Chapter 27 - (Chapter 81): Gotten Distant Again
Year 7442, Month 6, Day 5
After advancing through the cave a bit for a short while completely different from yesterday it starts bending back and forth. With this I can"t draw a map properly. There"s no split paths yet but by the time one appears I won"t know which direction we"re going. I really need to hurry with increasing Ralpha"s MP amount. If we can at least raise it up to 7 MP then every 5 minutes or so we should be able to figure out the correct direction. I"m thinking about that since I"ve already given up on drawing the map and watching Zenom"s back while making sure not to be negligent in my caution.
Zenom is slowly moving forward while he checks the ground carefully for traps. It would probably be a good idea to let him switch with Zulu soon. In the next moment Zenom quietly said.
"I really want a stick or something long for this. As expected it"s a bit exhausting."
A pole huh, that"s true.
"I guess so. When we return I"ll make sure to prepare one. Zulu, change places and take the lead."
After I said that and this time Zulu took the lead and we started moving ahead again. Zenom is being cautious at the rear.
After that, we continued for a short while when my identify captured some monsters ahead. When I tried identifying and they were gnolls. One, two...So there"s 13 of them. That"s just right. I put my hand on Zulu"s shoulder and stop him from advancing before turning around.
"There"s the presence of some monsters. It"s probably goblins or something. The number is probably around 10. Let"s make some noise and lure them over. Zenom, Ralpha, Zulu stand at the front and take them head on. Bel and I will a.s.sist from the back. Okay?"
After saying that in a whisper and I had them change the line up. After I instructed Zulu to raise his voice and lure the monsters I went to the back and urged everyone else on. Obviously being careful of attacks from the back is my job. Well, there"s only one direction so it"s probably fine though.
Zulu is raising some sort of loud voice. They don"t seem to be words that have meaning but I guess it"s some kind of battle cry. The gnolls quickly noticed and started running here. Now then, I"ll open the identify window and carefully watch I guess. Who should I identify? I guess I"ll go with Ralpha here. Since she"s the weakest one among the three front attackers and her HP is low as well.
With Zenom in the center, Ralpha is on the left side and Zulu is on the right as they"re lined up, I guess the gnolls thought there were only three of us they"re running over while screaming. Along the way one of the ones at the front was shot by Bel"s bow. After being hit in the center of it"s chest with an arrow the gnoll somersaulted before falling. Since the gnoll at the head fell all of the gnolls that weren"t even lined up in any order went into complete chaos as they continued to charge at us.
While thinking it might be dangerous if it turns into a melee, I stand at the ready with my bayonet so I can a.s.sist them at anytime while watching. Of course my left hand is relaxed so I can use a spell at anytime. But, contrary to my worries the three of them are calmly dealing with the gnolls it seems. The gnolls are using short spreads it seems and since they"re completely at a disadvantage Zenom and Ralpha re completely focused on defense and earning time. Occasionally Bel is shooting her bow between the gaps in them.
As expected of a user of "Shooting Intuition". Since I have Ralpha"s identify window opened still I can"t tell if she
9;s using her Unique Ability or not but for now she"s landing every hit on the gnolls. Since Zulu has more reach with his two-handed sword he"s using it to hit their spears and cause their guard to collapse then stabbing them through the gaps he made with his sword and defeating them.
Hmn, this is hard to tell, I guess I chose the wrong person. When a.n.a.lyzing the experience it would probably better to do it on someone who uses a short sword or club. At the very least it would be better if it was an opponent where Zenom and Ralpha can land hits with their small range.
Oh~ it would be bad if they think I"m slacking off. I"ll defeat one or so of them. It should be fine if I just find an appropriate one and blow it away with {Stone Arrow}. While thinking that without any sort of danger the combat ended. Gnolls and Goblins aren"t much more threatening than a group of children with weapons after all. The final remaining three Zenom threw his hand-axe into one of gnolls back and finished it off and the other two Bel shot in the back as well with arrows to elegantly finish them off.
