Chapter 186: The Dragon's Convergence

Chapter 186: The Dragon's Convergence

The four Classers stood in front of me, waiting for an answer.

My breath caught in my throat. Had they seriously caught onto my identity already? Maybe I was wrong to trust Bon. I thought I’d cleared things up with him—and left behind a nice intimidating impression even if they still didn’t believe me—but maybe that thought was incorrect.

Either way, I wasn’t sure if lying here would be the best plan. Right now, it was at least my word against theirs, and maybe I could convince them that Bon was just lying to get back at me or something. My armor was way too distinctive for me to try and pass myself off as someone else, anyway. “...Yes. That’s me. Is something wrong?”

The woman frowned. “Hm? No, no, we just wanted to accept your job request. The, uh, mystery job?”

I blinked. “Oh.”

That was much better news than I was expecting.L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on Ñøv€l--B1n.

“Yes,” the Swordsman nodded and stepped up. Now that I got a closer look at him, he was actually less geared for combat and more geared for a noble’s ball. With a rapier on his side, he wore a frilled white shirt and his pants were a deep burgundy, the material looking soft and expensive. Even his shoes were perfectly clean. Compared to the others wearing leather gear with old muddy combat boots, he certainly stood out. He continued, “Pray thee, we do wish that our forces shall prove abundant in this endeavor. I wist not of your Class and Level, but mayhaps you could enlighten us so we may be, er...enlightened?”

I frowned. “Uh, sorry, what did you just say? Maybe I was asleep earlier without realizing it and I’m still waking up, but I don’t...know what any of that means.”

The Ranged-type with the short blonde hair giggled, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder. He visibly froze up at her gesture. “Entismo’s trying to impress you, is all. He’s a bit of a fancypants.”

“Let’s take this conversation back down to the bar, how about?” the Magic-Type said, backing away to let me into the hallway. “We can get to introductions then.”

We all found seats around a table in the main lobby. The hum of a dozen conversations filled the room, and the scent of decent food filled my nose. A public area like this wouldn’t be good for discussing the more confidential parts of the job—we’d have to do that somewhere else—but I definitely felt more comfortable in a public area right now, when I was outnumbered by these strangers.

“So, I’m Annor,” I said, sitting down, “what are your names?”

“I am Entismo,” the man in fancy clothing said, standing so he could take a regal bow. “I hope I make thy acquaintance well, mister Annin—er, Annor, I mean.”

I nodded slowly. “...Right. Uh, you don’t have to talk like...that. It’s fine, really.”

The blonde woman with the bow barked out a laugh. “Good luck getting him to do that. I’ve only gotten Entismo to curse once. Once! He’s just a big baby. Anyway, I’m Sylvie-Ann, but don’t call me Sylvie-Ann. If you call me that, I’ll punch you. Call me Sylvie.”

“Why would you even tell me your full name if you don’t want me to call you it?” I asked. “Also, do not punch me. Please do understand that if you start a fight with me, I’ll be the one to finish it. Seriously.”

She raised her eyebrows and put her hands up in an exaggerated expression. “Fine, fine.”

I nodded. I hated being so antagonistic with them off the bat, but I absolutely couldn’t risk any of these people hitting me—even playfully—and getting a notification with my Class attached.

The other woman nodded to me. “My name’s Aliss. I actually came here recently to look into the Demon attack on Koinkar. So, I mean, when I saw your request saying you were a native Koinkarian, I just had to ask you about—”

“C’mon, Aliss. He doesn’t want to be interrogated by some crazy summoning girl off the bat,” Sylvie said with a roll of her eyes. Then she looked over at me. “He wants to talk about money, right? So, that reward. That was real? Sixteen thousand?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sixteen thousand for your group. As long as you’re high enough Level, and you’re okay with taking on a dangerous job, we should be okay.”

Entismo grunted. “Forsooth, we shall verily be, um, okay with, uh, taking a dangerous...mission.” His voice grew quieter and less confident as he stumbled his way through the sentence. Could he just not think of a high-class way to word what he wanted to say? Though, really, the way he was talking was less actually high-class and more like what a five-year-old would think nobles spoke like.

“Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem,” Sylvie said, leaning back and picking at one of her fingernails. “We’re all low silver—well, all but one of us. Entismo’s still working on grabbing those last few Levels. Can’t get any flamin’ XP to save his life.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but glanced around at everyone at the table and seemed to decide against it, shutting his mouth and staying silent.

