The Heavy Smoker and the Reaper of the Wheat Field (2)

“Excuse me. Coming through.”

“Hey, cut it out! Don’t push! Are you the only one who got a quest?!”

As I parted the crowd and moved forward, some adventurers began whining, but there was no need to pay them any mind. Ignore anyone who squawks. Adventurers live by survival of the fittest.

─Swish.

Once I reached the bulletin board, I looked for a vermin-extermination quest. Then I spotted a quest notice hanging smack in the center.

[Farm Vermin Extermination—Farmland in front of Sargadis’s west gate. 5 copper per day.]

“Oh, 5 copper.”

“What? 5 copper? Where, where?”

The unknown adventurer standing nearby reacted to my mutter. I didn’t answer and simply pointed at the quest notice. He followed my fingertip, then clicked his tongue.

“Tsk. What? This is vermin extermination.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Huh? You don’t know what this is? Heh heh. Then you might as well go at least once. It’s all experience.”

What a thing for that bastard to say. There wasn’t a single decent job among those dressed up in flowery language like that. Slightly worried, I returned to my companions.

“There is one. Farmland in front of the west gate, five copper per day.”

“In front of the west gate? Then that must be the farmland of Mr. Hotulusil, the yeoman farmer. He’s a pretty decent fellow.”

“A yeoman farmer?”

No, fuck, more importantly, was Hotulusil a name? How could someone’s name be like that? Was he Kitai?

“A yeoman farmer is someone who works both the lord’s farmland and private farmland. The lord selects excellent farmers he trusts, entrusts them with cultivation, and gives them a share of the harvest. I was even selected for it when I was young….”

At the end, Gentric briefly lost himself in memories of the old days, then brushed aside his past glory with a short sigh and chuckled.

“Heh heh. Anyway, since you found us some work, Nord, this old man only needs to go to the reception desk. You’ve saved me.”

“Wait, what? Good heavens, have I been used?”

“Used? Didn’t I recommend a good quest in return for your help? I hope to see you at the site later. Ho ho ho.”

The seasoned old pro adventurer said so and headed for the reception desk.

Frang, who had been watching him, chuckled beside me.

“Nord, you got played, didn’t you?”

“Well, so what? We had to go look at quests anyway.”

I answered Frang, who was sticking out her tongue. I wasn’t particularly upset. I owed old man Gentric for helping us during our previous quest, too.

I folded my arms and asked while recalling the day we had paid our inn fees.

“Anyway, Frang? What about your inn fee? Mine is up for renewal tomorrow.”

“Same for me. So let’s take a different quest today and start the vermin extermination tomorrow.”

“Should we?”

After discussing it, we decided to stay at the inn just for tonight. The vermin-extermination quest would continue throughout the harvest season. Since it was similar to a short-term part-time job, there was no need to go immediately.

“Oh, right. Frang? Should we use the same inn, too? Even if we leave combining our rooms for later, it would be better to stay at the same place. It’s hard to go back and forth just to see each other every time.”

When I said that, Frang thought for a moment before answering.

“Hmm…. Let’s discuss that properly later. If we move inns, we have to say goodbye to Ms. Beinya, and we also have to compare which inn is better.”

“Got it. Then now… let’s look for a quest to do today.”

Fuck, damn it. We were back to square one. When I lowered my shoulders, Frang covered her mouth and laughed.

After that, Frang and I sorted through the quests on the bulletin board and took one to gather herbs. It was a quest to make regular deliveries to the Mages’ Guild. The herbs I gathered might even end up in Tirsi’s lab.

The quest proceeded with me essentially being carried by Frang’s ability to gather wild plants.

Frang roamed through the forest, nearly putting Bear Grylls to shame, digging up herbs and all kinds of wild greens. I even began to suspect that my girlfriend might really be half-elf and half-dwarf.

“Nord! Look! It’s an Angberi mushroom! It’s really sweet and delicious if you roast it, you know?”

“Mushrooms are sweet? Why on earth does such a mushroom exist?”

Anyway, the herb-gathering quest went without any trouble, and it was quite enjoyable because it felt like a date.

The only slightly annoying part was the constant stream of flying insects buzzing around us.

