You, Be My Sugar Daddy
You, Be My Sugar Daddy
"......"
Her sunken eyes.
After staring at Ian for a moment, Rina vanished beyond the portal with a flick.
A quiet ripple of surprise spread through the crowd.
"Hasn't Rina changed lately?"
"She seems a tiny bit... aggressive, like, really subtle."
"Didn't you see her glaring at Ian earlier? Something's definitely going on between them."
The whispers about Rina's change eventually zeroed in on Ian.
"Hey, did you guys hear that rumor from Kirtos? About Ian's suicide note when he jumped..."
All sorts of vague rumors floated around for a moment, and then the last team arrived.
Instructor Gerald Bommel, a former war hero, finished his evaluation. He walked over and stood in front of the gathered students.
"Were you all flustered?"
"......"
"Your answers are weak."
"Yes!"
I could hear the other students whispering that old fart, but it didn't seem to reach the instructor's ears.
"Making swift, accurate judgments even when flustered—that is combat. I believe you all learned something from this."
Ian nodded.
He'd gotten a good grade out of it, so by that logic, it had indeed been a good lesson.
"Next, you will face a monster of a considerably high grade. Though it's manufactured via arcane engineering, its fidelity is quite high. You could get seriously hurt, so steel yourselves. Dismissed!"
That concluded the first combat training practical session and the team assignments.
'I'll go eat, train, write my journal, and hit the sack. That'll be perfect.'
No matter what happened today, training was non-negotiable.
While he walked, happily thinking about training—
"... Eek!"
He bumped into someone.
"Sorry... Oh, it's you, Sylvia."
Blink, blink.
Her cat-like violet eyes blinked a few times rapidly.
"'Oh, it's you, Sylvia?' What kind of rude reaction is that? If you're going to apologize, you should do it properly."
"You weren't looking where you were going either. It's fifty-fifty."
"Ha?"
Sylvia's eyes widened. Even Ian thought he was being overly brazen. It was, to some extent, a calculated move.
'Sylvia has a tendency to like people who live life on their own terms.'
More precisely, she admired those who lived as they pleased. As with young ladies of prestigious houses, it was perhaps a reaction to the rigid etiquette drilled into them.
That was why Ian maintained an unshakeably confident—no, somewhat shameless—attitude in front of her.
"By the way, does the Aether class do this too? Speed runs?"
"Hmph! As if. We face the monster straight away."
"A monster? What kind?"
"A Class 5 dangerous species: the Frost Bear."
Class 5. That meant a monster capable of leveling a small city single-handedly. And a Frost Bear, of all things. They're starting off pretty hard, aren't they?
"It's different from ordinary classes, wouldn't you agree?"
Sylvia giggled, covering her mouth.
She really did come off like a fantasy noble lady, which made her a little annoying. Sylvia was naturally prideful. She was probably coming on strong because she was embarrassed about that mud-water incident, but...
Ian wasn't about to just roll over.
"Yeah. The high-advanced Aether class that got drenched in mud and went Oh no! Oh no! right after."
"Th-That was...!"
Sylvia abandoned logic for a good old-fashioned mudslinging fight.
"Hmph. And you're nothing but a washing machine!"
"... A washing machine?"
"A machine that does laundry. Oh, commoners don't know about this, do they? Pfft!"
"A washing machine..."
Ian's eyes shook violently.
Thanks to Pongpongi's legacy, he could accept dishwasher. But a washing machine...?
That dealt direct damage to Ian, the guy who had purified her clothes.
"... I didn't mean to hurt you that much. I just wanted to win the argument. I'm the type who can't stand losing."
Sylvia grew flustered, apparently not expecting him to be this thrown off her game.
"Hey. Don't apologize."
"That hurts more."
After a pause, she tucked her hair behind her ear. In the dim light, it had a slightly silvery sheen.
"Well... I was grateful, too. Last time, I mean."
"That's unexpected, coming from someone who shows off all the time. Even thanking me won't help your reputation."
Sure enough, the other kids were keeping their distance from Ian and Sylvia.
"Hmph. It doesn't make sense to forget gratitude while bearing the Laurent name. Expressing it is more important than what other people think."
At first glance, it was a touching thing to say, but...
Ian's eyes narrowed.
Sylvia averted her gaze a little. Even with her arms crossed in that haughty stance, her eyes slowly began to waver.
Ian's outsider radar went off.
"You don't have any friends either, huh?"
