A Familiar Taste 5

No matter how you looked at it, wasn't this a bit much?

They'd run into adventurer bandit gangs of roughly ten people about five times now. In terms of headcount, they'd killed maybe thirty monsters—but around fifty bandit adventurers.

As an adventurer, being wary and suspicious when meeting others in the Tower or the kingdom's remote regions was only natural. But running into fifty bandits in a single day was absurd. Add one particular condition, though, and it all made perfect sense.

Han Se-ah's sub-quest.

"Still, the sheer number of bandits coming at us is weird. Let's head back to the 35th floor and regroup."

"You're right… There are so many of our brothers and sisters on patrol, yet there seem to be far too many bandits."

Katie, who'd been swinging her sword in a frenzy against the bandits, and Irene, who'd been blocking arrows with her barrier, both nodded in agreement with Han Se-ah. Even someone completely clueless about the world would find meeting fifty bandits in a day strange.

Thinking about the boss monsters and gates that had appeared since Han Se-ah showed up, you could really feel how things had transformed into a game world.

Without even checking the passage up to the 37th floor, Katie wiped the filth from her sword blade and hop-skipped over a collapsed dirt path. For someone who'd cut down dozens of people in a single day, it was an absurdly cute sight.

"Then let's hurry down to the 35th floor. While we're there, I should buy a whetstone for sword maintenance. Targeting undead joints is one thing, but human grease ruins a blade."

"Didn't you buy one last time when we got the food supplies?"

"Back then I figured I wouldn't need to use my sword much against the undead… I didn't expect this many bandits."

Grace and Irene giggled helplessly at Katie, who was surprisingly serious about sword care—probably because it was a blade she'd brought from her family. A ranger who treated bows and arrows as consumables and a priestess who cast holy magic barehanded would find that a bit hard to understand.

I'd seen plenty of adventurers who treated their weapons like lovers, so I got it. There was a reason people who approached me as fans went crazy when they received my secondary weapons as gifts.

Without hesitation, the party dumped the bandits' corpses into the mud swamp and headed back down to the 35th floor. If a quest had really spawned, it looked like we'd be bouncing between the 35th and 36th floors for a while.

This world was reality to me, but I couldn't deny that its foundation was a game.

Boss monsters appeared every ten floors of the Tower, and when a player defeated them, a gate opened. Han Se-ah walked around filming with a translucent camera drone and communicated with her viewers, while NPCs never noticed. The sensation of the world freezing when she saved and logged out was another tell.

"Greetings, Brother. One who walks the path by the Goddess's will greets the Goddess's sword."

"Excessive formality is burdensome."

So I also had to accept and understand that unexpected events would keep erupting under the name of "quests."

A female Temple knight whose face was hidden by her helmet chattered away. She was enormously friendly—probably because I'd swept the 35th floor with enhancement holy magic during the Holy Crusade. Upon arriving at the 35th floor and meeting her near the miniature temple, she launched into an explanation without a moment's hesitation.

How the laborers who'd entered the Tower for the Temple, hearing there were no monsters on the 35th floor, had grown curious and started wandering far afield. How adventurers who'd been active around the 20th floor had forced their way up to the 30th for various reasons, wanting a piece of the Temple's actions.

"The sisters studying holy magic were fretting that perhaps some residual grudge from that wicked abomination Sir Roland defeated still remains. That instead of monsters appearing, there might be some evil spirit goading human malice—"

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Well, only the willfully weak and wicked who failed to hold the Goddess's will in their hearts and hid their evil natures would fall for such goading. The carpenters and stonemasons who came for the Temple don't fight at all and live quite faithfully…"

And then the point that an incomprehensibly large number of adventurers had started turning to banditry. The numbers were so high you'd almost think the kingdom's bandits had all been herded onto the 35th and 36th floors for a quest—even the Temple knights found it strange.

Sure, this was a world with bandits and mountain brigands, but those were the sort who showed up in some remote mountain village with unstable security, like wandering monsters. How did they appear right on the front lawn of a Temple that had just conducted a Holy Crusade?

"The problem is how to distinguish them. We have no way to tell good adventurers from bandits waiting for an opening, so the subjugation order is being delayed."

A situation that went beyond bruising the Temple's pride to smearing feces all over it. With a Holy Crusade already declared, they could issue a bandit subjugation order and hang dozens from the gallows without anyone complaining. The problem, as the Temple knight said, was that there was no way to tell them apart.

