Unlike the octopus chimpanzee Wolfgang, the other party member looked relatively normal.
“I’m Laute. Pleased to meet you.”
A tall woman with dark gray hair cut short like a man’s. Her somewhat stern appearance was accented by a small earring on her right ear.
She wore a brown quilted armor with a tanned leather breastplate over it.
Her gloves and boots were also made of hardened leather, and at her waist hung a northern-style one-handed sword and a mace.
In her left hand, she held a wooden round shield.
Judging by her equipment, she seemed to be a typical northern-style sword and shield warrior…
‘This is tricky.’
A close-range tank equipped with both shield and one-handed weapons. In short, she was a perfect downgrade of Kikel.
How could an iron tag female warrior’s strength compare to even half of a lizardman’s?
If her technique was excellent it might be different, but given that she carried a shield, she seemed to prefer straightforward blocking and thrusting tactics rather than intricate swordsmanship, so there wasn’t much to expect in terms of technique either.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Wolfgang, Ms. Laute. I’m Hilde. This lizardman here is Mr. Kikel.”
Of course, even if party members seem unreliable, one must maintain courtesy as fellow adventurers. I nodded to greet them and introduced myself and Kikel.
“Kikel Greg is! Favor is good!”
“…Pardon?”
The two people… no, Laute and the octopus chimpanzee were clearly confused by Kikel’s way of speaking.
Well, even I had a hard time understanding what he was saying when I first heard it, so how could they be any different?
“He means he’s pleased to meet you. Mr. Kikel has some difficulty with our language.”
“Ah, so that’s what he meant.”
When I stepped in as a specialized lizardman interpreter to roughly explain Kikel’s words, Wolfgang and Laute nodded and smiled as if they finally understood what he was saying.
* * *
After brief introductions, we immediately rented a carriage and headed towards the mining village written on the request form. It was a bit too far to walk.
As a result of discussing each other’s tactics in the bumpy carriage, as expected, Wolfgang was an unarmed combat trash and Laute was a sword and shield warrior.
It was a truly sad result for me, who had hoped my expectations would be wrong.
Really, is this party composition for real?
Three warriors and one octopus chimpanzee.
Four adventurers gathered, yet somehow all close-range, without a single person capable of ranged attacks.
It was fortunate that Kikel could serve as a radar to some extent and the enemy was just spiders; otherwise, we would have had no choice but to cancel the request and accept the penalty.
The ideal adventurer party formation is one that enhances adaptability through various combinations and complements each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Filling up with a single job – especially warriors – like this was something to be avoided as much as possible.
If we encountered a situation where we couldn’t swing swords up close, or enemies like ghost-type undead that couldn’t be taken down with ordinary swords at all, we would be wiped out as easily as a joke.
After finishing the tactical discussion, casual conversation continued.
Wolfgang, despite having devolved into a chimpanzee, seemed not to have lost his language skills, as he laughed while exchanging various jokes with Kikel.
“―At that moment when I faced the sun! Endless courage began to well up and fill my chest…! I charged at them with a resolute roar! They seemed overwhelmed by my momentum and began to retreat without even opening their eyes! So, I…”
“Kachak! Kachak!”
It seems they weren’t overwhelmed by his momentum, but rather squinting from the reflected sunlight… thinking about it that way, being bald does have its advantages.
Not just when fighting with the sun at your back, but even when facing the sun head-on, you can impair the opponent’s vision.
Well, if you’ve given up on being human, you should have some advantages like that, right?
Unlike vampires who gain great strength but turn to ash in sunlight, they, the octopus humans, have made the sun their ally at the cost of their hair follicles turning to ash…!
…Anyway, he was a very talkative man.
To the point where I wondered if the goddess had taken away his intelligence and devolved him into a chimpanzee in exchange for giving him a sociable personality and eloquence.
On the other hand, Laute seemed to have a rather reserved personality, never initiating conversation.
“Are you and Mr. Wolfgang well acquainted, Ms. Laute?”
“No. This is our first time meeting.”
She wasn’t completely mute, so she at least answered questions when asked.
* * *
An hour later, we finally arrived at the small mining village.
