Chương 8: 03-４: New Clothes, Work, and Obligations

I spread the three commission sheets I'd pulled from the guild board across the table. The edges still carried the smell of fresh adhesive, sticky enough to catch on my fingertips. That chemical smell mixed with the tavern's sour ale, stale sweat, and cheap tobacco into something that didn't feel like job hunting—more like browsing options for how to starve tomorrow. Jessi sat on my left, turning her new short blade between her fingers, the steel flashing cold light with each rotation.

The new clothes had somehow made her look more dangerous, not less. Before, in rags, she'd seemed like a wild girl who might blow away in a strong wind. Now, fitted into that dark leather jacket with its silver rivets, she looked like a freshly sharpened blade actively looking for someone to test its edge on. Lucas sat on my right—face still paper-white, but spine held deliberately straight, maintaining what remained of his Imperial Academy dignity.

Even starved down to something approaching a walking skeleton, that particular aura of at least I've read the books refused to leave him. I looked down at the three sheets and arrived at a single conclusion: Wonderful. One looked like a trap. One looked like a pitfall. The third looked like a compromise between the two that merely delayed death rather than preventing it.

"Cedric, I'll handle this one." Lucas spoke first. He pushed his glasses up his nose and reached for one of the sheets with a thin finger. The movement was slow but carried that specific bookish determination—as if touching the commission paper was enough to transform him from a half-starved wreck back into the honors student correcting thesis formatting. I looked down. A collection request: proceed to the abandoned mine and northern meadow outside town, gather low-grade magic crystals and cold-resistant herbs.

The sheet was vague throughout. The payment column didn't list a figure—just five words: purchased at market rate. I frowned the moment I saw it.

"You sure?" I tapped the ambiguous text.

"Commissions without a floor price are usually designed to catch new adventurers. Guild takes their cut first, then the buyer compresses the rate—you run all day and come back with barely enough for decent bread." Lucas looked down at the sheet, thumb moving slowly over his Royal Academy plaque. The pale platinum caught the tavern's dim light with a faint cold gleam—a painful contrast to his current state.

"That's true for most people." His voice was quiet but carried the particular stubbornness of academia.

"My ability to assess medicinal compounds and mineral purity doesn't lose to any buyer in this town. If they want to cheat me, they'd need to have studied considerably further than the third tier." Jessi let out an immediate, delighted laugh.

"Wow, there it is." She propped her face in her hand, studying him.

"Bookworm, you actually sound like a mage when you talk like that. Usually you look so close to fainting I figured you specialized in researching new ways to starve yourself to death." Lucas pushed his glasses up and looked back at her coolly.

"Compared to someone who survives by stealing, I at least have a marketable skill."

"Oh? Because your technique stealing that moldy bread yesterday didn't exactly scream marketable skill to me."

"That was emergency exercise of survival rights. Not theft."

"Your Academy actually teaches vocabulary like that?"

"Our Academy teaches precise description of phenomena. Unlike certain people whose primary methodology involves reaching into other people's pockets." I could see exactly where this was heading. I pressed my fingers to my temple before the table could be destroyed by verbal crossfire.

"Both of you. Enough." I looked at Lucas.

"If you're that confident, go. But one thing first—don't get so focused on proving you're brilliant that you end up buried in a mine shaft. The most fragile thing in this party isn't Jessi's conscience. It's your lungs." Lucas was quiet for a beat, then actually nodded.

"I'll come back alive." He said it so calmly it was almost unsettling. I was about to add something when a soft sound of leather shifting reached me from the side. Jessi leaned in. The dark leather jacket she'd bought fit close enough to be a second skin, waist pulled clean and tight, producing that quiet friction sound whenever she moved. Not loud—but the kind that made you think of a cat sliding along a wall in the dark, or a blade easing slowly out of its sheath.

She brought with her the smell of new leather and faint soapwort, completely unlike the rain-and-mud-and-fraying-cloth combination from before. Dangerous. Not in the sense that she was going to stab me.... Though that probability wasn't exactly zero either. What I meant was—she was not being kind to my heart.

"What about me?" She smiled, fingers hooking around one of the commission sheets and pulling it smoothly from under my hand. I wasn't paying close enough attention until I saw the silver border trim on its edge. I nearly came off the bench.