I guess if we have several people and we"re all cooperating then we won"t fall behind. After all I guess we won"t have any difficulties unless it"s against Orks or Hobgoblins. I cut the magic stones out of the 13 gnoll corpses while thinking that. Ah, I"m the only one who"s done four of them. Everyone is slow. Zenom and Ralpha have done three each, Zulu has done two, and Bel"s only done one.
Since I cut a lot of pretty small fish in my past life, it"s a specialty of mine cutting along the bone with a blade but your memory is more important than that. The shape and location of the internal organs and bones, what area the magic stone is around, and where is the most efficient place to put the blade in to get to that area, those sorts of things you get better at by remembering and getting used to them. It"s not like you throw away all of the organs of a fish after all. There"s a considerable number of places you can eat.
Ah, before it"s misunderstood I"ll say it but the meat of monsters is almost never eaten. At the very least Orks, Gnolls, or humanoid types which even we can"t communicate with them they can communicate among themselves, who would want to eat them? Even in my past life no on ate monkeys right? Ah, or did the Chinese eat monkeys?
Since Horned Bears just look like bears with horns growing and Giant Toads and Green Crocodiles aren"t humanoid so they"re eaten. Well, if you"re considerably starving you might eat them but even that"s something emergency rations. Rather than being good or bad it"s a problem of feelings.
After taking the magic stones we continued even further.
............
Today without finding any other deceased adventurers belongings or running into a dangerous monster like the Scavenger Crawler we were able to experience combat countless times. Of course if something like the Scavenger Crawler were to come out I intended to take it down with magic right away because it"s dangerous though. In the end without me partic.i.p.ating in the combat much at all I just remained cautious of the surroundings while a.n.a.lyzing the experience points.
To put it simply, the monsters level and HP multiplied is how many experience points they give. I somehow thought that was the case but in my case I have the Unique Ability "Gift of Natural Talent" and it"s difficult to do the calculations so I just ignored it until now. Also, if the monster has some kind of special skill the experience points seem to increase though it"s not limited to that. I still can"t tell if this is a fixed amount. It might be multiplied by a certain percentage. In the first place I have too few samples. Only three Hobgoblins appeared. It might be possible that the special skills have different types to them as well.
Furthermore, if you don"t kill them and just damaged them you don"t gain experience. However, if that one dies afterwards then it increases. In other words if Zenom or anyone else hits a monster with an attack. But, in the case that monster didn"t die in one attack, you gain no experience points. However, after that if he attacks once more and finishes the monster off then obviously he gains experience points for just that monster. I expected this. What I wanted to know was in the case if Zenom does one attack and after that Ralpha does another and finishes it off. In this case does all of the experience go to Ralpha? I wanted to know that.
Starting from the conclusion, that wasn"t the case. Going off the example just now, at the moment the monster died the experience went to both Zenom and Ralpha. The amount is different in each case so it might be that it"s distributed based on the amount of damage they did. It"s something I was able to figure out because I wasn"t partic.i.p.ating in the combat and just watching.
Come to think of it, there"s something weird I"ve found with the experience gained. In Bakuddo father"s level completely stood out from the rest. Mother was just one level less than father so you could say she stood out as well. For a while after I went out in the middle of the night to hunt I had accepted it but when you kill a monster you gain experience points. This is fine. But, what about the Dokush family of hunters? Putting aside their son Kerry, the father Zachary was level 10, the mother Winry should have been level 9 as well. I"m sure they were killing monsters while hunting as well but they should have been killing the animals that were their game on a daily basis.
