Quests
After the orcs left, there was one matter I prioritized over teaching the two dragons common sense.
"The inn's level is going up."
"Yeah."
The condition required to raise the inn to Level 3 was one hundred guests. It would have been impossible if the orcs had come in the same numbers as before—but thanks to the non-combatants and children they'd brought along as porters, we'd managed to meet the requirement.
And with the inn rising to Level 3, what unlocked was…
"Does this mean the guest rooms are finally opening?"
"Yeah. We can take people who want to stay the night."
Of course, not a single visitor so far had actually asked to sleep here. Not the orc mercenary company, and not the old wyvern hunter either.
The old man was one thing—the dragons made him uneasy, so that was unavoidable. But the orc mercenaries… they just didn't care. Sleeping outdoors was fine by them.
So the lack of guest rooms hadn't been a real problem until now. Still, sooner or later someone else would visit and want to spend the night.
"Ah, done."
"Would you upgrade the kitchen first, please?"
"Sure."
The moment the inn's upgrade finished, I started on the kitchen exactly as Grace had asked. Just like at Level 2, the kitchen's upgrade conditions were already listed—and we'd met them ages ago. The tavern was the same.
"I'd love it if we got wine…"
"That's not something I can decide."
I said that, but I also figured wine would appear deeper in the tavern once it hit Level 3. If anyone asked why I thought so, I wouldn't have had an answer. It was just a vague hunch.
"And…"
I checked the other function that had unlocked alongside the guest rooms when the inn reached Level 3.
"Quests, huh…"
I'd been wondering when those would show up. It was also a feature I had absolutely no idea how would work.
If I complete quests, do I get money? Or materials for upgrading and repairing the inn?
That seemed the most likely possibility at the moment. Holding that guess in mind, I opened the quest window.
Inn Construction (1)[Completable]
Raise the inn's level to 1
Never mind that a quest like this was showing up when the inn was already Level 3…
Visiting guests?
Don't tell me…
"So even if no actual guests show up, completing quests can still raise the inn's level?"
"…Probably, yeah."
I sighed and checked the requirement for Inn Level 4.
One thousand guests. Ten times the previous number. It looked hopeless at a glance—but if we didn't actually need that many real visitors, we might hit it faster than expected.
With that in mind, I claimed the rewards from every completed quest.
"The remaining quests are…"
Quests to upgrade the building and its facilities. A quest to hire up to three employees. Daily quests that repeated. And a handful of miscellaneous ones.
"Let's see… Collect ten units of lumber and ten units of stone? I'll go up to the canyon and grab those."
"Appreciate it."
I felt a little bad for the Treant and the Stone Golem who were about to make involuntary donations of wood and stone, but daily quests were free rewards if you did them—so I sent Rain.
There were other daily quests too—commission a mercenary, forge weapons and armor at the smithy, brew potions in the alchemy lab—but none of those were doable yet.
At this rate, even if we only collect daily quest rewards, we could hit Inn Level 4 in a month.
Not that I planned to ignore the other quests.
As it happened, the tavern reaching Level 3 completed one of them right then.
"Next…"
The guest rooms, of course. The ones I'd put off because Grace and Rain had demanded kitchen and tavern upgrades first.
The rooms were only Level 1, so they finished far faster than the kitchen or tavern had.
"Let's see… the condition for Guest Rooms Level 2 is…"
Reach an inn rating of ten points?
"Ah. No shortcuts for the rooms, then."
For the kitchen, Grace just had to cook—she didn't need to serve anyone. For the tavern, you just had to pour drinks into cups without handing them to guests. The rooms were different.
The inn rating was a score earned from high guest satisfaction, which meant you actually had to receive guests to get it.
The one silver lining…
"We've already got over a thousand rating points piled up, so I guess we're fine."
Apparently the satisfaction of the orc mercenaries and the old wyvern hunter—from before the rating system even unlocked—had been retroactively applied.
"I'm back."
By the time Rain returned with the lumber and stone, I'd already raised the guest rooms all the way to Level 3.
"So the only quest left is reaching Inn Level 4…"
Even that wouldn't take long, I figured. The daily quests alone would probably cover it. Assuming no guests came at all, maybe a week at most? And there were still miscellaneous quests sitting around.
"Hell yeah! This is the stuff!"
"?"
While I was running the numbers in my head, an excited voice rang out from the tavern—more precisely, from the liquor storeroom in the back. Rain. She'd noticed the tavern had hit Level 3 and let herself in without asking.
"Haa…"
"Master."
