“To our victory!” We clinked our jugs of ale together over the table.
We had just taken a coach back from a successful Abyss purification without any casualties. Before calling it a night, we always stopped by our favorite tavern, The Orc’s Club, to celebrate.
The table was laden with many tasty dishes besides the frosty ales. Most of them were meat: thick steaks, pork ribs and sausage, roast chicken, and giblet stew. Everything was greasy, but we cleaned all the plates, refueling our most important assets—our bodies.
Seekers are all gluttons. Tall, brawny Walter could pack it away, as you might expect, but even dainty Tanya, the only woman in our party, ate more than the average man.
The more we ate, the more we drank. Although the conversation had started out serious as we reflected on the battle, before I knew it, we were drunk and laughing. It was always like that. Since this job had been so lucrative, we were also ordering and reordering ever faster.
“We did really well today! We got away with five million fil! Five million! That’s our biggest haul ever!” Walter reminded us for the fifth time that night. He had a habit of loudly repeating things when he was drunk.
But I knew how he felt. I’d inherited my grandfather’s resistance to alcohol, so it took a lot to get me drunk. But if I did, I would behave just like Walter.
Five million fil… A great bag of coins occupied a place of honor as our table’s centerpiece. It was full—fifty coins for each of the lesser vampires we’d dispatched. The graceful Tanya was entranced by the bright and shiny coins, and the normally macho leader, Lloyd, also looked elated.
I was happy, but it wasn’t enough.
We should have made more. We earned only five million fil. That fact made my stomach knot up.
“Look how far we’ve come…” Tanya muttered, sounding emotional.
Lloyd flipped up his bright-red hair and nodded in agreement. “It’s only our first year, and we’re already doing so well. We can afford to aim higher. We should all be close to B-Rank by now.”
He was full of confidence, and I agreed. Everyone here was guaranteed to move up a rank.
A number of conditions had to be met to rank up, and we were very close to fulfilling the ones for B-Rank. There were three classes I could choose from upon ranking up, and naturally, I planned to pick one that would strengthen my current role. My team members all felt the same way.
It had been a year since we started out as Seekers. As Lloyd said, everything was going smoothly. But successful rookies like us attracted a fair amount of jealousy.
The imperial capital was home to a number of taverns that catered only to Seekers. They not only served food and drink but also served as centers for intelligence gathering and recruitment. Perhaps as a result, though these rules were unwritten at best, each tavern had a minimum rank and results for admission. C-Rank Seekers couldn’t patronize taverns reserved for Bs, and were even kicked out of certain C taverns if they lacked the requisite number of kills. It was common to hear stories of ignorant newbies being “baptized.”
The Orc’s Club was appropriate for our rank and results, but even those with the same rank and results were further subdivided based on education and age. As we’d only been Seekers for a year, we were all between sixteen and eighteen years old. There were other tables around the bar, occupied by parties similar to the Blue Beyond, but dark clouds hung over the tables where older parties gathered. Those were the Seekers who were stuck, unable to move up in rank.
While they’d been active for a long time and earned the results necessary to get them into this tavern, such Seekers were often more arrogant than their abilities warranted, and they envied these promising young guns. In fact, one of them was glaring at us right now. When I glared back, he awkwardly averted his eyes and returned to nursing his drink.
I wasn’t in the mood to make something of it, but if I did nothing, he’d peg me for a weakling and might try something later. Sometimes, you had to push back.
“Hey, who are you mean-mugging?” Walter asked me.
“Nobody.”
Walter, red-faced from the alcohol, peered at me over the rim of his mug. The incident wasn’t even worth sharing. I let it go and started chewing on a sausage, but he kept pressing me. “What, what is it? If you have a problem, talk to me.”
“Shut up. It’s not worth it.”
“Are you still mad about our haul?”
“No. Forget about it, let’s just drink.”
“You care too much about money,” he said. “There’s a lot more to being a Seeker. I’m sure your beloved grandfather would say the same thing.”
“Huh?” I was going to just ignore him, but it pissed me off that he was trying to use my grandfather against me. What did he know about my grandpa? I’d told them that I was the grandson of Overdeath, but I didn’t remember saying anything about how he’d trained me, or even that he had trained me. Walter had a lot of nerve.
If anything, my grandfather had actually taught me the opposite. I was constantly told that as a Seeker, I needed to be concerned with money. Money, money, money. Everything a Seeker did required money. Buying all the equipment we needed in the field, procuring new gear, or repairing old gear—none of it was cheap.