Chapter 44
"Thanks for your business..."
"Thanks to you, too. Sorry for making such a big request this time. Next time, I’ll save up some Mille and come shopping."
'You completed the Subquest 〈Deliver the Requested Materials〉.'
I delivered exactly the materials the taciturn senpai had requested, and he even bought a lot of the extra materials from me.
It came to 382,000 Mille in total. I split it evenly with Hannah, giving her 191,000 Mille, and we left the shop.
Next, we went to Marie-senpai’s shop, where I handed over all the materials I’d gathered, except for the ones Hannah said she wanted.
I also picked up the materials left over from last time—the ones from the 〈Tropical Forest Dungeon〉 that she hadn’t been able to sell.
As expected, the boss monster materials fetched a pretty good price. She bought them for 2.12 million Mille.
In this world, the only way to farm a boss is to teleport back to the entrance and go in again.
As a result, boss materials are traded at a much higher price than materials from regular monsters.
This was my first time making over a million Mille. It was equivalent to earning one million yen in Japan.
Having it deposited into my Student Handbook was a little anticlimactic, but seeing the amount still made me grin!
“1.25 million Mille...”
Meanwhile, Hannah was staring at the amount, stunned.
I’d expected Hannah to be absolutely thrilled, so her reaction surprised me. She’d apparently grown up in a fairly poor family, with materials in short supply, so I wondered what she thought about making a million Mille in a single day.
“So amaaazing... Money... amaaazing... fwee...”
Oops, she’d short-circuited. I hurriedly caught her.
――Boing.
A 'hunch' in my upper arm!
Whoa! Wait, this girl actually has a pretty decent chest!?
I was stunned by the feeling of something soft squashing against the arm I was using to support her.
It was big enough to get squished!?
“Huh!?”
In that instant, I felt another 'hunch'—this time, a dangerous one. I hurriedly turned around and locked eyes with Marie-senpai, her expression completely blank.
“...”
“...”
Silence.
The look in her eyes seemed to be telling me something, and it was really bad for my heart.
Oh no, my gaze might drift downward. This is really bad.
If I looked down now, I’d be killed!
For now, I smiled and tried to bluff my way through! It was painful not knowing if I was managing to smile properly...
“Uh... mm. Zephyrus-kun?”
“Oh! Hannah, are you okay? You’re okay, right? You can stand on your own, can’t you? Good, stand up.”
“Huh? Wh-what, what, what!?”
At last, Hannah came to, just as I was suffering under Marie-senpai’s silent pressure.
I grabbed her by the shoulder and forced her to stand up.
“Don’t pass out just from seeing some Mille! I was almost killed because of you!”
“Fweee, what are you talking about!?”
I shook her as I tried to explain, making Hannah dizzy, but at least the sheer momentum managed to change the mood.
Still, it was so frustrating that I could barely remember the sensation that had surprised me...
“Oh, Marie-senpai, once we’re done with the next 〈Stillwater Underground Dungeon〉, we’re heading to Intermediate Beginner, so this will be the last time we bring in Lower Beginner materials.”
“What!? You’re already going to Intermediate Beginner? Isn’t that a little soon!?”
“Well, once we’ve cleared it, we won’t have any use for Lower Beginner. More importantly, I want to start a guild soon.”
“Ohhh. Right.”
When I told her about my goal, Marie-senpai was openly disappointed.
Normally, first-years stay in Lower Beginner for a while to level up, but since we can level by farming bosses, it looks like we’ll hit LV20 on our next run.
The maximum level you can reach in Lower Beginner is LV20.
Once we reach that, we’ll have no more use for it. Moving on to the next step is only natural.
And you can only get so much from gathering Lower Beginner materials, anyway.
Another reason to step up was that I wanted to start a guild.
I’d brought up guilds several times, but until now, there’d been a certain reason I couldn’t create one.
The requirements for creating a guild are:
① The leader must have cleared an Intermediate Beginner dungeon. ② There must be at least five members. ③ At least three members must have either combat Jobs or production Jobs.
Those are the requirements.
Well, to be blunt, I hadn’t met a single one of them.
Since I had to clear an Intermediate Beginner dungeon first, I’d put off recruiting guild members.
Or rather, it’d be more accurate to say I’d left that part alone because I thought I’d clear it soon enough.
And since I was about to reach Intermediate Beginner, it was time to start taking serious steps toward forming a guild.
“Have you decided on the members yet?”
“No, not at all. For now, I’m planning to ask around among the first-years I know. I want to fill it with first-years at the start.”
“Ah, I see. If upperclassmen get involved, they might take over the guild, huh?”
If someone with a top-tier Job like me started their own guild, upperclassmen might try to join.
Of course, upperclassmen were higher-level and more capable, so I’d run into the question of which of us should be leader. In the worst case, they could even take over the guild.
This was a kind of technique used by high-ranking guilds when they wanted to acquire a subordinate organization.
They’d deliberately send one of their own people into a guild made up of underclassmen, have them take it over, and bring the whole guild and its members under their control.
The academy wouldn’t intervene unless someone’s rights were being trampled too severely. If things didn’t go too far, the academy tacitly approved.
That was generally true in the game, too: the academy wouldn’t do anything until the player, the protagonist, took action. If it handled things on its own, it would ruin the events.
Well, there were exceptions. If things went too far, the academy would obviously step in. It even made the academy news from time to time.
After telling Marie-senpai I planned to get serious about forming a guild, we called it a day.