I was only killing monsters when I went hunting so I didn"t really pay much attention to it. There weren"t any fisherman in Bakuddo but when fisherman catch a lot of fish they end up killing in ma.s.s as well. When you"re fishing in the case that you make a large catch you immediately pull it in and kill it on the spot but I wonder if that doesn"t happen often with their catch? I feel like pulling it up in a boat and suffocating it to death would enter the realm of killing though... Though if I"m going to say that then Goblins and Kobolds are hunting small animals on a daily basis to live as well. I don"t know if it"s everyday or every couple of days but it would be strange if they weren"t killing some kind of animal on a daily basis. If they"re killing then they should be gaining experience points, but in that case level 2 and level 3 is too low.
Even those Large Leeches that I hunted like crazy gave at least 10 experience points or so. Come to think of it those things had the special skill "bloodsucking". I wonder if that was added as well? Since I didn"t do much normal hunting or fishing my memories of identifying regular animals are vague. I"ve seen several of them but I couldn"t be bothered remembering them. The majority of the animals I identified were after they had become Corpse of XX after all. Ah, come to think of it pigs and chickens were level 0. Though it probably can"t be helped since they"re not using their own power to find their food. Horses are level 0 as well. Even my war horse is level 0. Though I think a war horse would have received a reasonable amount of training.
Eh? Why didn"t I do any fishing? Since there were no needles and they were valuable in Bakuddo. In the first place, I"m a part of the ocean fishing faction, how and what are you telling me to fish in Bakuddo where there"s nothing but small fish in the river? There"s like 5 Km to the ocean. Not to mention you have to go through the forest where monsters live. Who would try to go fishing in that situation?
Since it had reached a good time I was thinking about these things on our way back after rotating myself to the safe area in the center of our lineup. Ah...come to think of it I"ve seen when pigs and chickens are killed and disa.s.sembled countless times but there was no magic stone...I wonder if they have no MP then they can"t produce a magic stone? Even Large Leeches had MP after all...Though I"ve only seen it once but the Brown Slime had MP as well. Well, I guess not all mysteries will be solved to easily.
...........
We found 27 Goblin magic stones with an average value of 150 or so. 21 magic stones of Gnolls with a value of around 2,000. 12 magic stones from Orks with a value of about 4,500. Hobgoblin"s magic stone was around 4,500 as well and we have 3 of those.
In the end we were able to collect magic stones with a total value of 113,214. That comes out to sales of about 800,000 Z. I gave Zenom, Ralpha, and Bel a bonus of 2 silver coins each and we all went to eat dinner.
Just as planned I made tomorrow into a rest day for now. After telling everyone to rest well and I started towards my inn alone. The other four are all in the same inn. I"m the only one alone...Ah, isn"t this a good chance? Maybe I"ll go and enjoy myself. Since it"s like I earned over 700,000 yen in just today after all, even if i enjoy myself a bit...it should be fine, but I remembered I still haven"t done my running for today yet. I ended up not doing it yesterday after everything as well. It"s no good to skip out on it two days in a row right? Since tomorrow is a day off, shouldn"t tomorrow be fine? It won"t run away from me.
I guess I"ll go and properly do my running to help with digestion as well..
..........
Year 7442, Month 6, Day 6
I woke up before sunrise and after creeping around putting on my clothes I went to eat breakfast. After eating some oatmeal with an egg in it and some kind of white-meat fish saute for breakfast my head started to wake up as I sipped at some bean tea. I"ll go to enjoy myself today. Let"s do that. I returned to the inn once and after putting 7-8 silver coins into my wallet I put my clothes to be washed in a basket and left it in the hall.
I"ll wander around for a walk and look for a good place to enter. While thinking that I suddenly realized. Come to think of it I wonder if there"s a designation system? When I went to "Ritton" in Keel Sebastian lined up the women and had me choose. I"m sure he meant pick one among them but I feel like that was because I showed the Marquis Webdos plate as well. If it"s a normal customer who doesn"t have something like that then I wonder what happens?
