CH 5

“Onii-chan I’m off!”

“Fatty, make sure the door is locked while you go out.”

“Are you sure about this, Fatty…well, you’re in middle school now?”

“””I’m off.”””

I’ll take that last word as ……–

Immediately after waking up in the morning, I went to the market to buy food for Iska and her family to eat, delivered it to the hut, and then went to the Adventurers’ Guild.

Iska and Ariamel receive it with apologetic faces. Nina and Stella seemed to be still sleeping, “Would you like to see their faces?” Ariamel said to me with a smile. Am I the father going on a business trip?

Yesterday I ended up eating with them and left it to Ariamel to at least clean up the mess.

When I was about to get up to return to the inn, Nina stumbled over and sat on my lap.

“… hey, Otto.”

Saying that Nina handed me the tattered doll she was holding.

The threads had come undone in places and the cotton inside was sticking out.

I could fix this if I had a needle and thread, but…

“Ah, I’m sorry Gray-san. Nina…Gray-san has to go home…hey, come here, okay?”

“Ya… Oto-san’s home here”

After Nina went to bed, she kept holding my fingers for a while, and it was quite late when I finally returned to the inn.

When I returned,  I was told by the innkeeper’s father

“Why it’s late today, so I thought you went to hang out at the brothel and come home in the morning.”

It was quite rude so II told his daughter Rina about it. The father was also quite strong-looking, but to his only daughter, Rina, he couldn’t raise his head and was always getting scolded, so I’m sure that’s the case even now.

… Well, you probably won’t regret it anyway.

And the bottom line is that Stella woke up once when we were eating, and what a strange girl she was.

The beautiful, quiet, expressionless girl with beautiful red eyes, just as Ariamel had said, stared at me and then began to eat as if nothing had happened, and immediately fell asleep after finishing her meal.

……It’s just my imagination that I feel like she was relatively energetic, right…?

When I opened the door of the Adventurer’s Guild and went inside, I found the place crowded with adventurers, even though it was still early in the morning.

Adventurers like myself, who make a living only as full-time adventurers, gather at the guild from early in the morning, seeking the most profitable requests possible.

“Part-time” adventurers are knights who serve the country, and alchemists and mages who collect materials and  do business on their own.

When I went to the bulletin board to see the requests, I felt a lot of stares. Well, I don’t mind, as it happens often.

I’m quite famous among the regulars of this guild. The bad ones, that is.

Blackmail, assault, train, scrape, stealing prey… I often hear rumours about me that I don’t remember at all, but it’s lame… if I did those things, my adventurer’s licence would have been revoked long ago.

The thugs are not counted, rather they contributed to the maintenance of public order so they should be praised. …right?

The guild also receives requests to take down bandit gangs and wanted criminals, but if either capture or extermination is acceptable, I would choose the latter without hesitation.

Capturing them doesn’t make much difference to the reward, and it’s more of a hassle than anything else. Either way, they’re going to be executed, and I think it’s the difference between slow and fast…that’s about it.

So, if those thugs harm Iska and the others I will not hesitate to kill them next time. I will destroy the organisation behind them.

I peel off one of the request forms posted on the bulletin board and walk to the reception desk.

“Oh, isn’t it Gray-san? Are you going to report the achievement with the material you will bring from the subjugation request today? Right?”

A voice called out to me from behind and I turned around to see a large man standing there, carrying a battle-axe.

The man’s name is Ganzas. He’s the leader of a party called “Blood Axe” and a B-rank adventurer like me. Behind Ganzas, the “Blood Axe” party members are grinning at me.

I sigh and stare at Ganzas and the others.

“Don’t get involved with me so early in the morning, it’s annoying.”