Chapter 138 – Bear-san Listens To The Talk About The Mines
Author’s note:
I rewrote almost half of this chapter and would be happy if you read it again.
Sanya-san took Fina and me to the Guild Master’s room. Before entering the room, as if she just remembered it, Sanya-san asked an employee to bring us drinks.
This Guild Master’s room was quite big. In front of the window at the back of the room, there was a big desk where Sanya-san must have worked. On both sides of the desk, there were bookshelves backed to the walls. On the desk, there were things that seemed to be documents, stored side by side.
It honestly looked like a mayor’s room.
In the center of the room, there was a table with chairs on each side; it looked like a place to hold meetings.
Sanya-san didn’t go to her desk, but sat on a chair on the other side of the table instead.
Really, how did it turn out like this...
I didn’t think that getting a knife would end up being so troublesome, and that wasn’t even taking into account that I wasn’t even getting the mithril knife yet, just information on the mine....
Ugh, if I had known it would have ended up like this, I would have just taken a nap. I wanted the Black Tiger dismantled, though, and wanted the mithril knife, too.
Maybe I should just abandon the knife for now.
As I was thinking about what I should do after this, Sanya-san asked us to sit down.
「Please sit wherever you want.」
Fina and I sat down in front of her, and then, with perfect timing, someone knocked on the door. The employee, whom Sanya-san had sent to get us drinks, entered and served us the drinks.
When the employee put the drinks down, I made sure to thank him.
「Yuna-chan, I have seen you a few times recently, but it has been a while, Fina-chan.」
「Yes, it has been a while, Sanya-san.」
Fina greeted her with a bow.
「So, what did you want to hear about that it made you come all the way to the guild?」
I explained to her what had happened until now and how I had ended up at the Adventurer’s Guild.
「A mithril knife to dismantle a Black Tiger, you say?」
「I wanted to buy one at Crimonia but couldn’t get it, so I came to the capital, but...」
Crimonia’s blacksmith → Capita l→ Capital’s Commerce Guild → Capital’s blacksmith → Capital’s Adventurer’s Guild → To be continued.
There was no goal in sight.
「Well, it’s a precious metal, so it makes sense. We couldn’t obtain a lot before, but now that we can’t mine anymore, it’s even worse. Even if someone were to sell it, it would surely be really expensive.」
Well, I didn’t really care about the cost, but I didn’t want to buy it at a rip-off price.
Since mithril ore became more expensive, it made sense for the price of mithril products to increase too, but I wanted to buy it at the normal price if possible.
「What happened at the mine, then? Blacksmith Gazar-san told me that a golem appeared.」
I really couldn’t understand why a golem had suddenly appeared in a mine that had been active for years...
Did things like this happen because this was a different world?
「It’s just as you said: a golem appeared at the mine. As the miners were mining, they discovered a huge cave, and it seems that the golem was sleeping in this cave.」
「The golem slept there?」
「From what the miners told us, supposedly one of them approached the golem, which suddenly woke up and attacked the man, who panicked and barely managed to get away alive.」
「And now the golem is rampaging throughout the mine?」
If there was only one golem, wouldn’t the adventurers normally be able to defeat it, or...
Was it possible that the golem had destroyed the passageway and the mine was now blocked in?
「It isn’t really like the golem is rampaging, it would be better to say that it only stayed there. It doesn’t leave the mine, after all. It attacks when we enter the mine, though.」
Since it was a golem, was it protecting something?
In novels and games, they were often used as guardians.
「Didn’t adventurers go there to subjugate it by now?」
「A number of them already went to subjugate it, but...」
Sanya-san said with difficulty.
「It seems that it’s really troublesome.」
「Troublesome?」
「It seems that there isn’t only one golem.」
「There are more of them?」
「We have reports of a number of subjugated golems, but for now, we aren’t able to grasp how many golems are in the mine.」
Were the golems spawning infinitely?
If this were a game, people would be happy with how much experience they could get, right?
Still, wouldn’t I know how many golems there were if I used detection magic?
The problem was that it might not be possible for me to detect monsters inside the mine.
I already knew that I could detect monsters in a goblin-nest-sized caverns, but would it work for something like a mine, where there were multiple levels? Was it only possible to detect on the level I was on, or was it possible to detect on multiple levels at the same time? I had never tried it out, so I didn’t know.
「There’s another problem; when we go further inside, iron golems start to appear.」
Iron golems, she said?
