65. Getting a Job Is Hard Here Too (2)
65. Getting a Job Is Hard Here Too (2)
"Millia, go inside and sleep."
"Mmm..."
She must have been sleepy. After talking nonstop for hours, Millia finally began blinking in exhaustion. Her yawn confirmed it. Nodding off where she sat, she held out her arms to me.
"Carry me..."
What was she, a little kid?
"Get up and walk yourself."
"Going all the way to my room is such a pain..."
Rubbing her eyes and whining, she looked exactly like a child. I carefully lifted Millia onto my back. Her behavior aside, her body looked about Karina's age, so she felt surprisingly heavy.
...Had she put on weight?
No, wait—could a Dullahan even gain weight? Did they age?
"Yohan, you're thinking weird thoughts, aren't... you..."
"Didn't think anything."
Was it that obvious?
I started walking to brush the matter aside. The steady swaying soon lulled Millia to sleep, and her breathing evened out.
"Looking after a kid was tough..."
She only looked slightly younger than Karina, so why did caring for her feel like watching a child I could not leave alone near the water? Perhaps it was because she acted like one. Still, I didn't dislike it. Like a puppy or cat demanding its owner's attention, Millia seemed to be asking someone for affection.
Having missed the warmth of another person for so long, even this clinginess felt welcome.
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The next afternoon, after lunch, I sat down for a private conversation with Reni. Millia had eaten and gone out to walk through the garden alone. Perhaps because she'd spent so long trapped in a dungeon, she genuinely loved wandering around.
Even back on the uninhabited island when we were building the boat, she used to roam the island picking up seashells or stroll along the beach with Karina whenever she got the chance.
"Reni. Are there any jobs at the academy worth doing?"
At my question, Reni sighed and tapped the teacup with one finger. Ripples spread through the orange-red liquid inside. Producing only that much vibration with her monstrous strength showed remarkable control. One mistake might have made the cup explode like a grenade.
Anyway, Reni answered me with a dark expression.
"Well... I asked around while you were in the dungeons. I managed to resolve the identity problem somehow, but they said they couldn't hire you without experience."
"So they don't want entry-level applicants without experience here either."
"What?"
"Nothing."
My old world had loved “entry-level hires with experience” too. This place didn't seem much different.
The nuance was different, of course. There, employers wanted experienced workers at entry-level salaries. Here, they were hiring someone to work at the most prestigious academy in the world.
Naturally, they could not hire someone without experience even if they wanted to.
A position like that would only be possible in the first place through parachute appointments by higher-ups. Actually, wasn't there a professor like that at the academy? My memory was fuzzy, but I thought there was.
Building experience immediately would also be difficult. Perhaps it would be different if I captured the entire Cult of Halphas by myself and dragged them in... or perhaps not. They might suspect me of being a spy instead.
The Status Window had not assigned me that mission for nothing.
This was more troublesome than I had expected.
At minimum, the job had to let me enter and leave the academy while giving me broad freedom to act. Satisfying both conditions was extremely difficult. Becoming one of Karina's servants would be easiest, but that would make continued intervention in the original story awkward.
How could an ordinary servant interfere in incidents within the academy?
It'd be better to become an Escort Knight like Reni... Wait.
"Reni, is there an Escort Knight position, by any chance?"
"What?"
Reni stared at me as if I'd just said something preposterous.
Even I knew the question sounded absurd. Becoming the Saintess's Escort Knight was hardly an easy position. Yet Reni didn't reject it immediately. She seemed intrigued. Resting her chin on one hand, she stared at the ceiling for a moment before lowering her gaze to me.
"An Escort Knight position... That might actually be easier."
"It might be easier?"
That was an unexpected answer.
"Do you know what the most important requirement for an Escort Knight is?"
"...Trust?"
At my answer, Reni smiled in satisfaction, picked up the liquor bottle, and poured some into her teacup. Was that tea or alcohol? Was this Russia? Who mixed liquor into tea? She'd been drinking it that way throughout our conversation and seemed to have emptied half the bottle. It was remarkable that her face had not reddened.
Then again, if she'd been pickled by those toxic narcotic mushrooms and still beat the hell out of every monster there was, of course she wouldn't get drunk on liquor.
"Right. Trust. That one requirement eliminated every bastard who wanted to become the Saintess's Escort Knight. All kinds of people applied: nobles obsessed with honor, nobodies who imagined they were exceptional, and delusional schemers whose motives were obvious. There's a reason I handle the escort work alone."
She must've really been put through the wringer. Reni's voice had an unmistakable edge of irritation seeping through.
"That's rough."
"Well, until recently, doing the escort work alone was manageable enough. But the situation's changed quite a lot."
I could hear the sound of teeth grinding. It came from Reni's mouth. It must've been because of the incident we went through before coming to this academy. That was an unpleasant memory for me, too.
"Because of those Halphas bastards, huh."
"Exactly."
An unexpected danger: the Cult of Halphas's ambush. They had deliberately struck while Reni was absent, and the attack had nearly been fatal. In the game, ambushes like that only happened in the middle or later stages, when the protagonist's party could stop them together. But an early-game attack with no proper companions?
The game could not have screwed us over much harder.
Was this another effect of adding the True Ending?
If only I'd at least watched the True Ending DLC trailer or read the patch notes.
"I'm not a golem. I can't stay beside Karina twenty-four hours a day. I need someone who can protect her when I'm absent."
"...Am I trustworthy?"
"At least more than those idiots. It's awkward to say this, but... you've never once laid a hand on Karina. There were situations where it wouldn't have been strange if you had... You must've been pretty pent up."
Reni scratched her cheek and avoided my eyes, apparently uncomfortable with the topic. It was certainly awkward to discuss openly. From my perspective, I'd never considered touching Karina because she was a major character from the original. It was absurd enough that I'd fallen into the world of Survival Academy, only for the main heroine herself to wash ashore on my island.
No way in hell would I touch her.
"Thanks for seeing it in a good light."
"Besides, both Karina and I owe you our lives. Think of it as repayment."
If that was how she wanted me to think of it, fine.
"Got it. If I pass the trust requirement, then ability comes next?"
Reni nodded at my words. It was obvious, since ability was the only thing left that could come up. Sipping the liquid that could've been alcohol or tea, Reni opened her mouth.
"Right. No matter how trustworthy someone is, it means nothing if they can't protect their charge. In that respect, I think your Skill is extremely well suited to escort work."
"Aren't there quite a lot of people whose raw abilities are superior to mine?"
"I can't say there aren't any. But few people are more trustworthy than you, and securing an escape route is another important factor. You can dig anywhere to hide or create a passage and move through it, right?"
"...Right."
"Using that ability for escort work alone would be a considerable advantage. I can handle direct combat myself. But..."
"But?"
"Experience is the problem again. I have the authority to write a recommendation, but you still need credentials that'll convince the higher-ups. Ten years on an uninhabited island are hard to count as professional experience, right? We've seen at least some of what you went through, but the higher-ups haven't."
I saw.
So I needed something substantial enough that no one would say, “Even so, this is a little much...”
But you couldn't exactly build a career in a short period of time.
"Isn't there some way?"
"It's not that there's absolutely no way. I'm not even sure if this'll work, but..."
It seemed Reni had thought of an approach in her own way. I drank my share of the tea and waited for her to continue. As if organizing the thoughts in her head for a moment, Reni paused before speaking.
"Here's my idea. I'll write recommendations wherever I can, and you should visit every guild and take their exams. If you pass even a few and earn licenses, wouldn't that make decent credentials?"
That was one hell of a ridiculous approach.
I readily nodded at the suggestion to brute-force the problem with sheer volume.