Chapter 10
Time passed, and it was already lunchtime.
I finished a hearty meal and headed to the meeting place.
It was 11:30. Sargadis also had a large clock tower, so it was easy to tell the time. Pocket watches were expensive, so most cities had one clock tower like that to announce the time.
I had left thirty minutes early because I was bored as hell.
I'd been waiting since six in the morning, and I thought I was going to die from fidgeting. Waiting six hours in an otherworld with so little entertainment was a form of hard labor.
Trudge, trudge.
When I reached the meeting place, a crowd had gathered in front of the fountain. Apparently, lots of people used this place as a meeting spot.
─Gush, gush, gush, gush!
Water continued to spurt from the small fountain.
Just looking at structures like this fountain and the clock tower told me this wasn't an ordinary medieval society. It felt like a modern civilization that had lasted for more than a thousand years after the Industrial Revolution failed. It also resembled a fantasy world from a Disney○ movie.
“Are you Mr. Nord?”
Just then, someone spoke to me while I was admiring the fountain.
It was a woman wearing a sleeveless robe. She had wrapped a flashy-looking miniskirted robe in a cloak that left her shoulders exposed. Her white hair and sky-blue eyes made her look exactly like an ice mage at first glance.
“Yes. I'm Nord. Are you the person who took on the role of party leader for this request? Uh….”
“I'm Tirsi. Tirsi Armashunas.”
“Yes, Ms. Tirsi. I'm sorry. I hadn't been given the party members' details separately.”
I'd forgotten to ask. The receptionist hadn't told me, either. Tirsi nodded as if she'd expected that.
“Even if you had asked, you wouldn't have been told. The party members' names and descriptions are only given to the party leader.”
“What? Why? Is it because they can't be bothered to explain it every time?”
“Probably? Parties must be formed and disbanded constantly every day. Still, I know who they are, so don't worry.”
Despite her cold coloring, Tirsi had gentle eyes and a gentle way of speaking.
I was fucking relieved. If the party leader was sane, there was no way the job could go completely to shit with just the two of us.
“By the way, you came quite early.”
Tirsi said that while looking toward the clock tower.
“It isn't even thirty minutes before the appointed time. I thought I'd be the earliest one here.”
“Heh heh. Embarrassingly, this is my first request, so I don't know how to kill time until the meeting. Besides, doesn't arriving early make a better first impression than being late?”
“That's true. You might be late to an appointment by accident, but you shouldn't do that the very first time you meet someone.”
Was she being finicky for a mage, or broad-minded by mage standards? People might have different opinions, but Tirsi's attitude looked perfectly decent to me.
Magic itself was common in this other world, but plenty of mages were rotten people. They were bastards who had learned how to draw magic circles instead of proper table manners and the virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom.
They also had an outrageous amount of academic pride, treated hypocrisy as a passive skill, and lived for the pleasure of feeling superior.
I understood their feelings. How proud would anyone be to have lived as an intellectual in this uncivilized world? They could be obnoxious, but as long as they didn't give me shit, it wasn't my problem.
And mage bastards were still better than motherless(母親less) university professors. Goddamn it, why was I supposed to figure out how to park the elephant he rode around on?
“Ah, another party member is coming.”
Tirsi said that while fiddling with her wand. A white-haired old man came walking toward us from far away. He had a short spear and a wooden shield strapped to his back, and he wore a meager leather cuirass over his chest.
“Ho ho ho. As I suspected, it was you, Lady Tirsi. Good thing I came out early.”
“Mr. Gentric. Hehe. It's been a while.”
“Are you two acquainted?”
I asked as the two greeted each other warmly. The Audumla Guild wasn't particularly large. It made sense that people would get to know each other while working.
“Yes. I met him while working on a request before.”
“I am Gentric Harius. A pleasure to meet you.”
The old man offered his hand, so I accepted without thinking. He was wearing gloves, but I could still feel a fair amount of solid muscle through the leather.
‘They say you should be careful around old men in an industry where young people drop dead one after another.’
The logic was that an old man who had survived while everyone else died couldn't possibly be weak. But that old man looked like an Iron-class scrub, so he probably wasn't some incredible expert.