***

The next morning, Frang and I accepted the quest and set out.

There were four adventurers on the vermin-extermination quest: Frang and me, along with a middle-aged man and a young man.

“Nice to work with you.”

I took the initiative and greeted them. Normally, when adventurers went out on an extermination quest, a Bronze-class adventurer was supposed to lead the party, but due to the nature of this job, there wasn’t one today.

A vermin-extermination quest was like a short-term part-time job, with various adventurers coming and going each day. There was probably one Bronze-class adventurer waiting at the farmland as the representative.

“Since we probably won’t see much of each other once we start working, how about we skip the introductions?”

“Sure.”

“Sounds good.”

The middle-aged man and the short-haired young man agreed with me.

To be blunt, we could hardly even be called a party today. When you go out to do temporary parcel-packing work, you don’t introduce yourself to every person you happen to work with that day, do you?

We weren’t people who would entrust our lives to one another, so we decided to simply remember each other’s faces and leave it at that. There would be other adventurers besides the four of us, staying and eating on the farm. Introductions were meaningless.

We exchanged rough greetings and headed straight for the farmland.

In this otherworld, farmland was generally located outside the city walls. Enclosing the farmland within the walls would cost too much.

“An Iron-class adventurer party? You may pass.”

As always, we reported our business to the guard standing watch at the gate and went outside through the western gate.

Our party didn’t even form a proper formation. We walked along as if we were taking a stroll, since we weren’t such cowards that we had to fear trouble near the city gate.

Whoooosh─.

Once we passed through the western gate, we saw a wheat field not far away. It looked like a golden plain surrounded by stone walls and wooden fences. The farmland was so vast that it stretched almost all the way to the horizon.

“Wow…. These fields are huge.”

Frang said this as she walked along the open path beside the farmland. I answered while happily observing her astonished expression.

“They are. With fields this big, even if you put dozens of serfs to work, harvesting alone would take weeks.”

They would need to put hundreds of serfs to work to harvest everything during the harvest season. It made sense for them to hire temporary workers every year.

Whiiiish─.

When the autumn wind blew, Frang drew her neck in as though she were cold. When I held out my hand, Frang took it.

“Heh heh heh.”

“Hee hee hee.”

Holding hands, we snickered as we walked along the path beside the wheat field. The middle-aged man walking ahead of us gave us a look as if we were hurting his eyes, but I didn’t give a fuck. A couple was, by definition, a kind of harmful vermin that violated public morals in public places.

Anyway, seeing such an unbelievably vast field made me think a little of my hometown.

‘A farmer.’

What kind of image did farmers have in the minds of people in the twenty-first century?

To be blunt, farming probably wouldn’t be seen as a particularly impressive profession. If a blind-date prospect worked as a farmer, the woman’s side probably wouldn’t consider him particularly successful, and the man, knowing that, would introduce himself somewhat timidly.

But farming was an impressive profession.

It was hard work, and a tough job whose income depended on whether each year brought a good or bad harvest. Even so, farmers were important people who supplied the nation with rice.

That was why I had always respected farmers. It definitely wasn’t because my paternal family worked in agriculture.

Anyway, as someone who respected farmers, I could say one thing: farms were generally much larger than people imagined.

Large farms were really fucking huge. They operated on an entirely different scale.

Looking at land covered with rows of greenhouses made my heart swell. In vast, blessed farmlands like those in the central United States, they even said the agricultural area was larger than the entire territory of Korea.

Even apart from that, there were many farmers who were far richer than me, a man who made two million won a month on minimum wage. I remembered that my paternal grandfather had lived comfortably in a fairly spacious house, too.

The farmers of America, the country with the largest scale of agriculture in the world, earned more money than many ordinary businesses.

Those people also had incredible farming machinery. It was enormous and cool, practically a tank for agriculture. If a zombie outbreak ever happened and American cowboy zombies ran rampant, they could probably end the crisis by driving tractors over them.

By the same logic, people who owned vast farmland in this otherworld were powerful figures to match.

Apart from the many ruins unearthed there, Sargadis was an ordinary domain. Since agriculture was its main source of income, land-rich, property-rich farmers were essentially this otherworld’s version of building owners.

