Reputation, Part 2
I walked the dimming streets as the sun began to set, bread and vegetables and slabs of meat stowed away in the inventory.
Quiet streets… was a stretch. The kids who'd been playing out front of the bakery were orphans entrusted to the Temple, and they came swarming over in a noisy pack. Of course, every scrap of their attention had been swallowed up by Hanna. It was only natural they'd take more interest in a beautiful mage stuffing endless loaves and vegetables into thin air than in some guy bouncing around at ridiculous heights.
"Big sis! Are you a mage?"
"Dummy! Girls aren't mages — they're witches!"
"Witches are the bad magic-users from stories! This big sis doesn't have a hooked nose or a hunchback!"
Orphans shuttling between the Temple and the back alleys, so of course they were brimming with curiosity about mages. Hanna looked a little put-upon, but even if they were NPCs, she couldn't exactly shove kids away in front of her viewers — so she gave them an awkward smile and played along.
Still, Grace and Irene read the situation from that stiff smile and stepped in to help, so she managed to escape the barrage of questions.
The kids' voices were so loud and chaotic that by the time we reached the Temple's back door, the priests in charge of childcare had already come out to meet us. Unlike Irene's pure white habit, they wore pitch-black clerical robes that looked designed never to show dirt. One of the men counted the children one by one, then approached Irene with a greeting.
"Hm? I heard you were heading into the Tower, Lady Irene — you're back early. Are the people behind you your companions?"
"Yes. They're my party members."
Even for a trainee priest, he seemed almost excessively polite toward Irene. The young man beamed as if he were the one who'd first told her about me, and stuck out his hand. Fresh enough to the Temple that he was practically buzzing at the sight of my face, just like the kids.
An earnest, boyish face that hadn't managed to shed its longing for adventure even after dedicating itself to the faith. The kind of trainee who'd probably bolt straight for the Tower the moment he learned a few holy arts. I took his hand and gave it a firm shake.
"Adventurer Roland! Word of the righteousness with which you saved innocent people from the Horned Wolves last time has reached even my ears, here among the children of the Temple."
"…?"
"Haha, so modest. Just as one would expect from the man who moved a step ahead of the city guard to rescue the poor of the back alleys — people everyone else had turned a blind eye to."
I'd hunted Horned Wolves, sure, but saving innocent people? I paused, wondering what he was talking about, and the trainee priest — taking my silence for humility — cheerfully launched into an explanation.
The back alleys we'd been roaming while hunting Horned Wolves. That was where alchemists and blacksmiths short on both skill and coin clustered together. A place where people without money threw up shoddy houses and scraped by. Naturally, the city's poor ended up hiding out there.
I hadn't really noticed them while hunting the Horned Wolves — maybe they'd all had the sense to stay well out of sight. Then again, any back-alley pauper without that much street smarts would have been dead long before the Horned Wolves showed up. Either way, I hadn't set out to save anyone, but the Temple side seemed to look kindly on the fact that I'd gone into the alleys first.
"We should head to the kitchen first and drop off the food ingredients."
"Ah — I've been keeping our guests standing around far too long. But food ingredients?"
The one who rescued me from the chatty trainee was Irene, neatly cutting him off at just the right moment. Her voice was far quieter than his, but the trainee caught it cleanly all the same and stepped back at once to look over our party.
Well, from Hanna down to me, we'd all arrived empty-handed — so Irene talking about food ingredients had to sound baffling. Still, he was obedient enough; he turned right around and started leading us toward the kitchen. The children who'd come with us had already been whisked away by the other trainees.
The kitchen that greeted us was far larger than I'd expected — they had to feed every priest and every child, after all.
"We've got some flour, vegetables, and meat. Where should we set them down?"
"Hang the meat in the storeroom over there, and the rest can go on this side— wha—?!"
Hanna bit down hard on her lip as the trainee priests and nuns bustling around the kitchen jumped in shock. She was starting to get a real kick out of playing the genius mage with that inventory of hers.
Probably because Grace gushed over it every single time she saw it, heaping on praise until her mouth went dry. From a housekeeper's point of view, sure, an inventory would look like a far more impressive spell than Magic Missile. But even from a mage's perspective, wasn't spatial magic a lot more impressive than that?
"Good heavens — that much flour, out of thin air…"
"With a spell like that, shopping would be so much easier."
"These are Lady Irene's guests, aren't they? The Goddess herself will look kindly upon them."
Once Irene had heard every last greeting from the kitchen staff, she caught my sleeve and led me along. We wandered past religious paintings hanging on the walls and arrived at a large room. Even before Irene opened the door, I could feel cold sweat running down my back.
Grace, with her sharp senses, must have felt it too — she gave an awkward little laugh. Then she slyly slipped behind me and shoved Hanna forward, which was just plain mean. Trying to duck out of it all by herself.