I guessed he was simply someone with an outstanding ability to survive and make a living without getting killed. The adventurer industry was this world's version of a small-business factory and a manual-labor site, after all.
Even so, his years of experience wouldn't have vanished. Depending on when he had started working as an adventurer, he was at least a more experienced veteran than me, so I decided to trust him.
“Now we're only missing one person.”
“Indeed. Three of us have gathered even though it isn't even thirty minutes before the meeting time.”
“I heard that the party leader was a Bronze-class mage, so I came out early just in case.”
“…Don't make it sound as if I'm finicky about time.”
Tirsi grumbled, and Gentric and I laughed together.
Our luck with this party seemed decent. Three people had gathered at the meeting place thirty minutes early. Some might have harshly criticized us for lacking time-management skills, but I was different.
I had the mindset that it was better for me to arrive early and wait than to get distracted and make someone else wait.
That mindset usually came from consideration for others. In an otherworld overflowing with natural-born psychopaths and acquired sociopaths, finding party members like these wasn't easy.
But anyway.
As was only natural, the last person still hadn't arrived even after we waited nearly twenty minutes.
“The last person is late.”
“But it's still ten minutes before the appointed time.”
“Even so, the three of us are all here.”
Gentric looked dissatisfied, but we were the ones who had arrived too early. Still, human psychology was what it was: having to wait to set out because of one person naturally made us annoyed.
That was when it happened.
“There she is. The last party member… huh?”
Tirsi, who had been looking at her pocket watch, turned to the left and suddenly gaped.
What was going on? I looked in the direction Tirsi was facing and spotted a short woman sprinting toward us.
Even with her face completely covered by a hood, I could have bet my life on her being a woman, because her breasts stood out with astonishing clarity even from this distance.
“I-I'm sorry! Am I late?!”
She was wearing a cheap hood that hung much lower than Tirsi's. It looked like a fucking gray poncho.
“I-I'm Francesca Eitrinen, a half-dwarf! I'm truly sorry for being late!”
She panted as she pushed back her hood. She was a beautiful woman with black hair, blue eyes, and a pure appearance. She looked young, but not childlike.
A half-dwarf.
Contrary to the impression given by the ‘dwarf’ race, there wasn't a single hair on Francesca's face.
From what I'd heard, female dwarves in this world didn't grow beards. Dwarven beards were a cultural factor, not a racial trait.
It would have been cruel to force Tolkien-style dwarves on the actual otherworldly dwarves, anyway. If someone told me, “You're a Yellow Monkey, so throw away your sword and fight with kung fu and archery,” I would have been generous enough to present them with a zero-dan taekwondo spinning kick.
Still, her short stature was just like the dwarves I knew. About 150 or 160 centimeters? She was practically the size of an elementary or middle school student.
But her breasts were fucking enormous.
─Jiggle, jiggle.
I'll say it twice because it's important. Her breasts were fucking enormous.
They were big. Really fucking big. Absurdly big. Anyway, they were insanely huge. Could her bust measurement have given her height a good run for its money?
What was even more astonishing was that she was wearing leather armor. Until then, I hadn't known that breasts were capable of such insane movement even when firmly wrapped in a bra and leather armor.
“Um, excuse me…? Are you the party going out on the sewer reconnaissance request…?”
Francesca asked hesitantly. Tirsi had frozen like a statue without moving an inch, so Francesca seemed to be growing worried that she'd made a mistake.
Gentric and I exchanged glances. Our gazes rapidly darted between Francesca's breasts and Tirsi's.
Whoosh! Whoosh-whoosh! Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh! It was a swift and precise movement, exactly like the decisive final shot that determined the winner of a world billiards championship.
─An overwhelming bust difference.
That was why our party leader had lost her mind.
Tirsi wasn't small, either. She had to be a B cup. But for a woman, breast size was the same as dick size for a man. Being confronted with an overwhelming gap, then reflecting on oneself and falling into a stun, was inevitable.
So Gentric and I greeted her first to buy the party leader time to recover from her status ailment.
