Chapter 82: Chapter 82: Registration Complete

Translator: ShiroiKaze/Soyokaze Translations

EDIT: Oh, and quick note: the user Primastella pointed out to me that the name “Haster” I’ve been using is likely actually the name “Hastur” in reference to Lovecraftian mythos, which this author seems to love borrowing names from. So I’m starting to use that this chapter. Thank you! I’ll consider revising previous chapters. Maybe.

Name reverted to “Haster” by popular opinion

After we chased off the lawless adventurers, we stopped by the guild to report the details.

While we’re at it, we’ll submit the requested materials.

“Oh, welcome back. Looks like Levy’s not with you today.”

“We came directly from the labyrinth today, so she’s still sitting at the inn.”

“That so? Too bad; I was hoping to chat it up with her, too. So what might you all be here for today?”

“Do you job, receptionist.”

Miss Remy was having plenty of idle chatter with Alec and Haster while complaining about not being able to chat.

She was sitting at the reception counter today too.

While Haster was taking out the 40 pieces of creeping vine material…

“Today we came to report on our task, and we also have information on some problematic adventurers.”

“Your task? You’ve only been at it for four days! You’re done already?!”

“Was that fast? Is it not supposed to be this simple?”

“Normally it takes a week even if they’ve built up their roots. The average would be about two weeks.”

“Two weeks? That’s longer than I expected.”

By Alec’s estimation, didn’t he think four days would be a normal period of time?

“On the first day they would jump right in, fight 1, 2, or 3 or them, get hurt, and take another two days to heal up… And then after repeating that about three times, they’ll finish. That’s the kind of difficulty it’s supposed to be.”

“Is that how it normally goes? We probably did it faster because we didn’t really get hurt much.”

“With more people, the rate of collection drops, but the risk of injury decreases. Even if that let you go into the labyrinth every day… Four days?”

Not getting injured is putting it lightly; we trampled them.

Haster and Alec were a rock solid front line. And with my magic shelling support, head-on battles are a cake walk.

“Veeery rarely, we’ve had experienced mercenaries and such leap into a horde of monsters and clear it in a day, but… Four days is really fast. This is promising.”

“I’m… Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

“Injuries from a fierce battle usually take ten days or more to heal up.”

Miss Remy giggled happily as she spoke with us. It’s just, that’s not something to laugh about.

Though I guess people dying would be a normal occurrence in the life of a guild receptionist…

“It doesn’t sound like you were too worried about us.”

“I wasn’t though? I mean, Levy introduced you after all. There’s no way you’d be normal! And just as expected, you cleared it in about half the time. And as proof of that… Here, your registration cards. I got them ready earlier.”

From under the counter, she pulled out some cards with a World Tree design, and presented them to us.

Oh? It looks like the design is a little different from Miss Levy’s.

“Looks like you were ready.”

“I believe in Levy’s abilities, after all.”

“This design seems a little different from Miss Levy’s, but…”

Basically the card’s border is red. I think Miss Levy’s had a yellow border to it.

I didn’t have anything to compare it to at the time, so it didn’t give me any pause.

“Oho, the young lady has a sharp eye, huh? The border represents your level of contribution to the guild. There are seven stages to it, and it’s built like a rainbow, starting from red it then changes to orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and then purple. If we only made our evaluations based on how far they’ve gotten in the labyrinth, it would be hard to distinguish their abilities, after all. So we retrofitted this on to the cards as well.”

“Why make it so much trouble…?”

“Because people will do anything to reach a higher rank. At the start you’re restricted to six people, but there are some who meet up after entering. There have even been pieces of trash in the past who bought tons of slaves to use as bait, aiming for a higher floor. And then there are girls like Levy who give it their all going solo; wouldn’t it just be offensive to them?”

“There are some pretty terrible people, huh.”

If someone like me were caught up in that, it would have been some good bait… I don’t die, so it would be infinite use.

Comparing that to the Lilith incident, I can’t really decide which would be better, but just thinking about it sends chills down my spine.

As a shivered thinking about it, Haster gave my shoulder a gentle pat to relieve me.

