Kind of tired... 139 isn"t done yet, 3-4 hours then I"m going to sleep after that. It"s the conclusion of this stuff for the most part. (Reverse chapters, SS, etc..) Though I do plan to do the next plot chapter (205) before the Reverses as well. Just one though this weekend.
Year 7445, Month 7, Day 25
Now then, I wonder what we should do about this. I don"t think there would be punishment even if we just quietly watch the four of them get lynched but just watching a lynching isn"t really a hobby of mine either. In the first place, they"re pieces gained with such trouble..though I guess they"re not that much but..so it"s necessary for them to work a bit more.
"Please wait just a minute! Do you intend to lynch and kill them here!?"
I said to Jeru as if I was a bit fl.u.s.tered.
"Yeah, that"s right. I can"t forgive these two! Of course Bin and Haruku are guilty as well. There"s no doubt these guys were playing us the fools and living the good life!"
Jeru has completely gotten emotional...Though it"s not unreasonable. Of course, it"s the same for the other members of {Sun.Ray} as well.
"Come now. Even if you don"t get that angry they can"t run from you. Putting aside handing them over to the knight group, wouldn"t it be at least good to get back the money for the charms you never received? If it"s like this then, something that could be returned won"t come back."
I said that and nodded while looking around at everyone"s face.
"Also, putting aside whether or not they were deceiving you, there"s one point that I found strange. Why is the amount different for each person? I would like to hear a clear answer in regards to that."
"I heard that it"s because the amount of money needed for the maneuvers differs at that time but.."
Hirosukol replied to my question. Faruergaz is nodding as well.
"Nn~ is that so? Faruergaz-san and you all, did you all pay together?"
""Yeah.""
"What was the cost per person?"
"We were told it"s 2,500,000 Z. That"s why we still haven"t paid the full amount but.."
Well, it might really be worth that amount if you can make a complete recovery from serious injuries that put you on the verge of death. Things around that area will differ based on values in regards to injuries and the amount of money they have so I can"t say anything. However, since they still haven"t paid all of it, it seems Faruergaz and the others are about out of money I"m sure. I think Hirosukol probably questioned riding Faruergaz"s back even for the charm so the 1,000,000 he paid was probably his private funds. In regards to Sanno and Ruttsu I think it"s probably the same.
"..A total of 15,000,000 Z for six people is it..That"s quite the amount of money. By the way Keinesutan-san has paid over 5,000,000 but is supposedly still in a situation where it hasn"t come back yet. Adding to that it seemed like it was still going to require paying even more. I"ve heard that Ramiresu-san and Harurein-san paid over 4,000,000 as well. I haven"t heard whether these two already have received a charm or not though. Gekudo-san paid 2,000,000 as well, and you haven"t received it yet right? Ah that part doesn"t particularly matter. Even if the price changes based on the time. Just, I found it strange how the difference in price was far too large."
Hearing my words Rokko, Jeru, Haru, and Binsu were remembering back to the amounts they paid.
"I"m sure even if we ask they won"t give us a proper answer but the actual amount required for getting the charm is probably not even 2,000,000. They probably either demanded more money from people who were quietly waiting and didn"t demand it from the ones who seemed loud or looked for an appropriate time and really handed over the charms they prepared. How about it, Koritto-san, Meiria-san?"
The Rindobel couple was just sulking with a sullen look and didn"t say anything. Although, Meiria is still biting on a gag so she can"t speak either way.
"I think it would be fine to take the fact that they"re remaining silent as accepting it. Well, if you look at their faces it"s obvious. Now then, the problem is the money that everyone paid them. As expected it"s this amount. I think they would be concealing it somewhere. The temple is suspicious I"m sure. I"ll explain as there might be some people who don"t know but while it costs some money who you can store things at the temple. Of course even money is fine. They"ll safely store things up to a fixed size away. If you were to lynch them here and kill them the money won"t come back. Even then if you"re fine with it, then I won"t say anymore than this."
"..I understand, if we still haven"t handed over the charm and you want us to return the money, then we"ll return it...But, think of the charms as being something you"ll never get your hands on again."
