Chapter 15 – The beastkin settlement (2/2)
“But, Elder.”
He won’t say it, but he must be suspicious of my possible ulterior motive. And in fact I did have one. But, there is a lot that I can’t say.
“That’s a lot of money and game he hunted at the risk of his life. Do you intend to disregard the resolve and goodwill of this youngster who offers all of that while asking for nothing in return?”
That’s a cool granny. Even the chief is no match for her. Let’s just finish the negotiations with her since I still have a lot of other things to discuss and stuff to do at the Guild.
“Then granny, I will leave the money with you.”
“Oyah oyah. You won’t get anything out of this old lady by acting nice, you know?”
“If you are nice to the ladies, good things might happen unexpectedly.”
Those good things mainly come from my ladies, but that’s perfectly enough. I will ask for proper praise later from them if I manage to negotiate this all by myself.
“Thank you.”
The granny then walked to me and hugged me as she said that. It was a bit unfortunate that it was through my armor.
“If I were a bit younger, I would have thanked you with my body.”
“Hahhahhah. Surely, you jest.”
She’s a charming granny for sure, but that’s a hard no.
“Hyahhyahhyah. I might not look like it now, but when I was younger, I was a famously beautiful and skilled adventurer you know. Oh, how many decades has it been since then――”
“Elder, you should leave that story for later.”
“Is that so?”
“However, Masaru-dono. We all lost everything we had, so we really don’t have anything to offer you in exchange.”
“Aside from ourselves of course,” granny added.
“In the last negotiations with the fortress, they requested some of us as slaves in exchange for continued aid. However, there is no way we can just sell the women or children while the warriors are away!”
Ah, so he’s suspecting some kind of connection between me and those people? He thinks we are here to create a fait accompli with the aid given and turn around and demand an equal amount of money from them in exchange, or something like that? They can’t really give back what was eaten already, that’s for sure.
Even if they manage to avoid paying that, if they accept the money as well, then there would be no outs left anymore.
But, trust is really important, huh. They wouldn’t be so doubtful if this came from the Church.
“We are just simple adventurers who just arrived from the kingdom. We have no connections to any slave merchants,” Syrah-chan assured.
“Then why? Why do you go this far to help us?”
“Masaru-sama is a great mage, who has the power to help a lot of people.”
“If you see someone going hungry right in front of you and you have some extra food, then it’s a normal thing to help out, right?”
There is also the Blessing stuff, but that’s just extra.
“When I was still young and was working as an adventurer,” the granny suddenly started telling a story from her past again.
“There were times that I’ve traveled with an S rank adventurer. Though it wasn’t a million gold, he frequently called fifty or a hundred thousand gold pocket change. He said he already had so much money that he didn’t really care about it anymore. There are some adventurers like that in this world.”
If you can take down a lot of monsters, then you can earn as much as you want, really.
“I’m still just an A rank, but yeah, it’s something like that.”
“See, he said so himself, so why don’t you just accept it and be done with it?”
“Do you really have nothing to do with the slave merchants?”
“I swear we don’t. Though wouldn’t the Empire of the Hiragis higher ups land you a hand instead of slave merchants?”
“Apparently, the transportation of food was delayed by something, but they said that even if it finally gets here, it still won’t be enough for everyone.”
The refugees of course received aid until now. That’s the reason why no one has starved to death to date. The problem is that they started to reserve food for the operation to take back Hiragis in a few months. They need supplies to take with them at the time and they need to support the soldiers until then as well.
It seems they wanted to make up the difference by hunting monsters in Hiragis, but unexpectedly the scouting adventurer parties did not make it back yet. If they were to send out the army blind, they might suffer unacceptable casualties. That led to the current difficulties with the food supply.
The refugee situation has been continuing for a few months now, so any surplus food from the area was already appropriated to the last. Even if they try to request from further away, the most efficient method of cargo transport in this world is carriages trucking along a road.
Since their plan of supplying themselves with monster hunting went bust, they can’t request stuff without it taking a long time to get here and they need money to pay for it as well.
The Empire still has enough surplus, so people could buy supplies from markets, but the beastkin don’t have the money needed for that. They already used what little they had.
The Empire could of course provide emergency funds or requisition food from the city markets and help out the Hiragis refugees, but even the Empire’s financial situation is feeling the hit from all the aid they’ve given until now and the large scale mobilization of a reclamation force.
If the Empire doesn’t help out, then the currently countryless surviving higher ups from Hiragis would have basically no means to do anything.
They have the choice of either sending out an expedition while being prepared to lose people, or overlook the starvation of the Hiragis refugees――
“We lost our country. Since they are still working to keep us alive, it could be worse.”
Is it possible that the food situation is just as bad for the rest of the camp as it’s with the beastkin…..?
We might have to give up on sword training and really start hunting monsters.
I thought about helping with transportation as well, but directly helping with getting actual food is simpler. This is of course not something we’re obligated to do, but we have the power to help them. Choosing not to do it despite that is…..probably not a choice at all.
Granny continued on in the meantime.
“Our famous Hiragis Luck might just still be working if a lucky break like this came to knock on our door.”
With us here, it’s highly likely that we will be able to take Hiragis back. Even if we were to somehow lose, with the help of my abilities I could easily help them start a new life somewhere else. I could even take them to our village if it comes to that.
God has not abandoned Hiragis and their luck has yet to run out for sure.
Well, we’ll be the ones to actually carry it out, so we might as well do what we can.
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
“Granpa! Granpa! Some adventurers gave us meat! We can eat as much as we want now!”
“Ooh, this is….an entire orc?”
“There was a pile thiiiis large of them! They said we could take as much as we wanted!”
“Hoh. Did you thank them properly?”
“I did! They told me to tell you that they said hello!”
“I see. I will need to go and thank them as well afterwards…..I’ll need to dismantle this before that though.”
“I will help too!”
“Very well. You were the one who brought it home. I will teach you how to do it.”
“Will I be able to become an adventurer too?”
“You will. You are my beloved grandson after all. Well then, go and bring the tools here.”
“Okay!”
Thanks for the treat.