“Honestly, attacking monsters is safer than attacking women and children at this point…”
The kingdom did not have chattel slavery, but criminals were a different matter. The best way for criminals to pay back their debt to society was to set them to work! Whenever a frontier citizen caught a foreign criminal, they hauled them off to the duke’s palace for the criminal to be sentenced. The length of the indentured servitude depended on the severity of the crime. These criminals were then sold to the mines or the clear-cutters, and the proceeds went to the housewives who turned them in. The news traveled fast. Now every woman on the frontier knew the quickest way to a full wallet. Even the general store lady turned a fond eye on those robbing her shop.
“Y’know, if they let you into the frontier without running an ID check, that’s ’cause they think you’re too low-level to do any harm. Frontier equipment’s not like the equipment they have back home. You can’t mug someone with an iron sword here. Do you have a death wish?”
When all was said and done, I served up spaghetti with meat sauce for the whole gang’s lunch before we went back to town with the would-be adventurers, aka new slaves, in tow. I paid a quick stop to the Adventurers’ Guild, took a look at the bulletin board, and sighed. I knew the girls had the location of a super cool, super huge dungeon, but they refused to tell me where it was on the outrageously false belief that I’d break my promise and sneak off to said dungeon posthaste. Thus, I asked the guild reception ladies to pin it to the board when I left this morning—but of course, they had done no such thing!
“This huge board doesn’t have a single job on it! I was doing you a favor by asking you to put one up. But no, this board looks identical to when I last saw it this morning. This is an outrage against the entire purpose of a bulletin board in an Adventurers’ Guild. You are stinting me on jobs! This bulletin board is an active obstruction to my ability to conduct business! Why must I sneak in here every morning, only to be rewarded with the knowledge that you have once again cruelly hidden all the jobs from me? I won’t stand for it! No more stinginess, no sir! I will not have it in my guild! Oh hey, where’s the usual reception lady? Out stinting, is she?”
“I believe she’s having our guild master approve those cruelly hidden job requests you’re referring to. I do wish he’d hurry up and sign them, though… We have enough on our plate as it is!”
The girl speaking just then was the non-spellstone appraiser guild lady, in case you were curious. Anyway, that didn’t matter—what did matter was that the guild master was revealed as the true job thief!
“That diabolical old geezer! Even if he weren’t the guild master, he’d still be an old man, and that’s diabolical enough. Then to add this crime on top of it? Monsters would be rolling in their graves if they saw the monstrosity this man was capable of! (Also, someone’s digging graves for a monster? Must be a well-loved monster.) Stop being so stingy, sir! Hand over the job requests, or I will revolt! I will rebel! I will even, dare I say it, revolute! Down with stinting on jobs! Down with stinginess! Down with old men!”
“Why must you raise holy hell every single morning and call it sneaking? Where in the dictionary does sneaking have anything to do with causing a wild rumpus? Oh, for—here, please hand this to Lady Class Rep. Tell her it’s the stinted jobs the evil stinter has been hiding from you all this time. Please, I really do mean it. I think the two worst dungeons have grown even bigger since we last checked.”
Oh word, some letters? I gave ’em a quick looky-loo, just to make sure they didn’t say anything bad about me that would invite a lecture, and realized they were dungeon jobs.
“Says here a legion of adventurers made it to the 10th floor before they had to turn back. That’s why they wanna bring in the big guns? And then this one says… The guild’s managed to thin out some of the monster spawns but has sustained heavy losses. This one’s over ninety floors long? Well, shit. Why don’t I accidentally wander into that one tomorrow?”
Ninety floors meant lots and lots o’ cash. And two giant dungeons? Be still, my beating heart. Right-o, now that I had a steady source of income, it was time to shop till I dropped at Miss Cheapskate’s general store.
“Sleeping Beauty needs a set of clothes and toiletries. Outside of that brief splurge in the capital with the girls, she’s never had the true adult experience of shopping with a disposable income. You know what they say, before one takes the next step to becoming an adult, one should first learn how to buy their own groceries. So off we go to the general store? And I’m the one who made all these groceries, so I know I’m right?”
Shopping time! Sleeping Beauty had spent far too long without any clothes to her name (nor a body on which to hang the clothes, but let’s not split hairs). She needed to lay in a steady supply of attractive attire to make up for all the long centuries she’d spent butt nekkid. We needed a smile for every moment spent in agony, dammit! What was the point of rescuing her if she couldn’t enjoy her freedom? If I made this much today…multiply by seven, carry the one, and that’s how much I make in a week… Looks like I’ve got enough to buy the whole shop’s worth and, uh, pay the bill next week?