326 - Head Hunting 1
TL/Editor: raei
Schedule: 5/week
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In the quiet Adventurer's Guild branch on the 43rd floor, without any important requests, all Ellis had to do was sell mana stones to the merchants who came by, using her sociability and networking skills.
――was what Ellis thought, so she quickly took some of her employees who had a bit of talent in sales and those who were good at paperwork and headed up to the 43rd floor.
The goal was to get an easy paycheck, assuming that anyone important, like a head of a trading company, would go to the guild master in the city rather than the 43rd floor.
However, that was a complete misjudgment on her part.
First of all, the kingdom's second knight order swarmed in front of the Adventurer's Guild branch on the 43rd floor, bought the building, and set up their subjugation headquarters. It wasn't just any mid-sized trading company, but an earl-ranked knight commander who persistently demanded a path be cleared for him.
It was already a burden to have a commoner as a representative dealing with a noble, and the opponent wasn't some small-time baron but the knight commander of the kingdom.
Moreover, she couldn't just run away, as she had the reputation of being the most experienced veteran employee in the Adventurer's Guild. How could she send a 5-year employee, who had just memorized the list of trading companies, or a 2-year employee, who was smart but a bit clumsy, to deal with the knight commander?
"So?"
"Please help me…."
"No, how am I supposed to help?"
In short, she had tried to settle into a cushy position to relax at the end of her career, only to find herself facing a sociopathic drill sergeant who enforced strict regulations and sent her to do weed-cutting work.
Of course, her whining didn't mean I had any way to help her.
Even if I had some connections, they were limited to knights like James Sullivan and his colleagues. How could knight connections help with a knight commander?
I did know a 6★ princess, but I wasn't sure if I could count that as a connection.
"Shouldn't you ask Hanna for that instead of me?"
"Hanna? She's kind and pretty, but she doesn't seem like someone who knows how to wield power."
Han Se-ah and Katie had moved to the Magic Tower's lab to sell off another five harpies, and Grace had gone to the temple at Irene's request. If it was a physical task, they could have asked me, but maybe there was another reason.
Thanks to that, I was lounging idly at the guild table when I got caught in Ellis's radar. She kept whining non-stop, seemingly planning to complain until the others joined us.
But she's not the type to waste time on useless talk like this.
"…Actually, there's something you really need to help with."
"I thought so."
She usually made all sorts of requests slyly, but seeing her slumped on the table like this, it seemed like quite a troublesome matter. Given that she started with talk about the knight commander and nobles, it was probably something involving nobles.
We had known each other for almost ten years since I came to this world. Somehow, we had formed a symbiotic relationship, using each other while building a friendship, so I could roughly guess without her saying much.
Ellis, lying slumped with her cheek on the table, looked up at me through her disheveled blonde hair and spoke with difficulty.
"They've increased."
"Mm?"
"The knights… they've increased."
"What are you talking about?"
The kingdom's second knight order had already swarmed the 43rd floor with all their squires. But more knights? Does that even make sense?
The second knight order was responsible for hiring adventurers or mercenaries to exterminate monsters, while the first knight order was directly attached to the royal family, guarding and assisting the royals. As I thought about it, a sudden idea struck me.
Perhaps it wasn’t the royal knight order but just a bunch of knights swarming in?
“No way…?”
“Yeah, that ‘no way.’ Nobles from all over have started sending knights, wanting to establish connections with the royal knight order… to the Adventurer’s Guild.”
“Why are they sending them to the Adventurer’s Guild?”
“I don’t know! They should go to the knight order headquarters, not the Adventurer’s Guild…!”
Obviously, not all knights in the kingdom are part of the royal knight order. There’s the first knight order, which can be called the royal guard, and the second knight order, which travels around the kingdom in the name of the royal family. Besides these, there’s also the Frost Wolf Knight Order led by Katie’s father, the Grand Duke of the North.
I can’t quite remember the names, but anyway, there are more knights than there are nobles.
Besides the knights serving the prince or the grand Duke, even barons and viscounts have a few knights to guard their estates and manors.
“They probably came because they thought it would be easy… like that.”
