The woman who was checking the documents we decided on had a slightly puzzled expression.
“Isn’t this going to be quite difficult?”
“It’s fine.”
“Yes, understood.”
The woman wrote up a document at her desk and handed it to us.
“If you take this and show it, they’ll assign you the job.”
The pay was 5 Silver per person. The duration was three days. The location was the harbor dock.
The job described in the document was concerning loading and unloading goods onto a ship.
We left the Commercial Guild and headed for the harbor.
It was quite a distance to walk from the inner city to the harbor.
There was a bus stop near the Commercial Guild, so we waited for the bus heading to the harbor.
I was quite surprised to find out that there were buses in Latnia.
Such facilities were not at all present in the Kingdom of Tholis or other kingdoms.
A little while later, the bus that arrived looked a bit different from Roran’s bus.
It was closer to a train than a bus.
After paying the fare, we sat down and waited until we reached our destination.
“By the way, wasn’t that thing from earlier okay?”
“That won’t do. It seemed a bit dangerous.”
It was a very simple task of just delivering an item to someone.
The pay was an unbelievable 1 Gold.
The woman from the Commercial Guild said it was a job even a child could do.
Simply delivering an item for 1 Gold seemed quite suspicious.
“Let’s check it out if we have time later.”
“You, no way?”
I memorized part of the contents of that document, thinking Aila wouldn’t take that job.
“No. If any problems arise, it’ll interfere with our work.”
“But it’s a job that pays 1 Gold just for delivering something.”
If I could intercept that item halfway through, I could simply solve the security issues.
“Don’t do anything conspicuous. And we aren’t criminals.”
The request given to me by a person named Python was an assassination.
In a sense, it would also count as committing a crime.
As I pondered whether to say this or not, the bus arrived at our destination.
As we got off the bus, the smell of the sea hit me hard.
A fishy yet salty breeze.
“It’s Dock No. 6.”
“Still, how about trying that job from earlier?”
“Ririan. You can’t earn big money easily.”
I thought Aila would agree to do it, but this time she was resolute.
“Alright then.”
Despite the thought of 1 Gold swirling around in my head, I decided to forget it.
As we entered the dock, a burly man greeted us.
“Are you the kids who said they’d come to work? You’re quite young…”
The man scratched his head, looking somewhat perplexed.
“Well, if you feel you can’t do it, just tell me right away.”
“Yes.”
The man took us to a small warehouse near the dock.
“See these boxes here? You just need to load them onto that ship.”
“All of them?”
“Yeah. Start.”
The largest box was about the size of my torso.
Aila picked up one of the boxes, and her expression suddenly stiffened.
“Is it very heavy?”
“No, it’s manageable.”
I connected a thread of Mana to one of the boxes and lifted it up.
While I had the physical strength of an ordinary child, I could move it easily using Mana.
Aila moved the cargo quietly with her innate stamina and strength as a beastkin.
I later got the hang of it and moved several with the Mana thread.
When the boxes inside the warehouse were quickly decreasing and only a few were left, the man came back.
“What, what’s this!”
“Yes?”
“You’ve already moved this much?”
The man was very surprised by the amount Aila and I had moved.
“Why?”
“It’s supposed to take three days…”
In Latnia, it was rare to see magical people, and those who learned magic didn’t do such jobs.
The results achieved in half a day using magic and magical power.
“Are you by any chance a magical person?”
“No. I can just use a bit of magic.”
Even among humans, there are magicians.
Revealing ourselves as magical beings would not lead to good outcomes. It was easier for us to be thought of as magicians.
“Why is a magician doing a job like this…”
“I need to pay for my tuition. Is there a problem?”
“No, well, I guess it’s good for us to finish the work quickly.”
When all the items were loaded onto the ship, the sun was just starting to set below the horizon.
“Good work today. Normally I’d pay you in three days, but since you finished in a day, I’ll give it to you right away. I’ll also add some bonus for doing well.”
Aila and I left the dock and counted the amount of pay we received.
The pay was 13 Silver each, with an additional 3 Silver added to the basic 5 Silver.
1 Silver is enough to stay for a day at a reasonably good inn within the city.
However, since we didn’t know how long we would be there, we looked for the cheapest inn possible.
It was a shabby inn located quite far from the city center.
The price was 10 Copper per day.
To save money, we rented only one room.
Entering the room located on the fourth floor, there was a small window facing the door.
It wasn’t very visible due to the buildings in front of the inn, but you could see the sea a bit in the distance.
In a room smaller than the academy dormitory room, there was only a bed and a desk.
“The room is a bit small.”
“It can’t be helped.”
After living in a spacious and comfortable hotel room, the difference felt serious stepping into such a shabby inn.
The biggest problem was that there was only one bed.
“I’m a bit tired from working for the first time in a long while, so I’ll sleep first.”
