Shall We Go Find One?
Shall we go find one soon?
At the center of the promotion test arena, roughly fifteen paces apart, a middle-schooler in full black-mage cosplay stood facing a bearded, one-handed swordsman uncle.
“Please take good care of me.”
“Sure thing, kiddo. I’ll go easy on you, so don’t worry too much.”
“Thank you for your kindness.”
The spar, arranged at the contractor’s request, ended in less than ten seconds. A one-sided victory for the contractor.
“Thank you for your hard work.”
“...?”
The adventurer, forced to his knees by a low kick, stared in disbelief at the blade hovering at his throat.
“...Kid, didn’t you say you were 1st-tier?”
He had only stepped up to tease her a little… so why was he the one in this sorry state?
Even though the match was over, the adventurer looked up at the young adventurer who still hadn’t withdrawn the blade from his Adam’s apple, eyes trembling as he waited for an answer.
“Yes. I’m a novice adventurer who reached 1st-tier a year ago… no, just yesterday.”
“That’s impossible.”
Disbelief and shock flooded the adventurer’s eyes.
“This is a prank, right? You all planned this to mess with me?”
“Accept your defeat quietly, loser.”
“What a disgrace to warriors everywhere.”
“You bastards. Why don’t you try fighting her yourselves!”
The high-tier guides remembered the lightning-fast movement that had appeared the instant she drew her dagger, along with the suffocating killing intent that had poured out with it.
“Hmm.”
“Hmmm.”
The adventurers who had watched the earlier spar imagined themselves getting thoroughly crushed by Yuri two or three times in their heads, then quietly shook their heads.
“Still… fighting a kid feels a bit…”
“A man has his pride.”
“...Screw you all.”
The contractor sheathed the dagger inside her robe, helped the kneeling adventurer to his feet, bowed politely to show respect for the duel, then came skipping toward me with sparkling eyes.
“Master! I mean, Raven-nim! How did I do?”
“As expected of my disci— *cough*, as expected of my contractor. I don’t know who taught you, but that was excellent knife fighting.”
“Ah, so that’s it…”
“...?”
At my creaky praise, the contractor smiled with satisfaction like a salaryman who’d just cracked open a beer after work.
Regina Gura came trotting over with quick little steps and poured out her admiration with a look of genuine astonishment.
“That was incredible, is the case! In all my years, I’ve never seen an adventurer of your age fight that well, is the case!”
“Ahem. Is that so?”
“...This is insane, nyang. I knew she had talent for combat, but how can one skill make her this strong, nyang! This has to be a bug, nyang!”
“...With this much power, maybe even Sion-nim could…”
Sion bristled at the way Yuri was scanning her up and down as if measuring her worth, growling with clear displeasure.
“Nya-nyang! Adventurer! Your arrogance pierces the heavens, nyang! We need to reestablish the hierarchy, nyang!”
“Calm down, thief.”
The performance of the skill the contractor had awakened—Contract—was so absurd that Sion couldn’t hide her excitement.
“...A 1st-tier adventurer beat a 3rd-tier?”
“And a rear-line fighter beat a front-line one at that…”
“Aren’t summoners supposed to have their summons do all the fighting?”
Without any help from Kkachi, using only pure hand-to-hand combat to easily overpower an adventurer two tiers higher than her—and a front-line fighter at that—said everything that needed to be said.
At this level, she could probably walk around the Green Zone without a worry.
“That skill… you said it borrows part of my power, right?”
“Yes. But I can’t use anything like your Authorities, and… well, it’s not exact, but it seems to borrow things like combat sense, stamina, muscle strength, and magical power.”
Authorities? Ah, maybe she means skills?
Well, if she could borrow my skills too, that would be a complete balance break. The adventurers would have every right to march up to the Goddess and file a complaint.
“When borrowing power, isn’t there some kind of price?”
The skill was literally called Contract. There should be collateral or a price, right? I had formed the contract with almost no conditions because she promised to get me out of that hellish place called Terraforming, but contracts aren’t usually this easy.
At my question, the contractor tilted her head and asked back.
“The price… haven’t I already paid it?”
Already paid it…?
“Ah. You don’t mean…?”
“Yes. It’s exactly what you’re thinking, Raven-nim.”
Surviving for a year in a ruined world.
That was the price for borrowing part of my power?
Made sense. A skill with this kind of performance couldn’t possibly come without risk. But thanks to that risk, among all the garbage memories from Terraforming that felt like hell, quite a few things had been born that I could actually call cherished memories.
The year I spent with the contractor. Of course the current me hadn’t been there with her, but the emotions and memories from that time still remained clearly.
That was why it still felt awkward to call her “contractor.” Back then, I had called her by her name.