"Wait—why did you take that one?" I reached for it. She shifted just enough that I missed. A Silver-rank commission. Silver rank. Which meant it was categorically beyond the reasonable scope of people who had just received iron guild tags and had pockets emptier than their faces. I slammed my hand down on the table, keeping my voice to a furious hiss. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Are you out of your mind? That's a mission against goblin hordes or wasteland wolf packs—Silver rank! Do you have any idea what Silver rank means? It means when you die, the guild says 'what a shame,' tears your name off the board, and that's the end of it!" Jessi blinked at me with perfect innocence and flipped the commission sheet over, tapping it with her finger.

"Eh? But look—it says right here.

'Recruiting rogue-class scout.' And it even specifies: 'Bronze rank acceptable, hazard pay based on ability.' See? I'm a perfect match."

"That's a polite euphemism for recruiting cannon fodder to trigger traps and die first!" I forced the words through clenched teeth.

"Only the guild could package 'go die for us' so professionally." Jessi just shrugged, patting the hilt of her newly purchased blade, grinning like someone who had never grasped the concept of self-preservation.

"Relax, little lordling. If there's a total party wipe, I promise I'll be the fastest one running." She said it so casually, like stating the most obvious fact in the world. But that very casualness revealed the particular cruelty of the world she came from. The slow ones die. The fast ones live. Nobody apologizes for it. I stared at her for several seconds, feeling a dull throb building at my temples.

"If something happens, don't tell anyone you're with my party."

"Ooh—so heartless."

"I'm completely serious."

"So am I." She smiled, folding the Silver-rank commission and tucking it into her jacket.

"If I won't even dare touch an opportunity like this, what did I buy new clothes and a new blade for? Surely not just so you'd have something prettier to look at?"

"..." There were multiple problems with that statement. The main problem being that I genuinely couldn't decide which part to object to first. I gave up and looked down at the final commission sheet on the table. A supply delivery request. Simple enough: transport two crates of ceremonial oil and flour to the monastery up the mountain. It looked straightforward. Almost suspiciously straightforward. Not an escort mission. Not guard duty. Not traveling with a caravan. Just one clear word: delivery.

Which meant I carried it, I guarded it, I delivered it—all alone. If anything went wrong along the way, it wouldn't be "mission failure." It would be "Cedric failure." I glanced up at the old clock hanging on the tavern wall. The hour hand was crawling toward eleven. Any longer, and the remaining commissions would only get worse.

"Fine." I pocketed the sheet, drew a slow breath, and looked at the two walking disasters across from me—neither of whom seemed aware they were disasters.

"We split up. Each handles their own task." A brief pause.

"Come back alive. That's the only rule." Lucas nodded first.

"Understood." Brief as always. He gathered his collection sheet and pack, slipping away like a thin shadow dissolving into the tavern's dim edges. Jessi rose slowly, deliberately blowing me an exaggerated kiss.

"See you tonight, little lordling." She winked, drawing out the last syllable with deliberate wickedness.

"Save some energy for our sleeping later."

"... Can you go one day without bringing that up?"

"Nope." Clean, immediate, final. She turned and vanished into the crowd like a drop of ink dissolving into boiling water. I stood alone at the tavern entrance, the rough, cold iron of the guild tag pressed into my palm. Whether it was the bitter damp of the Wasteland Moon wind, or simply the accumulated damage from being run in circles by Jessi all day—a sharp unease welled up in my chest. In this season, splitting up usually meant one thing. Variables. And variables were often worse than hunger.

I went to the town church first. Flint Town's church bore no resemblance to the towering white sanctuaries of the capital, where the architecture alone made you instinctively lower your voice. Here, the stone walls had blackened with damp, dark moss colonized every crack, and two crows perched on the cross-topped spire with obvious contempt for the divine. The entire building radiated exhaustion ground down by reality. Like everyone else in this town.

The priest in charge was an older man in a robe washed nearly white, cuffs frayed through years of wear. He took the commission sheet, studied it briefly, then looked up and let his clouded eyes move slowly over me. That look made my skin crawl. Not the way you'd look at an adventurer. Not the way you'd look at a delivery person. More like evaluating whether a young fool would make it back alive.

"Just you?" His voice was rough, like sand caught in his throat. I adjusted the strap on my shoulder, trying to project at least minimal competence.

"How much cargo is there?" The priest looked at me, wrinkles tightening slightly around his mouth. For a moment, I was certain he wanted to say something. Not mission briefing. Not instructions. A warning. But then he pressed his lips together, swallowing whatever it was—as if something colder and harder had forced his silence.

"Not much," he said quietly.

"One person can carry it up. Since you've accepted the commission, you should get moving." A brief pause before the final words.

