Chapter 8

Chapter 8

 

“Would you like to try learning swordsmanship?”

“Why would I?”

The Hero, Eleksid Graeme.

He continued persuading the Archmage, who wore a sullen expression.

“You have incredible talent! Your reflexes and your eyes are excellent!”

“I know.”

“Huh? You knew?”

Looking at the Hero’s bewildered face.

Archmage Tvalier lifted his chin and smiled.

“Is there anything I can’t do in the first place?”

“Huh? Uh…… I guess not?”

Confusion surfaced on the Hero’s handsome face, but.

The party’s Archmage spoke far too indifferently.

“It’s just that I don’t do it. Truth be told, I’m good at almost everything.”

“I-I see…….”

“So set aside that pointless suggestion.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Tvalier had been a mass of talent from the moment he was born.

He had never learned anything from anyone.

If he merely watched over someone’s shoulder a few times.

He could understand every principle behind it.

And that genius talent remained the same even after he crossed dimensions.

***

“You are aware there is a fee to make a Wanderer Plaque, yes? It is one tael of silver.”

“Here it is.”

When Tvalier readily took out a silver coin, stretched his arm up to the reception desk that was about as high as he was, and placed it there.

The receptionist, Mak Chung, immediately scraped the edge of the silver coin once with a piece of metal to check it, then nodded.

“Payment confirmed. Please write your basic personal details here.”

Tvalier took the wooden board and flinched for a moment.

Come to think of it, he was illiterate.

‘This is bad.’

After going to the trouble of establishing dominance so splendidly and building up his momentum, he could not suffer utter humiliation in a place like this.

While Tvalier was racking his brains.

Mak Chung, who had been watching him intently from the reception desk, opened his mouth with an affable smile.

“You may simply tell me verbally. In truth, everyone does that.”

“Erm…….”

Well, it was not as if the standard of this neighborhood looked particularly high.

Tvalier looked at Mak Chung, who had intervened at just the right time. Then he nodded and returned the wooden board.

Then he stated his date of birth. His birthplace. And his name.

“You are Young Hero Il-hyang ?”

“Yes.”

Il-hyang.

Among the characters currently in Tvalier’s head.

It was a combination he had squeezed together from the best of the ones whose meanings he knew.

Mak Chung naturally carved the information he had just given into the Wanderer Plaque.

Then he brought over a branding iron heated red-hot in the brazier beside him and pressed it straight onto the lower part of the wooden plaque.

He was stamping the Vagabond Association’s weed emblem into it.

SIZZLE—

Thus, together with the distinct smell of burning wood, the Wanderer Plaque was made.

The lowest-grade Wanderer Plaque.

The Wooden Plaque was complete.

“It is done, Young Hero Il-hyang.”

Tvalier.

No, the boy who had now become Il-hyang.

Received the Wanderer Plaque handed to him, toyed with it, and looked around.

He had now obtained a basic identification plaque.

But an identification plaque alone was not enough.

A mage needed many resources in order to grow.

Resources, in the end, meant money.

So he had to earn a great deal of money.

‘How?’

Naturally, working as a wanderer had clear limits.

As he stood there sunk in thought, the kind receptionist, Mak Chung, who had been watching him, offered advice.

“Simple requests may be undertaken even by Young Hero Il-hyang, who is at the Wooden Plaque grade. You see the wooden tablets hanging on that noticeboard over there, yes? All of those are Wooden Plaque requests. As you know, Iron Plaque, Bronze Plaque, Silver Plaque, and so on. You cannot accept requests higher than your current grade. Unless it is a very special request.”

“Hmm…….”

Right. Even the longest road began with a single step. 

When he approached the noticeboard, there were quite a few Wooden Plaque-grade requests.

However.

‘……I can’t read the characters.’

Ha, this damn illiteracy.

This again caught Il-hyang by the ankle.

He wore a troubled expression for a moment and was about to turn his head to look at Mak Chung at the reception desk.

But just then, another wanderer had come to the desk and was speaking with him about something, so it was rather awkward to cut in.

At that moment.

“Haha, my young brother. Are you looking for a suitable request?”

An oily voice sounded from somewhere.

When Il-hyang turned his head back.

He saw a man of about thirty with thick double eyelids and broad nostrils.

He wore a clean, long white robe and stood there like a painting, holding a folding fan lavishly decorated with white peacock feathers and all sorts of other bird feathers.

The man covered only his lips with the folding fan, leaving only his eyes and nose slightly visible.

An astonishing degree of wealth overflowed from the man’s entire body.

If there was one fatal flaw that did not suit his affluent attire.

It was that his appearance was quite lacking.

‘But his martial force is rather usable.’

He was a master whom all the wanderers here could not defeat even if they rushed him together.

‘At this level, would he be called a First-Rate Expert here?’

A martial force at the very top among First-Rate Experts.

By lower-dimensional standards, he was at the level of an intermediate knight.

Il-hyang smiled faintly.

At a glance, this world seemed to be centered more around knights than mages.

Even in such a world, this degree of ability surely made him quite a capable person.

And such a capable person suddenly spoke this familiarly to him?

At their first meeting?

‘So he has some scheme.’

He did not know what the man’s real motive was, but he sensed extremely ill intent.

In truth, that was why he liked it.

Il-hyang looked up at the man who had suddenly approached him, smiling brightly.

He made his expression as innocent as possible, like that of a boy, and asked back in a youthful voice.

“Are you saying you will give me a request?”

“Haha, of course. Why else would I have spoken to you like this?”

