Thirty Silver Coins For Two Party.
Neatly tied up red hair, freckles set shyly upon white skin.
The receptionist at the Mercenary Guild in Guise was a young woman in her prime.
Is it because this world is a game? Or is it because Guise’s security is stable enough? Or is it because the mercenary guilds have a stronghold on the mercenaries?
“What is your name, priest?”
I folded my thoughts neatly. Using the name I’d been using up to this point was a bit of a “please catch me while I’m still alive” gesture.
“Marnak. My name is Marnak.”
Marnak. For the first time, I spoke the name I’d chosen when I created this character.
The receptionist used the pen in her hand to fill in the blanks. Mostly descriptions of my appearance and information about the gods I worship. After a while, the receptionist smiled kindly and said, “I see.”
She’s quite beautiful like this.
“Yes. Priest Marnak. Could you please wait here for a moment, it takes a while to make a bronze mercenary plaque.”
I smiled.
“I can wait as long as it takes.”
Hearing my answer, the receptionist picked up her papers, stood up, and walked up the stairs to the upper floor.
This world was full of strangely beautiful women. Was it because this was a game world after all?
“Murder!
“I didn’t fall in love with her, Mother of Corruption, I just thought she was pretty.”
“Murder!
I patted the writhing goddess’s hand, then asked in a small voice.
“How many fingers does that receptionist have, anyway?”
The withered hand in my breast pocket extended two fingers.
Two fingers.
“She must be a one-fingered human, then, or a very high-status human.”
What the Mother of Corruption’s outstretched fingers meant was quite simple.
One finger was the divinity of ten.
Two fingers, one hundred divinity.
Three fingers meant one thousand.
Four fingers, ten thousand divinity.
Finger five, one hundred thousand divinity.
The way I, a priest of corruption, gained divinity was simple and straightforward.
It was through the death of the intellect.
For example, if I were to kill that two-fingered receptionist right now and send her up to the Mother of Corruption, I could immediately gain a hundred divinities.
Though it would be a very, very big pain in the ass.
However, this simple criteria for gaining divinity was quite generous, and I didn’t have to actually kill the other person; as long as the corpse was freshly dead, I could send it back to the Mother of Corruption and gain divinity.
When I first learned of this, I sought work near cemeteries for a time. But alas, I was not a Necromancer, and the only corpses that came to the cemetery were those that had been dead for too long for me to harvest.
“Priest Marnak. Here’s your ID.”
The redheaded receptionist, who had just come down from upstairs, smiled kindly and held out a bronze plaque to me. I cautiously accepted it, smiling as reverently as I could.
“Thank you, sir, but is there anything I can do for you?”
Yes. Now that I’d impersonated a priest, there were plenty of ways I could have gotten an ID, but there was only one reason I’d come to the mercenary guild.
It was because I was penniless. Even though I was an enhanced human who could go without food for quite some time, it didn’t mean I could go without food forever.
“Excuse me.”
The receptionist shuffled through a stack of papers.
“I thought there was something around here somewhere for a priest who serves the Goddess of Preservation—.”
Shuffling through the papers with deft fingers, the receptionist turned to me.
“There’s not as much work in the mercenary guilds these days as you would expect since it’s the dead of winter. If you’re looking for mercenary work, by the way, did you run out of money during your ‘pilgrimage’?”
“Yes.”
Pilgrimage.
Since the game was built on the motto of free choice, there were a lot of different gods involved in the continent. As a result, each religion was always trying to spread the religion, and pilgrimage was the signature action.
Pilgrimages literally meant that priests with some skill traveled around the world to proselytize, giving people the power of the gods. Of course, priests are human, and it was not uncommon for them to take on mercenary work to make ends meet when they ran out of money.
“Ah, here it is! This is for you, Priest Marnak.”
I took the paper and quickly read the words. The receptionist looked at me and smirked.
“It’s a good thing you’re a priest,” she said, “I often have to read these things to other mercenaries myself.”
A notice from the lord of Guise. The goal: to fight bandits or monsters. An assignment given due to the recent subtle increase in the number of peasants heading to Guise who have gone missing.
If the reward is what it says on the paper, it’s thirty silver pieces for every two party that succeed in exterminating the culprit after reconnaissance. Even if you don’t catch anything and come back empty-handed, you’ll still get a silver coin.
Not a bad deal.
After quickly scanning the documents with my eyes and getting a general idea of the situation, I humbly replied to the receptionist.