Koritto said. The first part was probably because he wanted to keep his life but the latter part was probably his goal.
"He"s saying this but do you still intend to continue?"
Jeru withdrew his spear.
"Is that fine for everyone else as well?"
I confirmed that everyone in {Sun.Ray} had nodded.
"Well then, Mishausu-san, I leave the rest to you."
Kamu made a surprised expression when I threw the conversation to her but quickly tensed up.
"For the time being, shall we return to the surface..But..you all, be grateful to Greed-kun..Since it saved your lives...Ah, also before we return we need to confirm this as well. If we"re not going to lynch them here then we need to decide what to do."
After she said that she looked around at everyone. But, no one is saying anything and just looking around.
"Greed-kun, since you had a reason enough to stop the lynching, didn"t you have some kind of idea? Would you please tell us about it?"
"Not really, it"s not like I have any special idea. It"s just that I thought even if you hand them over to the knight group like this the money wouldn"t come back..However, even if everyone"s money comes back, it"s not like you would be fine with that right? Since I"m sure it"s largely a matter of feelings as well."
"That"s certainly true."
"That"s why, what"s important is to first get the money back. After that it will come down to how to dispel those feelings. But, the conclusion has almost already been decided here. That you wouldn"t forgive them. However, I can"t get rid of the feeling that you"re being controlled too much by momentary feelings as well. If we return to the surface with them still restrained once then then they"ll become the third party, if possible it would be best to have a different third party other than the knight group look after them and during that time to recover the money or come up with the means to recover the money but how about it? There"s not much meaning in rushing with it right?"
"If it comes to watching them then I think the knight group is good though?"
"That"s fine as well but if it comes to that then most likely I can"t imagine they would let them go to retrieve the money they"re hiding somewhere."
"Then, who do you think would be good?"
"I"m fine with it as well. Fortunately I"m still a newcomer to {Sun.Ray}. I haven"t suffered anything that could be called damage. You could say I have almost no relationship or interest in these four. Ah, of course we can also hire people to make sure they won"t run away. Fortunately everyone from the {Slaughterers} who are hoping for my return are waiting over there with hopes of being employed after all."
Partway through I faced the {Slaughterers} while talking.
"Al-san, if you"ll return then we won"t mind doing anything. Please give us any order."
Toris said that and lowered his head to me. The onlookers got a bit noisy again. That"s right, say it properly in a place like this.
"Nn, I can"t promise you. But, if you want me to return then show me that you can be useful. I guess so, for the time being we"ll hire you all for 10 Z (1 large Shizu) per day. Mishausu-san, I"m sure there"s no problem with the {Slaughterers} in terms of abilities. Even in the worst case they won"t let them get away. The expense is..nothing special so it"s fine if we make it my treat but it"s better to do these things properly. I"ll bill you later on."
"Pu..If you"re okay with that then it"s fine. Let"s leave these four in the care of the {Slaughterers} afterwards. Is everyone fine with that?"
It seems there"s no objections. I thought Faruergaz or Hirosukol might be against it but there was no need to worry.
They were making expressions drained of life.
Since we finished our conversation we teleported to the surface.
................
After listening to my prediction we all left the dungeon and walked straight to the temple. There"s two temples in Baldukk but the small one currently has no priests(someone comes on full moons) so the only option is to go to the large one. The 20 of us walk through the town of Baldukk that"s become completely dark until we arrived in front of the temple.
The Rindobel couple including Bin and Haruku are tied up with rope but the 16 of us are surrounding them fortifying the area, no matter how you think about it escape is impossible. In the first place Koritto"s fingers are broken. I broke Meiria"s teeth. Zemyunel was beaten up quite a bit and has his tail between his legs. Haruku is the only one who"s as energetic as he was since he was healed but no desire to flee can be seen in him. Even if they were to try and run in this situation they would just get caught right away and dragged back though.
