Helping with Adventurer Party Management - Chapter 325

“This one, this one, and this one.” I pick out three pictures from the stack of first attempts made by the adventurers.

Since each person is asked to submit only one drawing, these three seem to meet a certain standard—at least to my amateur eyes.

“Can you tell me the names of these three people?” I ask the receptionist at the Adventurer’s Guild, someone I’ve grown familiar with recently.

He promptly provides their names.

“Can I speak to them directly?” I ask.

Fortunately, all three visit the guild almost daily, so arranging a meeting is easy.

Unlike many adventurers who spend their days outside the city exterminating goblins or other pests, these three make their living dealing with the recent surge of slimes in the city.

“The inn where they’re staying is just nearby. If you call for them, they’ll come running,” the receptionist says. He doesn’t sound like he’s offering a compliment—more like stating an obvious fact.

Lately, visiting the Adventurer’s Guild feels a little awkward.

A while ago, my presence there was met with awe or whispers of envy and resentment, but today, people keep their distance, watching cautiously.

Even my smallest actions seem to inspire fear, leaving me uneasy.

“Well, you are a bit of a prominent figure now, a minor leader of sorts. You’ll need to get used to it,” says Kiriku, who is acting as my guard.

From my perspective, it feels like he’s unnecessarily pressuring those around me, but I suppose it can’t be helped—it’s for safety, after all.

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After a short wait at the Adventurer’s Guild, two of the adventurers arrive, panting and out of breath.

I hadn’t meant to rush them, but apparently, someone had gotten word to them quickly.

One of them is short and wiry, more reminiscent of a merchant’s servant than an adventurer. The other wears simple armor, carries a club, and has sandals on his feet—definitely a novice adventurer.

The guild offers me the use of their reception room, so I lead the two inside. Both look visibly nervous.

After they sit down, I introduce myself and get straight to the point.

“My name is Kenji. I make shoes for adventurers in this town. We’re currently looking for people who can paint. Are you the ones who drew these pictures?”

They both nod, so I ask them to introduce themselves.

The guild’s documents don’t offer much insight into their backgrounds, so I want to hear directly from them.

The first man, the one who resembles a merchant’s servant, introduces himself as Elan.

Surprisingly, he says he has been a merchant’s servant until recently.

After getting into an argument with the merchant he worked for, he ran away from the shop. With nowhere else to go, he became an adventurer, surviving by harvesting slime cores and earning just enough to scrape by.

Elan admits he’s always loved painting, but when he was caught secretly using the shop’s ink and parchment for bookkeeping to practice drawing, he fled the store.

The second man, the novice adventurer, introduces himself as Franz.

He’s in his second year as an adventurer, having left the countryside in search of opportunities. I vaguely remember seeing him during a novice adventurer’s tour I gave before.

However, the fact that Franz is still wearing sandals strikes me.

It’s exactly the kind of thing I want to solve by getting guardian shoes into wider circulation—but it seems we’re still a long way off from achieving that goal.

“I’ll pay the copper coin rewards to both of you, as promised,” I say. “Now, do you want to hear more?”

They both nod in unison, albeit nervously, as if overwhelmed.