The Grassland Giant 5
What Han Se-ah and I were doing was a kind of tightrope walk.
The sort where you inch along a wire, and one wrong step sends you plunging straight into the abyss.
I had to subtly convey that Roland was not some mere NPC but a human being, guiding her toward clearing the game. Fail that tightrope act, and I would likely remain trapped in the game forever—living as an NPC until I crumbled into data scraps and vanished.
Han Se-ah's tightrope, of course, was the one she'd strung up over a single night with me. There was a touch of reaping what she'd sown about it, and yes, I was the one who'd blocked the rewind and set the whole mess in motion—but if she had a problem with that, she shouldn't have been peeping in the first place. If she hadn't been so sly about her voyeurism, maybe she would have found another way.
"By the way, capturing ogres alive—where are we supposed to keep something that big?"
"We'll have to commission the Magic Tower for that too. Frame it as specimen storage and they'll probably invent a spot that didn't even exist before."
"Or we could ask the stone dwarves underground to dig us a pit."
"True—craftsmen of the stone dwarves' caliber could forge chains sturdy enough for the job."
And so, even as Grace and Irene discussed the ogre-capture operation with distinctly heated looks in my direction, the viewers' minds were off in the cabbage patch.
The stone dwarves of the underground kingdom beneath the Harpy Kingdom. A craftsman race that could work not only Enhancement Stones but Special Enhancement Stones as well, excavating the depths with their peculiar laser beams. A race that was about to enter into cooperation with the Magic Tower under the Hero's name—and the viewers were too busy roasting Han Se-ah to care.
All she'd done was let out one cute little "Hyat?!" off-camera, and that alone was enough for the chat to riot.
"What ambush kiss?! He just came up close and suddenly grabbed my hand, so I freaked out. He was clutching Irene Mama's hand tight earlier too—Sensei, you're way too comfortable with physical contact with women. Seriously."
These were the same people who'd turned the arrow that once hit my backside into a video. There was no chance they'd sit still after Han Se-ah had delivered such a clean, high-pitched scream, practically gift-wrapped for clipping.
Already the Hankkyak remix was tormenting her. Whether it was Earth-4's latest hit or a song past its prime, I couldn't tell—but to the looping EDM beat, Han Se-ah went hankkyakkyak kkyakkyak, screaming right on rhythm.
And yet, through every variety of mockery, she kept delivering her lines without flinching. Then again, this was a woman who'd endured sexual harassment during workout streams and parental insults during game streams—her mental fortitude was rock solid. Getting ribbed over her own scream probably registered as nothing more than playful teasing.
"So then—do we post a capture request at the Adventurers' Guild and commission the Magic Tower for construction?"
"We should probably talk to the Magic Tower first and get a quote, don't you think? Even if we capture them, we need somewhere to keep them."
"As long as we have the conversation today, it shouldn't matter. We've only run into them twice ourselves—I doubt posting a request will have people hauling them in by the truckload within a few days."
And so, battered by every kind of teasing and suspicion, we crossed the grasslands, returned to the Harpy Kingdom, and stepped through the gate into the city. Whether the viewers had finally had their fill of roasting her, or whether the Magic Tower looming ahead had simply cooled their interest, they gradually started talking about the ogres.
The topic, as Katie and Grace had said, was how many ogres the adventurers might actually bring in.
Being named-tier, they were rare enough that Han Se-ah had only encountered them twice while blasting through floors 51 to 60. Come to think of it, there hadn't even been anything resembling a mid-boss along the way. Given the military structure of the place, maybe the mid-boss dark mage was planning to appear all at once alongside the boss monster—the Legion Commander.
"Alright, let's hit the Magic Tower first. We need to hear the details on ogre containment before we can set the request fee."
"Ah, Hanna's right. We do need to decide how many gold per head for the bounty."
While I was thinking that through, Han Se-ah—who had weathered every smear without batting an eye and counted only the donation totals—smiled brightly and led the party toward the Magic Tower.
As if the affairs of the Empire and the affairs of the Tower had nothing to do with each other, the Magic Tower always stood tall.
Some called it an ivory tower built of knowledge; others called it a golden tower that stoked the vanity of nobles. But for me and the viewers—modern people with modern knowledge—there was only one way to look at the Magic Tower.
