Mercenary: Derick Walker - 1

I studied the quest window that had materialized in front of me. A hundred monsters. The number felt a touch steep, but the objective itself was simple and unambiguous — the kind of grinding quest that showed up in just about every RPG. Easy difficulty usually meant a mediocre reward, but it was the sort of thing that would complete itself as we pushed through the dungeon anyway. No reason to complain.

I made the last of my preparations for the expedition. The final item on the list was registering with the mercenary guild.

As a slave merchant, I occupied a station incomparably higher than any mercenary. In Solari World, mercenaries were no different from the hired hands at a private inquiry office. They called themselves mercenaries, but pay them and they would do anything — an old man's odd jobs, herb gathering, letter delivery, the lot. Of course, they also handled their actual trade: escort work and fighting other people's wars.

The mercenary guild was the organization that managed this rabble. It was an easy field for people with nothing to throw themselves into, which meant the continent was crawling with mercenaries, and the guild's influence rivaled that of the merchant guilds. Power, after all, is simply a matter of having enough money or enough people.

As a slave merchant I had no particular need to belong to a mercenary guild, but I wanted to join for two reasons.

The first was that the mercenary guild was an excellent place to build connections. In Solari World, taverns and mercenary guilds were the two best venues for expanding a network. The mercenary identity let you approach all kinds of people naturally, and more than a few of those people were characters I could later recruit as party members.

The second was that mercenary status made a superb cover identity. If I ever needed to hide the fact that I was a merchant, there was no better mask. Plenty of people became mercenaries for that exact reason. I didn't have to look far for an example — Jin, the original protagonist I'd killed, had become a mercenary in the original story simply to obtain a respectable identity.

For those two reasons, I decided to acquire mercenary status. The process itself was almost insultingly simple.

Pay a modest registration fee, sign up at the guild, and you were immediately listed as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠an F-Rank Mercenary.

The F-Rank registration fee was about one silver. That was just expensive enough to sting a wanderer, which meant there were plenty of men who couldn't even become mercenaries because they couldn't scrape together the coin. Most of them were vagrants, petty thieves, or highwaymen. Jin, at the start of the game, had been no different from a vagrant himself, and he'd had to claw and scrape just to earn that single silver.

I went to the mercenary guild with Luna and Sera. F-Rank didn't even involve an examination. It was a status you could buy on the spot for a handful of coin — and it guaranteed absolutely nothing. People regarded F-Rank mercenaries as no better than vagrants with no identity at all.

If anything, you were more likely to be taken for a scoundrel trying to launder his name. You needed to be at least E-Rank before anyone would treat the title as legitimate.

Raising your mercenary rank was straightforward. Clear the quests the guild handed down, or explore a dungeon. Dungeon exploration paid out promotion merit generously, which was why it was a favored route even in the game. The risk, of course, scaled to match. In that sense, it wasn't so different from reality.

Once I'd registered, I immediately presented the receptionist with a dungeon exploration plan. She read through what I'd written with painstaking care. In the game, every procedure resolved in an instant. Reality, it turned out, did not work that way. Nearly thirty minutes passed before I got an answer.

"You're exploring the Shelter of Blades west of Coulon, correct?"

"That's right. These two will be accompanying me."

Register the expedition, explore the dungeon, submit a report afterward, and your promotion merit went up. To keep people from fabricating those reports, you were required to offer the guild a tenth of the loot you brought out.

That "tenth of the loot," however, was left entirely to a mercenary's conscience. The value of what you actually submitted naturally affected your merit total — which meant you could hand over more than a tenth to climb the ranks faster, or hold back and pad your income at the cost of slower advancement.

It was an utterly unreasonable system, but the guild didn't have much choice. Registration fees alone were nowhere near enough to keep the organization running. They had to fund themselves through quest commissions and the spoils they levied from dungeon-diving mercenaries. In the bleak world of Solari World, public-service charities and the like simply did not exist.

I already had more money than I knew what to do with, and no shortage of ways to make more, so there was no reason to be greedy about loot. Aside from the Dual Blades — the entire point of this expedition — I intended to offer everything to the guild. The faster my mercenary rank rose, the more convenient life would become.

After registering the expedition, we rested a day and then set out. Thanks to my inventory, we weren't carrying much. We took a carriage west out of Coulon.

Public order in a major city like Coulon was fairly stable. Relatively speaking, of course — it couldn't be compared to modern Korea. Thugs, vagrants, pickpockets, swindlers, and highwaymen existed in moderate numbers, just far fewer than in other cities. Even the monsters that prowled beyond the walls were scarce.

That could be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on what you needed. High safety was welcome. It also meant the hunting grounds were a long way off.

After roughly two hours by carriage, we arrived at the entrance to the Shelter of Blades.

The dungeon entrance was an obvious portal shaped like a circular mirror, radiating a lustrous pearl-colored brilliance that all but beckoned us in. Blatant dungeon mouths like that were rare in the real world. In Solari World, they were the norm.

We climbed down from the carriage. It had been a one-way trip, which meant we would unfortunately be walking back. Walking was no small task with this plump, well-fed body of mine, but there was nothing to be done about it. The expedition was going to take several days anyway. I would be walking plenty.

"So this is a portal. It is my first time seeing one in person."

Luna gazed at it with open wonder. I was just as curious. I had seen plenty of them in the game, but seeing one with my own eyes was a first for me as well. Sera, surprisingly, seemed used to the sight.