If I was the manager and they freely entered and it wasn"t a customer that was a regular I would start off by putting them with a girl that doesn"t have many customers. Like a newcomer. After that if they come several times then I"d take a survey and after comprehending the customers interests I"d give them a girl that they would like. Face and body, service, conversation since you never know what the customer might be interested in, just like that there"s no other choice than slowly increasing the customers that might become regulars. Hmm. Come to think of it, I wonder if Jabba is doing good? He was a man that it was regrettable to let him just be the manger of a place in the s.e.x industry. I never want to see his face again though.
Well, it"s fine, those sorts of slightly complex things don"t matter at all. Since I started to wander around in order to enjoy my day off, I just need to go all out and enjoy myself. Thinking that I started heading towards the #6 road where a lot of bars are said to be. It"s a simple way of thinking but if there"s a lot of bars then I"m sure it"s a prosperous area and if it"s prosperous area then there should be brothel in the area as well, so it might not be all that mistaken.
I was wandering around and looking at the scenery of the town as I head towards the #6 area of town. Ah, after I finish enjoying myself I should seriously try and get a grasp on the town of Baldukk, though it might better to just walk around. It"s a town with a simple structure but I"m sure it would be easier to remember by actually walking and looking around.
"Hey Joshua, you going again today?"
"That"s right, since it"s my day off. I earned quite a bit yesterday after all, I"m going to do it until I throw out my back~"
"You really love that stuff~ Didn"t you just catch that weird disease. They might refuse you with that ugly face."
"Heee~ "If it"s "Rukuso" then it"s fine, as long as you pay money there they"ll let you in."
"It"s because you keep going to cheap places like that, that you end up like that."
Eh? I couldn"t help but Identify the guy called Joshua. It was Condition: Disease (s.e.xually Transmitted Disease). Hmn, I guess the name of the disease like syphilis, gonorrhea, or AIDs doesn"t come out. He has weird smallpox like tumors on his nose and it"s hard to look at his face. After erasing the identify window where it"s roughly displayed and I thought a bit more. This isn"t Earth. Diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea might not be the same as on Earth. If there"s a disease I don"t know would it be bad? I play with the rubber bag in my pocket while thinking.
As long as I can"t heal an illness in one shot then I wonder if I should re-think enjoying myself? Or would it be fine if I just use healing magic on myself periodically after things have ended? If it"s at the level of a cold then I"m sure I can heal it in the early stages. The method to choose a partner who"s definitely alright might be... to identify the girl and check their condition but I wonder if I can identify diseases that have an incubation period? Syphilis and AIDS have incubation periods in the years. In the longest cases it can be over 10 years. I wonder if I can identify that far?
It would be bad if I got impatient and received a weird disease. Even if I have condoms they"re not absolute. No matter how short I estimate it I"ll be spending at least a year in this Baldukk I"m sure. I wonder if it would be better to identify as many prost.i.tutes as I can and confirm if it"s safe first? Rather, if I were be infected by an STD I"m sure Bel and Ralpha would scorn me. No matter what I want to avoid being looked at by them my subordinates like that.
Ah, even if they don"t have some kind of weird disease I can"t think of doing it with them as the partner at all. Even their appearances are completely those of children going from my common sense. Well, in terms of appearance I"m the same though. In any case, that"s another reason I"m neurotic about the problem of exhausting Ralpha"s MP. And I"m the type who doesn"t agree with romance in the same company. Even if you try to develop a romance in between doing your job there"s not much good to it. If you"re going to do a romance within the company then I won"t accept it unless you go to the point of marriage. If you marry then it"s fine.
Eh? Wasn"t Ralpha interested in Zulu? There"s no way that"s the case, I"m sure she wasn"t saying that seriously. After all, Zulu is a non-human. Even in my past life, I never felt much s.e.xual interest in black women. No, it"s not a matter of racial discrimination. But, it seems to be true that when the races(though in the first place Non-humans are humans so it"s not even a matter of humanity) are different it"s difficult to find someone that matches up with your type.
