"So Ren, Cleo told me how you bravely infiltrated the bandit base on your own! You deserve a reward for that."
I looked at her in confusion. What reward is she talking about? Next moment she bent down and kissed me on my forehead! Huh? What? She then looked at me and said, "That's just the part of the reward you know! I am not stingy at all. Your party will receive 10 gold coins as a reward for gathering information. As for rescuing Tien and Nina, you will get 1 gold coin for each of them as well. This is the reward they agreed to give you personally."
12 gold coins! That was a huge amount of money for us.
"Thank you guild master" I tried to be as polite as possible.
Annette smiled at me and said "There is no need to thank me. This is something you have earned. We have had a reward for information on these bandits for the past several months but we have been unable to gather any information. So, you have earned this"
Annette had been holding me this whole time. Now she carried me over and placed me back on Sheila's lap. Sheila hugged me tightly again.
Annette sat back down on her chair. I thought she might revert to her small form but she didn't.
"We will be planning a raid on the bandit camp soon. If you wish to participate in it, let me know. I will make sure you are included in the raid party."
Cleo nodded at her and said, "We will let you know after discussing it among ourselves"
"You shouldn't wait too long. We will have to attack soon as we can't let the bandits run away."
"Yes, we will let you know by tomorrow morning."
Cleo nodded and we got up to leave. I was finally able to stand on my feet after a long time. I sighed and thought about how women keep carrying me all the time. This is not something that happened to me before I became an adventurer. I have been good at running away from fights, so bigger children could catch me, let alone pick me up. But now, it seems to be happening everyday!
We walked out of the guild and I asked Cleo where they had gone. She told me that Captain Edwards had sent someone to fetch them to the guard office. They met Annette there and it turned out that she was the one who had asked for them. She was interested in the bandits after she learned about them from Eliena. They decided to conduct the discussion in her office and Captain Edwars sent someone to fetch me and Sheila. But it turned out that we were already at the guild.
"Oh right, Sheila is now registered as an adventurer."
"Oh, so that's why you were there at the guild." Cleo looked at Sheila and asked "Can I see your guild card?"
Sheila handed over her guild card and Cleo started examining it.
"So your strength is 10, agility and 3 and …. Magic is 3?" She looked at Sheila in surprise and asked "So you know magic?"
"Ah… no, I don't know any magic."
"Hmm… it's really not clear how this works. Turek has 5 points in magic but he doesn't know any magic either."
"We will figure it out. For now I am pretty happy to have another person who can do magic along with us" replied Cleo.
I looked at Cleo in surprise, so Sheila was joining us after all? I looked at Turek and Leana and they seemed to be fine with this too. I looked at Sheila again and sighed. She really doesn't look like an evil person. So far she has nothing but good to me. I would still want to be cautious but I shouldn't overthink this.
"So what are we going to do with the reward?" I asked
"Well, we could buy some magic books for me!" said Turek excitedly.
"Yeah, we also don't need to worry about money for a long time now. We didn't have a lot of money left after buying supplies and equipment." said Cleo
"Should we get separate rooms now that we have the money?" asked Leana
I looked at Sheila and saw her looking at me with a sad expression.
I sighed and said, "Well we can manage in 1 room, so why bother with five? It will also make organizing and communicating more difficult. We don't even know if there are so many rooms available in the inn"
Cleo looked thoughtful and said "Yeah, we can try sleeping in the room tonight and see if it works. If not, we will ask for more rooms. We could split up and just use 2 rooms. We don't need to rent 5 different rooms.
Cleo asked "So do you guys want to just split the money?"
"Sure! So with the five of use, everyone gets 2 gold coins at least. What should we do about the remaining two?" asked Turek
Sheila panicked and started rejecting the money "I… I don't need any reward. After all…. I was the one you captured ...I ..."
"What are you talking about? We were able to find out so much information about the bandits because of what you told us!" said Cleo. "You deserve equal share as well."
She looked back at Turek and said "We could simply keep the remaining 2 gold coins in the party fund. We will then use it for party expenses."
Sheila seemed to be tearing up… this girl cries too easily! I wanted to pat on her shoulder but I couldn't reach it, so I decided to just try to comfort her by patting her back. She looked down at me and smiled. She wiped her tears, bent down and hugged me. Huh?
Sheila straightened up and grabbed my cheeks with her palms and said "You are so adorable!"
Maybe comforting Sheila wasn't such a great idea. Now she is going to misunderstand me! I freed myself from her and tried to keep some distance between us. Sheila didn't seem to mind and continued to smile at me.