Joint Quest and Keeping in Check (5)
#
"Ah, hello."
I spun around, quick. Definitely not because I was trying to dodge the women's sparkling stares. No way, absolutely not.
"Welcome."
The trio I'd been waiting for stood behind me.
Lively, airheaded Tina. Composed Zinia. Easygoing Emily. They belonged to a major clan, but the way they behaved never inspired much confidence.
"Oh."
A murmur of admiration slipped out.
Tina and Zinia were in plain clothes, but Emily had modified her priestess robes quite scandalously. A slit crept up from her thigh, all the way to her waist. W-wait, did that mean she was going commando?!
Come to think of it, Reni had mentioned that priests who worked alongside adventurers could be pretty uninhibited, but was that seriously allowed?! She looked so innocent, and yet... she was even wearing a garter?!
Sure, compared to my girls, it was nothing special, but the sheer exposure still made it very easy on the eyes.
"Huh?"
My vision went dark. Cool fingers pressed over my eyes. This was...
"Reni?"
"...L-let's take a seat first!"
"..."
Reni rarely stepped forward first. She almost never did that. Had I been staring too openly? But Emily had cut the slit so conspicuously—wouldn't it have been stranger not to look?!
Naturally, I kept that to myself. I did have some tact.
Once Reni withdrew her hands, the three were seated right across from me. Their stares, though... seriously overwhelming. They just stared fixedly, not bothering to greet us, whispering only to one another.
"It's real..." "What'd I tell you?" "Hmm..."
Tina kept blinking her eyes, and for some reason Emily was flushing a little. Zinia wore an expression of intrigue.
"...Do I have something on my face?"
"Ah, no. I mean, it's not, um..."
Silence stretched out again.
-Scrape.
Reni dragged her chair right up next to mine, practically glued to my side. Wasn't she too close? I couldn't even move my arm.
Tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.
"Weren't you here to discuss work?"
Yuri yanked their attention back. Her voice had a faint knife-edge to it. The way she kept tapping her fingers against the table, deliberately loud, grated on my nerves.
Huh. I'd never seen this side of her directed at me, so I'd never noticed—she really did have a prickly streak.
The trio seemed to catch that vibe too. They glanced toward Yuri with a faintly hostile tilt, then abruptly froze.
"Ah...?"
Emily's expression stood out most among them. She looked visibly disappointed as her gaze darted back and forth between Yuri and me.
"Hmph..."
Yuri let out a quiet snort.
I felt like I could read the atmosphere. Some kind of silent battle had just taken place that I'd completely missed—and Yuri had won!
But with what?! How did you even decide victory here?!
Still, this mood was no good. We were supposed to work together for a while, and already this kind of psychological warfare?
Feeling weirdly like the team leader of a group project, I opened my mouth.
"Uh, well. You got here faster than I expected. Seems like we just contacted you not long ago."
Zinia fielded my remark.
"Yes. Emily had been waiting the whole time. You should have seen how much she pestered us... though it seems it was all for nothing."
"...Ahem. I-is that so."
I ended up stammering a little, because both sides moved at once—
Reni pressed up against me like she was about to fuse her chair to mine, and Yuri went so far as to step on my foot.
Zinia giggled at my flustered reaction.
"Then let's talk business, as your companion suggested. We've helped each other a few times before, but some of you are new faces, so introductions first. I'm..."
A quick round of introductions followed. The trio's lineup was warrior Tina, wizard Zinia, and priestess Emily. Melee DPS, magic ranged DPS, buffer and healer rolled together—an orthodox, well-balanced party.
Then our side did introductions too.
Zinia spoke up like she was the group's representative.
"So, how much have you been told?"
"Confirm the monsters' habitat, and if possible, abduct... secure eggs or young. Timeframe is within ten days. The rest I don't know yet."
"Then I'll fill in the rest."
Zinia launched into her explanation.
The actual timeframe was about seven to eight days. A day's walk to a staging point in the dungeon's safe zone, then roughly two more days from there to the quest area.
"The target monster is a Wyrm."
"Wyrm, I've heard of those."
Yuri threw out a know-it-all comment.
A type of legless, wingless earth dragon. No, even calling it a dragon was too generous. It was a Lesser Dragon—a downgraded version of a dragon.
Yuri broke off mid-explanation and put on a worried face.
"A Wyrm, though. Are we gonna be okay? I get that Lesser Dragons aren't too smart, but if you steal its eggs, I bet it'd go berserk. Isn't that kinda dangerous?"
"We phrased it that way, but we don't actually believe pulling that off is possible."
Zinia said something unexpected.
"The truth is, that's not what worries us."
"Then what?"
"The bigger issue is how the route to the Wyrm colony might have changed. That's the very reason we asked for this joint quest."
Zinia went on.