Even though it was called a mine, it didn’t seem to produce anything particularly valuable, as the size of the village was only slightly larger than a slash-and-burn farming village.
“Welcome! You must be the adventurers who’ve come to clear out the mine?”
The village chief was a surprisingly young man for his position.
He looked to be in his mid-thirties. His appearance was so frail that he seemed more suited to holding a pen than a pickaxe.
“Yes. We’re iron tag adventurers who received the guild’s request. Here, please check the request form.”
After showing the request form to the village chief to prove our identity, he guided us to his house, served us a meal, and explained the details of the request.
The meal consisted of boiled chicken, potato stew, and baked bread.
Wolfgang and Laute expressed their gratitude to the village chief and ate bread dipped in stew, while Kikel opened his mouth wide and swallowed a whole chicken in one go.
Me? I declined, saying I wasn’t hungry.
The village chief might have offered the meal out of pure goodwill, but if not, he might have tampered with the food.
Since the other three party members had carelessly eaten, I had to be wary on their behalf.
Even in the original world, there was a saying that people would steal your nose if you closed your eyes, so how much worse would it be in this world with terrible public safety?
A world where ethics and morals were nothing but vulgar jokes.
In my experience, this world was a purgatory where it wouldn’t be strange to have your throat slit or end up pregnant the moment you let your guard down.
Therefore, I spent time conversing with the village chief without touching even a fingertip to the food.
As it turned out, the man before us had become village chief only recently, less than a month ago.
Originally just an ordinary clerk, not even a miner, he had been forced to take on the unexpected role of village chief due to being the only child of the previous chief.
Personally, I found it a bit amusing that even the position of village chief was hereditary.
Rather than putting someone who wasn’t even a miner in the chief’s position just because he was the previous chief’s son, wouldn’t it have been better to choose the most capable old man among the remaining miners and give him the position?
It’s not like it was some kind of noble title, just the representative position of the village.
“Then, has the previous village chief passed away?”
“Yes. He went deep into the mine shaft and encountered a giant spider, and then…”
So he became spider food, is what he’s saying.
“Oh… I’m sorry to hear that. You must still be grieving.”
I expressed my condolences in a low voice. It was courtesy towards the deceased and the bereaved.
It must have been a difficult time, with his father having been killed by spiders not long ago.
“Ah, it’s alright. The villagers don’t know this, but he wasn’t really that good of a father.”
The village chief smiled awkwardly.
“He even tried to hit me on the head with a pickaxe when I said I wanted to be a clerk instead of a miner. I used to hate spiders, but these days I’m almost glad to see them.”
Oh, is that so…?
It was a statement that left me speechless, not knowing how to respond.
“Then, why did you request the extermination…?”
Laute, who had been looking at the village chief with slightly bewildered eyes like me, twitched her eyebrow and asked.
Why would someone who’s grateful to the spiders that ate his father request to have them all wiped out?
“Haha. No matter how grateful I am, how can I let harmful pests remain? With them occupying the mine shaft, we can’t mine any ore, so our income has completely stopped.”
So, it was a money issue.
It was good that he inherited the mine thanks to the previous village chief’s death, but with the mine full of spiders, he couldn’t generate any profit.
That was the reason he put in a request to the guild. This village chief.
* * *
And so we finished our lunch and chat with the client.
It was an informative conversation where we could clearly understand the reason for requesting the spider extermination, the detailed contents of the request, and the circumstances that led to him taking on the role of village chief at such a young age.
Yes, it was certainly an informative conversation… but after hearing it all, a new question arose.
A question I couldn’t even ask the village chief.
Was the death of his father, the previous village chief, really the work of giant spiders?
As someone who wasn’t a detective, I couldn’t know.
“What do you think?”
So, I laid out my suspicions to Kikel and asked what he thought.
“Don’t know. Not our business.”
Kikel’s answer was as concise as always. Yet it hit the nail on the head.
That’s right. Our job was to wipe out all the spiders in the mine shaft and return.
Whether the previous village chief died from spider bites or was killed by his son who coveted the mine, it wasn’t our concern.
Unless we received a request to investigate the truth of the incident.