Chapter 52 (1/2)

Ch. 52: Encounter After Arrival

Although the carriage was stopped at the city entrance, it was sent into the city without much of a search.

The other travelers were searched thoroughly, and when Loren traveled to different cities when he was a mercenary, they would be searched and examined very strictly and took a very long time before they could enter, but they were let in so easily it was quite anticlimactic.

According to Lapis, the carriage itself was prepared by the adventurer’s guild, and the driver was a guild staff as well, so it pretty much meant that the guild vouched for them, so they were able to enter without harsh examination.

Although one may think that if you disguised your carriage as the guild’s or steal one you could enter and leave any city you want to, but Lapis explained that there were pa.s.swords and keys that linked the carriage to the driver, so if one of them were wrong, the carriage would not be considered one of the guild’s.

Also, there was a heavy regulation that anyone caught disguising his carriage as the guild’s or using it illegally would receive the maximum penalty, regardless of who it is.

In any case, after they safely entered the city and were swayed by the carriage a while longer, they reached the city’s adventurer’s guild.

After thanking the driver and getting off the carriage, they realized that they forgot to wake up Klaus and the girls, but they told themselves that they would wake up on their own, or the driver would wake them up, and went to take care of their work.

Their actual job was to be at the school, so all they had to do right now was report to the guild that they arrived, and hand them the certificate they had received when they accepted the quest back in Kauffa, so they were done in no time.

“Let’s ask one of the staffs about rooms, and let’s take a good night’s rest.”

It was already dark outside, and the school was already closed, so if they were to go there the next day, all they had to do was rent rooms and rest.

Lapis wasn’t one that liked to go to noisy places, and although Loren had been taken to the entertainment district by his fellow mercenaries when they visited cities like this, currently there was no one to invite him, and he didn’t know the city well anyway, and if he wanted to drink he could do so at the guild, so there was no reason for him to go out.

“For tomorrow, is it fine to go to the school after breakfast and meet our client, the princ.i.p.al, for instructions?”

“It’s fine with me, but is it okay for us to be so laid back?”

“I heard that they choose teams to enter after the accompaniment arrives, so they don’t enter the dungeon all at once.”

“That…could be troublesome.”

Hearing Loren’s opinion, Lapis gave him a curious look and asked him a question.

“What’s troublesome?”

“There’s going to be a few teams that enter the dungeon, right? If all of them go in at once, I don’t know how large the dungeon is, but they would know that a few allies would be in there with them.”

“Ah, so if only one team enters, they would be in there alone and unaided, so the difficulty could increase.”

“Exactly. Well, for your own goals, would it be more convenient if only a few of them go in the dungeon?”

Even though the job was to accompany the testing group that entered the dungeon, they also had to search for Lapis’ body part, and they would have to move around the dungeon without anyone else noticing.

Loren thought that if there were other groups near them, it meant a higher chance of Lapis getting seen while moving on her own and wouldn’t be favorable for Lapis.

“Well in that case, there’s other ways of doing things.”

“Give me an example, just for reference.”

Loren asked her, knowing that she would give him a good-for-nothing answer, and Lapis answered him in a matter-of-fact way.

“Disable all of them…”

“Right, got it. Only a few of them going in would be more favorable to me than you.”

The thought of rendering students unable to move, even if it was for the sake of Lapis, made Loren’s heart ache.

Loren was willing to help her if she was going to try to be secretive, but when the thought of ‘when it comes to disabling students’ crossed his mind, he realized that he was a.s.suming that she would make him do it somehow, so he shook his head to chase those thoughts out of his head.

“You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of it easily in secret, without them even realizing it.”

“Don’t. They’re students taking an exam, you know? How are you going to take responsibility if they fail?”

“There’s always next year.”

“You know I won’t help you with that, right?”

“I bet you won’t.”

Lapis stated without any disappointment.

As Loren thought that if she did attempt to do so, he would have to stop her, Lapis gave him a nonchalant smile and waved her hands in front of her chest.

“I’m just joking, okay? I’ll fine some other way when the time comes.”

“You’re jokes make my blood run cold, you know that…?”

“Then let’s warm it up with some drinks and food, shall we?”

Lapis invited Loren to the guild’s bar, saying that it was a good time to get dinner.

Unlike the guild in Kauffa, the staff in this guild had no way of knowing about Loren’s situation.

At Kauffa’s guild, the waitresses would take Loren’s order even if he didn’t have any money because they knew that Lapis would come afterwards and pay for it, but it didn’t work that way at other places, so Loren’s only options was to find some way to pay for food with the money he had or eat with her.

“You’re not going to say that you want to eat all alone, right?”

“Of course not.”

Meals eaten alone didn’t taste that good.

Loren possessed enough sentiment to feel that.

“Then let’s eat together. It seems that we don’t have to worry about rooms, either.”