Player Name: Kaga Michio
Current Level and Equipment:
Explorer Lv.3
Hero Lv.2
Warrior Lv.1
Equipment:
Copper Sword
Leather Armor
Sandals
Taking a light power nap in my room I decided to take a short break from grinding in the Labyrinth to walk around the town some more. I had some time to think about my current situation, and I have to sadly conclude that with the current amount of money I can obtain from my dungeon-crawling expeditions, getting enough money to buy Roxanne will be impossible. The exact amount of money I can make by grinding monsters on the Labyrinths first floor for several hours is 200-300 Nar. At best I could earn a 1000 Nar, but only if luck was on my side. But then I had to consider the amount of money required to pay for an inn. It wasn't that much, but it's going to keep piling up, hindering my finances even more.
In the end, it all boils down to getting more money. All for the sake of buying Roxanne.
Even if I decided to go down to the Labyrinth's deeper levels, it would be foolish of me to expect that I'll earn 10 or 20 times more coin there. Maybe my luck would turn for the better if I happened upon a treasure chest, but so far I didn't stumble upon even one of those, making me feel like I shouldn't count on finding them at all.
I should focus my efforts on making money outside of the Labyrinth after all. There was one option that was available to me from the beginning, the one that might net me the highest profit.
Bounty Hunting.
When it comes to searching for possible Bandits, I just so happen to have a natural advantage in that field called Identify. With it, I can just take a casual stroll around town and scan everyone within my sight to see if their Job will point to them being a criminal. Making money just by looking at people and reading the information about them, that really seems like a dream job!
To be honest, I am still kinda reluctant about this Bounty Hunter business, but the fact that this line of work seemed to be made specifically for someone with my abilities is a fact that absolutely cannot be denied.
There seems to be no Thieves or Bandits or any other scum like that walking around Veil at the current moment, at least as far as I can tell. As expected, no one suspicious would be mad enough to walk around town in broad daylight. But if I want to increase my chances of finding someone like that, then maybe I should make my way to the northern part of the city, where Picker-san said the security was considerably weaker?
The center and the south of Veil were filled with big, beautiful-looking buildings and structures, but the further I went to the north, the more the quality and the size of the houses deteriorated. These have to be the quarters where the poorer citizens live, but it didn't quite have the look of a typical slum I was expecting to see. But just one step later…
… Yeah, it's a slum alright.
From where I was standing, I could see many more ruined buildings in the distance, and the smell of the air also worsened considerably. The same could be said about the people and the overall atmosphere of this place. With each step the houses became dirtier and ill-kempt and the air grew even more stagnant. Looks like some of the residents here didn't even have a place of their own, because they were just sitting or laying on the streets. There was even a small child standing in the middle of the road. It wasn't doing anything in particular. It was just standing there, looking absent-mindedly into space. It looked like it was sick for a very long time. I wonder if it even knows what medicine is?
Anyway, hanging around here for too long might be a bad idea. This place is just too dangerous. Maybe it's because it's my first time being in a place like this, but my sixth sense was screaming for me to get the fuck out of here the entire time.
There's just something about the atmosphere of this place that just seems… off somehow, and I don't like it one bit.
Compared to this dumphole and its inhabitants, delinquents crouching outside of a convenience store with their bats and pipes in the dead of the night almost seemed friendly to me now. Yup, I think the best thing to do will be a tactical retreat. Yes, falling back to a safe place now!
Do I really have to go in there to find criminals? That place is just too dangerous for someone like me! I mean, of course it is, and I knew it well. Even in my old world, slums were never a place that was safe for proper, upstanding citizens to be in. And even if I managed to track even a single Bandit down without any major difficulties, there's no telling if his or her buddies won't be laying in wait to shank me when their buddy will be in danger. So for the time being, I retreated to the very edge of the slum area. If I don't know the terrain, it'd be best not to go in too deep.
A little bit to the east there were women who looked like prostitutes standing in front of the building that was most likely a brothel, because the men who were walking past it kept casting glances towards it and the girls in front of it, which wasn't all that weird because the outfits they were wearing were rather… eye-catching, so to speak. Maybe I would have gone in and used their services myself if I wasn't warned that each and every one of them was supposedly riddled with STD's according to both Picker-san's and Alan-san's words. But putting the matter of their health aside, wouldn't you say that brothels are the exact place that comes to mind when talking about hangout spots for suspicious dudes?
Some distance away from the brothel, a crowd of people was forming, with lots and lots of slum dwellers gathering in one spot. I wonder if something happened over there. Maybe I should go have a look at it myself? While preparing to use Identify, I joined the crowd. Let's see, what the hell is that whole commotion about?
The source of the growing uproar was a patch of dirty, cracked road where apparently someone has fallen down. When I used Identify to appraise the guy who was lying on the ground, the information that showed up was not the person's name or Job, but the name of a piece of equipment: Leather Armor.
In other words, whoever that poor lad was, he was dead. How do I know this? Because apparently corpses are no longer recognized as human beings, and therefore they cannot be properly Identified.
「That's a filthy thief! That man was robbed I tell you!」
「How do you know that?」
At the back of the crowd, a merchant was talking with an older-looking Adventurer. They were talking in Brahim, so I could understand everything they were saying.
「Isn't that obvious?! Just look at his hands! See? The left one has been chopped off!」
「Ah, now that I take a closer look, you're right.」
「Oh, looks like he's been offed less than half an hour ago.」
I couldn't see it properly from where I was standing, but it looks like the corpse in the street was missing its left hand. Maybe it was because the culprit wanted to hide the victim's identity? After all, it takes up to 30 minutes for the Intelligence Card to disappear naturally after death. But I better not say that out loud. The last thing I want is to attract more unnecessary trouble.
「Make way! Make way I said! Let me through!」
Someone must have reported that there was a crime because the knights from the guardhouse have arrived on the scene, with the beautiful female Knight from earlier leading them. So I guess that in this city the knights act like the police, huh?
「A Bandit. Go and clean the body up. Once you do, dispose of it.」
「Yes, ma'am!」
The female Knight barely even glanced at the body before issuing her orders. This was obviously a murder case, and they're going to do literally nothing about it? That's cold.
「Our business here is done. Everyone, back to the guardhouse!」
She ordered her company to return to their station, climbed on top of her stallion and headed back as well. Wait, is that it? Are they really going to leave this case as it is?! And everyone is fine with that?
Apparently everyone was indeed fine with it, because as soon as the female Knight left the crime scene the crowd calmly broke up and everything went back to normal as if nothing had happened.