174. The First Request (1)
174. The First Request (1)
"Shin Se-hee, I need to discuss something with you."
Since there were no classes on the opening ceremony day, I sorted through the upcoming requests for a moment, then went straight to find Shin Se-hee.
The place where Shin Se-hee was working was the hideout near the academy.
It was the very building she had given me as a present before.
"Oh? Yes, come in."
She had been examining the documents spread across her wide desk, but put down her pen as I entered.
And behind her, as if she had already become a complete confidant, the Righteousness Freak Lee Min-young stood at attention with a stiff expression.
'Right, didn't she say this girl came in as Shin Se-hee's direct intern?'
I had completely forgotten about Lee Min-young during the break while spending time with my party members,
but seeing her stuck right by Shin Se-hee's side as soon as school started, it looked like they had been in close contact during the break too.
'......Seriously, the more I see her, the weirder it is. They're total opposites, so how the hell did they end up together?'
As I stared at Lee Min-young in wonder for a moment, her face began turning progressively redder.
"Ahem! Jin Yu-ha, weren't you here to see me?"
Shin Se-hee cleared her throat to get my attention.
"Ah, sorry. Yeah. I've got something I need to discuss with you."
"Oh? Hmm, then could you give us a moment?"
"Yes, understood."
When Shin Se-hee turned her head slightly and spoke, Lee Min-young answered with a picture-perfect posture and left, closing the door.
"So, what brings you here?"
"Well, now that the second semester's started, we can take on requests."
At that, Shin Se-hee nodded as if she understood what I was getting at.
"Ah, yes. The Utopia Party was established first, but we haven't been able to take any separate requests so far. So we've only been raiding open dungeons."
As she said that, Shin Se-hee pulled a thick file from a stack of papers next to her.
"I've already listed and organized the requests we can accept."
As I flipped through the papers she handed me, I couldn't help but be astonished.
'Seriously....... How long has it been since school started, and she's already organized all of this?'
It was a document that listed the requests the Utopia Party could currently take in an easy-to-read table, with a simple star rating system and evaluations.
It was even easier to read than the mission interface from the game had been.
'She's damn capable......!'
Shin Se-hee smiled with satisfaction when she saw the surprised look on my face.
"First of all, the request I'd personally recommend for Utopia's first one is the U.S. Monster Subjugation Request."
"The U.S.?"
True to its reputation as the world's greatest academy, Velvet Hunter Academy receives requests not only domestically but from all over the world.
Because monsters and Giant Monsters appear in other countries too, and those rat-bastard Demonized Humans hide out regardless of nationality.
Of course, other nations try to handle things with their own hunters as much as possible, since they don't exactly love being indebted to foreign countries,
but when does the world ever work out that conveniently?
Compared to the incidents that break out, the number of hunters is always insufficient, and gates they can't handle pop up without warning.
I nodded at Shin Se-hee's words.
"Hmm, right....... The U.S. Monster Subjugation Request is decent in terms of efficiency."
"Yes, it's a government agency request, the pay is good, and the monster level is exactly appropriate for us to take on."
"Tch, then I wonder if we could do that one as our second request. Though, someone will probably snatch it up before we take our first one, right? Since it's a pretty good request."
"......Pardon? Second? Do you have something else in mind for our first request?"
"Yeah, there's a request we can only accept right now."
I had to flip through the documents in my hand for quite a while before I could find the request I had in mind.
☐ Insomnia Resolution Request.
─ Every night, a strange sound echoes in my head. I can't fall asleep. Please resolve my insomnia.
Location: Japan, Jukai Forest.
Type: Personal Request.
Reward: 100,000 yen.
Success Condition: A satisfactory sleep.
Notes: Client's identity unconfirmed.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ 【Lowest】
Overall Review: Lowest-grade request. Insufficient situation description. Client's identity inaccurate. No recourse if the client later raises a complaint. The compensation is almost nil for the effort involved. The quintessential troublesome request.
( What does 'a satisfactory sleep' even mean as a success condition? Could you just knock 'em out with a hit to the head? ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽=ᕤ Swish-swish! )
I burst out a soft laugh at the handwritten comment Shin Se-hee had added.
After she checked which request I'd picked, Shin Se-hee's face turned bright red.
"Th-that, um, are you really planning to accept that request?"
She added the question quickly, as if to draw attention away from her comment.
"Yeah, let's take this for our first request."
I looked down at the request form and smiled with satisfaction.
'Because this is a Misrated Request.'
In Velvetsra, when the second semester starts, a mission window opens up allowing the Player to select requests.
Among them, there sometimes exist things called 'Misrated Requests.'
What's there to say?
After thousands of rerolls, newbies who'd pulled completely busted characters and were brimming with confidence would come in all fired up, ready to complete every single request in the mission window. This was a trap designed to humble them.
In other words, it was a lowest-ranked request with a difficulty level that was completely insane!