“Hey, is there a manager here?!”
And so, these miscellaneous knights had swarmed in with various desires.
Honor, gold, mana stones, connections, and more.
---
Raei Translations
--- Looking at the situation, Ellis looked less like a veteran soldier nearing her discharge and more like a public servant who had been mistakenly assigned to handle high-maintenance clients.
Various self-proclaimed ‘great knights’ with armor full of childish patterns, ornate helmets, and capes, and shabby ‘undefeated masters’ with battered gear were all seeking out Ellis.
Clearly, they weren’t top-tier but rather those who had reached the end of the mid-tier. They probably didn’t have the guts to directly approach the royal knight order, so they were testing the waters through the Adventurer’s Guild.
The problem was that there were more than just a few of these troublesome knights. There were even people pretending to be knights.
For example, a guy who looked like a mercenary, wearing poorly adjusted plate armor that seemed to have been bought second-hand, swaggering in and saying, ‘I’m a knight~.’
After dealing with such troublesome visitors all day, Ellis was now slumped over the table, her hair a mess like a ghost.
“Help me out, you heartless guy….”
“No, how am I supposed to?”
“Just rest in the guild lobby with Hanna for one day. Use the hero's name to filter out the riffraff and kick them out.”
“Filter them out?”
“If there are a few promising ones, I can at least make some connections.”
"You're obsessed with commissions, aren't you?"
“That’s how I make a living.”
Even in such a situation, she was trying to make money by sifting through the potential candidates for a commission. That’s where her guts to stand up to the knight commander came from.
It was rare, but if she could recommend a talented young knight from some rural estate to the royal knight order… she could gain intangible rights and benefits beyond money.
Was she aiming for headhunting and talent scouting beyond commission trading? Ellis, you scary woman…!
-Meanwhile, the guild receptionist is full of money-making ideas
-With such a frugal economic sense, I’d give her a passing grade as my girlfriend. Phew, this is the 37th time.
-Still, isn’t a talent-seeking girl better than a hero selling harpies for biological experiments to the Magic Tower?
-But we do have to take a day off to clear the path to the 47th floor, right? Turn off the stream, you know?
“No wonder there were so many tin-can knights on the way down. Merchants only go up and bring back mana stones the size of a head in carts, so it’s no surprise people flock here wanting to make money.”
But where was she, and what was she doing to have a camera perched on Ellis’s head?
Was it because Han Se-ah, who was at the Magic Tower, thought the story I was about to tell in the guild was more important?
At some point, Han Se-ah's camera was filming me skillfully handling and sending off the troublesome knights.
“But really, when you think about it, Heroes Chronicle is well-designed. Is it because it’s virtual reality? Honestly, imagine you’re working as a freelancer, and some company tells you that if you work for six months, you might win a housing lottery. Wouldn’t you do it? Everyone would flock there like crazy.”
-Housing lottery, lol
-But if you're a knight from the countryside, being an adventurer does make more financial sense
-Even if they are semi-noble, they still look down on commoners. But if they’re from the countryside, it makes sense to hunt monsters to earn a lot of money
-Working at a prestigious company you can brag about (annual salary 80 million) vs. a butcher you can’t brag about but definitely makes money (annual salary 300 million)
-In the Empire, if you steal just one harpy’s unfertilized mana stone, it’s like hitting the lottery, not just an annual salary, lol
The viewers and Han Se-ah accurately understood why the knights were flocking to the 43rd floor.
It was because of the money.
Gold.
Even a knight from a quiet barony owning a rural manor would find it hard to earn gold as a salary. Even if the wealthy central nobles poured gold into luxuries, it was their own league made possible by the immense fortunes amassed over generations.
But now, a place had opened where they could earn huge sums of gold just by being good with a sword. Who cared about dignity?
Knights who would normally scoff at adventurers earning gold by slaving away in the swamps.
But now, thanks to the participation of Temple Knights and the royal knight order, that dirtiness was gone, and income that used to be a single pouch of gold every few months could now be earned by the cartload in a week, with just a bit of luck.
Anyone who could resist that would be truly insane.
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