Chapter 53 – Orc Hunting Part 1
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Translator: SFBaka
Editor: Thor’s Stone
『It’s morning. Please wake up.』
I got woken up by Nanom like usual and took a morning bath. In this inn, apart from the scheduled cleaning late at night, it seems you can enter the bath whenever you wish. I was the only one using the bath at this time. Man. Life with a bath available really is the best.
After stepping out of the bath and drying myself up, I proceeded to check the info I asked the drone to collect last night. As I thought, the areas closer to the Great Demon Forest have the greatest concentrations of monsters. Oh, this info looks like it will come in handy later.
It was about time for breakfast so I went down to the dining hall. I asked the proprietress Kira-san yesterday to prepare our breakfast earlier since we planned on departing early in the morning for adventurer work. I did say it would be fine to serve it at the usual time if preparing it that early would be a bother, but Kira-san said she and her family wake up quite early anyway, so she humored my request in the end.
After a little while, the girls also went down to the dining hall one by one. We then proceeded to have our breakfast. The breakfast set was bread with some sort of jam, some salad, and a generous helping of soup. It was your typical breakfast set.
After finishing our breakfast, we immediately went out and headed for the Adventurer’s Guild. We walked for about fifteen minutes to reach the guild building and found there were already a lot of adventurers present.
“It’s still so early in the morning, but it’s already so lively here.”
“The guild is indeed already so packed in the morning,” Elna agreed.
Everyone was enthusiastically checking out the request board.
“Let’s split up and check out all the B and C ranked quests on the board. We’re just getting a feel for things today, so don’t pick the ones that require us to travel too far out of the city.”
“”Understood.””
The requests of different ranks were separated on different sections of the board. We are a C-ranked party, so the highest-ranked requests we can take on are B-ranked ones.
The B rank and C rank sections were not too crowded, so we managed to comb through all the requests before long. We gathered in a corner a bit further from the board so as to not get in the way of the other adventurers.
“Did you manage to find good quests?”
“There wasn’t anything particularly of note, I think,” Elna informed.
Everyone else also shook their heads. There were escort requests and some rare magic stone and material gathering ones, but there wasn’t anything that would fit a newbie party like us.
“Hm. Certainly. Then shall we go for some regular monster extermination quests?”
The regular monster extermination quests are quests that are posted on the board indefinitely and offer fixed rewards. For example, one may require you to exterminate Gray Hounds in the surrounding areas. You can then sell the magic stones at the guild for 300 Guineas apiece, and get a fixed 50 Guinea reward per Gray Hound killed.
It looks like everyone was on board with it, so we decided to proceed. But we can’t just pick one recklessly. We’ll have to decide on a target monster first.
“What do you think we should hunt? I personally think orcs would be good.”
Orc magic stones go for 600 Guineas each, and the extermination reward is 150 Guineas per kill. They aren’t any harder than Gray Hounds, and they were a perfect fit for us since every member of our party can use magic.
“That sounds nice, but the problem is where exactly the orcs are located,” Elma answered.
“Oh, leave that to me. I kind of have an idea where we can find them.”
“Haa… Alright. Let us go hunt some orcs then,” Elna agreed.
“It’s a bit far from here though. It’s probably about fifteen kilometers away from the city. It’s a bit too far to reach by foot, right?”
“That’s right. Well, since we do have horses now, why don’t we go there by horseback? It would be good for Tarth and Syrah to get some exercise as well. Let’s just get some more horses from a rental stable somewhere,” Elna suggested.
Oh! So there are actually rental stables huh? That sounds good. We’ll have to ask around to find one then.
We exited the Adventurer’s Guild building in order to search for a rental stable. After walking around town for a while, someone called out to us.
“Are you looking for something bro?”
It was a ten or eleven-year-old boy wearing messy clothing.
“Yeah. We’re looking for a rental stable.”
“If that’s the case, I can guide you to one bro.”
“…How much?”
“Te– No, five Guineas.”
“Alright. Go ahead.”
“Thanks for the patronage. I’m Teo by the way. There are two rental stables in this city. There’s an expensive one, but it has great horses, and there’s a really cheap one. Which do you want to visit?”
“The expensive one then.”
“That’s the way bro! J-Just a minute.”