When Il-hyang asked with feigned innocence, the man took the bait at once.

Then he opened his mouth again in a friendly manner.

“As it happens, our estate was about to entrust a suitable request to a Wooden Plaque wanderer. How about trying it?”

“May I know what kind of work it is?”

“It is nothing special. There is nothing greatly difficult about it. I thought I might entrust it especially to you, young brother.”

He did not state the contents of the request and instead spoke as though he were granting some great kindness.

Ordinarily, one would sense the ill intent in such excessive kindness and feel repulsed by it.

‘All the better.’

It was even better if the other party was a villain. Cleanup would be easier.

So Il-hyang asked politely once more.

“May I hear the details of the request first?”

“Ah, ahem. You are a more meticulous young brother than you appear. Of course. As I said, the request is not particularly difficult. It is only to inspect the medicinal herb field managed by this estate.”

“By medicinal herb field inspection, you mean…….”

Even at a glance, it was not a short-term request.

Yet he was entrusting a long-term request to a little kid he was meeting for the first time?

A thick stench began to waft out.

“In truth, the work is easy. But the medicinal herb field is outside the town, below the mountain, so they say wild beasts come down every night. Young brother, you only need to drive those beasts away. It is not so difficult, is it? Even beginners can do it without issue.”

His tone was gentle and sweetly persuasive.

If the request was to repel wild beasts coming down every night, that meant he had to stand guard at night.

Il-hyang looked silently at the young man for a moment. Then, without realizing it, the corners of his mouth curled up.

Rather than the mission this man was presenting, once he focused on the place where that mission had to be carried out, he could roughly estimate the situation.

‘Below the mountain, is it?’

Outside the town.

A secluded place that was sparsely traveled, and even difficult for public authority to protect.

Most likely, no one would be able to help him no matter what happened.

Once he thought that, the man’s scheme became plain to see.

Il-hyang smiled even more brightly.

“You have made an official request application at the reception desk, yes?”

“Ah, of course, of course! Here. It is written right here. It must have been too far in the corner for my young brother to see it, hahahaha!”

He laughed far too much.

Yes. It was good for a man to live joyfully.

The man grabbed and removed a wooden tablet from the corner of the reception desk, then headed toward the desk and looked back at Il-hyang.

“The request pay is quite large too. It gives five silver pieces a day.”

Ten days would make fifty silver pieces.

One silver piece was worth 100 copper coins. 

Looking at the market prices in this neighborhood, ten copper coins were more than enough for one day’s room and board.

Calculating based on that.

Working for only ten days would cover as much as five hundred days of room and board.

Estimating the prices here, Il-hyang smiled softly.

As he had thought earlier, the request conditions were far too good.

“It is an excellent request. But why has no one done it?”

“Hahat, because they are all cowards. They think outside the town is dangerous. That is why they miss every opportunity to make big money. Pathetic bastards who will never become rich.”

The young man looked around and spoke loudly.

Unexpectedly, however, the nearby wanderers were all busy subtly avoiding the young man’s gaze.

‘There’s something here.’

The young man seemed to be fairly famous in this circle.

‘In a bad way.’

The young wanderer at the reception desk.

Mak Chung looked at the young man who had brought the request form and at Il-hyang, then accepted the request with some complicated, subtle expression.

“Congratulations on receiving your first request, Young Hero Il-hyang.”

Unlike the congratulatory words, his voice was somewhat subdued.

But in accordance with the rules, he accepted and recorded the request.

Then he stamped it with the Vagabond Association’s seal and handed it to both sides.

“Please come back every ten days.”

“Understood.”

“Hahahah! What a refreshingly decisive young brother. Then, shall we begin the work immediately today?”

“Hmm…… Let’s do that.”

At the reception desk, they recorded today’s date as the start of the work.

And the two immediately came out of the Giyang County branch of the Vagabond Association.

‘It’s a little regrettable that I already booked a room at Manseok Inn.’

Right now, he was wildly curious about what dirty trick this oily man had prepared.

‘When it’s this blatant, there’s no way not to notice.’

No matter who looked at it, it seemed as if he intended to take a naive beginner and use him for something.

Pretending not to know anything was also an ordeal.

A few wanderers standing far behind whispered among themselves.

Il-hyang deliberately pretended not to notice and ignored them, then left the Vagabond Association building and headed straight toward the town entrance.

But then, the man in white abruptly opened his mouth.

“Ahem. Come to think of it, what is your name, young brother?”

“Ah! Please call me Il-hyang, Great Hero.”

“Hahat, I see. I am Pyeong So-byeok. Our Pyeong Family operates a rather large pharmacy here in Giyang County. We are the family that supplies eighty percent of the medicinal ingredients distributed in Cheonjung City of Ming Province.”

“I see. I apologize for failing to recognize such an honored person.”

“Not at all~ From now on, we can get to know each other, hahahat.”

After that, until they had completely passed beyond the city wall entrance.

Pyeong So-byeok continued trying to dig up Il-hyang’s information while wearing an expression that seemed forcibly composed.

“You truly have no family? Huh, is that really true?”

“That is correct. I am an orphan alone under heaven, without a single blood relative.”

At the answer that he was an orphan alone under heaven.

A sinister light flashed through Pyeong So-byeok’s eyes for an instant, then quickly vanished.

“Hmm, is that so? Your manner of speech was so refined that I was curious about your background…… but there was nothing much to it after all, was there?”

Once they had reached a place where the town walls were no longer visible.

Pyeong So-byeok’s eyes were now burning outright.

That was the gaze of a predator that had found exceptionally delicious prey.