The name of the trading company that requested the escort is Rivilla.
The request is to escort their trade procession to Pelmia, a small to medium-sized city located about ten days away from Vespians.
“As stated in the request form, the bronze adventurer will pay eight silver coins, and the iron shield will pay two. If an ambush occurs and we finish without any damage on our side, then I will pay one extra silver coin per incident.”
The client I met in person was a middle-aged man named Rug. He didn’t look like a high-ranking person such as the head of the trading company or a branch manager; he seemed more like an ordinary employee.
Well, if this was a business transporting highly valuable goods, that’d be a different story. But this trade involves transporting common necessities and decent luxury items. There’s no way a branch manager would personally handle such a task.
“Um… when you say ‘without damage,’ does that apply only to the transport goods, or does it include the trading company employees as well?”
If it included the latter, the additional payment could be dismissed as mere meaningless words.
If even a single porter falls victim to a stray arrow, isn’t that saying no additional payment would be forthcoming?
Protecting the goods shouldn’t be too difficult, but I couldn’t possibly be responsible for the lives of the escort soldiers or porters under the trading company’s employment.
“Ha ha. Of course, I’m talking about the goods. It’s our responsibility to look after our hired hands. Your job is merely to protect the product safely.”
Fortunately, this Rivilla trading company didn’t seem to be the kind of morally bankrupt bunch that wouldn’t care at all.
Seeing that they assured me they’d take care of their employees while we just had to protect the goods was reassuring.
“Is that so? That’s a relief.”
I smiled and stamped the contract.
Paying eight silver coins for hiring a bronze adventurer for ten days felt like an absurdly low price, but from the trading company’s perspective, that amount would likely be their best offer.
If we were to be ambushed by bandits during our journey, that would be one thing, but if we finish without any incidents, it’d look like adventurers would be pocketing silver without having done a thing.
Merchants weren’t exactly charity workers, so they wouldn’t want to hand out silver coins to idle hands.
So, it meant they would pay a base salary of eight silver coins and an additional one silver coin for each incident.
It basically meant they’d pay in accordance with the work done.
…Should I be hoping for the ambushers to show up then?
I wasn’t that desperate for money, so I didn’t mind if the base salary was a bit low, but I figured a regular adventurer might secretly hope for monsters or bandits to ambush them throughout the journey.
◆◆
Since we had about a day left until the trading company set off, I called my party members to the first floor of the inn to discuss this request.
We talked about things like the request conditions, the schedule, and the supplies we needed to prepare.
Gathering my party members was a piece of cake.
Friede was already staying in the room next to mine, and Amy happened to be thinking of moving out of her dormitory and therefore decided to stay in the room directly across from mine.
So all I had to do was bring Kikel, who was using a different inn due to the heating issue, over here.
“Friede, is this your first time meeting? Say hello. This is our iron shield warrior who will be working with us—”
“Kikel Greg!”
As soon as Kikel arrived at the “Snowbear’s Rest” and spotted Friede sitting at the table, he let out a low gasp.
“You! Small yet strong! I can tell just by looking! Amazing! State your name!”
Despite looking like a short child on the outside, he seemed shockingly strong. That was his way of complimenting her.
Is this a wild instinct? He seemed to have recognized that Friede was among the top tier in our party right away.
“Oh, um… th-thank you…?”
Of course, with his very peculiar way of speaking, the compliments’ meaning got muddled.
“Th-this is the bronze adventurer, Friede….”
Friede shrank back behind me and peeked out timidly to introduce herself in a trembling voice.
“Hah.”
Amy chuckled as if it was funny.
It seemed she had completely forgotten how frightened she was when she first met Kikel because of his appearance.
“Don’t be so tense, Friede. He looks a bit scary, but he’s a kind and reliable friend.”
Since we’ll need to move together from now on, it wouldn’t do for her to continue being this shy.
“Honestly, among iron shield adventurers, there’s no one as trustworthy as Kikel here. So you can relax.”
I stroked Friede’s messy hair, trying to calm her down, and smiled gently.
Kikel’s face did look a bit ferocious… but that was mainly because he was a rare non-human. Once you got used to it, his face was a hundred times better than some of the average adventurers.
Those guys were not just ugly on the outside but had ugly hearts as well.
“I-is that so…?”
Perhaps my gentleness had eased her tension somewhat; Friede looked up at me with a slight smile while she had been stiff as a cat with its tail raised.
“Kak! Kakak! I see now! I’m Kikel!”
As Kikel, who had been watching this, burst into laughter, he spoke to me.
“Your friends, two flowers, right? So popular, I envy you!”
It seemed he joked about my situation as if I had two flowers in each hand, saying it looked so popular that it made him envious.
“That’s a naughty joke. It’s not like that.”
I chuckled and shrugged.