“We aren’t going to do something like that.”

“Of course, I know that.”

But if the time comes for it, I should probably be ready to take on that role myself if needs be…

Not that I would ever tell him that.

Miss Remy watched us while finishing up some kind of paperwork and passing it to another official to file away.

With the way she’s completing documents one-handed, it would seem she’s very skilled in clerical work.

“Okay, and now the processing of your full registration is complete. Once again, welcome to the World Tree labyrinth!”

“Yeah, we’re in your hands.”

“Well, we’re gonna speed through this thing, so look forward to that.”

“A pleasure to be working withchu!”

“Yup, a pleasure.”

We each gave our individual courtesies… Is Marle making a habit of tripping on her words?

That could be a problem if there’s an entrance interview or something for the academy.

“So then? What’s this information about problematic adventurers?”

“Oh right, there’s that too… The guys we got tangled up with here a while back, they attacked us in the labyrinth.”

“Those guys!”

“Well, they weren’t exactly tough to deal with, so we easily repelled their attack and sent them running.”

“You say ‘easily,’ but they’re mid-rankers who made it to the 50th floor, you know? Good job winning.”

That was 50th floor level? Maybe this labyrinth isn’t actually such a tough… Well, Bahamut said it’s practically impregnable, so we shouldn’t let our guards down.

Miss Levy has high physical abilities plus “Peerless Magic,” and she only got to floor 102, so we can infer the difficulty from that.

“In place of evidence, we confiscated their registration cards. I think they should be fleeing the city right about now.”

“Understood. For now we’ll search around. Well, as long as they don’t do anything that stands out, I don’t think we’ll find them though… Is that okay?”

“As long as they don’t come back to town, it’s not a problem. We’re planning on being here for a while, after all.”

“Oh right, Master. We’re going to be here for five years, so wouldn’t buying a house be cheaper than staying at an inn?”

Alec… Do you realize how much a house costs? It’s on a whole different level from that little shack of yours.

However, we do need to put in the work of teleporting to Mareba once a month, so it’s true that having a base would be best. We have to hide the magic circle, after all.

“I guess that might be best. Would you be able to introduce us to a suitable two or three story property here?”

“Supporting adventurers is basically our job, so we do handle such things sometimes, but it’s expensive you know? Even in the sparser areas, it’s still the capital.”

“We’ll be fine as long as it’s within 100 gold coins a month.”

“Bhuwha?!”

Miss Remy did a spit-take when Haster presented an unbelievable amount like it was nothing. It’s like he was hoping for a rented house at 1,000,000 yen a month, so that’s no surprise.

Come to think of it, he has no sense of monetary value.

Also, let’s not be spitting on his face. That’s where I lick him. Lickity-lick.

“A-are you people actually the children of some well-off family or something?”

“I’m an orphan turned mercenary.”

“I’m a merchant’s son.”

“I am… A beautiful girl of unknown origins.”

“I am basically a village chief’s daughter? I mean, right?”

I guess that kind of makes Marle a lady from a good family, right?

She’s the daughter of the representative of a pioneering village though, so it’s not like they have much in the way of assets. The merchant, Gusta, on the other hand has plenty of cash.

“A village chief’s daughter, and a merchant’s son. I see. I guess it just makes sense you would have more money than a regular person. Hey, you, want to go out with me?”

“Uhh, actually my parents are dead already, so I’m pretty much penniless now.”

“You can’t!”

This woman isn’t to be made light of either; she immediately went on the attack when she heard he had assets. I’m pretty sure she’s joking though.

Besides, the one who actually has the money is Haster.

Even now he’s making almost 300 gold coins a month in payment for “Rings of Mental Resistance”.

Lately I’ve been nearly 700 coins too. I have those plus the royalties(?) from the “Air Conditioners” and the “Light Stones,” so they’ve just been pouring in.

If it’s just 100 gold coins, then we should easily be able to pay it.

About 1200 coins a month are flowing into the cottage right now. Of course more than 200 of those are consumed in material costs, but that’s still 1000 gold coins… 10,000,000 yen…?