The temples don"t run business 24 hours so we ended up setting up camp in front of the temple like this until tomorrow morning. Of course with everyone. Since I didn"t pay any money and don"t have any grudge I wanted to return to the inn to rest but I read the atmosphere and decided to endure it. On the way here Faruergaz sent his slaves to go and buy some food.
In the morning, after confirming that the members of the temple arrived at work Koritto along with his escort Kamu entered the temple.
THe priest or whatever at the entrance used {Status Open} on Koritto and said the words we told him to ahead of time. "I"m cancelling the contract on my locker so I"d like you to bring all of the contents of it". The only one allowed into the locker is the person them self after their {Status} has been confirmed. Other people even if they"re family aren"t allowed inside. However, if you cancel the contract then it"s a different matter. Since it"s just a matter of bringing all of the contents of it, there"s no need for the person them self to go.
Shortly after they returned with an inflated sack that we had prepared ahead of time.
It"s not as if I don"t feel like this is overdoing things but since everyone"s worries are quite natural(Since there"s no meaning if Koritto intentionally limits the amount of money he takes out and says "This is all the money we have remaining.") I decided to remain silent without meddling.
Since the Rindobel couple"s room at "Mogorito Manor" was too cramped Kamu paid 10 silver coins and reserved the usual "Foton" from this morning. Everyone returned to their inns once in order and went to grab their certificate of payment like things. Kamu said to come back quickly without doing anything unnecessary. That is~ this sort of situation after all. There"s no way they"d be allowed to relax and take their time or take a shower.
We counted just in case but Koritto and the others entire fortune in just gold coins was over 190 pieces. If you include gold Shu as well then it was close to 200,000,000. Even if you force them to pay back all of the damage at the current point that leaves 160,000,000 remaining. It"s not as if there wasn"t anyone who tried to put their hands on that but Kamu stopped them with a glare.
"Now with this, there"s already no one who hasn"t gotten the charm or their money back right? Everyone"s definitely gotten their money back right?"
After everyone nodded to her, Kamu returned the money to the sack again. After that she gave the certificates of payment or whatever to Misu and had her burn them.
"We returned all of your money. This is fine right?"
Koritto said to Kamu.
Kamu ignored those words and told everyone.
"Now then, we finished adjusting the money. However, I think everyone already knows we can"t finish things with this. Just like Greed-kun said yesterday, I"m sure some time is necessary to cool our heads down."
She said before looking closely at Faruergaz"s two slaves and sat down on a chair while saying, "You two, I"m sorry but could you go and call out the {Slaughterers}? Once they get here everyone can rest for a short period."
However, if it"s this time then most of the {Slaughterers} should be running. They"ll probably be running for another hour or so. Since it couldn"t be helped I said, "Most like they"re in the middle of training right now. I think they"ll return within another hour or so. After that they should have breakfast so I think that would be the easiest time to catch them. If they wait in front of Boil Manor then they should all come back once." Since Zenom doesn"t go running. As expected I doubt they would go and eat breakfast scattered after that.
Everyone has quite a bit of fatigue built up but if it"s just this level then if they were thinking of clearing through the 1st or 2nd floors without me then it would still be easier having less targets to be cautious of. For the time being we had some breakfast and waited for the {Slaughterers} to return. Just in case the two slaves bought some breakfast and went to Boil Manor early with it in hand.
After leaving watching the four to the {Slaughterers} we all returned to our inns and it was decided we"d return here again in the evening. It seems that Kamu and Misu are going to take turns remaining. Since they"re both women I"m sure they at least want to take a shower, either their sense of responsibility is too strong, or their anger is..being a leader is hard right.
................
Year 7445, Month 7, Day 26
After resting plenty until evening I leisurely walked back to "Foton" again. I"m finally going to be released from this unpleasant situation. I wonder what I should do to punish Toris and Bel who were the center of making the plan, I let a variety of pleasant ideas run through my head while walking through the town of Baldukk as it turns to evening.
Oh, there"s a delicious smelling scent. I wonder what I should eat when I arrive at "Foton". But that place, no matter what you eat it"s not very good. It"s a place that"s only redeeming feature is the price is cheap after all...While thinking about such fruitless things and walking down the road there were several faces I know walking from in front of me.