Perhaps for that reason, until we reached the farm, I had imagined that the owner of such vast farmland would look like a fat nobleman.

─But fuck.

The bastard who appeared as the farm owner was an elf.

“I am Hotulusil, a farmer.”

The male elf had given only his name and called that an introduction.

I was so dumbfounded that I couldn’t even react. No, fuck, why was an elf doing farmwork? Wasn’t the rule that elves loved and cherished nature?

Wasn’t farming basically growing plants so you could kill them? Farming was murder to an elf. Or was he a Kitai elf who completely ignored that whole nature-respecting thing?

“You don’t need to introduce yourselves. The details of the quest are written on the notice. However, you must report by the evening before you head back that you will be returning. Keep this in mind, since failing to do so will interfere with the same-day wage payment procedure.”

Hotulusil calmly explained the work.

He wore a large straw hat on his head and a sleeveless vest. He was the very definition of a straw-hat fuck-elf.

With his handsome appearance and the wheat field behind him, he did look fairly well suited to the role.

Elves really were a race of face geniuses. They were the kind of people who could probably survive without starving to death simply by relying on their looks.

Still, the mismatch between Hotulusil’s flowing, straight blond hair and his bulging arm muscles looked incredibly gay.

This wasn’t a statement against gay people. I had no prejudice against women with short hair, but I did have some prejudice against long-haired men. In this case, it was that bastard’s fault for being born an elf.

What the fuck was the stick strapped to his back, anyway? Was it a switch for beating slaves?

“The reason we hired you today is to exterminate vermin that are digging up the crops. However, it would be appreciated if you helped with the farm work while you are waiting.”

Hotulusil said this. He had used the expression ‘it would be appreciated if you helped,’ but apparently, if we refused to help with the farm work and tried only to exterminate vermin, we wouldn’t receive the quest fee.

That was because harmful vermin rarely came near the city to wreck crops.

If an adventurer failed to catch the harmful vermin listed in the quest, the farm owner could make the following excuse:

─So? Did you catch the vermin I asked you to catch? You didn’t, didja? Then I can’t pay the quest fee.

It wasn’t entirely wrong, so there was no way to argue back.

If this had been a farm-guard quest, we could have been paid simply for standing around all day, but this was, after all, a ‘vermin-extermination’ quest.

We had accepted an extermination quest and failed to catch anything, so it was only natural that we wouldn’t receive the quest reward.

For that matter, even if we caught vermin somewhere else and claimed that we had completed the quest, it wouldn’t work.

─I asked you to catch the bastards ruining my crops, not something living in the forest, did I?

If the farm owner made that argument, there would be nothing left to say in reply.

No matter how many tricks an adventurer tried, a farm owner had plenty of ways to screw over those punks. Adventurers like us were always in the weaker position, twenty-four hours a day and in every corner of the country.

‘Still, since they called us here to help with the farm work, they’ll pay us as long as we earn our keep.’

Farm owners couldn’t use such tactics against adventurers who had worked hard. If they did, they would have to harvest everything with only their own families and slaves from the following year onward.

Thus, the reality of this quest was close to a win-win arrangement.

A farm owner looking for sturdy temporary workers he could hire for just one season without having to pay for their meals.

Adventurers looking to safely build a track record and collect their wages.

The people on the two sides were in a relationship where neither could simply stab the other in the back. All adventurers like us had to do was work hard without slacking off, then collect our records and pay.

‘If only the farm owner weren’t an elf.’

I clicked my tongue inwardly. I was worried that even that straw-hat fuck-elf might stab me in the back like Yerna.

Every elf I had met so far had been a complete bastard. Since the only elf I knew was that fucking bitch Yerna, the equation elf = complete bastard held at a one-to-one ratio.

Therefore, elves were fuck-elves with a 100 percent probability.

The sample size was small, and that had to be taken into account, but I still had the right to propose this hypothesis. Any bastards with complaints could submit the paper I had spent three years writing under my name, then talk to me.

“Before putting you to work, I’d like to see what you’re capable of.”

Regardless of what I was thinking, the elf continued speaking. The straw-hat fuck-elf, arms folded, gave us a quick look.

“We elves of Tatarnia don’t trust the words of those who don’t act, you see.”