Chapter 239: 239 Who, me?

“Next! Lane number three!”

“Move it, quickly!”

Beyond the city walls, past the plains, lay a clearing in the forest.

There, a crowd of mercenaries was busy loading piles of timber onto wagons one by one.

The voices of the supervisors urging them on echoed relentlessly through the air, while the mercenaries sweated, pushing down their rising irritation.

When people think of mercenary work, they usually imagine glamorous scenes of fierce battles with monsters or performing dangerous escort missions.

However, this site was the cold destination of compromise where rookies who arrived at Labyrinth with such dreams naturally ended up.

This was a public service support mission for the Mercenary Guild.

“Hey! You’re holding up the line! Get over here and put that down!”

“Huff… Haa.”

Rin, having barely managed to transport a piece of lumber, staggered out of the line and flopped down in a corner of the clearing.

Several other mercenaries were already sprawled out there, resting from exhaustion just like her.

“Wood… You said we were moving wood…”

“It is wood.”

“I thought… you meant firewood!”

Taking the water bottle Ian handed her, Rin muttered as if she had been deceived.

She had plenty of experience helping out with firewood back in her hometown, so she had arrived at the site with a light heart, but…

What awaited her were construction-grade logs.

The mission was to load and transport logs and various materials that woodcutters had felled and piled in the forest outside the walls into the city.

These public support missions were closer to daily manual labor than typical mercenary work.

Transporting resources, maintaining roads, clearing brush, and the like.

Since the city was overflowing with E-rank mercenaries with no work, the city secured necessary labor for maintenance by paying these people a daily wage.

The mercenaries resting nearby stood up with weary faces.

While resting was voluntary, they had to participate diligently and meet the minimum quota to receive their daily pay.

No one was explicitly pressuring them, but the situation naturally made them feel self-conscious if they rested too long, so Rin eventually forced herself up as well.

Rin, who had ended up on this mission at Ian’s suggestion, grumbled with a hollow expression.

“You bought all those expensive things so recklessly… You’re finally out of money, aren’t you?”

“No, I still have some money left.”

“Then why are we doing this?”

“Because it seems like you’re severely lacking in stamina. This kind of work is great for physical training.”

In the game, these types of missions were training schedules that slightly increased stats.

Since there was a low probability of acquiring traits like [Stamina Increase] or [Strength Increase], making a first mercenary do this two or three times was a fairly standard strategy.

The only part that slightly deviated from Ian’s expectation was that this mission was quite popular, requiring one to line up early in the morning just to apply.

Though the labor was intense, missions issued directly by the guild meant no worries about delayed pay, and they were recognized as official mission credits.

To an E-rank mercenary who found fighting monsters overwhelming, it was an irresistible daily job.

Ian’s original goal was to do this about three times and aim for a trait, but…

Seeing the fierce competition and feeling like he was taking away jobs from rookie mercenaries desperate for a livelihood, he decided to be satisfied with just this one time.

“Who does this for training?!”

Rin complained to Ian while massaging her already aching arms, but since Ian was working silently right beside her, it was hard to grumble too loudly.

By the time Rin’s stamina was nearing its limit, the voice of a staff member checking the work at the wagons rang out.

“Lunch break from now until the top of the hour!”

“…Haa.”

Rin staggered over and sat down near a wagon.

She felt more physically drained now than when she was hunting monsters.

“…Ah! Lunch…”

Sensing the bustling atmosphere around her, Rin belatedly snapped her head up.

Being new to this kind of work, she had sat down for a moment at the mention of a break, and in the blink of an eye, a long line had already formed for the lunch rations.

Usually, wasn’t it the mercenary’s job to get the portion for the captain as well?

Thinking that Ian’s meal would be delayed because of her, Rin looked toward him sheepishly.

“Ca-Captain. I’m sorry…”

“Here. Rin, eat this.”

Ian handed Rin a lunch box he had brought separately.

It was a meal that stood in stark contrast to the menu being distributed in the ration line.

Rin took it with a flustered expression and a word of thanks, looking down at the lunch box that looked expensive even at a glance.

Seeing this, it certainly wasn’t because he was trying to save money…

Does that mean he truly came here for stamina training?

Giving up on understanding Ian’s incomprehensible sensibilities, Rin sighed softly and picked up her fork.

“Mind if I sit here?”

“Yes. Feel free… Whoa.”

Rin nodded casually without checking who it was, but she nearly dropped her lunch box upon seeing the face of the person sitting next to her.

Roughly disheveled bobbed hair and an eyepatch covering one eye.

It was Chris, the field supervisor for this support mission and the guild’s direct mercenary who had led Rin and Ian’s first mission.

Going out to direct combat like last time was an exception; normally, supervising these public duties was the primary job of guild mercenaries.

Glancing at Rin and Ian’s lunch boxes, Chris spoke in her blunt manner.

“Hans’s shop. You have to get there pretty early to buy those…”

“Would you like some?”

“I’m fine. The people doing the work should eat.”

