Chapter 176: Alliances and Accusations

Chapter 176: Alliances and Accusations

Once we finished sorting out the paperwork, we headed back out into the main guild lobby. In order to receive the first half of our payment, we’d need to find the other party we’d be working with so we could officially sign up for the job, so that was goal number one.

We’d come up with the idea to kill the Young Dragon ourselves on the way to town, and, while it was certainly dangerous, the reasoning went like this: regardless of whether or not we took on the Young Dragon, we wanted to team up with another group of adventurers just so we could take on the better-paying jobs, and this would effectively kickstart the process. At the end of the day, we needed thirty thousand eyt—plus ten fully-charged Mana Batteries—to get to the capital. And killing this Dragon would instantly bring us halfway to that goal.

I was sure any party would be thrilled to receive a sum of sixteen thousand as well, so being able to advertise that we had a job exclusive to us that would pay out so much money to anyone who helped us complete it would also draw in more people.

Once we were back in the main lobby, we approached the receptionist once again. We’d previously asked her to put up a request on one of the boards advertising us as a group looking to team up with other adventuring parties, but even she had said that it most likely wouldn’t get many takers. And judging by the sheer number of similar requests on that board, I agreed. We’d need to get our names out there some other way.

“Hey,” I said to the receptionist, “so we’re looking to find a new group of adventurers. Preferably through a much faster method than just putting up one of those team requests.”

“Well, feel free to approach people and ask,” she said. “But you’ll probably get turned down a lot. Most people don’t bother teaming up with outsiders unless there’s clear reason to do so.”

“That’s the thing. We do have a monetary incentive here. We’ve got a job we want to complete, but we just need some extra hands. If we can find another team, there’s sixteen thousand eyt in it for them. Do you think more people would bite if I approached them with that?”

She shrugged. “Maybe you could find someone if you spent today asking around.”The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.

“Yeah, well ideally we find a method that doesn’t require me spending hours cold approaching random people.” I sighed, taking a moment to think. “Maybe...could we just make a job request?”

She frowned. “Is the job not already on the board?”

“No, it’s an exclusive one. So we wouldn’t actually be advertising what we want the people to do. But, I mean, the job board gets a lot more eyes on it, right? So maybe if we have the request on there with the payment stamped on it, it’ll get more attention?”

“I suppose that’s within the rules,” she said. “Who are you looking for?”

“Just...” I looked over at Erani. How many people would we need?

Index? Any idea?

“You’ll probably want at least three more people equal to your Level to safely take down a Young Dragon of Level 22, but it’d be best to have more.”

“A team of at least three silvers,” I repeated. “The reward will be given to them to split however they want, so bringing more people will mean each individual gets less, though.”

She nodded. “Got it. So just a request for help from a group of adventurers of that strength, reward of sixteen thousand, and...no specifications for what the job will entail?”

“Just say it’ll be combat. And let them know that they’ll be working with us. I guess you can just transfer over the information you had on the original request for a team we had up.”

“Sounds good. I’ll let you know when someone accepts.”

“‘Course it is!” he shouted. “If they let everyone catch a couple ‘Spurs on their own and just wait for ‘em to make a half-dozen more, there’d be no point in trading teeth for coin, since they’d have no way of knowing you actually removed a ‘Spur from the wildlife or if you just grew one to kill on your own. Farming is clearly against policy. You can’t turn trophies of farmed monsters. They’ll kick you out of the guild and you won’t be able to turn in jobs anymore. Anywhere.”

I raised my hands and shook my head. “My bad, man. Didn’t know. As long as we don’t turn in the trophy of the one that we ‘farmed’ then it’s no issue though, right?”

“Well, yeah, I guess, but—”

“Great. So we’re just going to go kill the ones that were there when we found them and take them, and I guess you can have the other. Sound good to you?”

At the mention that he’d get to claim the other one, he seemed to calm down a bit. I understood why farming would be a problem, though. It’d certainly been something that came to mind when I saw how quickly and easily the things basically created free money. Probably pretty difficult for the guild to be able to tell when someone was turning in fraudulent monster trophies, but I imagined they operated off of a combination of the honor system and the ‘I’ll pay you if you snitch on your buddies’ system. And getting blacklisted from the entire guild just to try and make some easy cash seemed like deterrent enough for most.

But regardless, we just continued on with our mission of killing the local monsters and collecting their teeth.

Once we’d gotten enough for another night’s room plus food for today and tomorrow, we took a break. It was currently around four in the afternoon, and my XP had risen slightly higher from the kills, up above 2000. But I had something much more important in mind. Something I needed to do before midnight.

“So you’re just gonna walk down to the outpost?” Erani asked.

“Pretty much,” I responded. “With Expedite, it should only take me, what, six or seven hours at most? At worst, I’ll get there around an hour before midnight. And then I can just grab the Arcane Spell Crystal and rewind back to before I’d taken the Crystal, and come back to meet up with you. If there are any problems, just tell Ainash and she can tell me.”

“I guess that leaves me with some free time, huh?”

“Guess it does,” I chuckled. “Don’t have too much fun without me.”

“As if. I’ll probably just pass the time looking for more Gloomspurs.”

“Well that’d be nice too.”

“So you know what Spell you’ll be investing your Upgrade into?”

“Not particularly. But that’s what the six hour long walk is for, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “I cannot believe you. How have you not decided yet? I’d have decided the order of Upgrades the moment I realized I’d be getting their Crystals next.”

“Why not take some extra time to decide?” I shrugged.

She just shook her head. “Well I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re offered.”

“Believe me, so am I.”