Two flowers in the hands? That was a phrase used when a guy was walking around with two girls.
I was already obviously a woman, and both Amy and Friede were not my lovers but merely close associates and competent party members.
So where on earth did that even remotely resemble two flowers in the hands?
“They’re just… uh, what should I say? Right, they’re new friends I made when I came here. So, that comment is inappropriate.”
Honestly, it was a sort of joke that a drunk uncle would make.
“Ahem, ahem!”
“Ha…!”
Look at that.
The joke was so mischievous that even Friede and Amy turned red and looked away awkwardly.
What are you going to do about this atmosphere?
“Kakak! Kak! I got it! No idea! Kakak!”
I shot Kikel a desperate look to handle it, but he just burst into laughter and kept saying he didn’t know.
◆◆
A day later, we finished all the preparations and left the city gates of Vespians with Rivilla’s trading company.
A procession of twenty people comprising three carts, porters, and escort soldiers from the trading company.
Along with our party, a total of ten adventurers were following along to escort them.
Five bronze and five iron shields.
With five bronze adventurers, this felt like a bit too many for a transport request, but after meeting the adventurers, I started to understand the reason.
“Hilde, was it? Nice to meet you. I’m Bardurane. This is….”
“I’m Jane. Nice to meet you.”
A two-person party of a bronze warrior and an iron shield patrol.
The way they looked at each other with their eyes dripping with honey indicated they might have fallen in love during their adventures.
I guess they took on this request to help Jane, who had a lower rank than him.
Just like how our party chose an easier request to help Kikel advance.
“Oh my, who is this? Hilde, right? It’s been a while!”
“Ah… yes. It’s been a while, Amina.”
Another party was one I recognized, at least by face.
A bronze-grade female adventurer, Amina. She had learned swordsmanship from a retired knight back in her hometown and wandered about with just a longsword hanging on her leather armor.
“These are our party members. Runnam, Ben, Hamill. All three of them are iron shield adventurers.”
“I’ve never met any of them. What happened to your previous party members…?”
I usually wouldn’t remember the names of adventurers I’d only encountered once, but I had a vivid memory of Amina.
Why is that?
“Oh, those guys? I got tired of them, so I let them go. They’re probably doing just fine on their own, right?”
“…You’re as straightforward as ever.”
This adventurer, Amina, had a hobby of picking up reasonably good-looking iron shield or wood shield adventurers and nurturing them in her party.
Not only in dungeons but also on the bed.
What did she say to me that one time…? Something like, when men are in groups of three, it’s the most fun? I didn’t want to understand that advice.
Anyway, after she got tired of them, she would unceremoniously dump them and then repeat the cycle of seducing new men to join her party.
With her decent looks and somewhat scandalous behavior, she was quite popular among the lower-grade adventurers.
And since she gained her popularity from such unwholesome and promiscuous behavior, it was hard to view her reputation positively.
◆◆
In fact, escort requests for trading companies were often regarded as undesirable tasks for adventurers.
Unlike the common dungeon exploration tasks, the hardships and rewards were often pretty questionable.
First, the schedules were typically a nightmare.
When adventurers were hired for escorting, it would generally take at least a week, often extending to two weeks or more for long-distance trade.
Wasn’t this one a ten-day trade?
It meant we would have to endure a long journey without proper washing or sleeping, marching all day on the freezing northern snow. How could that be something as simple as it sounds?
Even warriors with excellent stamina would complain of fatigue in both body and mind by evening, so how much worse would it be for non-warriors?
“Ugh… Ugh… When did we take such an awful request….”
Amy from our party was already panting heavily, expressing her struggles.
“Um, Kikel…? Can you carry me?”
She was wishing someone would carry her like a sack with no pride left to hold.
“Kakak…! This, money, should be right, shouldn’t it?”
Kikel joked, shrugging off the shoulder. He said carrying her would require payment since it would be making him work as a porter.
Of course, he didn’t genuinely seem to want to be paid.
In fact, Kikel himself was likely pleased with being able to keep warm by having someone cling to him.
With the warmth capsules I bought him, the march in the snow wasn’t a problem, but being close to someone would still help maintain his condition.
“Isn’t it the opposite? An opportunity to carry an eighteen-year-old beauty on your back! You should actually be the one paying me.”
Amy seemed to have caught on to this and shot back with a confident smile, tilting her chin playfully.
“What? No way…!”
Kikel burst into laughter.
“I know. That’s self-consciousness? Means, many, right?”
With just one phrase of “self-consciousness,” Kikel crushed Amy’s confident stance.
“What? No, seriously…!”
With Amy’s confidence crushed, she lightly hit Kikel’s thigh with the staff she was holding.
Although it was a gentle touch due to the thick fur cloak and scales, from Kikel’s perspective, it was nothing more than a child bumping into him.
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