The Third Guest — Diamond-Rank Party (3)
The Pope of the Church that served Restwin, the God of Rest.
She and the three Diamond-rank adventurers she had hired managed to return to their starting point of Coreloot roughly a week after leaving the inn.
“I never would have guessed the sister was the Pope….”
Because the Pope had concealed her identity when she posted the request, the three who accepted it had treated her as an ordinary nun right up until she revealed herself at the inn.
“Would any of you have believed me if I’d just come out and said I was the Pope? That’s why I didn’t bother.”
“When you put it that way, I suppose you’re right.”
The thief nodded, conceding the point.
“What I still can’t wrap my head around is that there’s an inn sitting smack in the middle of the Dragon Canyon.”
“Anyone would feel the same.”
“Let’s head back to the Adventurers’ Guild first and file the completion report.”
At the Pope’s words, the three—eager to finish up and finally rest—nodded in agreement.
They had gotten a proper break at the inn along the way, but two weeks of camping out had still left them thoroughly worn down.
After wrapping up the formalities, the four of them made for the Adventurers’ Guild together, intending to rest…
“Uh…”
“Whoa… look at all these requests.”
The request board was packed solid.
They had no intention of taking anything on right away, of course, but the sheer volume still struck them as odd.
What on earth had happened in the two weeks they were gone to produce this many new jobs?
“Hm? Oh, Red. Long time no see. Where’ve you been?”
“Long-term request.”
Fortunately, someone who could fill them in was right there.
The warrior spotted a fellow Diamond-rank adventurer he knew and asked,
“So what happened? Why are there so many requests all of a sudden?”
“Something did. More precisely, it’s not that more requests appeared—requests from elsewhere got dumped here.”
“Requests from elsewhere?”
His acquaintance answered the warrior’s question.
“You know the Mercenary Guild across the way?”
The Mercenary Guild primarily brokered jobs for mercenaries.
And relations between the Mercenary Guild and the Adventurers’ Guild had never been warm.
Those affiliated with the Adventurers’ Guild called themselves adventurers; those with the Mercenary Guild called themselves mercenaries. The fields they worked in overlapped heavily, and that was the root of the friction.
“Come to think of it, I don’t really know the difference between adventurers and mercenaries. Could you explain?”
“Oh, is that so? Well, adventurers…”
Adventurers tended to operate solo.
The warrior, archer, and thief usually took jobs alone and only formed a party when a request specifically required one, like this time.
Mercenaries, by contrast, usually formed companies and worked in groups.
So when a client needed only a few people, they went to the Adventurers’ Guild; when they needed a large force, they went to the Mercenary Guild. That was the general rule.
Exceptions existed, of course, but those were the guilds’ respective leanings.
“I see.”
“Exactly. The request the Pope—er, Sister—posted this time only needed an escort for one person, so the Adventurers’ Guild was the right place. But if you ever need an escort to establish a church out there, you’ll be moving a lot of people. I’d recommend the Mercenary Guild over us for that.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
While the Pope listened to the archer’s explanation, the warrior pressed his acquaintance for more details.
“The Mercenary Guild? What about them?”
“Apparently the strongest mercenary company they had—the Orc Mercenary Band—left Coreloot.”
“Hmm? Is that really a problem? Adventurers and mercenaries both move to other regions all the time while working.”
His acquaintance laughed.
“The problem is that once the Orc Mercenary Band vanished, every request they’d accepted with them in mind went unfulfilled. The other companies simply weren’t good enough. Word is the guild now owes the clients a mountain of penalty fees.”
“Wouldn’t that make them want to take even more jobs to cover the penalties?”
“The guild brass skipped town.”
“What?”
“They ran. So the Mercenary Guild itself is paralyzed right now, and every request that would have gone there is landing on the Adventurers’ Guild instead.”
The news that the guildmaster and officers of the Mercenary Guild had fled left the warrior briefly stunned, but he grasped the situation well enough.
“Our turn.”
The moment the conversation ended, the thief called that it was their turn. The party filed their completion report and, at last, brought their two-week request to a close.
A small house on the outskirts of Coreloot.
Having rested enough, the red-haired warrior knocked on the door.
Thud, thud!
“Old man! You in there?”
A low voice answered from inside.
“Come in, Flynn.”
Without hesitation, the warrior opened the door.
Inside sat the wyvern hunter Oldrich Skybane.
Looking at him, the warrior—Flynn—asked,
“Old man. Why didn’t you tell me there was an inn in the Dragon Canyon?”
“So you went.”
“Yeah. If a place like that existed, you should’ve said so sooner.”
Flynn’s tone could easily have been taken for simple complaining.
To that Flynn, Oldrich said,
“It didn’t.”
“Huh? What didn’t?”
“There was never any inn there to begin with.”