It"s Vurihaima and others from {Verdure.Brotherhood}.
"Yo~ Greed-kun. It seems like things have gotten quite crazy on your end."
"Ah, Viruhaima-san. Well, there"s no need to worry. Things will end up however they go."
"Greed-kun, he"s making this sort of face but don"t mind it. Recently all our leader has talked about is you. We were starting to wonder if he"s a maiden in love. Here, feel free to head off already. Right now, things are difficult right?"
Basu cut off Viruhaima as he was about to continue saying something and told me to go ahead.
Ever since the incident with {Bright.Blade} I"ve been able to talk quite friendly with him but unlike old man Viruhaima he"s a man who is just as he looks with a good atmosphere to him.
Taking advantage of his words, I quickly pa.s.sed by and entered the door of "Foton".
It seems I was the slowest one. Though that"s the case it seems most of the members arrived at a time not much earlier than me and were drinking some disgusting ale and eating cheap food.
"Everyone"s gathered right. Everyone from the {Slaughterers}, thank you for your cooperation. It could be possible we might contact you again tomorrow, I"m very sorry but at that time we"re relying on you again. If there"s no contact then don"t worry about us."
Kamu said that and politely lowered her head to the members of the {Slaughterers} who were lined up in seats along the wall.
"It seems I was late, I"m sorry about that."
I lower my head to everyone and sit at the edge seat while ordering some beer, cooked beans, and roast pork.
"Now then, everyone has gathered. And then there"s no one here except for {Sun.Ray}. We can talk freely."
Kamu stood at the side of the four who are sitting on the bare ground, with her hand at her hip as she starts talking. Since Kamu is a gnome her height is considerably low. Though her face and figure are those of a splendid adult but I"m sure if you saw her from a bit further distance away she would look like either an upper grade elementary or middle school student, it just looks like a cla.s.s president with a good physique is talking.
"Please wait just a minute."
The one who said that, stood up, and glanced at me was Hirosukol. Is he going to pick a fight with me about something again?
"Is Greed-san a member of {Sun.Ray}? It seemed like they were saying something about him returning to the {Slaughterers} again yesterday though.."
Ah, that sort of thing. However, I wonder what it is. Even with how gentle I am, I"m starting to get p.i.s.sed off.
If you want to fight then I"ll be your opponent at any time.
"Hey, Fio!"
Faruergaz pulls on Hirosukol"s sleeve. Furthermore, some stifled laughs came from the members of the first and second parties of {Sun.Ray}.
"Fio, I"ve already that you don"t really like Greed-kun. But you know, I don"t know about the future, but right now Greed-kun is a member of {Sun.Ray}. I"m sure there"s already people who have heard but it seems you don"t know. In addition, I"ll tell you about this time starting from the beginning. Since I want everyone to sort through the situation once more let"s discuss things well."
After saying that Kamu started talking about all of the events that happened on the 7th floor from the start. Everything from when we teleported into the 7th floor until we returned. The parts she doesn"t know (the fact that the three suckers and I saved the {Slaughterers} who were partially collapsed from an ogre ambush and the ambush we did on the ogres after that) were appropriately followed up by the three suckers. It seems it was only Faruergaz and the others that didn"t know about things around there. Did they stupidly honestly just return to their inn and sleep?
The one who directly exposed the details about the things the Rindobel couple were doing this time was Haruku but if you were to look for the cause of that it was originally because the Ridn.o.bel couple decided to abandon Haruku when he was on the verge of death. That decision itself wasn"t definitely not something to be praised over but having said that it"s not something that people who weren"t on the spot have any right to talk about. The problem is right after Meiria was. .h.i.t with a spell from an ogre mage they immediately flipped that decision over.
The first point that can be raised here is whether the decision to retreat the moment Haruku was defeated was proper. Before Haruku was defeated I had already given them the warning, "We"ve already defeated three. Right now we"re fighting four more! Four are heading that way!" and everyone heard that. At that point it"s already not just a matter of abandoning Haruku alone but the result could end up abandoning the four of us in the decoy group as well.
