerna had. Every single elf I’d met so far had been a complete asshole. The only elf I knew was that bitch Yerna, so statistically it was one hundred percent—elf equals asshole. Therefore elves were one hundred percent fuckers. The sample size was small, sure, but I felt fully qualified to make this claim. If anyone had a problem with it, they could publish a three-year thesis under my name and then talk.
“Before I assign you work, I want to see what you can do.”
Regardless of what I was thinking, the elf continued speaking. The straw-hat fucker with his arms crossed looked us over.
“We elves of Tatarnia do not trust the words of those who do not act.”