CH 206

At the commercial guild, a young male employee named Volga-san assisted me.

Usually, anyone would feel cautious when someone they didn’t know entered the building but since Sarasa, the daughter of the guild master was here with us, the employee treated us with utmost care from the beginning to the end. I was grateful that he kindly communicated with me through writings because I couldn’t speak in their language.

I was told that the commercial guild was an organization that extended their operation across countries and was established in order to protect the rights of wandering merchants who didn’t have civil rights since wandering merchants didn’t have the citizenship of the country they traded in. Just like how it was back in Japan, even in this other world too, an individual couldn’t stand against a governmental authority so the people with the same profession gathered together and formed an organization to fight on equal standing against the government.

Just like in the adventurers’ guild, the merchant in the commercial guild was divided in a class system based on their commercial achievements. The ranks were similar too, like inferior iron class, bronze class, copper class, iron class, noble iron class and so on. By the way, since I didn’t have an official business record, I had to start from the lowest class, which was the inferior iron class. Those in iron class had the freedom to cross countries and those in noble iron class could receive preferential treatment to trade with a noble through the guild channel.

In short, there are some benefits in upgrading your class so from now on, I need to do my best to steadily raise my class. 

Also, apparently the commercial guild could keep our money for us so we could also make payments by using the cheque issued by the guild. If by any chance there was a fire or any sort of damage in the guild’s vault that could make the gold unusable, the guild actually had some sort of insurance system in place and the maximum coverage limit was up to 1000 gold coins. So it was similar to a bank’s deposit insurance. 

On this occasion, I was planning on buying a house so I had opened my vault beforehand and counted all of the gold coins I had saved. In total, I had more than 4000 gold coins and I had brought them all with me on a wagon. This vault of mine, I made it myself from iron and I stored it under my bed. The difference in security between the guild’s vault and mine was absolutely uncanny. 

Anyway, I decided to leave 3500 gold coins to the guild since I wanted to use that money to buy a house. That left me about 500 gold coins (and some spare change) in hand. 

When I handed that hefty amount of money to Volga-san, he became flustered and immediately went to get the guild master.

“Pleasure to meet you! I’m Alan!”

“Ple-Pleasure to meet you….”

This man, who exuded a charming and elegant aura, was the guild master of the commercial guild and also Sarasa’s father. After he introduced himself as Alan, he patted my back cheerfully.

Well, although he might be a little bit boisterous, he’s still Sarasa’s father. Since this organization is managed by someone like him, I believe I can trust them enough with my money. Whether it’s for searching for a house or for a business transaction, there’s no better partner than them. 

Alan-san was really happy that Sarasa was coming with us. He was practically all happy and giddy with his daughter around while Margo looked a bit stiff.

Ah, Margo looks smaller now….

While I was watching this harmonious family reunion with a warm feeling in my heart, a cat beastman with a stick came to intervene. From the looks of it, it seemed the cat beastman was saying something along the line of…

“What are you dawdling for?!”

And practically dragged Alan-san by the ear.

According to Volga-san, that cat beastman was the vice master of this guild, Dean-san. It seemed Alan-san was the type who could demonstrate his excellent capability when it was truly needed but during normal times like this, Alan-san was completely useless. And so, that was when Dean-san, the vice master, came in to fill the gap. 

“Hooo… The management in this world is running pretty smoothly, huh…”

Hearing what I just said, for some reason Sarasa and Margo were staring at me. 

“Then Volga-san, can you please recommend some suitable properties to me?”

I conveyed that to Volga-san with a mixture of gestures and words. Volga-san then laid out some documents on a table. The information about the location and the floor plan of the properties were neatly described on those documents.

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー

T/N: The manga raw hasn’t reached this part yet so I can’t find any picture of the commercial guild staff.