Ian spoke to Chris calmly, but Rin, caught between them, couldn’t even move her fork and sat frozen.

Since it was common for rookie mercenaries to stiffen up upon seeing her, Chris gave Rin a bitter smile.

Someone like Ian, who spoke so casually, was actually the eccentric one.

“Looking at your recent records, things seem to be going quite well for you.”

“You were watching?”

“When you’re a guild employee… it’s a bit of a hobby.”

Chris touched the scar on the eye covered by the eyepatch.

A deep scar that couldn’t be fully hidden by the patch was etched along her cheek.

“I can’t do proper work anymore. Watching other mercenaries grow has become my only hobby.”

“I think this is proper work too.”

Guild mercenaries were always supporters for the player.

Since they were always on the front lines during monster invasions, beginners would constantly ask two or three times a week how to save the guild mercenary NPCs during the final invasion.

Ian felt the same way; he had quite a favorable opinion of the mercenaries, including Chris.

“Isn’t it a job someone has to do for the city?”

Wasn’t that a line from one of the guild mercenary NPCs?

When Ian spoke those words, Chris, hearing them from a junior far below her, gave a small smile without answering.

“Let’s get back to work!”

“Ugh…”

Rin, who had been forced to swallow her food without even tasting it while caught between the two, hung her head at the shout to resume work.

As the surrounding mercenaries began to stand up, Chris also stood to supervise the afternoon session and spoke to Ian in passing.

“Captain Ian. I need someone to help with the inventory count over here. Would you lend a hand?”

“Ah, yes.”

At Chris’s call, Ian was moved to the task of checking the quantity of timber loaded onto the wagons.

Rin went off to move logs alone with a look of pure betrayal.

＊　＊　＊

“Traitor…”

“Sorry. But don’t you feel like your stamina has improved a bit?”

“There’s no way!”

After the work finished, Ian confirmed that Rin’s stamina had increased slightly.

The best outcome would have been getting [Strength Increase] to evolve it into a combination trait with [Agility Increase], but since Rin’s stamina was low to begin with, just getting stamina was a satisfactory result.

However, there was no way Rin, exhausted from working all day, could feel the change in her stats.

Rin had no choice but to massage her trembling arms and vent her complaints.

“Next.”

The line ahead of them cleared quickly, and soon it was Ian and Rin’s turn.

When they presented their mercenary tags at the counter, the clerk muttered while checking their names on the list.

“Ian Mercenary Group… two people.”

The clerk’s finger paused while checking the list.

Ian, watching from the front, noticed a memo written in what looked like Chris’s handwriting next to their names.

“One moment.”

The clerk reached under the counter, made a clinking sound with coins, and handed a pouch to each of them.

Their pouches contained a few more coins than the original compensation they were supposed to receive.

“…”

’She looks cold, but she’s really weak to compliments.’

The two of them shared an awkward smile as they thought of the expressionless, one-eyed mercenary’s face.

And so, ending a long day that was more intense than fighting monsters.

As they were about to head back to their lodging, the two felt a strange, different atmosphere than usual.

“…?”

Attempting to leave the guild, Ian and Rin found a crowd gathered in front of the mission board.

“Something must be happening.”

The mission board was updated when the guild opened in the morning, and the good missions were usually all taken by then.

At this awkward time, looking at the mission board usually only revealed unpopular missions that no one wanted.

People gathering in such a place meant… a new mission had been posted.

Posting in the middle of the day like this, without waiting for the next morning, meant it was an urgent mission.

Poking her head through the crowd, Rin read the new flyer posted in the center of the board.

“Night Tail? Captain, do you know what this is?”

Rin looked toward Ian after seeing the name of a monster she had never heard of.

Ian, who seemed to know exactly what it was, answered her immediately.

“It’s a mutant wolf. It’ll be about twice as big as the ones we’ve been hunting.”

“Whoa… The reward is several times higher than the others.”

D-rank missions basically paid much more than E-rank, but this mission’s reward was several times higher than even a typical D-rank mission.

“But why is this an urgent mission?”

“When animals like that become leaders, they lead a massive pack. They even raid villages. It’s best to find them as quickly as possible before the pack grows too large.”

Perhaps because of the high reward, the mercenaries in the guild were all talking about it with gleaming eyes.

A high reward meant high risk, but when it came to this much money, reason tended to go numb as greed surged.

All the mercenaries were buzzing with the same thoughts.

However, Rin, an E-rank mercenary who hadn’t even lost her rookie status yet, had recently begun to gain a sense of reality regarding her own skills.

Rin, letting go of such reckless greed, spoke to Ian with a detached face.

“A D-rank… that’s too much for us.”

“No, we’re taking this one.”

“What?”

Rin looked at Ian with a bewildered face and asked.

“Who’s going to catch that?”

“You are.”

“Pardon?”

Ian had been waiting for this mission to be posted on the board.

…

A|N: Guys if you aren’t liking the stroy lemme know. I can either try better with it or JUST TRY TO WRITE ANOTHER STORY LIKE THE OG || GILF HUNTER ||

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