At this point the decoy group had gained the cooperation of four members of the {Slaughterers} and were fighting in favorable conditions but since Koritto and the others didn"t have that information so the decision to abandon the decoy group as well was recognized by everyone. Just, in my opinion if there were three unexpectedly strong ogres in front of me and a veteran front line warrior gets defeated in a single hit then even if I have other allies further in, I can"t deny taking into consideration retreating once to prevent anymore damage and then reorganizing. Of course I have no intention of progressively agreeing with it either.
Next is the time when Meiria was defeated by a spell from an ogre mage. Certainly I didn"t mention anything about the ogre mages. But, they arrived at the conclusion that I can"t be blamed for that itself. The problem is, there was a power monster called an ogre mage that they didn"t know about until then but even after they established the fact that it was included in the group of ogres, just because Meiria collapsed he withdrew he order to retreat and chose resistance. Even though the forces on our side were reduced and the fact that there was an ogre mage included in the opponents forces became clear, so it"s safe to think that they were more powerful.
Furthermore it was a 180 degree change of plans in an extremely short period of time. Everyone expressed that they couldn"t agree with this decision. In regards to that as well, I thought that people have that portion, since Meiria is Koritto"s wife, I thought it was just a matter of her being more important to him than the other members. Although, if you look at it from the standpoint of a leader who has responsibility of stranger"s lives then how about it? and I can"t just agree.
Well, on my end things came to me like a revelation at that point. The situation was far too convenient after all.
Even if you just look at those two points their faith in the Rindobel couple would plummet. Even though he can abandon his allies, he didn"t just not abandon his wife but even after confirming an increase in the opponents forces he chose to continue fighting, so it was like forcing his allies to stand in their place of death.
And then even though it was an almost completely hopeless situation, when I crushed even more of the opponents forces and broke through, completely turning the dangerous situation around, they spit out unreasonable words towards me. Seeing and hearing all of that Haruku exploded. On that momentum he ended up exposing all of their past wrongdoings.
Well, in my opinion I had somewhat predicted their past and current wrongdoings though I didn"t have any confidence in it. It was just at the level that Haruku might have been cooperating with them to some extent, I didn"t think that they were progressively sending allies in to die or attacking them from behind. After Haruku was crushed by an ogre and face down on the ground in pain, I used the spell {Suggestion} on him while lifting him up but the effect it displayed far exceeded my expectations. Since I used the hole I have opened in my glove for using Identify to make contact with him there was no need to worry about any light leaking as well.
It was my own expectation that Kamu would tell them off about abandoning Haruku and then if that could be planted into Haruku the Rindobel couple would lose some of their cohesive power, or something like that, adding to that if I could put emphasis on my great efforts in saving everyone from a crisis then Haruku would be grateful to me, if things went well he might have adored me, then it might not be bad to take advantage of that and hijack {Sun.Ray}, or at least that"s what I was thinking. Even in the worst case I thought I would be able to pull out Haruku and return to the {Slaughterers} with him.
Well, he was far more useful than I had calculated but it"s not like Haruku him self reformed from the fact that he was betraying everyone so I don"t want that sort of person as my ally and now I have no intention of recruiting Haruku. Even if I could save him I don"t feel like it. That goes the same for Zemyunel who"s sulking as he"s still got a gag in his mouth.
"..In the end it was the Rindobels that exposed it themselves. Haruku was stunned by that and ended up confessing everything. Different from that, Greed-kun saved us from a crisis. He made use of his quick witt and put a favor on the {Slaughterers}, though there is a part where he forcefully made them cooperate but it"s certain that we were saved thanks to that."
"I"m sorry, everyone, Greed-san. Fio is..Greed-san had"I"m very sorry! I said something stupid to Greed-san as well. Please forgive me."
When Faruergaz was about to say something following up for him, Hirosukol covered it up with a large voice while apologizing. It"s fine as long as you understand...
