A Conversation with Jacob

Nobody had given me a specific time, but I couldn't keep the acting governor waiting.

Preparations done, the four of us headed straight for the lord's manor.

On the way, I had Alexia brief me on noble etiquette.

"If he's a knight who also serves as tax collector, he'd be court nobility. And if he traveled here personally, likely a baron. It's not as though you're meeting a king or a marquis, so there's no need to be excessively deferential."

Made sense.

"He has patrons above him, so being rude is obviously out. Just answer what you're asked and you should be fine."

Getting thrown in a cell that one time had made me paranoid. I knew now that the lord's son had been an outlier, but still…

"Short-tempered people in power need to be handled carefully. A commoner lodging a direct complaint is practically suicide."

Listening to Alexia's lecture, we arrived at the lord's manor. Jacob's subordinates were bustling about.

I managed to catch one and was told Jacob was in the back.

The door was open, and people were coming and going constantly.

"What are you standing around for? Get in here."

I'd been trying to pick a moment to enter when he called out first.

"Excuse me."

"I remember you from the plaza… Yohane, was it?"

"Yes. The guild master told me to come here."

"Right, that's right."

He'd probably been buried in paperwork. Jacob set down his documents, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his right hand. After a long sigh, he turned to face me.

That's when he spotted Elza and frowned.

He'd reacted to the priest robe.

Once I explained she wasn't a Sun God cleric, he seemed satisfied for the moment. No need to mention the Creator King faith specifically.

"Tell me the details about the statue. I'm told you and yours were the first to encounter it."

"Uh, Azu."

Azu had been the first to see it. From what I'd heard, she encountered it when a guard was about to be attacked by the statue and she blocked it with her sword.

Azu seemed a bit nervous, but she explained the sequence of events to Jacob from the beginning.

"I see… I examined the statue's remains, but there was nothing unusual about them. With this many eyewitness accounts, though, I have to accept it as fact."

I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen the statue moving with my own eyes.

"… The truth is, the Church of the Sun God has been installing bronze statues in various places recently. It's rare for them to go as far as diverting tax money like they did here, but in larger towns, they can gather enough through donations."

"That's… concerning."

"I'd heard they'd shifted to peaceful proselytizing as of late, but…"

If every one of those statues came to life, the situation would be uncontainable.

"That's all I needed. I'll include this in my report to the Kingdom. You have my thanks."

With that, Jacob turned back to his paperwork. We were dismissed.

We left the lord's manor and headed home.

"If there were a proper lord in place, we'd have gotten a reward out of that. Shame."

"It's fine. They need every coin they can get right now."

"My, how surprising. I thought you'd be the type to insist on payment."

I had no idea what Alexia and Elza thought of me.

"It's basically cleaning up the lord's mess, anyway. I'm just glad the whole ordeal's over."

"What are we going to do now?"

I couldn't answer Azu's question immediately. We'd earn money, that was a given. But I hadn't decided on the next course of action.

"Maybe I'll start going on adventures too."

"Um… are you serious?"

Alexia stopped in her tracks, surprised.

"I thought you made us adventurers specifically so you wouldn't have to put yourself in danger."

"That's right. But if having an extra pair of hands means more profit, I'll take that option."

Elza had a point. Combat was out of the question for me, but I could contribute as a porter. They'd been needing one for a while.

"I'm also planning to expand the shop. It'll stay open during construction, but the living quarters will be hard to access. If we'd be paying for an inn anyway, we might as well be out on an expedition earning money."

"You're not closing the shop…?"

Of course not. Closing the shop meant lost revenue. With the expansion, I could finally stock items people had been asking for but I'd had no room for, and keep more of the things that always sold out.

"You never cease to amaze… though I suppose that's just who you are."

"Do you have anything in mind?"

"Nothing. We just got back to town. I didn't even get a chance to browse quests before they roped us into patrol duty."

I hadn't looked at the Adventurer's Guild postings at all. Right now I wanted steady income more than a jackpot.

Nothing cures fatigue like the sound of money growing.

We got home and threw together a meal from leftovers. I gave the slaves the rest of the day off.

"Yohane-san, here."

One of the employees handed me a stack of papers. Copies of quests posted at the Adventurer's Guild.

I started looking through them. If nothing good turned up, we could always try a labyrinth somewhere.

… Oh, now this is good.

A quest offering payment for delivering a set quantity of burning stone. Burning stone purchased at market price, with a bonus paid for every fixed amount delivered on top of that.

This kind of arrangement was common when someone needed to amass a large quantity of resources.

Trying to buy everything you needed on the open market drove prices up before you were done. Speculators would show up trying to inflate things further, making it even more expensive.

By buying on the market while also commissioning adventurers to gather more, the total cost stayed lower.

Quests like these usually had a serious merchant backing them, so the payout was reliable.

The canyon I'd sent Azu to before had just reopened, too. This might be worth taking.

Then I checked the client's name. An Imperial noble.

This town was close to the Empire's border. The Adventurer's Guild didn't sort quests by country, so this kind of thing happened from time to time.