Hello Work – Volume 8 Chapter 9 (1/2)

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Chapter 9 – Border village Part 1 (1/2)

It did not seem like it during the day, but under the cover of the night Syrah-chan’s dark armor looked like it would be pretty intimidating if you saw it first in the light of a campfire.

As we walked towards the village chief’s house, where Ann should be at this time, the crowd of villagers that gathered near the campfire split in front of us in a hurry. Even those that looked like they wanted to call out to us seemed to freeze and refrain from doing so.

Under that armor was just the cute Syrah-chan though; if you look closely even her adorably twitching ears and tail could be seen from time to time.

She normally carries her large shield on her back, so she can’t even hide her armor with a cloak, nor would a leather armor be enough for her like what Francesca has since her role will be to fight in the front.

She will only need to wear this until her armor is finished, so there should be no real problem until then. Also, next to Syrah-chan, Lilia and Tilika who are partly hiding under their hoods don’t seem conspicuous in the least, so it might be for the best.

“That armor seems to be getting a lot of reactions.”

“Yes, Lilia-neesama. As expected from elven smiths, they did a good job.”

Even though the villagers were clearly intimidated, Syrah-chan seemed to be in high spirits.

“You like it?”

“If I can gather everyone’s attention, then others will be that much safer, right?”

Who knows how effective it would be against monsters, but against other people it should be very useful.

“Excellent resolve, Syrah. Though I wanted to fill that role myself.”

That sounded like she decided to hand over the tank role.

Truthfully, with her Spirit Guard Lilia’s defensive power is quite high and her attack power with magic is nothing to scoff at either. At this point, Syrah-chan is overwhelmingly lacking compared to Lilia.

However, since Lilia is nearly as versatile as me, rather than locking her down in the vanguard, it would be best to let her roam free.

We could not decide if we’d rather put Lilia in the front line, or Sati or me would be the best to fill the role instead, so having a dedicated tank join right now really helped us out.

“Leave it to me, Lilia-neesama.”

“Umu. However, if the role feels too difficult to handle, then speak up any time. I will stand in for you.”

I guess she didn’t give up on the role entirely just yet. We decided to use her Points for magic type Skills and only let her into the front line if she manages to pick up sword and shield Skills on her own, but there is no sign of that happening anytime soon so far. For someone who not only had no experience with using a sword or shield, but didn’t even do anything resembling physical training in her life, working up to gaining a martial Skill is proving to be a long road.

However, elves are patient by nature. She only started her training barely two months ago, so she’s probably content to take a few years to reach her goal.

Her goal seems to be to be able to rush into the enemy lines while shooting off spells like I usually do.
Though it’s not like I wanted to rush into the enemies when I ended up doing it either.

After cutting through the village square and walking a bit more, we found the village chief’s house, which was the largest of the lot. Inside one of its rooms, we also found Ann treating a patient. Will and Francesca were also standing by in the corner of the room. Only the elderly were waiting for further healing anymore, so she must’ve nearly finished healing everyone.

“Good work everyone. How was it?” Ann asked.

“They were just in the process of making a nest, so we took care of all of them.”

“Ooh! As expected of an A rank party. You work fast,” the village chief said.

We then proceeded to explain the location and current state of the nest. It was unlikely that any of them remained anymore, but since it was already night it would be too difficult to confirm for them.

However, it seems that destroying the nest was plenty enough for this job. The villagers themselves can fight if needed and if it gets too dangerous, there is a system set up where they can ask for help from nearby villages.

“By the way, about the rewards…..”

Come to think of it, we left before agreeing on compensation.

I was just thinking of it as volunteer work for the Church, since this was a job Ann accepted, but if we think of it as adventuring work, then it was a job done by an A rank party. That would make it pretty pricey by itself.

“It was the priest that gave us this job, so you’ll need to discuss that with him.”

The village chief seemed quite relieved to hear that.

Even if I would try being greedy here, villages like this don’t have too much money to spare. We will get some subjugation reward from the Adventurer’s Guild anyway, so I’ll leave the trivial stuff to Ann. I don’t think Ellie would mind either. Recently she seems to be after fame rather than money.

The ones who tend to decide things in this party are still Ann, Ellie, and me. Lilia also speaks up sometimes, but with money matters like today’s, she can’t seem to be bothered. Among the newcomers Syrah-chan doesn’t seem to be interested in financial stuff either and Will’s family is disgustingly rich. All our equipment is made by the elves as well, so there is no reason to be too greedy here.

“Can you tell us where we could stay for today? We are pretty tired, so we would like to retire early.”

“They prepared the second floor for us. They even have a bath,” Ann spoke up.

The room was quite large, so all of us fit in at once, even the bath allowed two or three people at the same time.

Let’s just go to sleep after taking a bath and a light meal today. Even if there is a celebration or something I won’t be going for sure.

Although in the second battle I did nothing that would tire me out, we set out at daybreak today and kept moving the whole day. Also, during flight Sati’s ears become all but unusable due to the noise of the wind, so inevitably my detection Skills become the main source of information, which is quite a bit tiring.

However, just as I thought, the village chief came to offer to throw us a party.
How should I react to this now? As I was just thinking that simply refusing their show of gratitude would be too rude, Syrah-chan came to my rescue.

“My master is tired.”

The village chief fell silent at once. That pitch black armor seems to come in handy sometimes.

“We are in a hurry to our destination. Giving us a place to stay is more than enough.”

I followed up her statement. Also, with our Levels going up, we need to discuss the distribution of Skill Points during our after fight debrief, so we don’t have the time to party.

Right. I guess, we better gather up and do that debrief right now.

“Ann, I’ll help with the rest of the healing. After that’s done, we need to talk about tomorrow’s schedule together with everyone. Everyone else should return to the room and get comfortable.”

The two of us finished up the healing in no time.

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