“Ahem, ahem. Yes. We are the party that received the sewer reconnaissance request. I am Gentric. A pleasure to meet you, Miss Francesca.”
“I'm Nord. I look forward to working with you today.”
“Oh, yes! I look forward to working with both of you!”
Francesca answered brightly, sounding relieved. Tirsi belatedly recovered from her stun and spoke.
“…T-Tirsi Armashunas. You don't need to apologize. In fact, you arrived earlier than the appointed time.”
“Y-yes! Thank you!”
Francesca answered briskly, as if she were slightly nervous.
Tirsi looked like the leader of a group project to me, but Francesca might have regarded her as an impressive person because she was both the party leader and a mage. Gentric had also spoken politely to Tirsi.
“Then let's get going.”
Anyway, after exchanging introductions, we followed the party leader, who had pulled herself together, toward the sewer entrance.
***
The sewer entrance was in the city's slum district.
Sewage treatment facilities were NIMBY facilities even in this other world. NIMBY facilities were generally built in the countryside, where land was cheap, or in areas packed with undesirable facilities, and the slums were exactly that kind of place in Sargadis.
The people of the slums looked at us, but before long they tucked their tails and returned to what they had been doing. They couldn't pick a fight with a four-person adventurer party that included a mage.
Still, judging by the way they glared at us, I would probably have been pickpocketed if I'd come alone. I needed to be careful.
I looked around as I followed Tirsi, and after walking for about ten minutes, we arrived at the sewer entrance.
“Oh, you're from the Audumla Guild, right?”
A young man greeted us at the entrance. He was wearing the standard-issue equipment of a guard. He must have been a guard for the sewage treatment facility.
But seeing him gave me a sudden, completely unrelated question.
Come to think of it, managing the sewers was the territory's responsibility. So why keep guards like him stationed there while paying adventurers to perform sewer reconnaissance?
My question was answered by the guard's introduction.
“I'm George, the client for this request.”
Fuck. It was a subcontractor's subcontractor.
Just as public officials made public-service workers do their bidding, the guards here subcontracted the management of an undesirable facility to adventurers.
‘Isn't this fucking illegal?’
It was incredibly unfair, but arguing about it in this uncivilized otherworld would have been foolish. The lord must have turned a blind eye, which was why the guards and the adventurer guild were allowed to trade requests like this.
I decided to think of it as a kind of win-win relationship.
The guard wouldn't have to return to his post reeking of sewage after the reconnaissance, while we would build up our records and get paid.
Good enough was good enough. If it was truly fucking awful, I could simply stop taking sewer reconnaissance requests in the future.
“I'm Tirsi Armashunas, a Bronze-class adventurer serving as the party's temporary leader.”
Tirsi, who was acting as party leader, stepped forward as our representative.
“Are there any unusual circumstances regarding this reconnaissance request?”
“No, no. There was nothing unusual up through the last reconnaissance. This is simply a routine patrol for maintenance.”
George waved his hands dismissively.
Judging by his age, the senior guards had probably dumped this chore on him. He had the face of a public servant praying that nothing would go wrong while he was on duty.
“When was the last reconnaissance?”
“A month ago. But I also went inside with some repairmen about two weeks ago. We only encountered a few monsters on the way back after finishing the sewer repairs.”
That information wasn't much help. Tirsi nodded as if she understood, then turned to us.
“Nothing seems out of the ordinary. I'd like to begin the request immediately. Does anyone need to make any preparations?”
“I'm fine.”
“I'm fine too.”
“I-I'm fine too!”
When there were no objections, Tirsi nodded as well.
“Then let's go in right away. Everyone, put on a mask.”
“Huh?”
Why were we suddenly supposed to wear masks? No one had told me to bring one. I was extremely flustered when I saw Gentric take a mask from inside his clothes and Tirsi fiddle with her earrings while chanting some kind of spell.
The warrior was patching over the problem with equipment, while the mage was doing the same with magic!
It felt as if I were the only one who hadn't brought an essential item for clearing the dungeon. What the fuck? Professor Brammathon's book hadn't mentioned masks, either!
“It seems you don't have a mask?”
