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Chapter 2 – 6 (part 2)

Unexpected Reward and Revenge

“Tenmsan. Could you please come here for a moment?”

Did something happen here too? Sensing something might be up I watched Flute, but she didn't seem especially worried so I quickly let it go.

“Did something happen?”

I spoke to Flute, who was behind the counter. She quickly guided me to a room located in the back. I entered what looked like a reception room, and once I sat down in a chair,

“Congratulations. Tenmsan, you've been promoted from C rank.”

Flute said, and she started to clap.

“…….Huh?”

I said, dumbfounded.

“I used a magic to contact our Guild Leader, who is in the royal capital right now, and told them of the incident with Banza. ‘Well then, raise their rank.' Was the reply I got, so we're officially acknowledging your rank promotion now.”

Flute replied.

“Isn't this a little too easy? What about the exam?”

I thought that my progress was a little too easy, so that was the first thing I thought to ask.

“Ah, that's not a problem. It was specially authorized by the Guild Leader. This is not favoritism thought, it's a matter of precedent.”

After saying that, she told me about how said precedent came to be.

There was an incident before where a certain n.o.ble, still a newbie adventurer, seems to have captured a wanted criminal and brought public order back to the city. By the time he was captured, the criminal had possessed considerable skills and had ama.s.sed some followers, so as a special exception, they increased the n.o.ble's rank from E to C. From then on, people who achieved similar feats could also raise their ranks up to C via the same special exception.

Still, the rank can only be raised to C. Since my efforts this time were deserving of the special exception, even though my rank was C it was raised, she explained.

“Well, if you think about what you've accomplished already, even B rank isn't all that strange, you know.”

Flute said with a chuckle.

“Then, I'm very grateful to be awarded this promotion.”

I replied while handing my Guild Card over to Flute. After, she handed back an updated looking one.

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I left the reception room and Lilly and her sisters had arrived. The three of them were surrounded by other adventurers (almost entirely males). I had only been watching them, (as calling out to them probably wouldn't have been good) but suddenly Flute burst out,

“Lilly-san, Nelly-san, Milly-san. Tenmsan is waiting for you!”

she said with a loud voice, like she was dropping a bomb. The sisters responded to the words with perked up ears, then smoothly slipped in between the other adventurers and made their way over to me.

……All the men left behind glared at me, their gazes oozing out ‘This guy again?!' Flute meanwhile was in good spirits, laughing. She definitely did that on purpose!

“Mooorning, Tenma!"

“So~rry, were you waiting?”

“We're sorry~, we didn't mean to make you wait.”

They greeted me in their usual way.

“Nah, I had some business to take care of, so I got here early.”

I answered the trio.

They replied with things like, “We just got here”, and “We wanted to catch you early, so we would've waited”, the types of things you might hear in a shoujo manga.

What the heck were they thinking about me? I didn't ask them, and decided it was best to ignore it.

“I have something to tell everyone concerning your last quest, so please come this way.”

said Flute, and she led us to the same reception room as before.

There, I sat in alone in an L-shaped chair, while the catgirls sat together in another identical chair. Flute sat in a chair facing us.

“For the guild troubling you with such a clumsy error on your last quest, we are truly sorry.”

she said, and then lowered her head. We replied that it couldn't have been helped but,

“Normally, save for emergencies, I put some doc.u.ments together concerning the identification of the requester. This time those doc.u.ments were incomplete.”

Flute explained. The incident that occurred was only possible because it was an inexperienced newcomer that encountered an error in doc.u.mentation.

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“For that reason, in addition to the original amount awarded, we'd like to apologize with 10,000G, as a nuisance fee.”

said Flute. She put a bag containing 15,000G in front of us.

“Does this include hush money?”

Flute responded to my question by shaking her head.

“No, this time we'll post about this incident on the Guild Board. So, this is purely a nuisance fee.”

she said with a bitter smile. Originally it seemed they had wanted to hide it but, seeing as I had argued with the knights right in front of the gate, a considerable number of people could've already known about it. Trying to clumsily hide it might raze people's trust to the ground, so it was appropriate to publicly announce it.

“Sorry about all this.”

I bowed my head, but Flute answered,

“This time, there was a problem with the knights, so there was no way around it. Please don't worry too much about it.” she said.

After that, we talked about the details of what had happened in the village, then left.

Once outside, we decided to split the money we had just received.