"There were a lot of portals like this in my hometown. Sometimes threatening monsters would even come bursting out of them."

Our formation was Luna in the lead, myself in the middle, and Sera bringing up the rear. Luna stepped through first. She had said it was her first time, but there was no hesitation in the way she moved. I followed her in, my heart beating a little faster than I cared to admit.

"This landscape is entirely different from the outside."

Wariness filled Luna's voice. It felt as though we had stepped into a Closed-type Dungeon — and by real-world classification, that was exactly what this place was.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Inside, we found ourselves in an abandoned desert village. It was night, and true to a desert night, the cold cut to the bone. We had dressed heavily in anticipation of exactly this. In the desert you had to cover yourself thoroughly around the clock — from the sun during the day, from the freeze after dark.

Luna, at the front, lit the way with a necklace fitted with a Light Stone, a kind of flashlight. The glow washed the surroundings bright enough to survey in every direction. I began explaining the dungeon as we moved forward at a careful pace.

"This place is made up of four zones. The first is right here — the Abandoned Village. There's nothing much to it. Cursed blacksmiths will come crawling out of the ruined buildings now and then to attack. Luna or Sera should be able to put them down without any trouble. The second is the Road of Tribulation, a desolate stretch of sand. You'll find Giant Scorpions and Sand Eaters there. Giant Scorpions are just big, with obvious weak points, but the Sand Eaters you need to watch for."

"Sand Eaters… I've heard of them. I heard they're monsters that swim through the sand like it's water."

Sera had it right. Sand Eaters were enormous creatures that lived in the desert floor, shaped like earthworms grown thousands of times over, with the sheer audacity to swallow ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a person in a single gulp. In the game, the thing actually had an instant-death attack — a nightmare of an ability that let it gulp down opponents of similar level whole.

"Past that road there's a large oasis. That's generally known as the end of this dungeon."

The truth, however, was that a hidden stretch lay beyond it. A secret section where soldiers entombed alive with their king stood eternal watch, sharp spears in hand, an iron cordon of the dead.

"I'll tell you about what comes after when we get there. We're moving."

There was no need to know too much in advance. It only cluttered the mind. Luna, advancing at a measured pace, seemed to sense something and stopped dead. Sera picked up the presence in the same instant.

"Approximately six of them."

As she spoke, Luna drew two swords from her hips.

"Eeeek! Bandits! Kill them! We will not let them trample our village!"

A grotesque man with rattling, loose-hinged joints stepped in front of us, a sharp knife in his hand. Five more identical to him crowded in behind. The entire blacksmith village had been cursed, and every last villager had become a monster. Once-simple craftsmen now wandered the streets as murderers, cutting down intruders without so much as a word.

"I shall deal with them."

The cursed blacksmiths closed in around Luna and her twin blades. I kid you not — I didn't feel so much as a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠speck of danger. She crossed the Dual Blades into an X and raised them overhead, then carved them down on a diagonal as her body spun with the cut.

"Blade Dance!"

Luna's skill. Azure energy burst from the Dual Blades, coiled into a whirlwind centered on her, and in the next instant the cursed blacksmiths around her were carved to pieces. It was a formidable technique — the kind that would let her charge into the heart of an enemy formation alone and still tear them apart. The skill cost wasn't even high, so she could spam it without a second thought. All in all, it was the sort of ability that proved Luna was a broken character.

"All of them have been dealt with."

Without Sera or me needing to lift a finger, she had cleaned them out. I scooped the worn iron swords the cursed blacksmiths had dropped into my inventory, and we pressed on.

The expedition met no resistance. We slipped out of the first zone, the Abandoned Village, without any trouble. The only monsters that appeared were cursed blacksmiths, possessed women, and rabid hounds — genuinely frail things that never got past Luna.

But the dungeon's tutorial stretch was over. From here on, the terrain demanded real caution. Without prior knowledge of this place, it would have been difficult enough to clear.

As we left the village, the time of day shifted to morning. We decided to rest a while before continuing. There hadn't been any hard fighting, but simply moving through the desert had piled on a surprising amount of fatigue. We resolved to spend the entire day here and set out again at dawn.

Luna and Sera pitched a camping tent of thick leather, heavy enough to block the sun's glare, and fixed an Ice Stone to the ceiling to bleed off the heat. Preparation of that level was essential for exploring this dungeon.

We passed the day inside. Ice Stone by day, Fire Stone by night, keeping the interior at a livable temperature. We posted watches and rested in rotation. Luna and Sera insisted they would take the watches themselves and tried hard to keep me out of it, but I overrode them with my authority. If only the two of them stood sentry, the fatigue would accumulate far too fast.

After nearly twenty-four hours of rest, stamina fully restored, we struck the tent and moved on.

What stretched before us was a barren sea of sand. Unlike the Abandoned Village we had passed through the day before, a dull, featureless landscape unrolled endlessly in every direction. The monsters here, however, were in a completely different league.

"Over there — the movement of the sand on that side is suspicious."

Luna pointed to the right.

Ssshhhkkk!

The sand was sliding, draining away. For a moment I thought it was a Sand Eater, but it wasn't. If a Sand Eater were moving, you would feel a heavy vibration, like the rumble of an earthquake.

"It's a Giant Scorpion. Everyone, prepare for battle."

What emerged from the sand was a scorpion nearly the size of two adult men. Its threatening tail gleamed, wicked and sharp.