After that as a result of everyone talking it over, we came to the conclusion that the charms of everyone who was able to get their money back this time and whether or not they were already moving towards obtaining them was an important point. What was the focus point there was the method to obtain the charms. Even if we asked Koritto and Meiria they would just evasively try to smooth words over and not give an answer. Though if they"ve already started moving to obtain them I think there"s not much meaning in hiding the contractor. Well, they probably weren"t moving though. Since Haruku said they would spend about a year or two watching over things to see if they could be useful, or something like that, I think it"s not impossible they wouldn"t be able to say it. Since Kevin was getting irritated he proposed torturing them and we managed to get them to spit out the method to obtain them.
After all it was just as I imagined there was no intermediation contractor. On the day of the full moon they would go to the capital, call out to poor people and the broke, hand them some money and have them line up. It seems they would buy back the wooden tags they came out with for double the price they paid. In order to confirm things like that it will take some time. There"s no full moon until the 17th of next month. In the end it became necessary to confirm things by wandering around near the temple in the capital and the poor people areas this day.
In any case we ended up going to the couples inn "Mogorito Manor" and dug through their room to find the wooden tags they had been buying from a while back but we were only able to discover 340,000 Z worth of wooden tags. Not to mention of that 100,000 Z worth was charms signed to Meiria when you use {Status Open} on them. This ended up being the deciding factor, even though they had received a total of more than 30,000,000(Even taking out the 10,000,000 Faruergaz and the others who it hadn"t even been a month since they paid over 20,000,000 had been paid since quite a while back) the fact that they only had this few a number of charms was established to be nothing other than fraud.
We sent a messenger to the knight group and confirmed what kind of crimes they could be accused of from the official in charge of judicial affairs. And then, after all it was charges of fraud, not to mention the fact that two n.o.bles (Gekudo and Faruergaz) were included was seen as a problem. Since they were caught in the middle of the crime and there"s a lot of testimony they would definitely be charged with the crime. Additionally, if they really hadn"t delivered any money to the family of magician who died in spring Santosu, then no matter what they say they wouldn"t be allowed any excuses.
Also, in regards to the act of attacking someone from behind in the dungeon in the past, the response was they had no choice other than to ignore it. Since there"s a lot of unclear points about the situation at that time and since you can"t easily tell if it was a monster or a person in the dungeon, in the first place even if you call them parties they"re not official recognized as allies(they"re just people entering together at their own convenience, so they can"t deny the possibility that it was a dispute over how to split up some treasure) so that point was the reason. Also, even if there was a n.o.ble who ended up as a victim unless there was testimony from another n.o.ble who saw it, they probably wouldn"t make a decision based on just the testimony of a Free Person like Haruku so they had no choice but to ignore that one.
However, the punishment for the crime of fraud against a n.o.ble was severe. Even when their peerage was the lowest sub-n.o.bility it adds 10 lashes with the whip on top of having all of their a.s.sets including real estate confiscated as a fine, and even included exposing their heads on the prison gate. Furthermore, in regards to the two accomplices who weren"t the main offenders they couldn"t say anything until the judgement but most likely they would get the same punishment.
For that sake, right now we"ve handed over the four to the knight group as suspects. On that occasion the bag of their a.s.sets excluding the money they were owed, Kamu handed it over without touching it. According to Kamu in order to continue as a leader of adventurers the most important thing is trust between allies, so if she were to put her hands on the money there, she wouldn"t be able to gain their trust. Well that"s certainly true.
Furthermore, it"s something I found out later but the Rindobel couple owned several houses in the capital.
Normally they were lending them to people and taking rent. They must have dreamed of living in one of the better of those houses when they retired.
.............
Now then, the problem is me. After we handed the four of them over to the knight group, in front of the gate to the knight group station, I said to Kamu and the remaining 15 members of {Sun.Ray} that I would be leaving the party. This is a gamble. But you know, everyone"s expressions when we obtained the magic stones from ogres, their faces when they were showing admiration for my combat abilities, their faces moved to tears when I magnificently ran up in a crisis and saved them, it"s just my prediction but...