Chapter 32

Part 5: Early Morning

SINCE the hunt for the tyrant boar was an emergency request, the guild paid us very well. Urgent jobs were ones that needed to be solved quickly, so they came with high compensation. One of Oranz’s industries was wood processing, so it would have been a serious problem for the monster to continue roaming free in the Sunset Forest. The longer it was allowed to do so, the longer the industry would have been at a standstill, and the greater the blow to the economy.

We were lucky to have happened to exterminate the tyrant boar just after the guild posted the emergency quest. If we had defeated it before the official announcement, we would have only gained fame and the purchase price of whatever materials the boar’s body produced. So, having earned a lot of money, we had been enjoying a brief holiday for the past few days.

Apparently, after reaching a certain rank, adventurers no longer had to work themselves to the bone every single day. The higher the danger, the greater the income. Adventurers poured intense effort and concentration into these high-risk requests, and once they finished, they took some time to rest. After all, staying in top condition was also an important part of the job of being an adventurer.

When I had free time, I would usually go out on my own to search out rare ingredients and highly rated restaurants. Technically, I could have eaten at the dorm canteen every day, but there wasn’t much variety on the menu. The main combination was bread and soup, which quickly got boring. Still, it was cheap, filling, and tasted decent, so it hit the spot as long as you weren’t looking for anything fancy.

But now that I had a little more time and money, it was a different story. I wanted to have delicious meals, even if it meant splurging a bit.

I wasn’t much of a picky eater, but I was ashamed to admit that my taste buds hadn’t changed much since I was a child, either. So far, I had yet to see any trace of either omurice or curry rice since coming to this world. Ketchup didn’t exist here as far as I knew and surprisingly, eggs were considered a luxury good. There was no curry, period, and I didn’t know what kinds of spices there were. I hadn’t even seen any cooked rice on offer, so there probably wasn’t much of a rice-eating culture to begin with.

Still, the meat dishes seemed to be well-crafted, and I even managed to find a restaurant serving a delicious hamburger steak—which made me think there must be something even better out there. So, whenever I had a day off, I wandered around the restaurant district looking for the most delicious food I could find. A very Japanese way to spend a holiday, if I said so myself.

✦ ✦ ✦

MY everyday outfit consisted of pants and a tunic, like what Totto and the others had given me during my early days here. Over that, I also wore an oversized hooded robe to hide my face and body from view.

As a dark elf, I attracted attention just by walking around, so back when I was new to the city, I’d always worn my hood to avoid being noticed. However, now that I’d worked here for so long, I knew lots of people and they noticed me even with the hood up. I’d started greeting people in passing, and as I got used to my surroundings, people stopped staring at me like I was an oddity. It was a lot more comfortable than it had been when I’d first arrived.

Over the past few months, I had just been buying the same pants and tunics over and over, whenever I wore them out. But I’d actually recently received a new robe—when a particular person had suddenly thrust it at me. It looked pretty much the same as my old one, though the texture and quality of the fabric indicated it had been much more expensive. I told the person I couldn’t accept it, but they kept pushing it on me, so I gave up and started wearing it, a mix of grateful and somewhat scared.