“Uh, okay.”
Aila, who settled on the bed first, quickly fell asleep.
Whether the job was really hard or not, Aila was occasionally groaning and making sounds in her sleep.
Outside the window, the outside had been completely engulfed in darkness.
Despite using mana threads all day long, I didn’t feel tired or exhausted.
In fact, I felt I still had enough stamina to pull an all-nighter.
Nevertheless, I thought it would be better to sleep, so I tried to position myself at the very edge of the bed.
Once I closed my eyes, I could hear sounds of singing and dancing from somewhere, as if a party was going on.
The noise faded away as time passed.
“Ah, you’re awake?”
A faintly sweet scent lingered at the tip of my nose, and my entire face was enveloped in something soft.
“Ah.”
Realizing the identity of the soft thing, I hurriedly pulled away from Aila’s embrace.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, it’s not like this is our first time.”
Now that was a fairly old memory.
Today, we returned to the Commercial Guild again in search of work.
Upon coming back again, the woman greeted us with an expressionless face.
“See, it was too much for kids, right?”
“No, we finished the job.”
“N-No way! I heard it was work meant for adult men for three days.”
“Actually, I’m a magician.”
At my words, the woman’s expression softened a bit.
“So, you’re here to find a new job today?”
“Yes.”
The woman took a few sheets of documents from the shelf and placed them before us.
“Choose from these.”
Again, jobs that required going outside the city were excluded.
While choosing, there was only one left.
“This is….”
The paper I held described the very task that I had suggested to Aila we should do separately just the day before.
Aila showed the document to the woman and asked several questions.
“Why is the pay for such a simple job 1 Gold?”
“It’s an easy job, but it’s quite dangerous.”
The woman said she would only reveal the detailed request if we accepted the job.
I was full of thoughts of accepting it, but Aila seemed quite troubled.
“It looks too dangerous…”
“You seem to worry a lot.”
When the woman spoke, Aila was startled and took a stance as if to quickly draw her sword.
“Don’t worry. I’ve seen mages keep beastkin as slaves.”
It seemed she thought Aila was my slave.
In Latnia, magical beings and beastkin were treated like slaves.
“So, will you take the job? You need the money, right?”
Now she was encouraging us to take the job first.
“Alright. I will do it.”
The woman stood up and locked the door at the entrance.
She drew the curtains at the window behind her desk, and when she pushed a bookshelf, a hidden door appeared.
“Let’s go inside and talk.”
Behind the hidden door was a dark room without any windows.
When the light was turned on, items that looked like safes covered the walls.
The woman opened one of the safes and pulled out a small box.
“You just need to deliver this to Kaluapa.”
“Kaluapa?”
“It’s a Thieves’ Mercenary Guild. I’ve noted the location here.”
“Wait a minute, I want to hear a proper explanation first.”
The woman casually sat on a chair in the room and pulled out a cigarette to smoke.
In the sealed room without any ventilation, the stench of the cigarette smoke filled the air in an instant.
“Phew… This request is from me.”
Exhaling smoke, the woman arrogantly crossed her legs.
“And Kaluapa is my patron.”
“Patron?”
“Yes. All I can tell you is this. Go on. Oh, and you know you shouldn’t open the contents of the bag, right?”
The woman smirked slightly while releasing a puff of smoke.
After leaving the Commercial Guild, Aila and I headed towards the city center to find the address written on the paper.
“I wonder what’s inside this?”
“From the fact that it’s tightly sealed to prevent the smell from leaking outside, it doesn’t seem like it’s anything good.”
Just in case, I cast a defensive magic on Aila.
“Don’t you need to cast it?”
“I have this.”
I showed Aila a necklace and explained.
In case of danger, it automatically absorbs my Mana and activates as a defensive necklace.
Thoroughly preparing, we searched for the location written on the paper and headed towards the harbor.
Even though it was daytime, sunlight didn’t reach this area well due to surrounding buildings.
“I think it’s that house over there.”
Between old wooden buildings, a particularly neatly built red-brick house stood out.
In front of it were unruly-looking people who seemed to be guarding the house.
“Um, we’re from the Commercial Guild.”
“Hilde sent you?”
Since I didn’t know the name of the woman who gave us the request at the Commercial Guild, I couldn’t readily answer.
When we failed to respond, a rough man opened the door and gestured for us to come inside.
The man led us into the dim interior and took us down to the basement.
Following a narrow and long corridor, we found a heavily armed man waiting in front of a thick iron door.
“Who are you?”
“Hilde sent the items.”
“Must be a delivery person.”
The man who guided us turned back, and the armed man opened the iron door.
Creeeak.
Inside the room, a man was sitting at a desk drinking.
“Come in.”
His deep, low voice didn’t seem to carry any strength at all.