It wasn't like some mountain bandit gang that had built a stronghold and spread their infamy over a long time. Among the adventurers who'd climbed from the 20th to the 35th floor, how many famous bandits could there be?

Since these were crimes committed in the Tower, survivors' testimony was naturally scarce. The odds of a wounded victim, without lantern, bow, or supplies, wandering the Tower and luckily surviving to report to the Guild were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about as good as winning the lottery.

"That's why the Temple's brothers are so troubled. We can't just round up adventurer brothers advancing through the Tower to reveal the Goddess's will simply because they seem suspicious."

"I see. Thank you for the information."

"Haha, if mere chatter can be of help to you, Brother, then I ought to keep my tongue moving until my lips wear away."

Thanks to the long, rambling explanation, chat messages from viewers who'd had enough started flooding the corner of the screen. Han Se-ah herself, though, looked thoroughly satisfied that an NPC had delivered the entire quest briefing without her having to say a word.

While the rest of the party stiffened at the Temple knight's words, I snuck a sidelong glance and spotted the holographic quest window she'd silently pulled up beside the noisy chat.

The word that stood out wasn't "bandits"—it was criminals. The quest wasn't telling us to subjugate bandits; it was saying criminals had gathered. Had some crime syndicate with more guts than brains actually come up to the 35th floor?

No, fuck, even so—the Temple is building miniature temples up here…?

The quest window had outright said they'd flocked in, so criminals had definitely arrived. The problem was the miniature temples built in a row from the 30th to the 35th floor for the Holy Crusade.

Temple knights patrolled in pairs, while priests and nuns gathered in groups of ten for their austerities, flinging Holy Power around like a storm. What possible profit could criminals find by gathering in a neighborhood like that?

My poorly spinning brain couldn't even begin to guess what the criminals were doing, or how.

"So we weren't the only ones running into bandits."

"Criminals showing up right under the Temple's nose… is some kind of Demon King's black magic actually at work here?"

"Surely not. Even if the sister said such a thing, the 35th floor has already been purified and a temple built upon it. The Goddess's grace is scattered across this place—if anything like that truly remained, the Saint and Saintess would have noticed."

Grace briefly brought up the evil-spirit talk from the chatty Temple knight, but the rest of the party treated it as a light joke. If an evil spirit could linger in a place the Temple had purified after declaring a Holy Crusade, that would be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a Demon King, not a spirit.

Besides, the quest window made no mention of evil spirits whatsoever, so Han Se-ah, the viewers, and I all just figured a criminal organization had shown up because of the quest and moved on.

Wasn't that how game quests always worked? The savior who'd set out to rescue the world gets asked by some neighborhood auntie to fetch a few eggs. They'd beg you to haul their luggage and then slap a time limit on it for good measure—so even if it didn't make much sense, you just had to roll with it.

"Looks like a market's sprung up in the meantime. Let's head over there."

"Already? …Ahh, they've pitched tents and opened general stores for adventurers. Merchants really are quick when there's money to be made. They claw their way up even into the freezing snowfields of the north."

Worrying about the strangely surging criminals—like some kind of monster wave—wouldn't produce a solution. The rest of the party seemed to have reached the same conclusion, as sharp-eyed Grace stretched out a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠long, slender finger and pointed in one direction.

From general stores selling adventurer consumables like rope, oil, and whetstones, to makeshift inns ladling hot stews of chopped meat from giant pots—criminals or not, the merchants had definitely flocked here.

"Look at that. A whetstone that costs three copper outside is thirty-five copper here?"

"An Intermediate-grade adventurer might balk, but an Upper-grade would rather spend the extra thirty copper than trek five floors down and all the way outside."

"True, Roland tips a gold coin at a time in taverns without blinking, so a mere thirty copper… still, eleven times the price is hard to swallow. Maybe that's just because I'm still Intermediate-grade?"

"…Even so, buying it here beats going outside the Tower."

The general-store merchants were gouging hard, determined to recoup their investment now that they'd risked their lives entering the Tower. Grace clicked her tongue and closed her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠coin pouch, saying she still had arrows taken from the bandits—but Katie, obsessed with blade maintenance and every bit the noble young lady, bought whetstones, oil, and cloth without a second thought.

This wasn't some tourist trap—who'd have thought you'd run into price gouging inside the Tower.

…But how exactly was Han Se-ah planning to clear this criminal sub-quest?