'But for the Veterans of Velvetsra, Misrated Requests like this were a goldmine.'
Since the difficulty was elevated, the reward was on a level you couldn't normally receive at your current stage.
On top of that, Misrated Requests have a set window of time you can accept them, and if you don't grab them the moment they appear, their rank gets readjusted soon after.
Among them, the Insomnia Resolution Request was a classic Misrated Request that could only be taken at the very first possible moment.
"......."
Shin Se-hee touched her lips as if in thought, then met my eyes.
"This one was mis-graded, wasn't it?"
This was exactly why Shin Se-hee was so easy to work with.
Even without me having to explain every little detail, if I tossed her just one piece of information, she'd figure out the whole background immediately.
"I see. Understood. So, the first request is the insomnia one. The second will be the U.S. Monster Subjugation Request."
"Can we even get the second request?"
"Of course, that much is easy. But what we need to worry about right now is this first request. You said it's only available right now, didn't you?"
"Yeah, its rank will probably be readjusted soon."
"Then we need to get through prep and the strategy as quickly as possible....... I think we're going to need a plan."
"A plan?"
"Yes. Accepting it itself isn't the problem, but we need a process to make the party members understand. A Misrated Request will be considerably more dangerous, and if our attitude is too lax going into it, a dangerous situation could arise."
"Hmm, I do have one piece of bait for that."
"......Bait?"
I smiled and nodded.
"Yeah. Tempting bait they won't be able to resist biting."
* * *
At Shin Se-hee's summons, all the party members gathered in the meeting room.
Lee Yu-ri, Kang Do-hee, Im Ga-eul, Sofia too.
We'd all been in the same house until this morning, so it wasn't exactly a novel sight.
But the atmosphere was chilly.
Because they'd just been abruptly shown the request form Shin Se-hee presented.
The handwritten comment from earlier was gone, but the rest was the same.
"Our first request? What is this....... 'Please resolve my insomnia'? And the reward is 100,000 yen....... That's 895,672 won? It's a lowest-rank request, isn't it? And the client's identity is unconfirmed? No matter how you look at it, this reeks of something shady....... Would it work if you just knocked 'em out with a hit to the head?"
At Lee Yu-ri's words, I thought of the identical comment Shin Se-hee had written earlier and laughed to myself.
"Yes, Utopia's first request is exactly this Insomnia Resolution Request."
Shin Se-hee maintained an indifferent expression, pretending not to notice my reaction, and spoke calmly.
"Hmm....... Ah, is this maybe to be considerate to the other parties that are forming up now? But do we really need to do that?"
Lee Yu-ri, who had been scratching her cheek, spoke up as the de facto representative of the party members, but everyone wore a similar expression on their faces.
After Chairwoman Rina's speech today, parties were springing up like wildfire.
And it was a situation where everyone was eyeing each other to see who would take which request.
It was no exaggeration to say that the Utopia Party was at the center of it all.
Because right now, no matter what anyone said, Utopia was the hottest and most influential party within Velvet Hunter Academy.
"Well, it's not entirely without that intention. Since our Utopia Party fended off the Blue Crab Wave during the break, our recognition has grown far higher than even the parties of the upperclassmen."
Shin Se-hee nodded, as if conceding the point.
"Building good relationships with other parties will be important for our future activities. Things are fine for now, but monopolizing the work of other parties isn't a good look."
"Flowerbed, you picked this request for some bullshit reason like that?"
Kang Do-hee had been listening to Shin Se-hee's words with her arms crossed, and then spat that out bluntly.
"Just say it. Your real motive is something else anyway."
"It's hard to accept that your assessment of me is always so harsh."
Shin Se-hee feigned being slightly, exaggeratedly hurt, but no one here was going to be fooled by that act anymore.
"Ahem, yes, well. You're not wrong. There's another reason I selected this request. The truth is, this request is a Misrated Request."
Shin Se-hee spoke about what she had just heard from Jin Yu-ha as if she had discovered it through her own independent investigation.
Fundamentally, screening and preparing the party's requests was part of her job as Operator.
And saying she'd found out through her own investigation was far more convincing here than saying Jin Yu-ha had told her.
'Because these people don't know that Jin Yu-ha can see the future.'
"W-wait a minute! A M-Misrated Request!? Then shouldn't we be reporting this!?"
Im Ga-eul, a second-year, raised her voice in alarm.
She had seen and heard what happened when a party of the wrong skill level rushed into a Misrated Request.
But Shin Se-hee shook her head firmly.
"No. We need to claim this one for ourselves."
"There's...... something going on here, nyes?"
The quick-witted Sofia's eyes glittered as she added to the conversation.
"Yes. I believe there's an artifact hidden in this location that will enhance the stats of every party member. That's my estimation, though."
Shin Se-hee recited that in a calm voice,
but it was a bombshell no one could just brush aside.
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