As I sighed, Grace stepped out of the kitchen, glanced toward the tavern storeroom, and spoke.
"When the kitchen reached Level 3, all sorts of fruit appeared in the pantry."
She was holding a wooden cup. I took it and checked the contents.
"Orange juice?"
"I mixed in a little of the other fruit as well."
I decided to try the fruit juice in the cup.
Gulp… gulp…
And once I'd drunk it—
"Ahh…!"
I let out a sound of pure satisfaction before I could stop myself. It was that bright, that delicious.
"This is good."
"It isn't just fruit. The variety of grains and vegetables has increased as well. That concludes my report on the kitchen."
"By the way, did Rain just walk into the tavern on her own?"
"Yeah."
"I take it you didn't give her permission?"
"I didn't permit it. I also didn't forbid it."
If I'd ordered her not to enter the tavern without leave, Rain—who couldn't refuse my commands—wouldn't have been able to go in. That said…
"Dragons don't get drunk easily even when they drink a lot, right? If I order her not to drink any further once she starts feeling it, she won't be able to keep going even if she wants to."
"True enough."
Grace nodded as if she shared the thought.
"Shall we go in too?"
"Yes."
Grace and I headed for the liquor storeroom at the back of the tavern. When we opened the door, the first thing we found was—
Gulp, gulp…
"Kahha…!"
—Rain, hoisting an entire barrel of liquor and pouring it straight down her throat.
"…That barrel isn't even designed to open from the top, is it?"
"No. It's built so you draw the contents through the spigot."
"So why is the lid open?"
"She appears to have forced it off."
Grace said this while glancing around the storeroom, then ran a hand over one of the barrels.
"The selection of liquors has expanded, at least. And… the barrels themselves are cool to the touch. We should be able to drink cold alcohol."
"For real?!"
Did that mean I could finally have a cold beer?! I asked with that hope in mind, and Grace poured me a cup. I took it at once and drank—
"……"
—and was immediately disappointed. No carbonation, and the flavor was flat.
"Master. In this world, alcohol of this quality is…"
"I know… It's better than what you'd get at an ordinary inn."
I knew that. But my expectations had been high, so the letdown hit just as hard.
"Man… Our master really did come from a nice world, huh."
Rain said this as she pried the lid off a new barrel.
"Oh! Wine this time?"
Then she lifted the opened barrel and started chugging again.
"Kah! The wine isn't quite noble-grade, but it's still pretty decent!"
"……"
I looked at her and issued a command.
"Rain. From now on, don't drink to the point of getting drunk."
"! Pwah?! What kind of order is that all of a sudden?!"
Whether the command had taken hold properly or not, Rain set the barrel down at once and protested.
…So that's why something felt off.
"…Sister? Were you already drunk…?"
"I should've known the moment she switched from polite speech to casual with me…"
Grace stared at Rain as if she couldn't believe it.
"You got drunk off a few barrels? You?"
"Khh…!"
By human standards, drinking that much would go past intoxication and start threatening your life—but by dragon standards, that amount apparently wasn't enough to get drunk on.
"…Hic…! Fine! I'm a lightweight! So what!"
Rain confessed it with a flushed face.
"That's impossible…"
"People—no, dragons—can be weak to alcohol. Why are you so shocked?"
I couldn't understand Grace's reaction. Rain being a lightweight was perfectly possible…
"When we drank together before, she put away nearly dozens of times what she just did. And she was completely fine."
"…Maybe she just got weaker with time?"
Even dragons couldn't escape aging, apparently.
"The last time we drank together was only a few decades ago. Getting this weak in that short a span is strange."
"……"
I understood what she was getting at. So Rain's weakened tolerance had a cause other than aging?
"That said, the way she's acting right now… it looks more like she's admitting she's always been a lightweight."
"……"
At my words, Grace seemed to realize something was off as well, and she looked at Rain. Then, as if something had occurred to her, she asked—
"Sister. Just a thought, but…"
"Was the reason you used to hold your liquor so well… the Dragon Vein, by any chance?"
"……"
Rain didn't answer. She just hung her head. The intermittent trembling in her body said Grace had hit the mark dead-on.
And then—
"…Fine! I've always been a lightweight! The mana from the Dragon Vein just circulated through my body and burned off the alcohol! Did that help you any?!"
—she flew into a rage and started throwing a fit.
"…She's properly drunk, all right."
"Shall we just let her rant freely until she sobers up?"
Fortunately, for all the thrashing about, she wasn't trying to wreck the storeroom. Once she'd blown off some steam, she'd settle down.