Chapter 32
“Here, this is the list of materials we want you to bring back.”
I took the note Marie-senpai handed me.
It was a list she’d put together after I visited her guild, 〈Patch Seal Sticker〉, and met a few of its members.
As I’d expected, this was definitely a delivery quest.
I was relieved there weren’t any burly 【Muscle Warriors】 waiting to ambush me and force me to take out a hefty loan on an expensive painting. Not that 〈Dan-Katsu〉 has loans.
Looking over the note, I saw that, as expected, it was mostly materials from lower-tier beginner dungeons. But...
“That’s quite a lot... And materials from three different lower-tier beginner dungeons—Shocker dungeons, at that.”
“Huh. You’re a first-year, right, big bro? You just got here, so you haven’t even challenged a lower-tier beginner Shocker dungeon yet, but you’re pretty well-informed. I wish my guildmates would learn from you.”
Marie-senpai sounded impressed that I could tell which dungeons the materials came from with just one look at the note.
〈Shocker〉 was the nickname for a lower-tier beginner dungeon.
Mid-tier beginner dungeons were called 〈Shocchu〉, and upper-tier beginner dungeons were called 〈Shokko〉, the latter name evoking their high difficulty.
But I hadn’t told her I’d never challenged a lower-tier beginner Shocker dungeon, so how did she know?
“Hehe, you look puzzled. It’s simple, big bro. You’re the 【Hero】 everyone’s talking about right now, aren’t you? Rumor’s already spread that a first-year 【Hero】 cleared the 〈Beginner Dungeon〉 yesterday faster than anyone else in your year.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh, seriously!”
I had no idea where the rumor had leaked from, but word sure spread fast!
That’s what happens when you’re famous. Hehe, I can’t help it.
“You look pretty happy about it. You seem like you’ll go far, big bro.”
Oops, I guess it showed on my face. I took a sip of the tea she’d served me to clear the air.
“All right, I understand what you’re asking for. I should be able to handle it without any trouble.”
“Right! Usually, it’s a pain figuring out where the materials come from, but you seem to know all of that already, so this is a big help.”
According to Marie-senpai, quite a few people accepted delivery quests only to fail because they didn’t know where to find the requested materials or what they were.
Apparently, just recognizing the materials by name was enough to earn a lot of trust.
Well, unlike ordinary games, 〈Dan-Katsu〉 had an absurdly large variety of drops.
It was perfectly normal for a single monster to drop ten or twenty different kinds of materials and resources, so unless you looked up what dropped from each monster, things could get really annoying.
In 〈Dan-Katsu〉, it was all too easy to search blindly and come up empty-handed.
“Now, next—”
“I know. The reward, right? Here’s what our guild can offer.”
When I looked at her questioningly, Marie-senpai showed it to me as if she’d been waiting for me to ask.
“Ten uses at our 〈Patch Seal Sticker〉! How about it?”
A use pass—in other words, a coupon. Marie-senpai showed me ten of them with a smug grin.
“I see.”
“Hehe. You’re definitely gonna need this sooner or later, Hero big bro, right?”
“You bet!”
〈Patch Seal Sticker〉 was a production guild.
So what did they specialize in? A 〈Design Paint Change Shop〉 for equipment. In other words, styling.
Just like in other games, it was an everyday problem to have equipment with great stats but hate its colors, design, or shape.
You usually had to choose between performance and appearance. Equipment that gave you both, like the 〈Sky Series〉, was pretty rare.
That’s where the 〈Design Paint Change Shop〉 came in. It was a production business staffed mainly by people with Jobs like 【Color-Changing Mage】, 【Decorator】, and 【Barber】.
As the name suggests, these shops let you customize your equipment’s appearance to your liking without changing its performance. It was pretty important.
Nobody wants to wear equipment that looks bad. And that’s even more true in real life.
If you could use one of these shops to coordinate a mismatched assortment of equipment that wasn’t part of a set, you could see just how important they were.
At this Dungeon Academy, students had to wear the academy uniform, but their equipment was up to them.
If you wanted to enjoy fashion, a 〈Design Paint Change Shop〉 was essential.
Of course, you couldn’t customize your gear so much that it became unrecognizable. Even so, changing the colors or design and adding patches could dramatically change its overall look.
As a 【Hero】 who’d suddenly attracted a ton of attention, this was definitely going to be a necessary expense for me going forward.
It wouldn’t improve my combat power right now, but looking ahead, it wasn’t a bad investment.
Design paint changes cost a lot of Miel, so getting ten uses for free made this a pretty lucrative quest.
Still, Marie-senpai was quite the shrewd operator for someone with such a cute face.
It was a three-birds-with-one-stone strategy: keep her connection with the 【Hero】—me—from ending here, secure the materials she needed, and get a celebrity—me—to advertise her guild.
She was capable, all right.
I definitely wanted to keep doing business with her.
You accepted the quest 'Deliver Items in Short Supply.'
I accepted the request without hesitation.