“Luna, what’s going on?” I called out.
“Sir Noir, Lady Emma…what are you doing here?”
“Lola asked us to check on you.”
“Whoa, now,” the other adventurer cut in. “You called in reinforcements? You’re not backing down, are you?”
His tone was harsh, but Luna just shook her head. They were ready to tear into each other, and this guy looked plenty strong.
Name: Moisi Sousterre
Age: 28
Species: Human
Level: 104
Occupation: Adventurer; Mercenary
Skills: Superhuman Strength; Physical Defense (Grade A); Flail Bomb
His level was high, and he had some scary skills to boot. That Flail Bomb skill meant that, if he hit something hard enough with his weapon, he could cause an explosion.
Morningstars came in a few varieties, and his had several spikes sticking out from the ball. The handle was basically a stick, but the head was attached to a long chain—giving it quite the reach. If he nailed you with that using his Superhuman Strength, it’d smash your bones to bits.
I checked his companions while I was at it, and they were all strong too. Mind you, Luna was pretty strong herself. Still, I wasn’t confident that she’d come through this fight without a scratch.
“Hey, what guild are you guys with?” Emma asked.
“Efreet,” Moisi replied immediately.
Efreet was another major guild, like Odin and Lahmu. They were known for picking up adventurers from other guilds. Either way, I wondered how we’d ended up in this situation to begin with.
“The goblin extermination job came from Odin. Are you guys here to snipe it?”
“Snipe it? We got the request from Efreet. If anyone’s snipin’, it’s you guys.”
He didn’t sound like he was lying, which meant that the request had been posted to their guild too. Duplicate requests weren’t a common problem, but they did happen.
I asked the head of the village about it, and he looked uncomfortable. It seemed to me that a duplicate request had almost definitely been made. Before I could interrogate the chief, he confessed.
“We put in requests with multiple guilds. We were planning to withdraw the others once one was accepted, but we were too late…”
That explained it. There was no way to know if or when a request would get picked up, so sometimes, they were submitted to multiple guilds. Normally, the client would withdraw the other requests once one was accepted, but it seemed they hadn’t made it in time…
“In that case, why don’t you guys just split the reward?” I suggested.
Moisi seemed troublingly dangerous, and I really didn’t want Luna to fight him.
“No can do,” he said. “You can either back off or settle this fair and square. Those are the only options.”
“Sorry,” said Luna. “But I’m ready to fight too. They were extremely rude to me, and I’m not about to take that lying down.”
Luna was normally so level-headed, but she seemed quite upset. They must have insulted her.
The head of the village was too terrified to do anything either, so there really was nothing we could do but watch the fight unfold.
“Everyone, I must ask you all to kindly step back,” Luna said.
As the villagers complied, I took the opportunity to whisper some advice to Luna. “That flail can explode. Stay on your toes.”
“Got it. Thank you, Sir Noir.”
I stepped away, and the fight began. Luna readied her magical firearm.
“Energy Shot!”
Pew! Pew! She fired off two shots, but Moisi twisted deftly to dodge them. He clearly had a lot of experience if he could predict their paths so precisely.
Moisi swung his flail above his head and flung it forward. The spiked ball flew at Luna, picking up speed as it went. Since I’d warned her about its hidden effects, she made the right call and dodged a fair way back.
A thunderous boom shook the village and sent dirt flying into the air. It wasn’t that big of an explosion, but it would have been enough to kill.
“Heh, not half bad! But I’m not backing down!” Luna fired her weapon again. Each shot consumed her magic, so she couldn’t fire indefinitely, but she had learned to manage it well.
At first, Moisi dodged her shots and swung his flail, setting off explosions here and there. But the longer the fight went on, the thinner his stamina wore, and soon Luna’s shots began to graze him. They shredded his clothes, tore at his flesh, and made him bleed. What’s more, she focused her fire on his legs, hindering his movement. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t stand and he fell to his knees.
Luna approached him and held her gun to his head. “Ready to admit defeat?”
“Tsk, like hell I am…”
“I demand an apology for the awful things you said about Odin.”
So that’s what she was so mad about. Luna was a devout and selfless person, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she couldn’t stand to hear her guild being disparaged.
“If you wanna kill me, go ahead,” said Moisi. “It’s not murder in a duel.”
He was telling the truth, but in reality, something like this could well start a war between our guilds. All the same, Luna’s glare hadn’t softened one bit.
“L-Luna, I think you should—”
“Y-yeah, I think we can take that as an admission of defeat, can’t we?”
Despite our pleas for mercy, Luna showed no intention of lowering her gun. “So you won’t take back what you said. Is that your final answer?”
“What’s it matter? If I bow my head to you Odin scum, I’ll be exiled.”
“Understood. You’ve made your decision.”
Sh-she isn’t…
Pew!
But she did. Luna fired at him at point-blank range. Moisi’s head snapped back and then hung limp, his face stiff. Everyone gulped.
Emma frantically grabbed my arm. “N-Noir, what do we do? Sh-she really did it…”
“Wait, he’s blinking.”
Moisi was alive. He checked his arms and legs, confused.
“What did you do? My scrapes and scratches are all gone. And I don’t feel tired anymore.”
“My gun isn’t just for shooting enemies,” said Luna. “Anyway, that settles it. The fee is ours.”
She flashed him a smile, then came over to join us.
“It was a Healing Shot, huh? That’s our Luna.” I should have known better. There was no way she’d commit a senseless murder. I felt embarrassed for even thinking she might.
“I can thank your advice for my victory, Sir Noir. I would have struggled without it.” She turned to the village chief. “Sir, please make the payment out to Odin.”
“V-very well,” the village chief replied meekly.
They had probably put down a deposit already, so everything would be settled once they paid the rest. As far as the members of Efreet went, they seemed to have accepted the outcome. Another fight seemed unlikely.
The three of us headed back to the guild hall and told Lola what had happened.
“That village chief lied to me. I told him to give us three days to take care of things on our own, if it wasn’t an emergency!”
Some adventurers violated request terms, so it made sense that the people who paid them sometimes did the same. The really awful people refused to pay up at all. Of course, the guild wouldn’t accept requests from such folks again, but they could always go to another guild and pull the same trick. There were several adventurers’ guilds in town, and most of them didn’t communicate with each other, so there was nothing to stop someone doing the rounds.
“I hate the way things are these days,” said Lola. “Why are the slimeballs always the ones who get ahead?”
She seemed more than a little upset, but soon enough her expression did a one-eighty, and she clasped my hands to give me some coins.
“Mr. Noir, please make a better world for us! I’ll help you earn all the LP you need. Here’s the down payment from the job. Hee hee.”
“I believe this belongs to Luna. I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, is that so?! Well, good work, Luna.”
“Urgh, I hate feeling like a third wheel,” Luna complained, sounding genuinely troubled. “Maybe I should stop being friends with you.”
While changing society would no doubt be tricky, I could at least try to make Odin the top guild in town.