Chapter 128 - Demanding after Unifying (2/2)

“I’ll give the coins back later.”

“It’s something I already paid. Please keep it…”

When Lapis said without even batting an eyelash, Loren frowned and whispered again.

“You don’t have to act so stubborn you know?”

“Then please buy me something worth two silver coins after the job…that’ll do.”

Loren nodded when he finally saw her expression change into a tired one.

If that would be enough to cheer her up and stable her mental, it wasn’t a bad deal.

“S-so…the neighboring village…”

“We should start by going to that hag and asking her the distance and other pieces of information, as well as supplies.”

“It would be much easier if she would pay extra…but since Klaus accepted it, I doubt she would do such a thing…unfortunately…”

“Why does he get caught so easily, I wonder.”

“I believe we can only take it as a trial from god…”

“Then your god must be a mean one. But as someone who got tangled up in all this, who am I to say about others?”

Ignoring Klaus, who had recovered from being stomped on by Roll, trying to take the lead again, Loren and the girls went to Rose to try to receive any kind of supplies they could get.

“Our village doesn’t have much to offer…If the nation did something, I wouldn’t have to ask you to do it…”

Rose’s response was pretty much what they had expected.

She also kept glancing at Layla, who was dressed like a knight, making it worse.

Although she had only prepared and hadn’t reported the incident yet, Loren knew that there was almost no chance of the nation doing anything.

The nation was at war, after all.

There was no way they would send anyone to deal with a small village’s problem.

Layla hung her head because she knew that as well.

“But Master Klaus has accepted.”

When Rose said so with a smile, Klaus blushed and smiled back.

While Ange and Roll immediately started punching him in the gut, Loren sighed in exasperation and said to Rose.

“I get what you want to say. But aren’t you being a bit too dirty about this?”

“Don’t make it sound like that. I’m just someone who doesn’t have the means to fight that’s appealing to you for mercy.”

“It’s not like I don’t understand why you want to do this. But just handing everything over without cutting yourself even a little bit isn’t the most praiseworthy thing to do, no?”

Loren understood weak or helpless people asking stronger people for help.

But Loren believed that even so, the ones asking for help should of course, carry a part of the burden as well.

But even when he said that, instead of responding, all Rose did was smile.

After thinking for a moment, Loren lowered his voice slightly.

“So that means you can’t give us anything to help?”

“I believe ‘we can’t give you anything even if we wanted’ is the correct response.”

“I see. I guess it can’t be helped. By the way, since there’s no payment, it means there’s no problem if we fail and we don’t need to report back, right?”

Rose looked at Loren with a wondering face, not understanding what he was saying for a moment, but her expression changed as she heard Loren’s next words.

“If you paid us, we would carry the risk of failing, and report back to you, whether the situation is wrapped up or not. But since there isn’t, it means you don’t need those either, don’t you?”

“That’s…”

“What I mean is, it’s alright if we made it so that we failed immediately after we leave, and just go back to Kauffa.”

If there was no payment, there was no risk or penalty if they failed.

Then all they had to do was silence Klaus somehow immediately after they left the village, consider the job a failure, and head back to Kauffa.

Since Layla, as a knight, wanted to help them, things wouldn’t go that smoothly, but Rose had no way of knowing that.

“Please, you can’t!”

“Then at least try to help, dammit. Don’t think that just because you’re weak, getting help is natural. Well, the biggest problem is that our leader is sloppy when it comes to women.”

“B-but…”

“I’m not saying that you need to pay us money. There’re things like food, water, or alcohol that you could supply us with, right? Maybe lend us a donkey to carry our things. What I’m saying is, at least try to show a cooperative attitude.”

Loren knew the village was in a tight spot.

On top of that, without any men, they didn’t have enough working hands either, so he understood that Rose wanted to save as much as she could for them.

But trying to solve the problem without carrying any of the burden wasn’t a good thing, and hearing Loren’s demands to give them what they could, Rose started calculating in her head, while cold sweat ran down her brow.