Guard George asked while standing there with his spear.
His words made me feel a little wronged. Fuck. I never thought the day would come when someone would call me a maskless loser after I'd survived the Ching-chong COVID crisis in the twenty-first century!
“Is it really necessary? I hadn't heard that we needed to prepare masks separately.”
I wanted to believe this was all some kind of superstition. I wanted to believe that masks were unnecessary and that everyone else was wearing them because they were cowards.
“Ah, apparently people didn't pay much attention to it in the past. But recently, the mage guild said… what was it? Toxic gas? They say it's better to wear masks to protect against it.”
But fuck, that was an extremely reasonable explanation.
The only ventilation in a sewer came through the drains. It was a semi-enclosed space filled with sewage and wastewater, so it made sense that toxic gas could build up.
“Then do we need to get masks with anti-gas magic or something? Iron-class adventurers don't have any money. How are we supposed to afford that?”
“Gas masks? No. We just wear cloth masks.”
What the fuck? Then masks were completely pointless.
“I see. Cloth masks.”
I sighed. A mere cloth mask would be useless against toxic gas. Still, spending more money than the request's reward to buy a gas mask would have been idiotic.
‘I guess I can just go in like this.’
If it were dangerous, Professor Brammathon would have written it down. In the chapter on ruins and dungeons, he'd said to bring a gas mask or some means of detoxification. The gas in the sewer must have been harmless enough that I wouldn't die even if I ignored it.
Tirsi fiddled with the wand she'd used to chant her spell and spoke in a slightly apologetic tone.
“I'm sorry. I haven't learned enough yet, so I don't really have the capacity to cast it on you too, Mr. Nord….”
“Heh heh. It's my fault, so why are you apologizing, Ms. Tirsi? I understand completely. You don't need to apologize.”
It would be bad if she cast a status-resistance buff on me and couldn't use magic when something happened. Prioritizing damage over healing was a cardinal rule of Korean gamers.
If my head got a little dizzy, I could just go to a temple afterward. I had quite a bit of money saved up, too.
“Um, excuse me….”
Poke, poke.
As I was thinking that, someone poked me in the back with a finger. There was only one person at this spot who wasn't in my field of vision.
“Ms. Francesca?”
“Ah, yes. Um… if you need one, please use this. I made it from new cloth yesterday, so it's clean.”
Francesca opened up the mask with both hands and showed it to me. The black cloth mask looked clean, just as she'd said.
“No, but if I take this, won't you have no mask to wear, Ms. Francesca?”
“Don't worry about me. Dwarves are sturdy. Aside from the smell, this is no different from my homeland's underground mines.”
“…Is that so?”
Dwarves were the sort of people who built cities underground. Perhaps they were more resistant to toxic gas and low oxygen than the other human races.
“Thank you for lending it to me. I'll use it carefully and return it to you.”
In any case, refusing after she'd offered it like that would have been rude. I accepted the mask gratefully and put it on.
─Sss.
I tried breathing through the mask. A slightly refreshing scent wafted out, along with the distinct body odor of a woman.
It smelled nice, but I felt like I was doing something fucking wrong. I felt like a pervert burying his nose in clothes a woman had worn.
“Is everyone ready?”
George, who had been watching us, bent down and picked up some things sitting by his feet. They were a large lantern and a map.
“Don't lose the lantern or the map under any circumstances. Follow the map exactly, and write down any damaged sewers or facilities on this paper.”
“Understood.”
Tirsi accepted the equipment and spoke to us.
“I'll carry the lantern and map since my hands are free. But in case of an unforeseen situation, I'd like someone else to handle the notes. Does anyone know how to write?”
“I can write.”
“Me too.”
“What? Am I the only illiterate one? I sure wasted my years.”
Everyone except the illiterate Gentric knew how to write. Gentric scratched his head vigorously.
Tirsi looked back and forth between Francesca and me. The paper went to Francesca.
“It makes more sense to entrust it to the rogue than the warrior. The note-taker's hands will be occupied, so they won't be able to respond to a sudden battle.”
It was a reasonable suggestion, so no one objected, and we finally entered the sewer.