Helping with Adventurer Party Management - Chapter 287

If the booklet is small, we can avoid writing unnecessary information. I explain this jokingly, but I’m quite serious. Given a large blank space, people tend to want to fill it with extra details. Conversely, if the writing space is small, they adapt by including only the essential information.

“If you keep the information to a minimum, it should be fine even if it’s small. In extreme cases, it could be enough to simply note that goblins are worth two copper coins each, with the requester covering travel expenses.”

“Isn’t that a bit of a stretch? Villagers can barely read, and they’ve never requested an adventurer, so they don’t know how to make a request. Even if the village is under attack by a monster, they can only guess it might be a goblin based on footprints and damage, or that there might be three of them.”

One reason farmers are hesitant to approach the adventurer’s guild is that the conditions for making a request are unclear.

For adventurers, monster attacks are an everyday occurrence, but for most villagers, they are rare events that happen only once every few years or even decades. When a disaster occurs that necessitates requesting an adventurer, it’s often the first time they have to do so—unless the villager is from a very remote settlement.

As a result, the requesters are inexperienced in making requests, leading to endless issues with contracts, such as overestimating or underestimating the situation. Most of the time, the uneducated farmers suffering from monster attacks simply endure the hardship. When neighboring villages hear such rumors, they become even more reluctant to ask adventurers for help.

In short, because they are asking amateurs in monster countermeasures to estimate the work, the calculation of costs is often inaccurate.

With that in mind, the image of the booklet solidifies. Previously, I envisioned the contents as more of a catalog of request cases, but now I believe the booklet should serve as an estimate form.

It’s useful to imagine entering the required information into an input form on a webpage, where the final amount is displayed. For instance, the following questions might be included:

1. Was the monster attacking during the day or at night? (If it was at night, proceed to question 6.)
2. Did you see the monster? (If you didn’t, proceed to question 6.)
3. Did it have two legs or four?
4. Was it bigger or smaller than a human?
5. How many monsters were there? Were they communicating with each other?
6. Did you see the monster’s footprints? Were they bigger or smaller than a human’s?
7. …

The booklet should list the questions on the left and the formulas on the right. It would be even better if it includes footprints and illustrations of major monsters, like goblins, as supplementary information.

Then, a clergyman from the church who can read would interview the peasants and create an estimate on their behalf to hire an adventurer. The basis for the cost would be clear, making it easier for the adventurer’s guild to accept the request.

If the request is based on an accurate estimate, adventurers are more likely to accept it. From their perspective, a request to eliminate a monster is a matter of life and death. The more experienced an adventurer is, the more they understand the importance of precise information. It’s only natural to welcome a request accompanied by accurate details.

When I share this idea with Sara, she asks me, “I understand the theory, but can you really do that?”

So I answer proudly, “Yes, we can. Thinking back, when I was an adventurer, I gathered information and selected requests in the same way, right? After all, the information coming into the adventurer’s guild is often very unreliable.”

“Ah… Now that you mention it, Kenji is really persistent and keeps asking me all sorts of questions. Was that what you were doing?”

“I wouldn’t say persistent…” I reply with a wry smile.