They were a troublesome bunch to fight inside a cave.
Since it was a cave, I couldn’t use fire magic. If I used earth magic, I didn’t know how much damage a physical type of attack would cause. I wasn’t sure if using wind magic to cut iron would work. Water was out of the question, and using ice magic would have the same effect as earth magic. When it came to things like iron golems, having a mithril sword, which could cut iron, was something I would have liked to have.
To summarize, it would be troublesome to fight the golems inside the mine.
「We had it as a rank D request until few days ago, but now that iron golems started to appear, I put it as a rank C or higher request.」
So, it increased from a rank D request to a rank C request, huh.
When talking about rank D, that would be adventurers with the strength of Deborane or Deborane 2.0, right?
I tried to recall their strength, but... I realized that I didn’t know their strength since I only one-sidedly punched or used magic against them.
The only rank C acquaintance I had was Jeid-san, who I had encountered not too long ago, but I didn’t really know how strong he was.
I didn’t really understand this, but wasn’t he quite strong, being at rank C?
「So, if I go to the mine, will I be able to get mithril ore?」
What I was looking for was information about mithril ore and not golems.
「Hmm, I don’t know. That information is Commerce Guild’s jurisdiction, after all.」
That meant that I had no reason to go to the mine, then.
I might be able to get some, but the opposite was also possible.
It would be troublesome, so should we just go home?
I decided dropping it was better and stood up from my chair.
「Sanya-san, thank you very much.」
I thanked Sanya-san, drank the drink that the employee had served me, and was about to leave, when there was another knock on the door.
「Come in!」
Sanya-san called out, and somebody I knew well entered.
「Oh? Yuna-chan and Fina-chan were here?」
「Eleanora-san!?」
「Why are the two of you here?」
That was what I wanted to ask.
「I came here to get some information. What about you, Eleanora-san?」
「I came to speak with Sanya.」
Eleanora-san approached us and sat down next to Fina.
「Fina-chan, are you well?」
「Yes.」
Fina answered a bit nervously.
「Is Noa doing well too?」
「Yes, we played together just the other day.」
I saw the two of them together from time to time; they were obviously getting along well.
They even came to the Bear House sometimes and asked me to summon Hugging Bear and Swaying Bear.
「Oh, is that so. May I leave that girl in your hands from now on as well?」
Fina smiled and nodded.
「So, Eleanora-sama, what did you want to speak with me about?」
Sanya-san asked to Eleanora-san, who intruded so suddenly.
「I came here to learn more about what happened with that case.」
「You’re talking about the mine?」
「Yes, if we keep being unable to procure ore, the whole country will be troubled.」
「A few days ago, two rank C parties went to the mine.」
「I thought about sending the soldiers if it proved impossible for the guild to handle this, but shouldn’t it be okay with rank C adventurers? How many people did you send?」
「Four to five people in each party.」
「Hmm, I will continue overseeing how it goes for a while longer, then. If they won’t be able to deal with it, I will send out the soldiers.」
「I understand.」
I was thinking that if they could bring out the soldiers, then they should do it sooner, so I asked about it.
They told me that monster subjugations were adventurers’ jobs. If soldiers were to take care of subjugations, adventurers would be out of work.
Only when the adventurers couldn’t handle the situation would the soldiers be sent out; this was the unspoken agreement between them.
That was why the adventurers were sent to subjugate the golems and not the soldiers.
This seemed like a really troublesome relationship, but I guess they had no other choice, huh.
If the soldiers took care of all the monsters, adventurers wouldn’t have anything to do, and if a real crisis were to fall upon the country, and the soldiers were deployed hunting monsters, it could end up really bad.
「So, Yuna-chan, why are you here?」
I proceeded to explain everything to Eleanora-san.
「Mithril, huh.」
「Is the ore shortage really that bad?」
「We can manage to get iron and other basic ores, but as for mithril and other more precious metals, we can only procure a small amount, so the shortage is quite bad. Their prices keep rising, and normal adventurers can’t afford them anymore.」
Mithril did cost a lot as expected, huh.
「Yuna-chan, if you want mithril, would you mind listening to my request? When we procure some mithril, I will prioritize sending it to you, or, if you prefer, I could give you the mithril knife I have at home.」
「Your request... Is it the golem’s subjugation?」
Listening to what she was offering, I could only see it ending up like that.
