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Volume 1 Chapter 5-4: Art of Negotiation

Sistina’s thoughts were to compensate the misfortune of the Noble who had died and give some money to the ones they left behind.

The Noble had gone to much trouble and donated a lot of money at the temple to try and invite an Acolyte back with them.

It seems like he wasn’t a very wealthy noble in the first place, so if news of his death spread out the fall of their house was nearly certain.

If at that time they had received some compensation money there was a chance they could rally and survive. For that reason she wanted to take all the goods, carriage, and cargo that were originally the Noble’s, sell them and give the money to their family. That was her request.

According to Sistina under these circumstances if all the owners of the property died then we did not have any particular duty to return the goods. In the first place those were goods that had been stolen by bandits, in that situation taking the goods you got from them was considered proper remuneration.

By that line of thought, Sistina’s idea was almost like telling me to give up all the goods I earned by risking my life and fighting. Furthermore, the carriage was a very expensive item and we could even use it again when we needed to leave town.

These were all things that were currently quite useful for us.

「I see…but don’t worry about it. In terms of compensation for eliminating those bandits…I’d say you joining me was plenty. I think we can make due with what we earned by killing the bandits and taking their things. I’m sure you have a plan as well Sistina.」
「…Soujirou-sama…I feel proud that I signed a contract with you.」
「Sistina…let me tell you, I think our Master is quite a push-over to most people except those with ill intentions. You don’t have to hold back too much, you can act normally. If you let him touch your boobs later most things will probably be settled.」

Hotaru-san laughed mirthfully, but I couldn’t deny her words. If I could do that freely then I might not even mind losing the carriage…

「W-well…s-should we do that tonight?」

WOAH! Those upturned eyes hit me strong! Forget about waiting til tonight let’s go for it now!!

Bam!

「Hey! Soujirou! Come to your senses, we’re on a public road ja.」
「Wha! Wh-what was I doing….?」

I saw my hands extended out in front of me with my fingers wiggling in Sistina’s direction. But as I moved I felt a strong smack on my head. It seems that Hotaru-san struck me out of my daze.

Upon seeing this, Sistina smiled a bit. It seems she finally cast off her tension. It appears that even just suggesting something that would disadvantage her Master was very hard to bring up as an Acolyte.

I’ll be with Sistina from now on so I don’t want her to be so afraid. I need to develop trust and understanding between us from now on.

「Soujirou-sama, we’ve reached the Vigilante corps headquarters.」

It was right near the Lord’s residence. Well, I suppose that the Lord would want to keep his fighting force nearby where he could keep an eye on it.

The Guard Headquarters apparently had a separate area and window for people who wanted to collect bounties. We headed in that direction.

「Soujirou-sama maybe you should appraise the Bandits’ weapons before we turn them in? Just in case.」
「Hm? Oh, you mean some of them might sell for more money than we might get from the bounty?」

Sistina nodded. Certainly I hadn’t considered that most of the equipment the bandits had would have been stolen as well. I should give 『Arms Appraisal』 a shot.

『Long Sword Rank: H+ Refining Lvl: 0
Skills: None
Owner: Dovza (Deceased』
『Long Sword Rank: H Refining Lvl: 0
Skills: None
Owner: Kenda (Deceased)』
『Long Sword Rank: H Refining Lvl: 0
Skills: None
Owner: Sahge (Deceased)』
『Dagger Rank: I Refining Lvl: 0
Skills: None
Owner: Rook (Deceased)』
『Wood Bow Rank: G- Refining Lvl: 0
Skills: None
Owner: Rook (Deceased)』

Un, that’s good enough. They weren’t particularly strong bandits so they don’t seem to have any strong equipment or special items. For their protective equipment, I didn’t know what would suit me personally and had yet to see any need for it at present. I would think about it when the time came.

「I didn’t do all of them, but just from looking at the rest I can’t see anything useful. I’ll leave these to you.」
「I understand. We cannot really negotiate for the bounty rewards, but you can leave shopping negotiations to me later.」

Sistina said with an adorable smile that I couldn’t help but put my faith in.

We entered the exchange room and saw a small counter with a cheerful looking middle-aged man wearing a vigilante corps outfit. He looked quite leisurely.

「Oops we got visitors? This is the bounty exchange area, if you have business with the corps then go outside to the main entrance.」
「We were attacked by bandits along the highway by the Great Forest, and we killed them instead so we would like to collect their bounties.」

When he saw that we were actually here to exchange bounties he finally perked up and straightened out his slovenly appearance.

「Oooh! Aren’t these the guys we been hearing about lately?」
「You have?」
「They only had around 10 men in total but they were really good at information gathering so…they would find out most everything about their targets and almost always take them down. It was really hard to even get a hint about where they were.」

They utilized underhanded means so certainly it would be difficult. Until the time I met them, the bandits hadn’t lost a single member.

「We were just about to start gathering some people to go after them. You might’ve saved us some trouble. Take out their weapons for me if ya could.」
「Alright, Soujirou-sama please.」
「Got it, just the weapons are fine right?」
「Yes」

I took the weapons and placed them on the counter like Sistina asked.

「Alright then, we’ll have to appraise these.」

The guy said and picked up the weapons and took them into the back. There should be someone within the headquarters who could obtain all the necessary info from the weapons. For an organization like the vigilante corps it wouldn’t be odd for them to have an exclusive smith that could do tasks like that.

「The vigilante corps doesn’t look like an organization with a big backer…I wonder how their finances are…」
「Though they’re called vigilante corps, their true identity is that of private soldiers for the Lord. Their maintenance costs are paid by the Lord. The bounties on bandits are provided by a mix of town citizens paying and the vigilante corps themselves. There are also times when a certain band of thieves are given a bounty by individual citizens as well. If there are bandits who cause harm in shared or multiple areas there are cases where towns will share information and bounty rewards. In that case you can collect the bounty from any town that offers it.」
「I see…」

As we spoke the man emerged from the back room once more.

「Certainly these are the weapons from the bandits. We have the results of the bounty here. The Chief and Vice-chief of the bandits have been confirmed dead. The number of bandits have been confirmed to match the numbers reported so we have labeled them as 『Destroyed』. We will be giving you the reward for the complete destruction of their group.」
「We understand. Thank you very much.」

Sistina accepted the bag with the bounty money in it and bowed slightly before we left the building.

After that we got back on the carriage and headed to our next destination, we checked how much money we had received in the bag. We had been given 30 gold, 7 large silver, and 5 silver.

So it’d be 307,500 mars….yen was about ten times that so in total we had received 3,000,000 yen all at once.

You could say we made some good earnings. We’d be able to stay in a nice inn tonight.

By the way, the weapons were not returned to us. Apparently the bounty payment also took into account the weapon purchase prices as well.