“…Ah. Right—the innkeeper said he was a transmigrator. Wait. So the building itself appeared when he arrived?”
“Most likely.”
As he spoke, Oldrich tossed the arrow he had been fletching to Flynn.
“Whoa…”
The arrows Oldrich used were meant for his massive crossbow, designed to punch clean through a wyvern.
Their size and weight were nothing like ordinary arrows.
Only because Flynn was a Diamond-rank adventurer could he catch it; anyone else would have crumpled under the weight on the spot.
“What did you make of them?”
“Of what? Oh—the innkeeper?”
Flynn answered while deftly helping with the arrow work.
They had just been talking about the innkeeper, so assuming the question was about him was only natural.
But Oldrich meant someone else.
“I mean the staff working beside him.”
“Staff… plural? I only saw one.”
“…Is that so.”
“Why? The one I saw looked like an ordinary woman… is there something about her?”
“If you don’t know, leave it.”
Flynn’s face twisted.
“Hey, don’t start talking and then clam up—explain!”
Flynn pressed him, but Oldrich never gave a proper answer.
Having rested sufficiently, the blonde archer skipped taking a new request and headed for the library instead.
There she reread a number of well-known fairy tales.
So all of these actually happened…
It wasn’t some ordinary nun who had told her—it was the Pope herself, serving the renowned god Restwin.
She could hardly refuse to believe it.
Reading the fairy tales again after hearing that story… they feel completely different.
Not children’s fables crafted to teach morals, but historical records—exaggerated, yes, yet still records of real events.
That was how the archer saw fairy tales now.
“Hm?”
While she was reading, the black-haired thief happened to spot her and blinked.
“Fairy tales?”
“Ah—! You scared me!”
“This is a library. Keep your voice down.”
“I wouldn’t have yelled if you hadn’t snuck up on me.”
The archer said it while eyeing the book the thief was carrying.
“What about you? What brings you to the library?”
“I come here every day off. This library’s herb and toxic-plant compendiums are constantly updated.”
I’d rather ask you the same thing.
“This seems to be your first time here. Why come to a library just to read fairy tales?”
“I had a reason.”
The thief looked mildly puzzled but showed no interest in digging deeper, shifting to another question instead.
“By the way—what do you plan to do?”
“About what?”
“The inn. Are you going to tell people you know?”
An inn standing in the heart of the Dragon Canyon.
Was it better to mention it to those around them?
That was what the thief was asking.
“I’m not. Honestly, the number of people who could even reach that place can be counted on one hand. And if some underqualified idiot decides to go check it out and gets himself killed in the canyon, the aftertaste would be bitter.”
“Fair enough.”
“What about you?”
The thief shook her head at the archer’s question.
“I have no intention of spreading it around either.”
Only…
“Because the nun hired us to enter the Dragon Canyon, a lot of people seem to think something’s out there.”
“Ah, that makes sense. Hiring three Diamond-rank adventurers—they’d assume whatever’s there is worth even more.”
It took the white-haired nun—no, the Pope of the Church of Restwin—a fair amount of time to reach her church.
The church was not in Coreloot, but in another country entirely.
“Welcome back, Your Holiness.”
“The Dragon Canyon… you must be exhausted.”
When she returned, the clergy offered their greetings of hard work.
Every one of them knew she had gone into the Dragon Canyon.
“But… you came alone. Did the persuasion fail?”
“Yes. Even I concluded that leaving him in the Dragon Canyon would be safer than bringing him to the church.”
More than that…
“There was an oracle. It commanded us to establish a church branch inside his domain.”
“An oracle from Lord Restwin?”
“But in a place that dangerous…”
To the clergy, an oracle was something that had to be obeyed absolutely.
Even so, those present looked troubled.
It wasn’t merely a matter of going to the Dragon Canyon—they were to build a branch church there.
Establishing a branch in the Dragon Canyon would require transporting building materials, plus a steady supply of provisions for the clergy who would live there.
Provisions especially could not be a one-time delivery; they would need regular resupply.
“And whoever goes would need to be strong enough to survive the Dragon Canyon…”
“They don’t necessarily have to be strong, but…”
The Pope started to correct the clergy, who did not know that monsters never approached the inn—then fell silent.
Something had occurred to her, and she sank into thought for a moment.
“…No. They will definitely need to be strong.”
The employee at the transmigrator innkeeper’s side.
There was no telling when she might turn on him, so someone capable of stopping her and protecting the innkeeper was required.
The Pope shared that fact with everyone present.
“In that case…”
“I would be the right person.”
The moment the Pope finished speaking, one of the clergy stepped forward.
A woman whose eyes were both covered by a black blindfold.
Looking at her, the Pope said,
“Inquisitor. May I entrust this to you?”
“Of course, Your Holiness. If you leave it to me, I will devote everything I am to protecting the transmigrator from every threat in this world.”