I suggested we split it into four equal parts, but the trio disagreed. Their reason was that for this quest, it had been two separate parties, “Tenma and his Familiars” and the “Wildcat Princesses” that came together to take on the quest. They said it was common sense that the reward should be split two ways. While I wasn't completely convinced, if it had only been the wildcat princesses that took the quest, they would have failed for sure and they probably would have suffered for it. So in the end I reluctantly accepted their reason.

Then there was the matter of the Dash Boars that s.h.i.+romaru and Slalin had hunted. Although it would seem that the boars belonged to us alone, I decided to hand over 3 of them. Now the trio were reluctant at first but, since the boars were defeated during the quest they also had the right to claim them, and I half-forced them to take them.

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After that we had lunch together, then borrowed the use of the “Dismantling Area” behind the guild, to take apart the boars. Normally, you need to make a reservation beforehand, but it happened to be empty so we rented use of it for some time. It was 300G an hour, and we rented it for 3 hours. It came with staff specialized in Dismantling to aid you.

With the King types included, there were 7 boars in total. Thanks to the staff, we were able to Dismantle them all in around two and a half hours. As a thank you to the staff, I gave them a portion of the meat and one whole boar's worth of innards, and they seemed very happy with it. Even more than the fresh meat, the chance to eat very fresh quality offal was a treat. Processing all of the boars was tough, but because of that, it drove the value of the parts higher.

The three girls sold all of the organs and practically all of the meat to a butcher they knew, with the remainder to be used for dinner. The raw materials gathered were given to the guild.

I decided to save the bones from a few boars, and sold my raw materials to the guild. The bones were for s.h.i.+romaru to snack on. I had the Magic Bag to keep the meat in, so I decided not to sell them and keep them in there.

What I understood from the price a.s.sessment was that, the materials from the King Boars were worth almost twice as much as the regular boars. Especially their hides, they were worth 5 times as much. Normally I would've been very pleased with this but, since the reward money for taking down the thieves was way too big, seeing the amount I got from the boars, I couldn't get as excited.

I parted ways with the catgirl trio as we left the guild, and then realized I had left something only half finished. I called out,

“Okay, now is the time!”

and went outside the city gates. From there I walked a bit more to an empty field, and called s.h.i.+romaru out.

“s.h.i.+romaru, sit!”

“Woon!"

and he came out of the bag with my command. The moment he did, he tried to run away.

“s.h.i.+romaru, stay!”

“Kuu~n”

s.h.i.+romaru suddenly made a weak sounding whimper. He had fixed his line of sight on the home-made soap I was holding.

I ignored his stare and used water magic to wet s.h.i.+romaru down. He seemed to hate it but, listened to my command faithfully and stayed still.

Then I rubbed soap on him till bubbles formed. After 30 minutes, the bubble daruma s.h.i.+romaru was complete. 1 When I washed away the bubbles with water, s.h.i.+romaru re-emerged with a truly miserable looking face.

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After that I blended conditioner into his fur. About 10 minutes later, I rinsed the conditioner out and was more or less finished.

Right as I was thinking his fur just needs to dry now, s.h.i.+romaru shook his body. He got way too excited while shaking.

The result was that I became soaked with water. s.h.i.+romaru made very slow and quiet footsteps to try and get away again.

“s.h.i.+romaru. STAY.”

Hearing those words, s.h.i.+romaru sat, with his back much straighter than usual. I slowly walked in from of him. At that moment, he decided to flop over, showing his belly to me.

“What the heck are you doing, s.h.i.+romaru!”

Responding to my voice, he twisted his body around. By the time he got up again, he had become a brown wolf. s.h.i.+romaru, who had no idea what he had just done, had to once more become a bubble daruma.

It took way more time than I had originally expected. When I got back to the inn, the sun was setting and the surrounding area was becoming dark. Because s.h.i.+romaru had to be washed again very thoroughly, he was dead tired inside of the bag.

“Oh, Tenma. Welcome ba… Did you, change your clothes?”

Because the innkeep had asked, I explained what had happened with s.h.i.+romaru and he burst out laughing. Hearing him, his wife also came out, and when he told her the reason he had cracked up, she laughed exactly the same way. Then all of the regular guests at the inn also joined in laughing.

That was the moment I decided that s.h.i.+romaru would go without dinner that night.

[Author's Note]

The baking soda and other ingredients used to make home-made soap are sold in the large cities. The conditioner was made by dissolving lemon juice and other things in water.

Hi, Refulgent here, if you like my translations, you can show your support by leaving a comment / constructive feedback at [ FourSlimes . com ]

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