It’s really too bad we have nothing to use it on.

“Well, joking aside, if you have that much, then maybe you should get some “Rings of Mental Resistance” first? Above the 50th floor there are quite a few enemies that cause [Panic] you know? Those guys got stuck around there too, after all.”

“Yeah, we’re fine on that actually…”

Our strong point is that we can prepare “Rings of Mental Resistance” ourselves.

Haster hasn’t hidden the production method for them, so other magicians could make them too, but his magic power is on another level from most other magicians. The average one wouldn’t be able to accurately create them, so as a result, Haster has basically monopolized them.

Moreover, as a result of having the “Dragon’s Blood” and “Heart,” his magic power has jumped to multiple times its original, and his ring making has actually gotten better too.

“Then weapons and armor… Actually, you’re wearing some pretty nice armor, huh? Is that wyvern scale?”

“Uhhh, well…”

Not like we could tell her they’re from an ancient dragon.

“Your weapons seem pretty cheap in comparison. If you prioritize those, you might be able to jump up to the 50th floor all at once.”

“We’ll get there little by little.”

… We couldn’t exactly say that we were secretly switching out our weapons once we got in the labyrinth.

“Well, if you insist, then I could probably recommend a place around here.”

Miss Remy pulled a single file out from a drawer, and presented papers with a series of landscapes on them to us.

There are no photographs, so the locations were shown through landscape paintings.

“This one is near the labyrinth, so it would make for short round trips. This one is a bit far, but it’s more well-made than the previous one. This one doesn’t get quite enough sunlight because of the roots.”

She explained one property after another for us.

This city has the World Tree’s roots radiating out and running through the city, so the closer you get to the center the less sun exposure there is.

There’s also the position of the roots to consider, so the site location is apparently pretty important.

While listening to her explanations as we flipped through the file, my eyes stopped on a strange picture.

It was a house built underneath a root protruding into the air.

“Miss Remy, what about this one?”

“Ohh, that one… It was originally built to be a three story house, but then the root grew. It went across the roof. So, since there wasn’t much they could do about it, they made it a two story house and added a basement on instead. I can’t really recommend it though, you know? It doesn’t get much sun exposure, and there’s no telling when the weight of the root is going to crush it.”

“How is it structurally?”

“It was only built three years ago, so the house itself is pretty new. Thanks to the root, the people who were planning to move in ran away, so it’s essentially brand new house. The price also reflects it being new at 500 gold coins, but can’t take any complaints if it gets crushed.”

Not only is it for sale rather than rent, but it’s new too? A 500 gold coin price tag is well within our budget.

Normally 500 gold for a house that could collapse at any time would probably be expensive, but if I just cast [Toughness] on the whole house, we shouldn’t have to worry about it collapsing at all.

Plus the roof is the World Tree’s root, so we won’t have to concern ourselves with roof leaks either.

The basement also give its big points. Because I can hide a [Teleportation] magic circle down there.

There are also plenty of rooms, with six on the first floor, four on the second, and four in the basement. Complete with a bathroom and toilet.

One last thing to worry about is…

“How far is it from the academy?”

“The academy? It’s not too far away.”

Assuming Marle passes into the academy, we’ll have to consider how convenient her commute is, but it doesn’t look like that’s too bad either.

This is actually a pretty nice deal for us, isn’t it?

“Haster, I want to take a look at this house.”

“Hm, ahh… It actually has a similar feel as the cottage, now that I look at it.”

Has a basement, two stories, poor sun exposure… I guess it is pretty similar.

“Hum, well then. It should hold if we reinforce the walls and roof, and we’ll be able to live there nicely… Miss Remy, save this house for us. We’ll look at the real thing later, and if there are no problems, we’ll probably purchase it.”

“Oooh?! You’re really okay with it? This property has quite a few problems with it though.”

“It’s actually pretty nice for what we need.”

“Alright, then I’ll hold this for you, so make sure come get it!”

“Hold on, we haven’t committed to it yet.”

And so we unexpectedly found ourselves a villa in Belit.

Fufufu, us newlyweds just got ourselves a brand new house?