"Hah? No, I do!"
"Then why doesn't anyone want to team up with you?"
"Th-That's because I'm just a tiiiny bit lacking in skill, I guess?"
He got the gist of things now. Like Pongpongi, she'd probably honed skills other than combat.
No matter how much the Aether class was treated as the elite of the elite at Lichten, it was only natural that some were better and some were worse.
But Ian tilted his head.
A trading company the size of Laurent should have at least some information on most monsters.
In Fanta X Aca, information circulated in a closed system. Information itself was treated as an asset, a major commodity. It was an entire industry.
Profiles and weaknesses of various monsters and hostile entities, which artisan made the best weapons, even the fetishes of the Empire's second princess—all information was processed and sold. The guild Intramus, which specialized exclusively in intel, possessed staggering value and power. Even regular guilds treated information, especially monster data, as critically important.
So the sight of Sylvia, failing to find teammates, didn't add up.
Wait, you're not bad at calculating, are you?
"Wh-What kind of rude question is that to ask out of nowhere!"
"No. If you had info on a monster, wouldn't you use it to pull together a team?"
At Lichten Academy—especially in the Aether class—a good grade was worth far more than intel on one or two monsters.
"Ha! Of course I know that! What do you take our trading company's intelligence for?"
"Then why are you standing around like this?"
......
Contrasting her earlier sharpness, Sylvia now mumbled.
"Don't tell me... you don't know its weakness?"
"... No."
"Wow. Laurent Trading doesn't know?"
That was genuine admiration. Monster intel was apparently guarded more strictly than he'd thought.
Sylvia took it as mockery and bristled.
"... Th-This isn't because my intelligence is lacking—it's only natural! Why would anyone be gathering info on monsters in the northern snowfields?"
She had a point. The Frost Bear was indeed a monster you could only hunt in a specific region.
'In the game, you had to hunt it as part of the story, but...'
Reality was a different matter. The byproducts of the Frost Bear held some value, but the profit margin didn't justify going after one. So no lunatics would bother poking around the territory of that monstrous domain animal.
'But I'm different.'
Playing the game meant inevitably learning about countless monsters. After repeating the same fights over and over, you'd naturally internalize the enemy's patterns down to the second.
The corner of Ian's mouth twitched up.
'I could sell the information I know.'
Intel trading, huh. That didn't sound half bad.
Most of all, it had a huge advantage: no need to set up a store or hire employees. He just needed a platform to extract the info from his head. Zero initial investment. That meant his bank balance—which Pongpongi had driven into the ground—wouldn't be a factor.
'But trust would be critical.'
Buying information was, in the end, an act of trusting the seller. And Pongpongi's body was the worst possible vessel for that.
"You don't know either, do you? Information on the Frost Bear."
A thought naturally occurred to him. Sylvia, the successor of the Laurent Trading Company. Emilia's trading company overshadowed hers, but that was through no fault of Sylvia's ability. She was sharp with numbers, had business acumen, and most importantly, she repaid her debts reliably.
Ian kept calculating, arms crossed.
Plus, info on the Frost Bear was highly likely to become public now that it'd been chosen for an Aether class practical exercise. Which meant its value would drop. Right now was the peak price for Frost Bear intel. And the person who desperately needed it was standing right before him.
Investing in Sylvia seemed worth a shot.
"Come here for a second."
"... What?"
Sylvia narrowed her eyes and crept closer, wearing an expression that said Is this guy about to confess? Ian knew that look well by now, but he didn't care.
The info he could sell was at its maximum value right now. He had no intention of bargaining. He'd just hand it over, pure and simple, like spreading an unfamiliar drug.
"Go for the Frost Bear's ears."
"... What are you talking about?"
"The weak point is the tendon behind its ear, where the head connects. The rest of its body is covered in near-impenetrable fur, but that spot is different. The organ that generates its ice element is located there. That means you can neutralize skills like its Ice Barrier or Roar."
Sylvia blinked, full of bewilderment. It was too specific to dismiss as nonsense, yet Ian was far from trustworthy enough for her to accept it as truth.
"... Why are you telling me this?"
"Just because. I wanted to beat you in an argument, even for a moment."
"... Have you gone crazy, by any chance?"
"Even if I'm crazy, the info is real."
Doubt, disbelief, hope... A complicated expression crossed Sylvia's face.
"Go quickly and gather a team."
Ian gave his sponsor a push on the back.