Side Story 10: Laveata Town.

Side Story 10: Laveata Town.

Honestly, this is more surprising than I thought, I said with slight wonder.

Huh, I can understand what you mean with that, to my side, my best friend Kyouya agreed. The town looks sorustic, but the medieval setting really has its charm, right? Especially with that simple touch of technology.

I, Tatsuya Nagata, had to nod to his statement, slightly enthralled by the rural appearance of Laveata town. Compared to the intense hustle and bustle of Japans Tokyo, there was much less noise and it wasnt so crowded that I felt like everybody was touching me as I walked down the street.

However, it was still decently crowded due to a simple reason: the E rank monster dungeon, Fur Walker Dungeon. While there were quite a few normal citizens running around and working, my attention was drawn to those that were carrying around weapons.

Staffs, giant greatswords, mighty axes, and many other medieval weapons that you could imagine an adventurer would carry around. What differentiated them from guards, was that they were all wearing different kinds of clothes and armor as they walked past us.

While the guards had orderly and almost identical sets of equipment, the adventurers would range from gambeson, chainmail, metal armor, robesand some also had leather armorwhich was pretty good on the eyes.

Ahem, anyway, considering what I just learned, I should stop calling them "adventurers" and start differentiating them into "hunters" and "mercenary". You see, compared to a traditional adventurer guild, the "adventurer" job is separated into the hunters and mercenary guilds.

While they technically werent too different, both hired people to fulfill quests that mostly relied on endangering their lives, the quests that they offered differed. Hunters would handle anything that related to monster hunting and material acquisition, while mercs handled requests that could range from services to bounty hunting.

When we were in the respective guild houses to get our ID card eligible to accept both guilds quests, we got an explanation from their guild masters about things. Apparently, the two guilds were practically the same with some adventurers accepting both guilds quests.

Hey, Nagata-kun, Ishigami-kun! We are leaving you behind so get a move on, please! a girl with dark brown hair called us out from a distance.

Looking over, the girl that called for us was Tamae Tsuji, one of our two ex-class representatives, who was wearing a wizard outfit while carrying a staff.

As we hurried towards her, the guy walking beside her berated us, Come on, you two. This isnt Tokyo, anymore, but you can still get lost here, and getting lost here would be disastrous.

Ahh, cut us some slack, Kudo-san. We were just admiring the town. You have to admit that its pretty cool, I said.

Sigh, I know we are technically tourists, but you have to start being more serious about things," Nishio Kudo said exasperatedly. We are in a world where people are allowed to carry around their weapons anywhere they wanted, while also being paid to kill things for money. Getting lost is a real problem here!

Hes right, you two. You heard what Sir Elrick and Lady Yorshka have said, yeah? Not everybody around here is civil, so we must stick together, Tsuji-san said seriously. Were all a team now so lets work hard together, alright?

It wasnt a mistake of her to say that we were a team now, as it was very much true. After the two stunts my party pulled in the church, it seems like the upper echelon wasnt too happy about it at all. While my argument with that piece of shit Mikami only caused a scene, the fight Sakamoto-san and Hanazawa had knocked out two members of our party while it also forced the knights to handle the situation.

Elrick von Karstein, the supervising knight of party Misfits, lectured our group for that display, telling us that our party had to work with another one as the bishops were confident that we would be a danger to ourselves at this point.

The lecture content itself wasnt as bad but the way how Elrick gave it was frightening. It was clear that something happened to him after we caused that incident as both his demeanor and mood worsened. He hasnt dropped his usual faade, but his words have gotten a bit sharper.

Also, Sakamoto-san was quietly crying as she listened to our lecture, and afterward apologized fervently to Elrick for causing him so much trouble. She said something like, "I thought she wasn't giving you enough credit for all you've done for her. Im truly sorry. I didnt want to reciprocate your kindness like this which made him sigh exasperatedly, before telling her that it was alright.

Clearly, it wasnt as he seems more stressed than usual. Sakamoto-san also made an effort to apologize to Hanazawa, but she just brushed it off, saying, Yeah, yeah, whatever, I dont care. I heard what you had to say before walking away.

So, Sakamoto-san has been depressed ever since. Kyouya tried to comfort her but seeing him only made it worse for her as she felt bad that she was at fault that he was hurt. The punch Hanazawa gave him should have been hers, she said.

The depressing mood lasted for five days as we were stuck in a carriage while we traveled to Laveata Town. Once we were there, we were told that we would cooperate with Tsuji-san's and Kudo-san's party as a joint effort. We were told that they were the only party that was willing to help us as the rest declined.

Honestly, that suited Tsuji-san so well. She was popular due to being willing to help anybody she could. They might not be our class representatives anymore but those two totally still acted like they werethankfully for us. Our party's cohesion was so bad that we needed extra help.

After introducing our status board to everybody, our party decided that it would be good to get something to eat together before we went to the lodging that the church reserved for us. The next morning, our knights escorted us to the hunter and mercenary guild. We got our ID updated and were then allowed to accept quests.

Quest: Kobold Subjugation

Rank: G

Reward:

Experience, 1 G Rank Point, 2 Larger Copper Davi

Objective:

Slay 10 Kobolds of any kind

Slain Monsters:

If you showed bad manners, then that could cripple your future reputation with others. In an MMORPG, you can be hunted down, or your guild could suffer because of you.

