Chapter 7

The graphic content is, for now, just insurance.

The number of views has doubled since the last time... Huh? What?

I am very grateful and thankful, but... What? Why?

"Wh-what?"

Ehrlene repeated the words she had just heard, her face a mix of bewilderment and confusion as she asked again.

The morning after staying overnight in a border village, she was having breakfast with Kena, a self-proclaimed "country adventurer," right in front of her.

The morning after the shocking confession of the previous night.

In the first floor of the inn, mercenaries and Ehlene's caravan companions, along with their families, were enjoying a hearty stew and bread for breakfast. The stew, of course, was generously filled with chunks of meat. It was the meat of the Hornbear, known as the beef of the frontier.

To say that there was an abundance of it, with no trouble at all, and that they had no problem eating it, was no joke.

Putting that aside for now, the issue was the woman in front of her.

"Let me ask you again, you want to go to the capital with me...?"

"Yeah, I can go alone, but I don't know the way very well. Can you please?"

"How can you get lost on a straight road?"

Putting that question aside, Ehlene thought for a moment and then agreed without any particular objection. Then she turned her gaze to Kena's shoulder and behind her.

"For now, there's no problem, and you're welcome. But there seems to be a problem with that young lady?"

"Huh? ...Oh."

Kena turned around to follow Ehlene's gaze and saw Ritt, holding a tray, with a face that looked like she was about to cry, and she broke out in a cold sweat.

It would hurt her conscience to just leave it as it was, so she asked Malle to let her take the girl to the back of the inn.

"Kena-onee-chan, you're leaving..."

"Yeah, I can't stay in this village forever."

Kena felt her HP drop significantly at the sight of the girl's moist, upward gaze. She squatted down, crossed her legs, and got on the same eye level as Ritt. Taking her hands in both of hers, she spoke.

"Don't worry, this isn't a permanent goodbye."

"Really?"

"Yep, I promise. I'll definitely come back to see you."

She hugged Ritt, who still had a sad, regretful look on her face, and whispered in her ear.

"To prove the promise, I'll tell you something amazing."

"Huh?"

"Don't tell anyone, not even Malle, Gatt, or Luine."

"U-um... I understand, I'll keep it a secret."

"The silver tower beyond the mountain. Do you know it?"

"Yeah, Mom says there's a bad witch there."

"That bad witch is, well, me."

"Eh? Eeh!?"

Ritt, who had not been holding on tightly, detached herself from Kena and stared at her face, muttering, "Kena-onee-chan, you're not a bad person."

Kena, feeling happy at those words, hugged the girl again.

"It's a secret, okay? I'll come back to check if Ritt hasn't told anyone. If I don't come back for a long time, you can tell someone, okay?"

"Okay, if you don't come back, I'll tell someone."

"Right. Then I'll have to make sure to show my face in this village when I return to the tower."

The two of them, who looked like sisters, smiled at each other, and the villagers who had been watching from the shadows shed a quiet tear.

---

A couple of days later, the day of the caravan's departure and Kena's journey arrived.

When the caravan left the village, the villagers came out in full force to see them off. "Safe travels," "Come back soon," "Bring your son next time," and so on, the villagers said, and Kena thought they looked like young people returning to the city after going back to the countryside.

"You're quite popular."

"Thank you for your hospitality."

"I think it's the other way around, though."

Ehlene and the leader of the mercenary group watched Kena wave goodbye to everyone with both hands, thinking that perhaps this girl was insensitive to other people's kindness.

"By the way, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Arvita, the leader of the mercenary group 'Flame Spear.' I'll be in your care for the journey to the capital."

While swinging her legs on the edge of the driver's seat, Kena was approached by a middle-aged man walking beside her. She was then greeted by the members of the mercenary group one after another, and her eyes darted back and forth as she couldn't remember all their names.