"May the Lord watch over you." Maybe I was reading too much into it. But that blessing sounded less like comfort and more like compensation. The supplies came out quickly. Two black-lacquered wooden crates, sealed tight and wrapped in waterproof oilcloth. The craftsmanship was far more careful than I'd expected. I bent down to test the weight and immediately frowned. Heavy. Much heavier than the commission sheet suggested. Strangest of all, when I shifted them, there was no liquid sound. Nothing like oil.

Nothing like loose flour either. More like— Two solid iron ingots. Or lead blocks. I found myself checking the commission sheet again. Ceremonial oil and flour. That's what it said. But this weight made no sense.

"... Are priests using rocks to bake bread now?" I muttered under my breath, then strapped both crates to either side of Bruce's back. The old horse let out a heavy snort, hind legs slipping slightly in the mud—the weight was clearly pushing his limits too. I ran my hand along his rough neck, guilt twisting in my chest.

"Hold on, old friend." Bruce flicked an ear, seeming to express polite contempt for my reassurance. Fair enough. Comfort doesn't lighten loads. Same as noble education—not particularly useful in practice. The road up the mountain wasn't technically far. On a clear day, it would have been a moderately challenging forest trail. But this was the Wasteland Moon, and days of rain had soaked everything into rotting mush. The entire path felt like someone had deliberately repaved it with mud.

Several mountain streams cut directly across the trail, swollen with snowmelt and rainwater, running fast and ice-cold. When it splashed on my boots, it felt like frozen iron being driven into bone. The slopes were loose with shifting gravel—every step raised the question of whether the next would send man and horse tumbling down together. It wasn't easy even for someone young with working limbs. Let alone aging clergy with damp and old injuries settled deep in their bones.

Thinking about it, I could understand why what looked like a simple errand had ended up on the adventurers' guild board. Because it was inconvenient. And in this world, most people don't fear hardship—they fear inconvenience. I rode Bruce slowly upward, cross-referencing the rough map in my hand. According to the markings, once I passed the grove of old oaks draped in dead vines ahead, I should see the monastery—or at least the chapel spire. Then the wind shifted. Cold.

Cold enough that I instinctively hunched my shoulders. But what made my spine lock wasn't the temperature. It was what rode on that wind. Not damp vegetation. Not earth and rotting leaves. Something faint but unmistakably clear— Sulfur and rust. I frowned immediately. Wrong. That smell had no business being here. The next second—"Ah—!" A short, strangled scream tore through the forest's dead silence. Not an ordinary cry for help. Not the stupid sound of a drunk falling into a ditch.

This carried a terror that had been violently cut short—like someone forcing out their final breath just before a blade found their throat. Every hair on my body stood up. Not bandits. At least, not ordinary bandits. This was church territory. Even the boldest mountain thieves usually had sense enough not to operate this close to a sanctuary.

"Bruce—go!" I drove my heels in on pure instinct. The old horse screamed in pain, hooves churning mud and water, dragging the heavy crates as we charged toward the sound. Trees blurred past on both sides. Cold mist slapped my face. Branches scraped hard across my pauldrons. Bruce was breathing in ragged gasps, hooves slipping on mud and loose stone—but he kept driving forward. One hand gripped the reins in a death lock, the other pressed to my sword hilt. My heart hammered against my ribs hard enough to crack them.

We rounded the final wall of vine-choked trees and the mist suddenly broke. And I saw it. The chapel stood in a forest clearing. But the first thing that hit my eyes wasn't the cross. Wasn't stone walls. Wasn't anything holy. It was blood. The heavy wooden doors hung crooked from their hinges, like something had smashed them open by force.

On the white stone steps, a streak of red—vivid enough to sear the eyes—dragged from the entrance deep into the pitch-black hall beyond, as if something had been hauled inside before it finished dying. My heart clenched. Bruce stopped. Not because I pulled the reins. Because he absolutely refused to take another step. The old horse had gone rigid—ears pinned flat, nostrils flaring violently.

He'd caught the scent before I did, something seeping slowly from that open doorway that had nothing to do with prayer or anointing oil. Stronger here than in the wind. Sulfur. Rust. Blood. And something else that turned the stomach— The sweetness of rot. I slowly drew my sword. The blade left the scabbard with a soft scrape that seemed to echo like a scream in the too-quiet grove. The forest had gone absolutely silent. No birds. No prayers. Even the wind seemed to have stopped.

Only the chapel remained, doors thrown wide—like a mouth that had just finished eating, waiting patiently for the next fool to walk inside. Unfortunately. That fool appeared to be me.