Lining up, I was able to fully see all the different people that have made it their job to kill monsters. Some of the adventurers look like they havent eaten anything good for days while keeping badly maintained equipment, and then some people look like they've been doing this for all their life.

Yorshka explained that the people we see here arent anything special yet, due to the dungeon being an E rank. It wasnt suitable for total beginners, but you wouldnt find experienced fighters above rank C here.

Hey, Kyouya, I dont know why but I cant get rid of this feeling that everybody is looking at us, I told my best friend, uneasy of all the people glancing at us.

Not at us, but at the girls, Kyouya pointed out. Some of them even look pretty jealous.

Having my friend point that out made me understand our current situation. Our group was majority female!

Tsuji-sans party had four girls, while our party had two. Quick math told me that we had six girls, while only having four guys. Our girls werent bad looking but I guess Yorshka was attracting the most attention due to her womanly charms.

Thinking of all these reasons, it might not be surprising that everybody was looking in our direction. Looking around, there were a few female adventurers, but they were in parties with mostly guys. We really must stand out.

After some waiting, we finally made it in front of the entrance of the dungeon. It wasnt anything boring like a hole that led into the dungeon, but it was instead a proper entrance built by the people responsible.

IDs, please, one of the guards said.

We were told by the guild masters of the guilds that only the leader of the party had to show their IDs to gain entrance. When we registered by the guild, our two parties also made our five-man parties official, which also allowed us to name it. Hanazawa, in all her wisdom, chose to keep the joke name for our party, so were now officially party Misfits.

Both Tsuji-san and Hanazawa went forward and showed their IDs to the guards.

Huh? G rank?! Wait, are you kids sure about this? The dungeon might only be an E rank but its still quite dangerous, a guard burst out, worry clear in his face.

Monsters in the world are given a rank by the System, which starts at rank G and goes up to SSS rank, or also known as the Myth rank. The hunter and mercenary guild adopted a similar system by ranking each adventurer with a scale from G to S rank.

As we just registered, we had to start from the bottom of the barrel despite the churchs support. The guild masters told us that they couldnt grant us that, and that a rank skip can only be given on rare occasions, and that this wasnt one.

While G was our official rank, it wasnt a correct measure for our current strengths. Elrick told us that every single one of us had the stats of an F rank adventurer, just without the experience.

Hey, excuse me but this should clear a few things up, Yorshka went in front and showed the guards her ID. "This is just to give them their first combat experience, and I can guarantee that these kids can hold their ownhopefully, ha ha ha!

Uhh..what?! Arent you the-mhrmmm! the guard was able to comment on her ID when she pushed her hand to block his mouth.

Uh, uh, silence, please. You should know what I mean with that, correct? Yorshka said with a wink.

Once he nodded, Yorshka removed her hand. The guard whispered the details to his partner, who couldnt help but also shout out, nearly exposing whatever Yorshka was hiding but he was also swiftly silenced by Yorshka.

After a few more seconds of this comedy act, the guards finally gave us permission to enter the dungeon. When we entered, I could faintly hear the two guards fanboying, saying, "I can't believe I met the-you know who!" and "Ha, the others will absolutely kill us for this but it'll be worth it!".

The dungeon was underneath the entrance, so we had to walk down a set of stairs. While we walked, Kohaku Kobayashi, one of Tsuji-sans teammates approached Yorshka, while her long, black hair with red highlights flowed around.

Hey, Lady Yorshka, can I ask you something? she asked, only continuing after Yorshka nodded. See, uhm, Ill cut to the point, how does it feel to kill?

How does it feel to kill?, a very important question for literally every single one of us. Since we came to this world, we learned how to fight but nobody has killed anybody in their lifetime before. As much as I was hyped of finally leveling up, I also was anxious about actually drilling my spear into somebody, even if its a monster.

Hmmm, I guess that is something you kids would be interested in, so Ill give you a serious answer, Yorshka said, her carefreeness gone, which made all my classmates listen intently. "Frankly, it really depends where you came from. The place that I grew up never batted an eye about killing stuff. Besides the adrenaline rush and the thrill of having survived, we think of killing as something natural."

If you have to hunt to eat, then it makes sense that killing animals wouldn't affect you too much. It was their common sense, after all.

However, I guess you kids are more like sheltered little nobles, right? Well, in that case, you should be content if you only have to vomit, she further added. Ive seen some weaker willed people completely lose it. To defend their mind, their personality twisted into something more aggressive, so they can stay sane despite knowing what they just did. Still, in that case, maybe they were already insane, to begin with?

All of us gulped at her words.

Ha ha, come now, just because it happened to others doesnt mean that it will happen to you kids, Yorshka smiled at us, aware that her words struck us hard. Stay focused, all of you. Elrick and I are here to defend you, but we wont protect you from every single hit. Its a battle for survival in the dungeon so treat it like that. If you have to throw up then do it, but get right back into the battle, otherwise, you are risking yours and your partys life. I can describe how killing feels, but every single person handles it differently.

With those words in our minds, we continued moving down the stairs, eventually reaching the bottom and entering into a large cavern room. It was mostly empty, besides the few adventurers preparing for their trip.

Alright, young ones, its time for all of you to finally get out of level zero!