"—and when the goblins came bursting out, Mary held them off. She's a seasoned maid and a skilled thief, after all. Monsters thrashing through the underbrush from the front and the rear at once—"
The voice carrying through the door was unmistakably Charlotte Cavendish's, the same noble lady we'd met earlier. She seemed to have gathered the children for an adventure tale, and the way the exploits poured out without so much as a pause for breath was something else. If she hadn't been a noble young lady, she could probably have made a living as a street bard.
Surely the person who'd wanted to see me wasn't this girl. Irene must have sensed my hesitation; she gave my sleeve a light tug and whispered. She'd taken hold of it so naturally I hadn't even thought to question why she was leading me by the sleeve.
"The children of the Temple… they very much wanted to see you, Lord Roland. When the orphans leave the Temple, some of them find work in the shops of kind people who support us — but when there aren't enough jobs, they have no choice but to become adventurers. If this has been a burden… I'm truly sorry…"
Her head dipped in apology, long lashes trembling. Faced with that fragile look, I couldn't bring myself to say anything harsh.
Even if I'd decided my operating principle was to move only for profit, when a beauty like this showed a vulnerable side, a man's heart went soft right along with her. Besides, I'd already planned to visit the Temple at least once for the sake of managing my public image.
If spinning a few adventure stories was enough to raise the Temple's favorability, it was pure profit. Hanging around that talkative noble girl would be exhausting, sure — but the returns were guaranteed. I gave Irene a small smile to tell her not to worry, then opened the door.
"—and so, after we drove off the goblins and searched the huts, what do you think we found? Piles of fruit! The monsters inside the Tower may appear out of nowhere, but they still need to eat and rest just like anyone else. That's why the Horned Foxes on the lower floors will sometimes hunt Horned Rabbits right in front of you. But since monster corpses don't remain in the Tower, they can't actually eat them. And that's why starving Horned Foxes end up charging at adventurers. Ah, and about those Horned Wolves that appeared in the streets this time—"
Young children sat clustered together in the fairly spacious room. It wasn't only the boys who were interested in adventurers — a few little girls were mixed in among them, clutching dolls tight.
And sitting at the center of that circle, mouth never stopping, was none other than the pink-haired noble lady, Charlotte. Her dark blue-haired maid-thief was nowhere in the room — probably off helping with chores.
So this was the story of clearing the goblin settlement on the eleventh floor and looting the huts. At best, it was the tale of a four-person party — before Irene had transferred over — hunting a dozen or so goblins and rummaging through some shacks. A story that could be summarized in a single sentence, and she'd been spinning it for over five minutes. Impressive, in its own way.
Back in university, I'd struggled just to fill three minutes of a presentation. How did she keep going like that with no script at all? Maybe if you checked her status window, something like "Chatty Charlotte" would be floating there.
"And the one who hunted those dangerous Horned Wolves and cleaned up the city's back alleys is none other than Lord Roland, right over there."
"Oh— whoaaa!"
Charlotte kept the story rolling with theatrical flair, locking eyes with the children, then smoothly steered the topic toward me. Every gaze in the room swung my way at once. Still, their manners training must have been strict — they didn't come swarming over.
A bit quieter and more well-behaved than the kids who'd been running wild in the streets. Maybe the result of sorting into outdoor kids and indoor kids.
I followed Irene — still holding my sleeve — as she led me in among the children. Hanna and Grace trailed behind with awkward expressions. Watching the two of them shrink under those bright, sparkling stares was pretty entertaining; neither of them looked like they'd ever had much to do with childcare.
"Yesterday… where did we leave off?"
"Big brother Roland was alone on the eleventh floor!"
At least she didn't plan to dump the storytelling on me cold. Irene settled into place and began the tale herself. Her voice was soft, but her tone and diction were so clear that the children held their breath and locked in.
Irene, curious about adventures in the Tower. The mage young lady who came to the Temple for volunteer work to prove her everyday piety and help Irene along — Charlotte — and her loyal maid, Mary. The tank from the twenty-fourth floor, apparently, was someone Charlotte had hired with her own money.
The way I was raising Hanna, Irene had been climbing the Tower carefully from the first floor for her own trials — and then Horned Wolves had appeared and started mauling citizens. So the devout Charlotte and Irene had gone wandering the tenth and eleventh floors at random, searching for traces of the Full Moon Wolf—
"And that was when they met Lord Roland, right here. Does anyone have questions about adventuring?"
Every single hand shot up without exception. Looks like I was going to be talking for a while. I gave a helpless smile under the children's stares, and Irene and Charlotte both beamed back at me.
For all that, though… Charlotte's gaze was a little strange.