SHK CH 422 (Patreon)
Content
[Adventurer Guild]
The adventurer guild was a mysterious place. It had many branches all over the mortal realm where the adventurers could come and take a rest or take up missions and receive the corresponding rewards for said missions and they were extremely fair and rigorous.
Being an adventurer was no different from obtaining a free pass to different countries as the adventurer guild ran all throughout the mortal realm and was more or less an independent organization of sorts.
Obviously, one of the main centers of the guild was placed in the Capital of Lustbutg but for various reasons, it was one of the places that the adventurers very rarely visited.
The first reason was that the quality of the missions available in the Capital’s branch was either extremely low class or extremely high class. The missions stood on the extreme ends of the difficulty spectrum and there were no in-betweens available. The definitive reason for this phenomenon was the presence of the vast quantity of soldiers available in the capital as they could take care of the majority of problems that plagued the city and its surroundings.
The second reason was that adventurers were a rough bunch but in a place like the Capital of the kingdom, there were many people far rougher than them who wouldn’t hesitate to throw them in prison if they caused any sort of ruckus. And adventurers, as they were by nature, were not able to go without causing chaos in their wake which made the capital extremely unsuitable for their kind.
For all the reasons above, they generally tried to avoid this place as long as they didn’t have an escort mission or anything of the sort that forced them to be present in this region.
Currently, though, there was a great influx of adventurers from all sides of Lustburg that were flooding the branch building.
War was a great calamity for normal citizens. But for adventurers, this was a period that could greatly increase their revenues and accolades. There was no way in hell any sane adventurer was about to miss a situation like this one.
———
The interior of the adventurer guild was fused with a large tavern and the crowd was as rowdy as always.
Gulp~
“Kuh. Gotta say, nothing better than a beer after a hard day of work, innit?”
Sitting close to the main reception area, a dwarf with a thick beer guffawed in pure pleasure after downing a large mug of beer down his throat.
His stocky face was rosy from the alcohol and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in a vulgar display of manners.
Happiness could be seen plastered on his face as if drinking was the most beautiful thing in the world for the short-sized creature.
Sitting next to him with a bored expression was a tanned woman of average height. Her brown and alluring skin made a certain contrast with her long white bunny ears that made her an exotic sight to the beholder.
She was carefully wiping her set of daggers and grimaced as she heard the exclamation coming from the alcohol-craving dwarf.
“Stop talking so loud, will you? We know that you love beer more than you love your own life. No need to shout it every time.”
“Young lass, you do not understand. I love beer and beer loves me, it’s necessary for me to show my love every time. Otherwise, our sacred love will fade with time. This is why all your relationship—”
“I dare you to finish that sentence.”
The dwarf raised his hands in surrender when he felt the cold blade neatly placed against his beard.
“Everything but the beard. I won’t be able to woo any woman without a thick and bushy beard like mine.”
“Scoff~ I thought beer was your only love in life?”
“I am an ever unfaithful one.”
The two men who were sitting at the same table as the bickering duo chuckled as they watched the usual scene unfold between the dwarf and the exotic bunny woman.
Even so, it was something they appreciated as they did not have many friends.
“Stop laughing you two, this is serious.”
She growled slightly before chugging her own beer down in a few mouthfuls. “I need a man. But all the ones I find always flee. Am I a monster or something?”
“Well…”
The two brothers could only give an awkward laugh in response. It was hard for them to explain that most men didn’t want a woman who loved her knives more than she loved them and could become invisible at a moment’s notice.
The feeling of never knowing when you would be stabbed wasn’t really a nice thing now, was it?
Like this, the four continued to play around until the dwarf finally sighed…
“Well, enough joking around.”
The merry atmosphere subsided slightly with that sigh, “Guys, what do we do now?”
He spoke quietly and looked at the two men, “You two managed to climb the ranks in the adventurer guild after leaving the Coliseum. But now a new opportunity is coming our way. What will you do?”
The two looked at each other briefly. They had once been slaves fighting in the coliseum and it was only thanks to reaching a high rank in the arena that they were able to buy their freedom.
Currently, they were living a very respectable life. But with the incoming war and the promise the prince made…
“...Can the prince's words be trusted?”
The promise he made was too tantalizing to just ignore but there was always a small doubt in the back of their minds.
“Well… After facing the prince, I believe that he isn’t the kind to lie. Rather he would be too arrogant to lie.”
“Facing?”
The dwarf chuckled at the words of the woman, “You mean after he trashed us like we were ragdolls?”
She could only cough awkwardly.
The four of them had fought the prince for his coming-of-age ceremony in the coliseum.
But the fight lasted only a few moments. Nothing they could do even disturbed him, and he completely destroyed them in a few moves.
His following fight with the Gladiator queen showed that they never had any chance of even beating him.
“Ahem… Well—”
The door of the guild suddenly opened.
One person entirely clad in obsidian black armor from head to toe followed by four women all wearing black featureless masks entered through the door.
The atmosphere they spread was eerie. As if a reaper followed by a few ghosts were walking their way in.
They didn’t know why… But each time they took a step, the atmosphere slowly began to change, becoming heavier and heavier as people stopped chatting and some even started reaching for their weapons.
Even though they didn’t know who those people were, they could all feel it instinctively.
Those people were dangerous.
But out of them all, the ones who showed the greatest surprise were none other than the four adventurers who were previously chatting by themselves.
Even though they could not see his face, they recognized his aura in an instant. After all, they had been in the first row to receive it. Furthermore, they could recognize the blue hair and the wolf ears above the head of the woman who had a sword on her hips.
The four of them had the same expression as they wondered the same thing.
What the hell were the prince and his bodyguard doing in this place?
(AN: Those dudes appeared in ch 52. Well, they were also gone in a flash.)