Niedz must have expected his friends to laugh with him. After all, they’d shared the hardships of being bottom-feeder adventurers together and knew that dungeon delving could be a quick one-way trip to the grave. I was all too familiar with how laughing at your own powerlessness was a common topic of conversation for those in the lower ranks.
Which was why Gahedd’s response must have taken Niedz by surprise.
“Oh, that? Sounds like you haven’t heard the full story yet. I get why you’d feel that way, but relax—I think we’ll be just fine.”
Niedz seemed to recognize that Gahedd—and probably Lukas too—had heard the deal from me already. He appeared puzzled, though, as if wondering why his friends weren’t viewing me with more suspicion. He probably knew that none of them were the type to trust others easily. They didn’t exactly seem like the type to treat anyone and everyone with total skepticism either, to be fair—but Niedz still had to be wondering why Gahedd and Lukas seemed so unbothered.
“Relax?” Niedz repeated, looking perplexed. “How can I? Didn’t you hear that we’re heading for a dungeon? None of the ones around here are any place for the likes of us. And since Rentt said ‘delving,’ that has to mean we’ll be going fairly deep...so there won’t even be anywhere for us to run.”
It appeared that Niedz’s plan was to flee the moment things went south. That would only work if you were being chased by something slower than you, though. Sure, people could outsmart your average dungeon beastie and escape them that way, but a big enough difference in strength would make everything else meaningless.
I couldn’t blame Niedz for assuming I’d be taking them to a level way deeper than their pay grade. That was what happened most of the time when someone forced a weaker adventurer to accompany them into a dungeon. Using your companions as meat shields was rare in Maalt, since basically everyone saw it as disgusting behavior, and word got around quickly, but I couldn’t say it never happened.
In a city like Lucaris, where both the population and adventurer count were orders of magnitude higher than Maalt’s, things like that had to happen fairly frequently, even if they weren’t openly condoned. So in that sense, Niedz was right to have misgivings. He had no way of knowing that I wasn’t going to be doing any such thing.
Fortunately, Gahedd was quick to explain. “I felt the same as you after I woke up and got the story,” he said. “But Rentt very patiently assured us that wasn’t his plan. It sounds too good to be true, but he actually intends to train us.”
Niedz paused. “What? Train?”
“Yeah. He said he didn’t know if we were talented enough to make it big or not, but he could at least teach us enough to get by day-to-day without any problems.”
“But...how?” Niedz’s expression showed a certain amount of self-deprecation, as if he was wondering how I could train them when their own efforts had amounted to nothing.
“You saw it just now, didn’t you?” Gahedd pointed out. “He was teaching Lukas some of the fundamentals of harvesting jobs.”
“Fundamentals? What fundamentals? They’re plants—all you’ve gotta do is pick them, don’t you...?”
“Sure, yeah...but I know even you still try to do it carefully, right? That kind of in-depth stuff is what he’s going to teach us.”
Niedz fell silent for a moment. “Carefully, huh?” he said, eventually. “So like harvesting them without damaging them, things like that?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“But I do that already.”
Gahedd shrugged. “It’s not enough. You heard what he said earlier, right? About how the plant might look healthy, but it’ll wither unless you harvest the dirt with it? I had no idea you were supposed to look for magic crystals in the soil either. But if we learn more stuff like that, it’s gotta come in handy someday, right?”
“Yeah, I...think I see where you’re coming from. But...” Niedz paused. “What’s the point? How’s it going to help us make a living?”
“Well, Rentt says it might take some time, but enough steady effort will mean bigger payouts and direct commissions. Especially for a city as big as Lucaris—he mentioned something about it being likely that there are a lot of clients with an eye for quality here.”
“Really?”
“I asked Diego, and yeah. They show up from time to time. Apparently, they have low expectations of most adventurers since we’re so sloppy with the harvesting stuff, and always directly commission people they know can bring in high-quality hauls.”
“Huh. I’ve never heard of that before.”
“I mean, those adventurers are getting special treatment. It’s not like they’d go around letting everyone in on the secret of how they make their coin. Uh, unless they’re Rentt, I guess, but he’s not from around here anyway, so he said there’s no real downside for him if he teaches us the ropes.”
I had explained to Gahedd and Lukas that if I had been a Bronze-class living in Lucaris and earning my living from harvesting jobs, then teaching them would basically have been creating more competition for my own livelihood. But since I wasn’t, and had no plans to settle down here, it was fine.
The truth was, I wouldn’t have minded teaching them either way, but people didn’t believe you when you offered help that might cost you something. I knew that explaining it like this had been the best way to get through to them.
No matter where you went, most adventurers were the opposite of delicate. I could probably spend my whole life teaching people what I knew, and it still wouldn’t become widespread enough to create any real market competition. Even if it did, it would likely be localized to a single city, and even then, the increase in high-quality ingredients wouldn’t actually cause prices to fall by that much—the excess would just end up being exported elsewhere. All in all, I had nothing to lose by sharing my knowledge.
“And that’s not all...” Gahedd began.
As he continued to explain to his friend, I glanced out of the window and noticed that the sun was setting. I had to be at the adventurer’s guild soon.
I left the three friends to their conversation and turned to Diego. “I need to meet someone at the local guild,” I explained. “Can I come back tomorrow?”
He nodded. “Sure, that’s fine with me. It’s not like you can leave these guys out in the cold after all this, right?” He punctuated his words with a chuckle.
Diego would be putting the trio up for the night at his place. “Are you sure, though?” I asked. “If you’d rather not have them here, I’m sure they can sort themselves out for a single night.”
“It’s fine. They didn’t take any commissions today, so I doubt they’ve got the coin for lodgings. But, hey, you’re going to be training them from now on, right? Maybe I should start charging them for room and board once they’re making enough to stand on their own feet.”
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Now that was terrifying. “And how much is that going to be?” I wondered. “All of a sudden, I feel bad for them. Well, it should be fine if you’re only charging standard rates. I’ll just have to get them to a point where they won’t even blink at paying prices like that.”
Diego made a noise of admiration. “All the more coin in my pocket, then. Best of luck.”