“Anyway,” Allis said, “I think we fit the Level requirements on your quest, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Oh, as for Classes, I’m a Wizard, Entismo is a Swordsman, Sylvie is an Archer, and Boy here is a Berserker.”

She said the last part while gesturing to the fourth and final member of the group, and the only one who had yet to speak. The Berserker—’Boy’ was his name, apparently—was a massive, hulking man, standing taller and wider than me by a huge margin. He had a chipped battleaxe on his back that was otherwise covered by a cheap cloth shirt.

“Mm,” I said. “Boy, huh? Nice to meet you.”

He simply nodded to me.

Entismo laughed. “Ah, my fair ladies, please do not, er...scuffle.”

Sylvie rolled her eyes. “I am not a fair lady.”

“But it is rude, prithee, to argue with one another.”

“Ugh, I know your little crush is around, but can you please stop with the—”

Entismo quickly elbowed her in the ribs and she stopped speaking, instead just sighing and taking another sip, then slamming the mug down next to another empty mug of hers. How fucking fast could she drink?

“A-anway,” Entismo said to me, “I appreciate a fellow user of thy, uh, Enchantments! I am perchance a tad reliant on them, myself, you see.”

“Uh huh,” I said with a nod. “So are you, like...a noble? Or something?”

“I am the grandnephew of the venerated duke of East Westershire!” he said proudly.

I nodded once again, unsure of how to continue the conversation from there.

“Anyway,” Sylvie said, “so what’s up with your build? What do the Enchantments do? Got anything cool?”

The time passed as we discussed the specifics of our builds and the different ways we might be able to mesh them together. I worked to speak as vaguely as I could about my own abilities, of course, but they didn’t seem to mind too much. Plenty of adventurers were secretive about their build, especially when they were specced down an irregular path. One of the main strengths of taking unpopular abilities was the surprise factor, after all, so most who relied on that were hesitant to give it away.

After about half an hour, I saw the doors at the front of the lobby open, and Erani stepped through. I’d silently told Ainash to inform her of what was going on, so she knew who I was speaking to and where we were, walking straight over after entering.

“Oh, hey,” I said with a wave to her as she approached. I stood and gestured to the group of four. “Eita, meet Entismo, Sylvia, Aliss, and Boy. They’re the adventurers who wanted to take the job.”

She nodded to them, but before she could say anything, Sylvia stood from her seat, spilling one of the half-dozen empty mugs that’d piled up in front of her.

“Woah...” Sylvia muttered. “You really are missing an arm! I didn’t think those people were telling the truth about it! That’s so cool! How’d you lose it? Did you, like, blow yourself up or something?”

Erani blinked. After a moment, she quietly answered, “Um, no. No, just a battle.”

“And your voice! What Spell is that?!”

“We should probably get to a more private place,” Aliss interrupted. “And preferably somewhere without access to more alcohol. Now that everyone’s here, we can talk about the specifics of the job, right?”

“Indubitably,” Entismo said with a nod. “We heretofore shall transport ourselves to a new milieu!”

Erani leaned back, as though physically pushed away by his barrage of nonsense. “What?”

“It’s just...” I shook my head, leaning in to speak with her. “Listen, I don’t know if we have much of a choice when it comes to who we go with. It’s basically them or bust, here. So. Y’know. Eccentricities.”

Sylvia hopped out of her seat. “Man, I am so excited to hear about what we’ll be doing! I bet it’ll be, like, building a secret lair! Or hunting down an artifact hidden deep in the ruins of an ancient buried civilization!”

“Not quite,” I said as we walked out of the bar. I honestly wasn’t sure whether she’d be excited or disappointed by the news that they’d be slaying a Young Dragon with us. “Where are we headed? You guys know a place?”

“Boy actually owns a house in the northern residential area,” Aliss said. “We can talk there, if you want.”

“Wait, I thought you guys said you only just came here.”

“Well, when I came here with Boy, it was my first time in the town, but we chose this place specifically instead of any other random town near the mountains because Boy grew up here. Some old estranged relative of his died a while back and left him a nice place, but he was already living in another city when that happened, so it was just kinda sitting around until we came back. It’s been neat meeting all of his old friends since we came in.”

I noticed Entismo giving Aliss and Boy a strange glance when she said that, but wasn’t totally sure what that was about.

“Uh, sure,” I said. “That sounds fine. We can talk there. Lead the way.”