I"m sure that international marriages are unusual in part because they simply don"t have many chances to get to know each other but it seems that there"s also the fundamental theory on living creatures if you wanted feel a instinctual desire to want to have kids with the other person. Even on Orth there"s marriages across races but after all they"re just as unusual as international marriages from my past life, and they have the barrier of it being difficult to have kids. There"s also the opinion that if it"s difficult to have kids then you can do it as much as you want though. That is that, this is this. If it"s just a night of fun then that"s fine. But, I"m talking about when you"re planning to get married.
That"s why if Ralpha and Zulu were to say they want to marry I wouldn"t be against it but just saying they"re dating or stuff like that is...I"ll think about it when it comes to it. Ah, Bel has a lover doesn"t she. If the partner still likes Bel then it"s fine if they get married. If that isn"t the case then we"ll deal with it when we get there. I"m sure things will only go as they can go.
Somehow I"ve lost interest. Since I"m young it might be better to just run to let it all out. In the first place I"m still 14 years old. I have to question going to a brothel at this age a bit. I don"t know how long this self-restraint of mine will last but..it probably won"t last that long.
It might sound like I"m just trying to act cool but that"s exactly the case. My motives are simple. If I think carefully about it then I"d hate it if I get infected with an STD. I might be able to heal it with magic but magic exerts its power through image. That"s why if it comes to a disease that I know about then I might not be able to heal it. If I regret it at that point then it"s already too late. Therefore, as long as I don"t try testing it using someone else then even if I wanted to I can"t play around.
Putting it even more simply and I should find a couple of seemingly healthy people and then try infecting them with STDs. And then test if I can heal them with magic. If it"s OK then I can just stretch my arms out, relax, and play around. If it"s no good then I"ll have to limit going to a brothel to when my MP hits 0 for some reason and I can"t hold back my s.e.xual desire.
Ah, I also want the statistics of having someone use condoms and see to what probability they can use them before they get infected as well. It"s most likely a couple percent, even in worst case I"m sure it wouldn"t exceed 20% but if I think about that then I wonder if I left Keel too soon? If it was the "Ritton""s Jabba, otherwise known as Haritaid then I"m sure he would have happily cooperated with me...
Should I use Zulu? Wait just a minute, aren"t I forgetting that condoms have a size? He has a height of 190 cm or so. He"s a full head larger than me....It"s mortifying but the only one I have on me is the M size. I have some weird pride that it"s not an S but in the first place I never made an S size, so just make it your and my secret that there"s only M and L sizes. Ah, six years older brother is the L. Since my older brother is a huge man in every meaning of the word.
Alright, since I"ve decided that I"ll go with a drawn out battle here. Though it"s in the middle of the prosperous area since there were originally quite a few bars I"m sure there"s some places that aren"t closed. I"ll sit there and look at the street while identifying like crazy. It goes against my princ.i.p.als a bit but in the end there"s a high possibility it could connect to preventing the spread of STDs and above all it"s for my n.o.ble objective of enjoying myself. I"ll make it so when I use Identify it only shows me their condition. Rather, unless something unusual happens I don"t have any interest in their names.
After finding an appropriate bar and taking up position at a table facing the street I started identifying the people as long as my MP holds out. I started to regret it immediately. If I don"t leave some records and make a statistic then there"s not much meaning to it. It"ll just become my subjectivity. It"s a bit troublesome but I need to prepare some writing utensils and come back. Ah, my objective is just to figure out what ratio of people wandering around this area are infected with an STD when I identify them.
.............
After returning to my inn to get some writing utensils and walking around the roads of Baldukk again and someone called out to me. It"s Bel. I thought she had something she wanted from me but it seems she and Ralpha have split up looking for something. It seems that they"re searching for shoes. Since they"ve got a fixed income for starters they want to buy some shoes I guess. And, if they"re going to buy some then want some proper rubber-sole shoes so while looking for stores that sells they were looking for me as well.