After the name exchange was over, Ehlene led her into the box wagon. At that moment, Ehlene and Arvita exchanged glances and nodded solemnly. Their hearts were burning with a single mission: "We can't let this girl, who has no sense of money, enter the capital as she is." There were two reasons for this strong feeling.

---

Case 1

When Ehlene sold Kena a map, she thought, "This person might be interesting to haggle with."

"Eight silver coins, perhaps?"

Even Arvita, who was just nearby, thought, "Hey, that's a bit too much," and inwardly criticized it.

...But the person who was asked,

"Yeah, okay, eight coins. Here you go."

She handed over eight silver coins to Ehlene without hesitation, and the two of them stared at the silver coins in astonishment. It goes without saying that Ehlene hurriedly handed over the maps of the other countries.

---

Case 2

This happened after Kena had tried to please Ritt and then negotiated to accompany the group to the capital. According to Ehlene, it was a stroke of luck to have a magician of Kena's caliber accompany them, and she would have asked for it herself. Still, from a merchant's perspective,

"Ten silver coins, perhaps?"

...She said, and the two of them hurriedly stopped her from paying the amount she was about to pay.

"What are you thinking!?"

"Hey, hold on a minute, miss. You should be a little more suspicious!"

"Huh? Isn't this the going rate these days?"

At this, the two of them thought, "This person's values are stuck in the past, two hundred years ago."

---

Because of this, Arvita decided to teach Kena the general knowledge of adventurers, and Ehlene decided to teach her the basics of money. In fact, they were so eager to teach her that they would have bowed their heads and begged to do so. From what they had seen of her behavior in the village, if they let a person with such a distorted sense of economics loose in the world, there was a real danger that the general market would collapse.

In the box wagon, a small wooden box was lined with cloth, and Ehlene's economics class began. On top were three coins, brown, silver, and gold, in that order.

"Listen, Lord Kena. First, this brown one is a copper coin, and fifty of them make one silver coin. And a hundred silver coins make one gold coin."

The copper coin had a bird design, the silver coin had a flower, and the gold coin had a building. Ehlene then took out a colorless, slightly glowing coin and placed it next to the gold coin. It had a crest that felt familiar to Kena, something that seemed close to her.

"This is a crystal coin, with the crest of the god who appointed the world to be united. It's worth fifteen gold coins."

Kena took it in her hand and examined it, then used a spell. [Magic Skill: Analysis]

"Huh?"

Then, taking out a colorless, transparent stick from somewhere, she performed [Technical Skill: Replication]. Suddenly, a torrent of light swept through the wagon, and when it abruptly subsided, there was another crystal coin in Kena's hand.

"Oh, I thought I recognized it. It's a family crest."

She fiddled with the crystal coin she had made, looking at the crest on it with a nod of satisfaction. Ehlene, on the other hand, was trembling with her jaw dropped. She had heard that the production of crystal coins was a closely guarded secret, known only to a select few dwarves. To have it casually made right in front of her was a shock.

Still, she steeled herself and said,

"Lord Kena! It's a crime to make money without permission!"

"Yes, I'm sorry."

Ehlene was thinking, "What if she doesn't bow her head so easily?"

---

The caravan reached an open area along the road in the evening, while it was still light, and prepared for the night camp. According to Ehlene, there were usually several places along the road suitable for camping, and sometimes even complete strangers would huddle together for the night.

The night camp was a joint effort of some of the merchants and the mercenary group. There was a small but clean stream nearby, so there was no shortage of water. Fetching water was mainly the job of the children. Arvita, sitting on the wheel of a covered wagon, approached Kena, who was muttering to herself while staring into space.

"Ten copper coins, one, two, three, four... Is O-giku going to come out of the well, or something?"

"Looks like you've been told a lot. Did you learn anything?"

"Yeah... I didn't expect Ehlene to be such a strict teacher."

Arvita laughed heartily at the exhausted-looking Kena.

"Well, did you at least understand the value of money a little?"

"If I say I didn't understand, I'll have two teachers, won't I?"

