Chapter 11
Chapter 11
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Underground Sewer (1)
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Prifre City Adventurer's Guild Branch.
"Senior, did you hear about that?"
"Hear what?"
As always, when lunchtime rolled around, Sylvia was enjoying her golden break, chatting lightly with her ever-curious junior.
While the other guild staff focused solely on rest during their break, Sylvia and her junior always savored light conversation.
Her junior wasn't the type to pipe down even if told, and Sylvia didn't particularly mind her chattiness.
On any normal day, Sylvia would have let her junior's chatter fade into background noise for a peaceful rest, but the news from her mouth was more than enough to shatter that tranquility.
"That Backstreet Mad Dog? She suddenly vanished."
"...What?"
The Backstreet Mad Dog—a reference to Cloe, the pickpocket who'd recently been making a name for herself.
Her skills were too sharp to catch easily, and investing more manpower to nab a single pickpocket felt like a waste.
She didn't cause major harm anyway, so Prifre had wrapped up the matter by posting a bounty request at the guild.
They already had their hands full dealing with the suddenly ferocious magic beasts, after all.
"Nah, she's probably just taking a break from her antics."
"No way. Word is, a noble got involved and put a hit out through an assassin guild."
"An assassin guild?"
"Yeah. There are rumors of someone getting kidnapped in the slums. Think it might've been her?"
If nobles were behind the request, it wasn't entirely implausible.
They cared more about their reputations than immediate losses, after all.
"I see..."
She hadn't lived an upright life, but at least she hadn't taken lives. That drew a clear line, so her disappearance like this felt off.
Sylvia had heard of countless deaths through the guild, but moments like this couldn't help stirring a bittersweet pang.
"Whatever, right? One less criminal means good news for us."
"Yeah... I guess so."
-Creaaak-
"Oh, hello..."
A girl with white hair and dark blue-gray eyes.
Rion, the adventurer Sylvia had recently assigned the Cloe request to.
"Ah, Rion! Come on in!"
Sylvia didn't memorize every adventurer's name, but she made a habit of remembering special ones like Rion.
Forget her Magic Tower background—Rion had a pretty cute look to her.
Sylvia had felt an affinity for that appearance, hoping she'd avoid a pointless death, which was why she'd recommended the Cloe request.
"Is there something I can—!"
Sylvia cut herself off upon spotting the woman glued right behind Rion.
"Uh, well..."
A suspicious figure in a bizarre mask. Her build marked her as female, but nothing else could be gleaned.
"Ah, uh... my companion..."
"I see. My apologies."
"..."
Sylvia had worried Rion might be in danger, but thankfully, it was just her one-sided misunderstanding.
"Hmm..."
Sylvia snuck a glance at the masked woman standing behind Rion.
'Something's... off...'
Rion, who'd taken the Cloe-related request.
Cloe, whose whereabouts had suddenly grown murky.
And now... a mysterious woman appearing beside Rion, who usually preferred solo ops.
'No way?'
Could the missing Cloe be this masked companion of Rion's?!
'Nah, no chance.'
It was reasoning perilously close to the truth—practically the truth itself—but Sylvia shoved the thought aside.
'Cloe's hair is definitely yellow...'
As a wanted criminal with a posted description, Cloe's hair color was widely known.
But this woman's hair was black. The odds of her being Cloe were next to zero.
Artifacts that altered eyes or hair were rare across the entire continent.
Even in the Empire, only royals or top-tier nobles used them occasionally to hide identities.
A small-town crook like Cloe having one? Near impossible.
"What brings you here today?"
Shaking off her wild imaginings, Sylvia switched back to business mode.
'Probably here to cancel the request.'
Rion's current request was 'Capture the Pickpocket,' but with Cloe gone, completion was impossible.
"Uh... to cancel... the request..."
To prevent one adventurer from hogging low-rank requests, taking on multiple at once was banned.
That must be why Rion had come to cancel.
"Of course."
"And... instead... could I take... another request...?"
"Absolutely. Got one in mind?"
Rion seemed to have found a reliable companion now, which was exactly the outcome Sylvia had hoped for.
Wishing Rion a bright future as an adventurer, Sylvia waited for her choice.
"The underground... sewer purification facility cleaning..."
"Pardon?"
Sylvia couldn't hide her bewilderment at Rion's pick.
"That's... a D-rank request, you know?"
One meant exclusively for adventurer certification exams, no less.
…
Deciding to take Cloe as her disciple had forced Sion to overhaul her plans in Prifre entirely.
Her original plan: rack up as many requests as possible to hit S-rank adventurer swiftly.
That would've cleared most adventurer-related achievements, after which she'd never set foot in Prifre again.
"Urp..."
But adding Cloe to the party shifted Prifre's goals dramatically.
From reaching S-rank adventurer... to saving the slums and reforming Cloe.
That was precisely why Sion had picked this filthy sewer cleaning request.
"Ugh... seriously, I think I'm gonna puke..."
The moment they entered the waterway, Sion pinched her nose with one hand, face scrunched in disgust.
As someone from modern Korea raised in clean facilities, this stench was unbearable.
Of course, Cloe—raised in the slums with a natural tolerance for smells—was utterly unfazed.
"...It stinks a bit, but nothing major."
Back home, the water she drank to survive reeked just like this.
Cloe kept the rest to herself.
"R-Really...? Urp..."
"Can't... Blerghhh..."
...After all that struggling, they finally reached the underground sewer's purification facility—and it was a total disaster.
"Whoa..."
Mold caked the walls, grease and rotten sludge clogged the devices meant to purify wastewater everywhere.
The water—which should have been the cleanest here—reeked so badly it choked them just getting close, and the mana stone at the machine's core emitted no light.
"This... urp... looks like the magic's all used up...?"
In Rilteia, wastewater was gathered at one purification facility and cleansed via magic before release into nature.
But if that facility failed?
Polluted wastewater flowed straight into the wild, inflicting irreparable damage on the area.
"Figures it'd be like this."
Cloe swallowed her rage at the negligently maintained facility.
The stream fed by this wastewater bordered the slums, slowly rotting the surrounding land.
Proper maintenance could have let slum dwellers drink clean water and farm their fields.
Cloe glanced silently at Sion.
Her small face was twisted, dry-heaving nonstop. Clearly, environments like this were alien to her.
'Wondered why she wanted to come here...'
Yet she'd come all this way. No doubt to purify this facility.
To revive the slums' land and stream.
Cloe hadn't planned to learn anything or remembered any lessons, but seeing Rion—now her master—keep her promise brought relief.
The world was full of scoundrels who treated promises like trash.
Especially those like her hometown folk, scraping by without a clear path to survival.
"...Purify."
Sion promptly placed her hand on the dulled mana stone and cast the spell.
Cleans—a magic that restored dirty objects or bodies to pristine condition.
The spell that had let her hide her bare face from the Seven Stars party to the end.
"Whoa..."
Cloe gasped in admiration as Sion cast flawlessly without a staff in an instant.
With the spell, the grime encrusting the device peeled away, revealing its original shine.
-Whirrr...!
The device hummed back to life, and the waterway's water seemed to grow clearer—
"Wh-What?"
—or so it appeared.
"...Huh?"
If the purification facility was working normally, the wastewater nearby should at least turn clean.
But it remained murky, showing no signs of purifying no matter how long they waited.
"...Something's wrong here..."
The purifier was fine. Sion had checked it multiple times.
Even when Sion cast purification directly on the wastewater, it cleared briefly before reverting to its turbid state.
By the current circumstances, only one possibility remained.
"Lily."
For some reason, someone had maliciously crippled the purification facility's function.