The Invaders of the Large Tomb

"Come on, give me a break, I don't want to ask either."

The two of them smiled bitterly at each other.

There were a few rules in common between adventurers and workers, where certain things were simply not done. The first would be to uncover a teammate's past. The second would be to display excessive desire.

In the case of the second rule, to some extent, excessive desire was unavoidable due to the fact that many people chose to be workers for personal gains. However, even that had a limit. Too much desire could cause a team to lose its coherence. For example, it was difficult to trust teammates who were constantly grumbling about money. Letting teammates watch your back during dangerous moments was a fundamental part of teamwork and unity. As such, all teams needed a minimum level of trust between each other. But how much could you trust someone who was known to be greedy when you take on a high-risk, high-reward job?

Currently, it seemed like there were problems relating to Arche, which would affect her reliability.

That simply wasn't a matter which could be easily overlooked.

During the course of their jobs, they would be putting their lives in each other's hands. As such they couldn't afford to have even a trace of doubt in their teammates.

Hekkeran shook his head, while displaying his reluctance on his face.

"Looks like it can't be helped, then. I'll have to ask when she comes back."

"I'm counting on you~."

Hekkeran narrowed his eyes at Imina, who was smiling and waving her hand, and said, "Don't think you can get away. You also need to come talk to her with me, yo."

"Eh, ehhh..." Although Imina clearly wanted to refuse, she gave up as soon as she saw the determination on Hekkeran's face. "Oh well, it can't be helped. Hopefully it isn't anything big..."

"Anyway, where did Arche go?"

"Eh? Ah, she's gathering the information behind that job."

"Aren't Rob and I in charge of that?"

After returning from Kattse Plains, they received a new commission, with pretty good terms for the nature of the work concerned. As such, they began the preparations for taking the job.

Originally it should have been Roberdyck, who was best suited for this sort of thing, to research the background of the commissioner as well as the compensation. Hekkeran was to head to the Empire's Administrative office to collect the payment for their undead subjugation—all work related to eliminating undead on the Kattse Plains was treated as government work by the Empire—and at the same time, use alternative methods to gather similar information as Roberdyck.

Imina and Arche should have waited at the inn.

"It wasn't just that. Rob needed help investigating the history and conditions around the area of operations."

Hekkeran nodded his head, as a look of understanding dawned on him. Although Arche had dropped out of the Imperial Magic Academy, she probably still had some contacts there. She was probably more suited at gathering academic-related information and she could also visit the Magician's Guild to collect additional material.

"So that's why she went along. Rob is also quite knowledgeable, and has connections to the temples.

Anyway, how did it go?"

Hekkeran made a sound as he sat down into a chair, and spoke up.

"Although the request was only offered to workers, the content of the job isn't anything bad. The reason why they chose to hire workers this time around is probably because the location of the job is somewhere adventurers can't go. However, just like the client said before, it seems like they've made contact with other teams as well."

"Are we really working with other teams? Even if it is said that the ruins they discovered appear to be untouched, for them to be willing to invest this much without any definite gains seems a bit..."

That Greenham guy—from one of the other teams that were contacted—was saying the same thing.

But in the end, 'Heavy Masher' seems to be planning to accept the request. If we don't decide by tomorrow, things might become troublesome."

So far Hekkeran's team had only listened to the contents of the request, and they had yet to accept it.

Although they promised to give the client a reply by tomorrow, if they were going to accept, they would have to start preparing immediately.

"And then, at this important juncture something else comes up… Are the two somehow connected?"

"We can't rule out that it was done by another team that wanted to make a fortune with this, but I think we should still wait and listen to Arche's explanation before deciding. If it really is some scheme started by another team, do we back out or carry on?"

"Of course we continue. If they plan on starting a fight, then we just need to keep whacking them until none of them dares to mess with us again, ‘till we knock all their teeth out."

"That sounds quite excessive."

Although Imina seemed overly harsh on the outside, Hekkeran also thought her approach to solving this problem was a good one.