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[Translator: otwentyfirst//proofreader: ~ Shawna B. ~]
[Host: justreads.net]
[Apr. 7th, 2019]
... [Back at the Rime-Frost]
“Girls from remote villages have gone missing?” The mayor repeated. A mayor had a lot of responsibilities. Things like missing village girls were usually dealt with by the lower ranked administrators. The missing reports began with two missing girls from a nearby village. Since it was just the disappearance of common girls, the case wasn’t a high priority. Had it been n.o.ble girls, then the matter would have been more urgent.
Cla.s.s divisions were normal and order of importance would always be n.o.bles over commoners, thus the disappearance of a few commoners wasn’t considered that important. However, in this case the numbers were too high to be ignored.
The mayor had noticed the number of missing girls increasing in recent years. To date, over two hundred girls had gone missing. That many in such a short period of time was worrisome. Even if the missing was just a small village aunty, if the issue spread far enough, as mayor of the closest town, he would surely be reprimanded.
He had ambitions. He wanted to transfer to a larger city, but in order to do so he needed to gather enough political achievements.
He knew the Younger Prince and Princess would be visiting Rime-Frost in a couple of days. The timing was horrible; to have such a troubling case be active while members of the royal family were in town was problematic.
“Where did you say some of the bodies were discovered?” The mayor stood up from his chair as he spoke.
They hadn’t found the murderer, but the fact that they knew the whereabouts of the bodies was good. It showed progress. They couldn’t justifiably say he was slacking off.
It was the first time the village chief had been in such a grand place, standing in front of such an important official. His legs were shaky and he was very nervous. “In the mountain forest near our village. They’re in a cave, all of them dead. Without the aid of the adventurers, we would never have found them.”
The chief became sorrowful as he remembered.
The mayor became morose as he listened. What do you mean? Are you suggesting the city’s officials weren’t good enough to find them? Although the mayor was unhappy with the village chief, he maintained a kindly expression on his face.
“So, it turns out you had adventurers come to help. I was not aware of that. As the mayor, I’ll have to properly thank them for helping the very busy people of Rime-Frost.
The mayor was aware of his image so he spoke in a way to suggest it was only because the officials under him were extremely busy that they had not solved the case themselves. To be able to tread up the mountain and deal with the ferocious polar bears, these adventurers had to be very powerful. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to make connections with strong adventurers.
“The two adventurers have left our village, but they accepted our mission so they should return.”
“Is that so.” The mayor nodded his head. That meant he would have more time to consider. “You made an appointment to see me because...” The mayor realized he hadn’t asked why the village chief wanted to see him.
The old village chief immediately made his request. “This humble one came to see your Honor to ask for a necromancer. The adventurer said the deceased girls’ souls were suffering, trapped in the cave. This humble one came to ask for this a.s.sistance.”
This surprised the mayor. “A necromancer?” He nodded his head and said, “I see. Return first. A necromancer will arrive there in about two days time.”
The overjoyed chief bowed, kowtowing to the mayor many times.
The mayor dropped his mask of benevolence after the chief left. He called out to an a.s.sistant. “Come. Make sure there aren’t any suspicious people around tomorrow. The celebrations must go off without any problems.”
“Yes.” The a.s.sistant immediately replied.
... Jier and Feng Wu got up early the next morning. The spirit flew around excitedly around Feng Wu. She was very lively.
At this time, one of the dispatchers Jier sent out returned. The boy was around fourteen or fifteen and clearly poor with tattered clothing that barely hung onto his emaciated frame. He had been sent to one of the closer villages, which was why he was able to come back so quickly.
“Adventurers, I have news. The village I went said they were several girls missing. They were too poor to hire an adventurer so they had to rely on city authorities in Rime-Frost to resolve the case. It’s been over a year but the culprit hasn’t been found and the authorities haven’t given them any updates on the case at all.”
The teen shared what he learned. He was very lucky yesterday. Jier picked him to gather information the village. If he returned with information, he would pay twenty silver coins. Twenty silver coins! Ordinary people only earned two silver coins a month, so twenty silvers was ten months worth of work! It was a big deal.
He agreed to the job right way because of the high pay. It was enough to pay his family expenses for the rest of the year.
“Good.” Jier gave the teen twenty silver coins. “Do the same thing at another village. Make sure the information is accurate and I’ll pay another twenty silver coins for it. Don’t even consider deceiving me. You won’t like the consequences.” Jier didn’t care about the money but he didn’t want the boy to think him a foolish spendthrift who was easy to deceive. He wanted it to be clear he wanted good information.
The teen gripped the edge of his shirt and resolutely nodded his head before running out to complete his task.
After he left, two others came in to report their findings. Other girls in the nearby villages were also missing. The earliest disappearance was from the year before last. It was a small village of about seven hundred; it wasn’t far from Rime-Frost at all.
Having heard all this Jier felt the reward for the mission was too low. The perpetuator harmed so many people! The reward amount wasn’t proportionate to the work involved at all!
If it was possible to drop the mission he would have done so and took taken Feng Wu with him back to school. But they couldn’t abort the mission. Once they accepted it they were responsible for completing it. Even though he knew this he couldn’t shake how unfair it was. The work wasn’t worth the payout.
Originally he thought it was a simple task; he never expected it to involve so many lives. He was in a lousy mood all day thinking about the c.r.a.ppy pay.
Later that night three well-dressed people, with invitations in their hands, sat in a nice carriage on their way to a fancy birthday party.