YuriYuri… what the hell was I thinking?
I used to hit her with my hands and feet as if it were normal, even forcing her to run while threatening her with a gun.
How could I have done such terrible things to a child like this…?
Whenever I thought about it, I wanted to go back and beat my past self to death. But I decided to forgive him because he had shown a rather romantic side—sacrificing himself to send the contractor back.
While I was briefly reminiscing about a past that no longer existed, Sion and senior Regina Gura, who had gone to the record keepers, returned.
“With this, the adventurer’s promotion test is officially over, is the case! You worked hard, is the case!”
“Good work, nyang! Adventurer! You’re now officially a 1st-tier adventurer, nyang!”
Yuri—no, the contractor—accepted the adventurer certificate Regina Gura handed her, eyes sparkling.
“Ooh, it feels strangely moving.”
However…
“Regina-nim. I heard that registering status information gives you a certain amount of dallant. Just where is this ‘certain amount’ of dallant?”
It was true the application form had mentioned it. But from the contractor’s perspective, that form was written almost a year ago.
She remembered that?
As expected, the contractor’s mind became suspiciously sharp whenever money was involved. Terrifying.
“Ah, I completely forgot, is the case! It was absolutely not intentional omission, is the case! Please don’t misunderstand, is the case!”
Faced with the contractor’s fierce gaze that burned like a beast that had starved for five days, Regina Gura hurriedly pulled a check from her pocket with an “oh no” expression.
“Status information provision fee of 100,000 dallant, plus unregistered job and skill information provision fee of 2,000,000 dallant, for a total of 2,100,000 dallant, is the case! Here, take this and please stop looking so scary, is the case!”
“Eh? Th-this much?”
The contractor accepted the check with trembling hands. She seemed completely stunned, staring blankly at it without saying a word.
No matter how valuable information was, I hadn’t expected them to be this generous.
With that much money, couldn’t we buy a house?
Our first goal was to move our base closer to the dungeon. Thinking we might be able to achieve that a little faster, I asked senior Regina Gura if there were any cheap houses near the dungeon.
“A cheap house near the New Spear? Hmm, the area around the New Spear is a commercial district, so there aren’t really any residential buildings, is the case! The places closest to the New Spear are all clan houses, which might be a bit large for just the two of you. Would that be all right, is the case?”
“...Clan house?”
A ‘party’ was a small cooperative group formed when adventurers temporarily or long-term joined hands to explore dungeons more efficiently. They usually consisted of two to five people and were often formed through the Adventurer Guild’s party recruitment system or spontaneously at taverns after a few drinks when people clicked.
And when those parties grew just a little larger—
“They become ‘clans,’ is the case!”
Even the smallest clan had at least ten members, so clan houses were closer to mansions than regular homes.
But we didn’t need anything that big. The larger the house, the more places there were to clean. Minimalism was best.
“Senior, isn’t there anything else? A simple studio where we can just sleep would be enough.”
“Studio? Ah, you mean a building with only one room, is the case?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. But if that’s all you need, wouldn’t it be simpler to just sleep at an inn or tavern, is the case?”
“....”
I had no response to Regina Gura’s perfectly logical point.
Well, rent here isn’t that expensive.
With 2.1 million dallant, we could practically rent out an entire cheap inn.
Wait a second. Don’t I have a quest?
I remembered an amazing quest at the Rainbow Cup: if I could make the owner, Noir, feel the emotion of fear, I would receive lifetime lodging rights at the tavern and a secret gift from the demon Croma Ira.
During the contractor’s level-up celebration party, I had brushed off Croma’s hints by asking her to wait just a little longer.
Sigh. If only I could somehow make that work.
The Fear of the Emotionless
📍 Location: Rainbow Cup Tavern
🎯 Objective: Use the Injector to make owner Noir experience the emotion of fear
🎁 Reward: Lifetime lodging rights + secret gift from the Demon of Wrath, Croma Ira
It was a heaven-sent opportunity from the Goddess that would grant both a free base and a secret gift from a demon, but it was still too difficult. Because I had yet to test the Injector on a ‘human’ target.
Anyone hearing that might hook their finger and ask if I was even human, but honestly I was far from normal in many ways, so I was an exception. The Goddess’s slightly uncomfortable labeling of me as “In?human” in my status window was also a bit concerning.
Is there any suitable test subject for a fear vaccine clinical trial?
Testing it on people around me made my weak conscience tremble, so that was difficult. It would be nice if it was a bad guy who could get a little hurt or even die.
***
“Raven-nim. Then, shall we slowly go find one?”
“Hm?”
“My… 200,000 dallant.”
“...!”
Found the bad guy…!