Today I'm taking Julian with me for an adventuring job. I can't really leave him alone. Felix and Sabine are both busy so I use this chance to train him as well.
After staying with me, I told Julian to do what I tell him to do. Including getting him to start exercising. He needs to get stronger no matter how littler hi improvement is. As for his talent, I will get him appraised sooner or later. But the basic is still important so he needs to at least have some knowledge and stamina to do some adventuring business.
"Do I have to?" Julian asks.
"No. But your other choice is to find another job and you can't rely on me anymore. Which one do you like?" I ask him back instead of answering.
"…I'll train and join you in your adventure."
At least he's smart enough to pick the right choice for his future. After learning how to read, he started picking up books from the library and gained a lot of knowledge that can be helpful for him and his sister. That's what he said he wanted to do when I asked him. He wants to help his sister.
It's morning and the adventurer guild is packed. The guild in Dahlia is so popular with adventurers. Many of them were students, former students, or failed to be students of Dahlia Academy but they still stay here. And because the surrounding areas have many monsters and dungeons, it's always popular with adventurers all over the world. At least that's the setting in the game but I guess it's true.
As we enter the guild, everyone is looking at us. A teenager and a kid entering the guild. They just glanced a bit before turning away their attention from us. For them, we're not worth paying attention to.
"So, what kind of mission will we take?"
Even though he was reluctant to join at first, he ends up getting excited at what kind of job we will take. Though I won't take anything too difficult so maybe it's something that can be done in the city. I'll also increase my fame and reputation little by little. This is what Sabine recommended to me when I asked her how to increase my fame.
"It's not wise to bring you out to fight when you never trained at all so let's pick something we can do inside the city. These kinds of jobs are not popular among adventurers but the rewards usually good. You just learned to read so how about you pick some yourself," I say.
And Julian excitedly runs to the mission board fighting over missions with other adventurers. Though as I mentioned before, missions inside the city are barely touched.
Julian returns to me a few times with missions he thought to be good. But they're all out of town and will take a while to complete so I refused them all until finally he picked the right one.
"This one is good! Miss Sabine points at this mission for me to take," Julian says excitedly with a paper on his hand. So in the end, Sabine helped him to pick a mission.
[Urgent help in the public library to sort books]
The reward is normal but the mission? It's just Felix being lazy to work. He's supposed to be the librarian and there are staffs in the library. But he's asking for adventurers to do it?
"Is there anything else?" I look at the mission board and for some reason all the missions inside the city have disappeared. I guess this is the only one left.
And so we took this mission. The counter where Sabine is has people waiting in line but there are some empty receptionists. I guess she's popular. And I don't want to bother waiting in line just to take this mission so I go to another receptionist.
She was shocked to find out that I'm a B-rank adventurer but she still did her job. And then Julian and I went to the library to sort some books.
It took longer than anticipated. It's already afternoon when we're done and returning to the guild to report that we have finished with the job. This time, Sabine's counter is empty. Maybe because all the other adventurers have gone on their missions.
"I'm here to report for a mission completion," I say.
Right after saying that, someone behind me pushes me aside as if he's the one in charge.
"I'm first. My beautiful Sabine, I'm here to report for the completion of my mission."
A rough-looking guy skipped the line and pushes me aside to flirt with Sabine. Whatever, I'll just go to the empty receptionist. I'm not in the mood to have a quarrel against someone.
"I'm sorry but not only you claimed myself to be yours, you skipped the line and also pushed my friend aside. Those are things I don't appreciate at all. I can still do my job but I have to tell you that no matter what you do after this there is zero chance at all that I will be yours. Thank you for showing me how horrible of a person you are. Now, show me the proof of the completion."
Damn. Sabine is so professional in her job. Is that because she's talented in communication? Maybe.
But seriously, he just dumped someone right in front of other people here. Although the guild is not crowded because many adventurers are on their mission, the guild is essentially a place that is never empty. So the event of the man getting dumped is being watched for everyone to see.
Embarrassed, the man quickly grabs his reward money and runs away with his party members holding their laughter. I guess he's the strongest in his party. That's why none of them dare to laugh publicly.
"Miro, my counter is free now," Sabine says.
"…If you're really my friend you shouldn't have given me a job like this," I say.
"Even Felix has enough influence in this city to spread your name. It's not easy to increase your reputation unless something big is happening in this city. You have to do things like this little by little until the things you have done build up so much everyone talks about you," Sabine says with a smile.
And I'm just showing a poker face. Not making any expression at all. But that's enough for her to understand something.
"…Something is going to happen soon, right? You're going to use that to increase your fame?" she asks.
"It hasn't happened yet. But you don't need to worry because it shouldn't affect the people," I say.
There should be something that will appear in the near future. A monster that shouldn't be here appears. It's not in the main story but you can encounter this monster in the game randomly so sometimes when I played the game, I encountered this monster and sometime I didn't.
The reward is not great in the game. But if I subjugate this monster and show the proof to the guild, I will gain some reputation. That's enough to show the people that I'm strong and I will have enough trust from the guild to create my own clan.
Though I still don't have enough members. I should quickly contact Natasha and Hal.
I doubt Natasha can join because she's affiliated with her father's company. As for Hal, I don't know if he will still prefer to be on his own like in the game or not. But I should still invite him.
"Since it shouldn't be dangerous, I'll trust you. Here's your reward and…" her head gets closer to me and she starts whispering something to me. "The boy called Roland is the one who had just entered. Behind him are his party members and friends, Owen, Lola, and Pearl."
So it's the protagonist and his party. He managed to make Owen, Lola, and Pearl to be his party members.
Right. If it's in the game, this should be around the time he gained enough trust from those three to create a party together. And all of them were important characters in the game.
But this is real life. I don't think their character events will be important to me at all.
After grabbing the reward, I turn around and see the protagonist for the first time. And I can only see… a naïve-looking teenager. That's my impression of him after learning about him from Cornelia and from the investigation.
The protagonist, Roland, has a sword attached to his waist. He uses a one-handed sword unlike me. As for Owen, he has a mace and a shield. He's big guy and a tank who is older than Roland even though they attended the academy in the same year.
Lola is a small scout who can detect traps. She's agile with her feet but for her combat abilities, they're low. Other than the fact that she's good as a scout, there's really nothing useful about her at all so she's never my first option in a party most of the time because I remembered where most traps are located. But I guess in real life she is extremely important.
The last one is good. Pearl. She's a healer who can use buff magic. Mainly buffs because her talent is in support instead of healing. But she can also use healing magic as well.
Though her other talent is more important. She can decide the protagonist's action because of her talent. She is talented in judging people.
Weird, right? But this is a real talent that really exists. Talent to judge people.
She can judge with her talent whether someone is good or evil. But I think that's just her misinterpretation of her own talent. Because seeing her reaction after looking at me, she has judged me to be evil.
Maybe I am selfish thinking of myself over other people. But evil? She's not wrong but she's not right either. It's not like being evil to one person means I'm completely evil to everyone else.
I don't know how she feels when she judges people. But if she judges a desperate man like me to be evil, I don't think it's good to get closer to her.
I'm just someone desperate to survive the ordeal that will happen. I know things will happen. But being judged to be evil because of it? I can't trust her talent completely.
Maybe in the game when she judged people to be evil, some of them are like me. Desperate people who had no other choice. But it's not like I will just hate people randomly or kill strangers for no reason.