Hmn. I don"t think they"ll be able to get their hands on shoes with rubber-soles here. If it"s sandals then I think it might be possible but when it comes to shoes I think we"ve only made the rubber-base boots that we sold to the Webdos Knight Group. My knit boots are a one-of-a-kind product as well. When I left the house though it was a small quant.i.ty we had just started selling the same boots as we sold the Webdos Knight Group to Webdos Company. Putting aside the rubber, we couldn"t keep up with the production of the rest of the boots.
I talk while looking at her feet and just like Ralpha the tips of her toes seem to have gotten hard. If it"s like this then I"m sure the skin of the bottoms of her feet has gotten thick as well, is what I was thinking when looking pitiably at her and Bel acted embarra.s.sed. Maybe because she"s already used to them being seen or shes just becoming defiant she said.
"They don"t look like the feet of a girl right. Even at my house only my parents and older brother had shoes but us young siblings didn"t have shoes. Even though we were a Sub-Baron family, we weren"t all that wealthy...One of things you could say is good is that I have no need to worry about bunions."
Yeah, I only made these shoes when I left the house so until then I was barefoot as well. Let alone just that my older brother Farne didn"t even get shoes until he entered the knight group. I think the wallet was tighter in my household. Putting that aside, rubber-sole shoes huh...
"Hmn, rubber-sole shoes indeed. I think you probably won"t find them or even if you do they"ll be at an insane price. Normally sandals are about 3,000 Z and leather boots you should be able to buy a decent pair for 15,000 Z so wouldn"t it be better to get some of those? Honestly speaking, if they"re rubber made then the sale price of both of them is over 10x that amount."
I said it intended as a warning.
"Yeah, I heard about that from Ral as well. But, if it"s leather-soles then you need to spend money on repairs quickly..and sandals you almost have to throw them away after use.."
It"s true that normal leather sands will become unusable even after just using them for a week straight of working the fields or escorting a caravan it seems. They"re something you wear around town or in the house. Boots are made durable compared to sandals but even then they"re made to only last two or three weeks when travelling and then you need to replace the soles.
I had a pair of leather-sole business shoes in my past life but even if you did maintenance on them everyday if you walk around outside doing sales then in a month or at best two months you would need to replace the soles at a shoe store. Those have a thin rubber part in the center of them for the most part but it"s only about 1 mm in thickness and after that rubber bottom is shaved away the leather soles disappear quickly and you need to replace them. Since the running costs are so high unless you were rich person it would be impossible to use them normally. Rather they aren"t made to be walked in outside other than going to work. They"re something you use on carpet or tiles inside of a building. In my case I used them when I found it appropriate to show off during a business deal.
If you change locations then they become a luxury, is what I was thinking but that doesn"t solve anything. It"s true that it would better to have shoes. Even if the leather on the bottom of your feel gets thicker it"s no comparison for rubber. It could be said that it"s a huge combat potential up just being able to run without worrying about the ground. Is this that? I guess I should somehow try and get in contact with Bakuddo. Ah, I guess Webdos Company would work as well.
Come to think of it, there was an adventurer job in the government office of Keel for escorting a caravan to Romberta. After I left Keel and pa.s.sed through Viscount Penlaid"s territory, and a short while after entering the King"s direct territory I pa.s.sed a caravan with a number of carriages connected together. Huh, When was that again? I wonder if that caravan has already arrived in Rombertia? Or maybe it hasn"t arrived yet? Since the structure of the town of Baldukk is unique I doubt they would go through the trouble of pa.s.sing by it. I think they"ll circle around this town and head to Rombertia.
I feel like if we go to the capital then we might be able to find some place to find rubber-sole boots produced in Bakuddo but I think we were only selling around 10 pairs to the company was it? I feel like they"d sell out right away. I explained those sorts of circ.u.mstances to Bel. In any case, since I thought of sending a letter to Bakuddo through the Webdos Company, I couldn"t think of anything to say other than endure until them or use something else until then.