Ten copper coins would allow an adult to live comfortably for a day, mainly in terms of satisfying their appetite. A night at Malle's inn cost twenty copper coins, and ten days would be two hundred copper coins, or four silver coins. No wonder she fainted at twenty silver coins; that would be a thousand copper coins, or fifty days' worth.

"Still, a spear costs thirty silver coins, but the value of that is...?"

"Well, I saw it, and it was a good one."

The spear Arvita carried had a blue blade that looked like flickering flames at the tip.

"At a weapon shop in the capital, they'd probably buy it for thirty-five or more."

"Is that so? Is it overpriced, or is it just hard to judge?"

"You're a magician, so you won't use weapons, but the weapons said to be made by master craftsmen are often worth two gold coins."

Arvita nodded thoughtfully with his arms crossed, and Kena nodded in agreement. However, to Kena, who had been used to the lowest amount of one gil in the game, the current value of one silver coin was hard to grasp. Once you learned the skills, you could make most weapons and armor by just being careful with the materials. The only things you couldn't make were the gag weapons distributed as event items, like the Tyrant's Armor, the Hungry Wolf's Sword, the Tragedy of the Night, and the Noise Shield. Most of them had subtle effects and were almost exclusively for collectors.

"By the way, you said you wanted to be an adventurer, right?"

"Well, I need to make money, and it's not good to wander around without a job..."

"Why don't you ask the High Priest to take care of you?"

"No way, I don't want to be a freeloader. That would make me a bad mother, wouldn't it?"

"I think that's how most parents and children are..."

Arvita nodded in agreement, thinking that elves and humans might have different ways of thinking.

"Basically, becoming an adventurer is easy. Just go to the Adventurer's Guild, register, and get a registration card. It's something like this."

Arvita showed her a card that was about 1 mm thick, similar to a credit card. It was red overall, and Arvita's name, race, occupation, and mercenary group name were displayed in rainbow letters on the surface.

"Originally, it's white, but colored ones are only for groups that have gathered a certain number of people. If you have this, you're an adventurer. Be careful, though, because if you lose it and want a reissue, it'll cost you two silver coins."

Kena nodded in understanding as she listened.

Ryadale, the VRMMORPG, was a purely Japanese-made game that had been mainly developed in the country, and the influence of this was evident in the language used in this land. The characters used were kanji, hiragana, katakana, roman letters, and English. In the game, the alphabet was tilted ninety degrees and distorted, giving it a certain atmosphere. To put it simply, it was as if the alphabet had been written vertically with a brush dipped in plenty of ink, and then the ink had flowed down the paper when the paper was laid horizontally. This was used in daily life in some places and could be read with effort. Occasionally, there were also ancient texts in kanbun.

Arvita's card was written entirely in katakana, saying "Arvita: Human: Sentinel: Flame Spear Mercenary Group," which was a bit difficult for Kena to read. From the grammar, she wondered if she would have to write her name in katakana as well.

"Other adventurer guilds are pretty much the same. There are a lot of papers with request contents posted on the walls, so you just peel off the ones you can do and take them to the reception. Some have deadlines, so be careful with those. If you can't do it after you take it, you'll have to pay a penalty. ...That's about it, I guess?"

There was no mention of penalty fees, but Kena thought that this part was the same as in the game. The most important thing for her to remember was that this was not a game but reality. If she died, she might not be able to revive at the guild headquarters like in the game.

While receiving various instructions and answering questions, the sun began to set, and one of the group members came to tell them that dinner was ready. As the group member, a young man, was about to return to the group, Arvita called him back and nodded at Kena.

"Kennis, this lady saved your life. You should thank her properly."

"Huh? Oh, right. I'm glad you're feeling better."

"Forget it already!?"

Kena, who had just noticed, was scolded by Arvita. The young man looked enviously at Kena, who was joking around with the group leader, and then straightened up and bowed his head.

"Miss Kena, thank you for doing your best for me the other day!"

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