338 Good Reviews (1/2)

”What are you busy doing? The battle's already begun, so why aren't you going outside?”

The liches gathered their mana and summoned a thick blanket of dark clouds that blotted out the sun, while skeleton mages summoned a never-ending sea of skeletons. With a fierce intent to do battle, the infinite amount of cannon fodder arrived on the battlefield. The fighting had reached its peak…. Just joking!

Although the first part of all that was true, it wasn't important.

The undead indeed began their battle against Oak Town. But strangely, they seemed to be highly unmotivated. The battling wasn't fierce at all. High-level undead troop types like Abominations weren't even sent out.

Even though it was quite a common tactic for undead mages to summon a sea of skeletons to overwhelm their enemy with the force of numbers, the sea of skeletons still needed a sufficient amount of supporting, powerful troops to be at its most effective. Only summoning weak skeletons and having them attack by themselves would be no different from giving their enemy free practice targets and experience.

The defending adventurers felt that it would be a waste to even use arrows against this pure sea of skeletons. It was enough to simply have the treants toss large boulders. A single boulder rolling downhill would act just like a bowling ball, sending shattered bones flying everywhere.

”How boring. That's just nothing but testing our defenses. There's nothing worth watching at all.”

There would be no possible result because both sides were still testing each other right now. All they were doing was wasting a minor amount of ammunition and losing a very low amount of lives.

”What are you doing? [The Adventurer Review System]? What is this?”

”I'm just adding a new patch to the 'Contract Heroes' system.”

”A patch? What kind of hellish idea have you come up with now?”

”Well, something that's obtained too easily won't be valued. And, if everyone is treated equally in the Contract Heroes System, it's actually unfair to those who work the hardest and have the most accomplishments. So, I created this VIP level system, where the best 'employees' will obtain even greater honors and levels in the system.”

I even started laughing out loud as I said this. It was precisely of that spy's appearance, as well as the large mercenary groups and adventurers remaining on guard against each other, that helped me discover many insufficiencies about my Contract Heroes system.

”Why are you laughing so evilly? Honor? Are you such a nice person? Why do I feel like you're going to make others suffer again?”

”No, I just recalled something funny. So what do you think of this level system I came up with?”

”One heart, two hearts, three hearts, one diamond, two diamonds… One crown, two crowns? What's with all these designs? Hearts, diamonds, and crowns? Is there a connection between them?”

”It is something you wouldn't understand, a representation of the greatest honor! It's a label that represents how much money you've spent. Although in the end, many people started grinding and making fake accounts, in addition to those professional counterfeiters, rendering it completely unreliable… at the very least, it was quite reliable when it first appeared.”

Actually, what pictures were used for the designs was unimportant. Although I evilly plagiarized the designs used in a certain Chinese application [1]1, Contract Heroes indeed needed a clear level system that indicated their level of reliability.

In this world, mercenaries and adventurers didn't have a clear level system. How mercenaries and adventurers got hired relied completely on their past reputations and personal connections. This was precisely why that empty shell of a mercenary group from before that lost all but a few of its members still had people fighting over succeeding its name. The reputation that it established over the past hundred years was the greatest wealth of all.

Establishing a credibility rating system for adventurers and mercenaries would require a neutral accreditation party that the public and all the countries trusted in. Previously, this would obviously be impossible in this generation where so many countries existed in opposition to each other.

The Mercenary Guild? Many mercenaries would treat the Mercenary Guild as a neutral intermediary which provided services for them. In fact, the Mercenary Guild would often help retired and injured mercenaries find new jobs, provide water and food for mercenaries, fix and maintain their weapons, enchant their equipment, provide job opportunities for current mercenaries, and other such services. But most of the time, the Mercenary Guild relied on the mercenaries themselves to support it. They lacked any forceful measures against the mercenaries themselves.

This was what the royalty of every country wished to see. Not a single country wanted to see the neutral Mercenary Guild have its own power and independence. Otherwise, the power the Mercenary Guild possessed would become dangerous to their interests.

”Absolutely neutral, and we focus on providing services to all mercenaries.” This could basically be the catchphrase of the Mercenary Guild.

The end result was that all Mercenary Guilds and mercenary alliances lacked credibility in the minds of most adventurers and mercenaries. There was also no way for countries to recognize the validity of Mercenary Guilds from other countries. If you mentioned a particular mercenary group or adventurer, the most you could describe them with was ”Oh, they seem to be quite famous” or ”He sounds like he's pretty powerful.” Vague words like these, but they were obviously unconvincing and unreliable.

The lack of a very clear review system wasn't good for either the employers or the employed. After all, potential employers would also be afraid that the bodyguards they spent so much money on hiring turned out to be bandits that attacked their own employer or a group of weaklings posing as the strong. The mercenary groups would also worry whether their employer would treat themselves as nothing more than expendable cannon fodder. This was why the hardest missions with the highest requirements could only be found through personal connections or privately notifying a Mercenary Guild. The oldest and most veteran mercenary groups would only become stronger and stronger, and newly-established mercenary groups would find it impossible to receive high-level jobs.