Ultra-mega-max graduate school…!
"Aha, so you'd like to know about commissioning an ogre capture? Marie, if you would."
"Yes, my lady."
The face of the ambitious Charlotte Cavendish, whom we hadn't seen in a while, had a curiously polished sheen to it. Of course it did—unlike the days when she'd been scrambling for research topics, she now commanded dozens of assistant mages. A glow like that was only natural.
The young lady who'd fled to the Magic Tower to escape a political marriage was now ordering around dozens of mages with a single flick of her chin.
She gave a light nod, and the blue-haired maid flicked her hand in turn. The thin bracelet on her wrist must have been a magic tool, because at that signal the assistant mages surged into motion. Watching those people, hoods pulled down over their faces like oversized hoodies, shuffling about with hollow eyes, I couldn't help thinking this was worse than actual graduate school.
"A capture commission for the frenzied ogres that appear from the 51st-floor grasslands… ah, here it is. Fortunately, it's a lab I have connections with."
"Oh, is that so?"
What came out of Charlotte's mouth was quite promising. Whether it was because she had a near-monopoly on the research topics the Hero's party casually tossed her way, or because she was expanding her influence in a manner befitting the title of "Ambitious," every subject we raised seemed to involve someone she already knew.
The negotiation that followed was almost too one-sided to call a negotiation.
True to a medieval fantasy world, the authority of a Hero conferred benefits even upon a single mage of the Magic Tower—and Charlotte hammered the unit price down to a level that made me think, Is this price even real?
"Sleeping agents to keep them under, storage space, and a sealing magic circle on top of that—and you're saying forty gold per head is enough?"
Five gold for the sleeping agent, five gold for frenzied-ogre management fees, ten gold to rent a large specimen cage, twenty gold for the sealing magic circle. To the common folk of this world, it was an unthinkable fortune—but to top-tier adventurers who could earn hundreds of gold on a single expedition, it was pocket change.
These were giants that, to hunt at all, required either an upper-rank fighter who could wield aura, or dozens of mid-rank fighters operating specially crafted large-monster ballistae. Creatures that cracked the ground like a bomb with a single stomp and pulverized boulders into soft tofu with their bare fists—and the cost of safely containing one was a mere forty gold.
Aim for ten of them and you were looking at roughly four hundred gold. The request fees for the adventurers would be calculated separately, but given our party's finances, it wasn't a serious burden.
"Are you sure about this?"
"Yes, don't worry, Hero. I have connections of my own, so I can get it cheap. And if things go according to your plan, we'll get a front-row seat to a rare spectacle—a named monster fighting a boss monster."
So between the cheap labor extracted from graduate students' blood, sweat, and tears, the discount through personal connections, and that distinctly mage-like willingness to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, the thoroughly beaten-down price left me thoroughly satisfied.
Han Se-ah, for her part, might not have known a mage's labor rates, but she seemed pleased enough comparing it to what she normally dumped into mass-producing bombs. It was only Grace, Irene, and the viewers who knew the weight of gold coins and trembled at the figure of forty gold.
"Um, Roland? Is forty gold really alright? Factoring in the Adventurers' Guild request, it'll come out to nearly a hundred gold per head…"
"That much is fine. Our party's savings are solid, and if you think of it as an investment for enhancing our gear with Special Enhancement Stones, it's money we have to spend."
"I-is that so…?"
Irene, in her characteristic way, timidly tugged at my sleeve and whispered close.
Grace, having watched Han Se-ah pour gold into bombs while crafting alchemical arrowheads, seemed to grasp it well enough—but for Irene, whose idea of luxury was earning gold to buy meat skewers for the temple orphans, the sum was apparently staggering.
To an adventurer, equipment was as precious as life itself. Most adventurers dumped years of savings into the Magic Tower or a blacksmith just to replace a single piece of gear—so a hundred gold for one Special Enhancement Stone was a bargain.
"Ahem—calling me F2P trash, are we? I've said this over and over while running this stream: if you're jealous, go pull a natural 6★ gold-spoon super tanker and start from there."
So stop poking the chat, would you.
I couldn't even tell who the free-to-play peasant was supposed to be at this point.