Teo went to a corner of the street, took the hand of a four-year-old girl wearing a dress akin to rags already, and pulled her along.
“It’s this way bro!”
He started leading the way, but he was walking too fast. He was half-dragging the little girl already.
“Hey, you don’t really have to hurry that much. Is she your sister?”
“That’s right bro. Here Ella, say hello to big bro.”
“…I’m Ella, big bro.”
“I see. I’m Alan. Nice to meet you.”
Fortunately, the rental stable was actually in the same direction as the inn, so we didn’t have to go too far.
“Here you go, Teo. Your payment.”
I handed him five large bronze coins. In other words, 50 Guineas.
“Eh!? But I thought I said five…”
“Go ahead and take them. Get yourself and Ella something nice to eat.”
“T-Thank you bro! Thank bro as well Ella.”
“Big bro.”
Big bro isn’t the same as thank you though. Oh well.
Elna chose three horses from the stable and Teo received a tip from the stable owner as well. So he’ll be able to earn a little cash every time he brings in customers huh.
The price for the rental was 300 Guineas per day for each horse. There was also a deposit of 10,000 Guineas per horse. Of course, we’ll get the deposit back later once we return the horses. But people without that much money probably can’t afford to rent horses at this stable.
Elna pulled the three horses we rented along back to the inn where we left Tarth and Syrah. Teo also tagged along with us.
“Hm? What’s wrong, you two?”
“No, um, I just thought I’d guide you more since we received too much, bro.”
“We’ll be going out of the city with the horses once we reach the inn though. You won’t be able to follow after us anyway.”
“I’ll at least send you all off then. We’re really quite free bro.”
“Do as you please.”
“Hey Alan, how about we hire Teo for trash disposal duty?” Selena suggested.
“Oh! Taking out the trash is my specialty. That’s actually my main occupation. I’ll clean up any kind of filth, bro!”
“Hm. Alright then. Might as well.”
Did we have some trash in need of disposing though?
We had the inn’s stable boy prepare Tarth and Syrah for heading out. Selena and Sharon went up to our rooms upstairs and brought down some of the preserved foodstuffs we didn’t eat during the journey here, including dried meat, baked bread, and dried beans. There were actually quite a lot of them left.
I see. It’s true that these would actually go bad if we didn’t eat them soon, and once they did, they’ll be the same as garbage.
Selena and Sharon really are kind girls after all.
“These are trash…?”
“It’s our leftovers. We probably won’t be able to finish them all anymore. So we’ll give them to you,” Sharon offered.
“T-Thanks a lot, big sis!”
We exited the city while being sent off by the cheerful smiles of Teo and Ella.
It looks like they don’t require people to get checked whenever they go out of the city. We copied the adventurer party ahead of us and showed the guards our guild IDs. We were allowed to pass the city gates without much fuss.
“Okay then. Our goal is in this direction.”
I went ahead and led the way. The target destination is of course an area near the Demon Forest. It was also called the Sea of Trees, but the areas around Gantz have been mostly cleared, and I confirmed via aerial footage that we can reach our destination without any trouble through horseback.
After traveling for two hours, we encountered five Gray Hounds and three goblins. It looks like there’s a higher concentration of monsters in the areas near the Demon Forest after all.
We dismounted on a spot with a great view of the surroundings due to high elevation.
“Have we arrived?” Elna asked.
“Yeah. The orcs are just 700 meters from where we are currently. The area’s practically crawling with them.”
“……Is that perhaps an orc settlement?” Elna inquired again.
“Hm? Do those guys actually form settlements? There was nothing about that written in the monster guide though.”
“They do! Alan, this is too much for us! We can’t just attack an entire orc settlement with these numbers!” Elna warned.
“Really? Um, the number of orcs is about 75 men or so. Hey Elna, is it okay to count orcs as men?”
“…Orcs are monsters you know. Alan! This is reckless! You say there are at least 75 orcs in there…. Wait? …C-Can we actually beat them?” Elna faltered.
“Um, Elna, I think we probably can,” Cleria followed up.
“That’s right. I also think so too,” Sharon seconded.
“…Fine. I understand. Let’s do it then,” Elna conceded with a resigned sigh.
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