“If you can’t read, it’s just because you haven’t had a chance, it’s not a special talent.”
I could already read and write the letters of this world, just by being dropped here. I hadn’t bothered to study for it, thanks to the comfortable conditions.
“But when does this job start?”
“The priest came at just the right time, because this job starts tomorrow.”
The reason this receptionist was being so condescending to me was because I was a priest. In this world, priests are an intellectual class, and as long as you’re a priest, you’re guaranteed a minimum level of education, and they all have their own powers, just in different sizes.
As a result, people basically treated them with the utmost respect.
A class with both power and knowledge. That was the priest.
The only problem was that I was a priest of corruption, hated by the entire priestly class.
I gave the receptionist my best friendly smile and spoke carefully.
“I was wondering if I could get a portion of my payment in advance?”
I really didn’t have a dime in my pocket right now.
***
After being told by the receptionist that I wasn’t supposed to do this, but that since I was a priest, I was giving him a special advance, and that even a priest would have to pay a penalty if he was late for tomorrow’s departure, I finally managed to get a silver coin as an advance.
“That was quite a talkative receptionist, Mother.”
“Murder!
“I won’t kill her, mother. A person may be a bit talkative, but that’s no reason to kill them.”
“Murder!
“No, I didn’t, and I’m going to be very angry if you go on like that.”
“Scurrying Rabbit.”
That was the name of the cheap inn where I was about to be eaten by a fox. After paying ten nickels for my room and board, I had only ninety nickels in my pocket.
Poor, poor, poor.
I spooned down the stew, which I had no idea what was in it. Again, I could taste nothing.
I glared at the stew. It didn’t look very appetizing with all the crap floating around.
Yes, if I had a sense of taste, I might have found this stew too tasteless to pass down my throat.
As I mechanically scooped up the stew, I observed my surroundings. Humans gathered here and there, chattering away.
I, on the other hand, was alone.
I was starting to get a little sullen.
“Murder!
A voice echoed in my head, as if to say you’re not alone.
“Do not worry. Your son has a heart of gold, mother. He was just thinking about getting a decent weapon this time if he got paid.”
I ran out of stew. I left the bowl and went up to my room. A few extra coins had gotten me a private room. Stretching out on the hard bed, I drifted off to sleep.
***
I arrived at the place the receptionist had highlighted, the gates of Guise. I was the first to arrive at the meeting point, as the sun hadn’t yet risen, and I was in good shape for not needing so much sleep.
“Murder!
“I came early, Mother. Isn’t it too much to kill them all for being a little late?”
As I was chatting with the Mother of Corruption, people were gathering one by one.
One by one, officials from the castle called out names, checked mercenary plaques, and took attendance. When I saw my name crossed off, I slowly stepped back and looked at the man in charge of this mission.
The silver-plated mercenary, a middle-aged man, was named Galad. He wore a thick coat of fur over the armor he carried. His aged features matched his fur, and from the way he was talking to the official in a fairly friendly manner, it was clear that he was a mercenary who had been working in Gwyth for a long time.
When the official finished talking and left, Galad was the first to turn to me and smile.
“Are you not cold, priest?”
I was dressed in nothing more than a pair of pure white priests’ robes, without even the usual fur. As an enhanced human, this cold was nothing to me.
In fact, I had no money for furry clothing.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I suppose the cold doesn’t penetrate the priests’ noble minds.”
Galad seemed pleased with his use of the word ‘noble’. After a moment, Galad asked me cautiously.
“I hear that you worship the Goddess of Preservation, do you mind if I ask what powers you have at your disposal?”
What he expected from me was quite simple.
“I can stop a wound from deteriorating and ‘maintain’ its condition.”
Galad smiled in satisfaction. A look of relief that the power he expected was correct.
“Indeed, a power worthy of a priest of the Goddess of Preservation.”
It was a simple ability to delay the decay and deterioration of a wound, to be sure, but the result would be the same anyway, so it made little difference to Galad.
Galad spoke to each of them in turn. Ten people in all. I spoke to the Mother of Corruption while Galad took stock of the people.
“How many fingers does everyone have?”
The results were mundane. One and a half fingers for Gallad. The rest of them half to one finger.
Half a finger meant the possibility of growing to the next number of fingers. An extra half meant no additional divine payment at harvest.
In other words, if you killed and harvested a finger and a half or a full finger, you got the same amount of divinity.
There were no special humans.
Galad, having carefully accounted for everyone, gave the signal to depart.
And so began the thirty silver pieces coin for two party missions.