“Oh, so you’re Aoi! Fez just won’t shut up about you. My name’s Carla. Nice to meetcha!”
The leader of the hunters Fez introduced me to was a cheerful girl with short silver hair and fox-like ears on top of her head. She seemed about the same age as Mary, maybe? Older than Sara, at least. Asking a lady’s age was rude no matter what world you were in, and between the variety of Daemon races and the different ways they changed as they grew older, it got hard to guess how old they were just by looking. I decided to stop fretting and just think of her as being the age she looked. You could tell at a glance that she was a hunter. She wore form-fitting leather armor, reinforced here and there with bits of metal, and had a wicked lance strapped to her back. If this were a game, maybe she’d have been a lancer class? That leather armor looked like it’d be good for mobility. It was probably better suited for hunting monsters than plate or chain mail. I mean, it was basically a staple in games: wearing heavy equipment bogged you down, lowering your agility in exchange for defense.
“Get yer shit together, girl!”
Carla gave me a two-handed wave by way of greeting, a big, goofy grin on her face, but Fez was having none of it. He rapped her on the head with his paw.
“Ouch!”
“How many times have I got to tell ya, first impressions matter! Act ladylike! Be polite!”
“Aww, gimme a break. It’s just us cute girls in the group now, so we might as well work with what we got!”
“Now see here, little missy. You can make bank with that airhead act in damn near any other line o’ work, but consider what yer doin’ here! Ya think this guy’s gonna want to hire a buncha scatterbrains to protect his people from monsters?”
For all the world, he looked like a caring older brother scolding his little sister. What a touching sight.
“...”
“...”
I shared a knowing grin with three more girls, all of whom were wearing armor similar to Carla’s and standing off to the side, watching from a safe distance. The rest of her party. You could tell from the way they nodded at each other and rolled their eyes that scuffles like this between Fez and Carla were common.
Two of the girls had dark eyes, cat ears, and lustrous hair, both exactly the same shade of black. Probably sisters? The last looked more doglike, perhaps. She was more human than the cat sisters or Carla—kind of a middle ground between normal humans and beastmen like Fez. Her short, tawny hair and her physique were more human, but she had a few distinctly animal features as well, particularly the gray fur covering her skin. I marveled once again at the variety of Daemons around. Even within a single race like the beastmen, there was so much variety. None of them, not even Carla, really had the muscles you’d expect from someone who fought monsters for a living. If anything, they looked rather frail. But perhaps the kind of lithe strength you saw in a cat or a wolf was simply a trait of their race.
“I’m Carla’s partner, Ruth. Don’t be fooled by the way we look. We’re all Rank 7 hunters; you can count on us.”
The puppy girl walked up to us with a wry smile on her face, the two cat girls trailing behind. Hunters have ranks?
“This is the first time I’ve heard of hunter ranks. Mind filling me in on the details?”
“Oh, of course not.”
She explained to me that a hunter’s rank determined the kind of work she could accept. Hunters improved their rank through a combination of completing jobs and passing examinations. Apprentices were Rank 10, novices were Rank 9, and newly recognized fledgling hunters were Rank 8. Carla’s group being entirely Rank 7 meant they were all veterans. You could find hunters from Rank 10 to Rank 8 wandering all over the place looking for work, but from Rank 7 up they were almost exclusively attached to a specific town. The world was a hard place, so they were quick to jump at the promise of stability, once they found a steady job and a long-term residence.
“Gosh, Fez, is that how a gentleman talks to his sister-in-law? Show me a little respect here!”
“Don’t you dare bring that up. Acceptin’ a brat like you as family was the absolute worst part about gettin’ married, I swear.”
Well, that certainly clarified their relationship. I did remember hearing how he’d had to retire and get married when he got a girl pregnant. So apparently that was when he’d married Carla’s sister.
“Anyway, Aoi, it’s awfully nice to meetcha.”
As she shook my hand, she turned and stuck out her tongue at Fez.
“Uh, right.”
Hmm. Being polite was just good manners at a first meeting, but these were Fez’s friends. Maybe I should make an exception.
“Nice to meet you too, Carla. I’m Aoi.”
In the end, I decided to be casual.
“That’s the spirit! Now, Fez here was tellin’ me you wanted to hire us. That true?”
“Yeah. It’s a little complicated, though.”
So I told them about the labyrinth, the construction, the monsters. Basically the same spiel I’d just given Fez. And when I finished...
“Oh man, you’re a lifesaver! We’ll be set for winter! I was gonna have to crash at my parents’ place if I didn’t find a job soon, and man was that gonna be embarrassing.”
“Huh. So, you don’t have to answer if this is a touchy subject, but what’s so bad about staying with your parents?”
Carla turned to the side, then looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
“Well, it’s just a little awkward ever since my sister had her baby. They’re not pushing me to get married or anything, but, you know...”
They sounded like nice parents.
“It’s just like, the way they look at me, like half-worried and half-resigned. It bugs me, you know?”
“Oh, I see. Yeah, I know how that feels.”
I was familiar with that look. Like, when they were wondering if you were really okay. I remembered it well, from when I’d been hunting for a job.
“All right, then how about we talk details?”
While Fez returned to his cart, looking worn out from his discussion with Carla, the rest of us sat down and discussed the job. In the end, we agreed I would pay the first month’s rate in advance, and Carla’s group would live in an unoccupied house in Milt and commute with the villagers.