When a distortion happens inside a dungeon, what happens to the monsters inside?
Nobody really knows.
If they had legs, maybe they run somewhere. If they had claws, maybe they dig underground. If they had wings, maybe they fly into the sky.
Or perhaps they rose from the ground, as though the dungeon itself were an incubation facility.
Normally, monsters breed among themselves, but when a dungeon is going through a distortion, there are no set rules.
One thing's certain: you never know what's going to jump out from where.
Zinia's expression turned serious.
"If this were just a scouting mission, the three of us could manage on our own. But with the distortion happening, we have no idea what might happen en route. Will the water source we used for resupply still exist? Will new monsters appear? Will there be anywhere to rest? Worst case, the Wyrm colony itself might have completely vanished."
So it was a completely unknown world. Still...
"Uh, so if the colony's gone, what do we do then?"
"In that case, we'd have to find another monster of comparable value to the Wyrm."
"...So in the end, this is a quest with no deadline..."
"Not exactly."
Tina cut me off.
"Even if the Wyrm vanishes, there'll definitely be something of similar value. We're not just heading out totally clueless. Things like large-type monsters don't just disappear that easily, y'know."
"...Tina. That's clan-exclusive intel."
"...Ah."
Tina glanced warily at Zinia, then looked at me and grinned.
"That's what they... say, right? You heard... that, didn'cha?"
"..."
There was always one. Someone with such a loose mouth. Sometimes they were easy to deal with, but having one on your own team gives you a headache. Thank goodness she was not in my party.
As if trying to dodge Zinia's scornful stare, Tina chattered on.
"Honestly, this is a great chance to score. Opportunities like this don't come around often. Because of this quest, we even shelled out big bucks to rent a Subspace Pouch. With this, restocking on the way and carrying the eggs after we swipe 'em is a cinch... I mean, a breeze."
Aha. So when Emily mentioned earlier that they needed money, it was for renting that thing, I supposed.
I asked purely out of curiosity.
"What's its capacity?"
"One meter length, width, and height, max load a hundred kilos!"
The tone screamed, 'Bet you guys don't have one of these, do ya?'
Zinia cradled her head in her hands when she saw Tina shouting it out so proudly.
A snort came from next to me. I turned to see Reni huffing smugly through her nose. Well, sure, honestly my inventory's specs were leagues better, but why were you acting so proud about it?
"What's the pay?"
"To start with, we split it fifty-fifty..."
"But weren't you the ones who requested it? I think our side deserves a bigger cut."
Unhappy with Zinia's answer, Yuri dug her heels in. I decided to step in and settle things.
"Let's start with fifty-fifty. But since we were the ones asked to help, I'd appreciate a slightly larger share for us depending on our contribution."
"...Fine. Then for the details..."
# # #
Working out the finer details ended up taking quite a while. We even had to test each other's skills inside the dungeon to see how they actually performed.
Reni looked pretty embarrassed since she only had a handful of skills, but from my perspective, there was no need. The buff had already sent her output through the roof. Watching their eyes go wide at the high-output Holy Light was truly entertaining.
I also wanted to show off Ariel's bombs and the collab attack she'd pulled off with Yuri, but Ariel refused. She said it was too expensive to use just for a demonstration, or something like that.
Zinia was nice enough to offer space in their Subspace Pouch for our provisions too, but I played it off vaguely, saying we had something similar of our own.
After agreeing to meet again the next morning, we went our separate ways. Then I grabbed Yuri.
"Yuri, what's with you? Aren't you being too snippy? We're doing a joint quest, so it'd be nice to get along."
"...Didn't you see their eyes?"
"What do you mean?"
"Hmm..."
Yuri crossed her arms with a slightly dissatisfied expression, and Reni, weirdly enough, was furrowing her brow too.
"Haa... seeing stuff like this, sometimes I think I might've gotten lucky..."
"M-me too..."
Seriously, what were they on about?
Anyway, next up was buying supplies for tomorrow's scouting.
First, one more tent, a few extra blankets...
Yuri watched me shop with a look of utter disbelief. Reni didn't say a word, but her face held a similar expression.
"Why are you buying so much? You setting up house in the dungeon? Why get a new tent when we still have the old one?"
"Because we need it. That's why I bought it."
"Need it? What are you talking about?"
These idiots. They were forgetting a crucial fact. I decided to be a little generous.
"We'll be inside the dungeon for days. You think we won't apply buffs during that time? You want all of us to sleep together in one tent?"
"..."
To put it simply, we needed a dedicated sex tent. Judging by how both their faces flared bright red the moment they understood what I meant, there were no further objections after that.
...Dammit, I shouldn't have opened my mouth. Now that I thought about it, if I'd pushed for one tent, a dream 4P might've actually been possible!
I dug my own grave!