「Yes, I think now that rank C adventurers were sent, it will be fine, but I would still prefer for it to be resolved as soon as possible.」
「I do want mithril, but you could also ask a rank B or A adventurer, not just me, right?」
I had never seen them, but I was sure that there were some high ranked adventurers at the capital.
Yet, they smiled bitterly.
「We do have some high ranked adventurers at the capital, but it’s quite difficult to ask them.」
「............?」
I tilted my head.
I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t ask them when the adventurers were here.
「The first reason why is because high ranked adventurers often wander around. We don’t know where they are or when they’ll return. So, we can’t ask them.」
「They go to undiscovered lands, looking for strong monsters. They don’t have much to do at the capital, you see.」
「High ranking adventurers are mostly free and hard to control, and they don’t like to be bound to one place.」
Eleanora-san and Sanya-san explained to me.
So, that was why I had never encountered high ranked adventurers before, huh.
「Also, a lot of those high ranking adventurers are eccentrics, so it’s quite difficult to ask them.」
Eleanora-san and Sanya-san looked at me at the same time.
Why were they looking at me, I wondered?
Wait, someone else was looking at me, too. Fina, why were you looking at me as well?
I would become sad, you know.
I wasn’t an eccentric person.
「Yuna-chan is not an eccentric person, so it’s okay.」
Eleanora-san said, still looking at me.
The way she said it was strange, somehow.
「Like I said before, high ranking adventurers are all people who either love adventure, are shut in researching magic, or going on long trips looking for strong foes. They also have a lot of money, so they don’t really accept many requests.」
Oh! Somehow, these adventurers were giving me a good feeling.
I also had a lot of money, so I didn’t really want to work. I also wanted to see this new world, so I did want to go on adventures. New magic research also seemed quite interesting. I didn’t really want to look for strong foes, though (or maybe just a little).
When I thought about it now, I was a comrade of these eccentrics.
Still, it was all due to my way of thinking, and absolutely not because my clothes were eccentric.
「But it’s not like all of the high ranking adventurers are eccentrics, right?」
If that was the case, this world would end...
「But of course. There are also some normal high ranking adventurers, but they are mostly taken by other countries.」
I see. That was why the only high ranked adventurers who remained were eccentrics.
「So, it’s difficult to ask high ranked adventurers, and because of that, could you please accept my request, Yuna-chan?」
It somehow seemed to me as if they were already putting me on the same level as those eccentrics, though.
I wanted mithril, so it would be okay to accept, but the problem were the iron golems.
Normal golems made from earth or rocks were fine, but I didn’t know if I could subjugate iron ones.
「You will give me enough mithril to make a knife only?」
「Hmm, mithril is a precious metal and is difficult to process, so it has quite the price attached to it, but if it’s knives, I will give you enough for two of them.」
I glanced at Fina, who was shaking her head. Was it because mithril was more expensive than she thought?
「Big Sis Yuna...... You don’t have to push yourself so hard; I don’t need a mithril knife. I think it will be fine if we just ask the guild to dismantle the Black Tiger.」
When someone said that they didn’t need it, it was human’s nature to do your best to obtain it for them.
Also, thinking of the future, I had the feeling that we would need the mithril knife again.
「Okay, I accept, but I’m not sure if I can take care of them.」
「Yuna-chan, thank you. You saved us. While you’re away, I will take care of Fina-chan at my house, okay?」
「「Huh?」」
When Eleanora-san said that, both Fina and I let out surprised sounds.
「Don’t tell me that you planned on bringing her with you?」
Eleanora-san asked in astonishment while also hugging Fina at the same time.
I didn’t plan on bringing her with me, but as one would expect, I couldn’t really tell them that I was planning on sending her to Crimonia using my transfer gate.
「I’m counting on you.」
I answered.
「Big Sis Yuna!?」
Fina gave me a surprised look, and I apologized to her in my heart.
I learned where to find the mine, and I once again went to the Bear House, used the Bear Transfer Gate to ask Terumi-san to lend Fina to me, got her approval, and went back to the capital using the gate before finishing this troublesome task by handing Fina to Eleanora-san.
Fina had a sad expression since she had to stay at a noble’s mansion; I really hoped she wouldn’t lose her soul from the stress this would cause her.
I will come back soon, so please wait for me.
Just like that, it came to be that I had to go to the mine on my own in order to save the imprisoned princess Fina.
I felt that my goal had somehow changed, but I departed without paying any mind to it.
Author’s note:
It will be difficult for me to post tomorrow even if it would be just writing a new side story...