What I filed at the Guild counter was a help-wanted request for adventurers.
I paid the Guild the filing fee and deposit, and set about gathering hands.
Hawkins, document in hand, kept looking back and forth between the paper and my face.
“L-Lyle… is the amount correct? Four days. Two silver coins just for participating. The work description is: stand at the destination?”
The doubt was reasonable.
The pay didn’t match the work.
“It’s correct. Also — about the head-count.”
“Eh, yes… ck!”
Hawkins, troubled, checked the head-count line.
“A hundred?!”
“Up to two hundred is fine. Basically, they’ll be standing around the destination — the abandoned mine. There’s a smaller group that will be doing actual work — separate pay scale — but I’m hiring them too.”
He kept rechecking the paperwork.
“Bandit numbers, per intel, around twenty. Overkill on paper, but the actual fighting will only be done by Lyle’s group. Eh, treat it as wartime pay — not bad.”
The Third. I felt it too.
(A day’s work normally pays six to ten large coppers. Here they get two silver for two days. Less than that and applicants won’t flood in.)
“Greedy types will swarm. Make a show of it.”
As the idiot heir.
A twenty-strong bandit gang, subjugated by hundreds — I’d look ridiculous to Darion’s people.
That, in turn, was how my location would also reach House Walt. Then again — they probably already knew.
But if my behavior was this idiotic, what would they think?
Maybe they’d eventually send assassins.
(If Ceres is feeling whimsical, she might.)
So — ridiculous it is. The flailing idiot son.
(It’s all on the dice, basically.)
While Hawkins was checking the document for errors, I added:
“Oh, that reminds me. There was something I wanted to ask you, Hawkins. May I?”
“Yes. Within what I can answer.”
I asked.
After all, Zelphy had said nothing against it.
I didn’t expect the Guild to refuse.
(More cards in hand is better.)
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
In front of the Guild’s ground floor.
In a busy spot, I made a loud speech.
“I am of House Walt — former count house, former heir! I have today resolved to stand and subjugate the bandit gang nesting near Darion! Any who consider themselves up to it — come forward!”
“Louder. They can laugh — go big.”
The Fourth, directing. I shouted the bandit subjugation campaign.
Ridiculously.
Inviting laughter.
“A noble subjugating bandits?”
“Disowned means…”
“Can’t be much, can he?”
“Leave it to the lord, surely.”
“Once the labyrinths are cleared, they’ll handle it. Just sit tight.”
Stifled snickers as adventurers passed by.
Some passersby were openly cracking up.
“Now is the moment to rise, to fulfill our duty as kn—” (Self-respect, abandoned!)
Swallowing the embarrassment, I kept shouting at the adventurers.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
Shouting done. I met up with Novem and came back to the rental.
A red-haired girl — Aria Rockward — was waiting at the front door, arms crossed, niou-style.
The crossed arms pushed her chest forward.
Different angle than usual. As mentally shredded as I was today, I let my eyes drop for a fraction of a second before asking,
“Did you need something with our house?”
“‘Did you need something’ — what kind of question is that?! What was that you did today?!”
The thing I’d been loudly promoting, presumably.
“Ah, the bandit-subjugation recruitment—”
“Lord Lyle, you were wonderful.”
Novem’s flattery had me embarrassed; meanwhile Rockward strode closer.
Big strides — hardly the gait of a former ojou-sama.
“I just wanted you to lend me Zelphy! With her, I could’ve put together a small elite team and gone in! Now you’ve made it that loud — even the bandits will know!”
Novem cut in.
“You may be misunderstanding something.”
“M-misunderstanding what? Everyone really was making fun of him.”
That was the point of how we’d acted.
It wasn’t wrong — and somehow, I was a little sad about it.
“What we’re doing, we’re doing because we have our reasons. Or did you think… we were doing this for you?”
Novem, blunt. Rockward flinched.
The First, in my ear.
“E-eh, Novem-chan… I’d, I’d kind of like you to forgive her. We could try getting along, hm?”
The Second.
“Whose side is this guy on. We don’t need to manage her mood. The work is the same regardless.”
Recovering the Rockward family’s Jewel was the core of my goal — no doubt.
It was also the condition under which the First would help.
But on a personal level, I did want to help her.
The ancestors’ cooperation came from a different place: getting the First to acknowledge me. Plus, securing my safety.
“B-but if the bandits run because of it, none of this matters!”
”…Then perhaps you should act yourself?”
“Eh?”
Novem, cold. And also — straightforwardly correct.
“Zelphy accepted the Guild’s job to be our instructor. We paid her, as we should. We’ve engaged her for separate work now, but we are paying for that too.”
“I-I’m sorry about that. But I don’t have that kind of money…”
The Rockward family was in decline. Worse — collapsed.
If she’d had that money she wouldn’t be leaning on an old acquaintance like Zelphy.
“Without doing anything you can, you reprimand Lord Lyle’s actions? Or — once Lord Lyle succeeds, were you planning to bargain for the Jewel? How self-serving are you?”
“I — I—”
Rockward looked stricken. I started to step in. The Third stopped me.
“Lyle, let Novem-chan have this. It’s also for Aria’s own sake.”
When I stopped, Novem confirmed it and continued.
“Even laughed at, even humiliated, I would never mock someone who is trying. People who only watch have no right to comment.”
Rockward fought back.
“That’s why I’m asking for help! What am I supposed to do alone?! What can a girl like me actually do?!”
I just watched.
The Third, quietly.
“Novem-chan took on the role of the villain in your place. By rights, you should’ve been the one telling Aria all this.”
The First.
“That’s right! Get it together, you!”
The Second, to the First.
“You understand we’re in this mess because of you, right? Maybe look in a mirror before lecturing.”
I lowered my eyes, then raised them.
Rockward was crying. Tears rolling. The strong-jawed girl from a moment ago was gone.
She wanted her important thing back.
Alone, she couldn’t get it.
She’d worried. She’d panicked. Both, of course.
I took Novem’s hand and headed for the door. Passing Rockward, I said,
“We leave at dawn. If you see me with the group assembled at the gate, that’s the subjugation party. After that, do as you like.”
“Eh?”
I led Novem inside.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
Morning of the next day.
I looked over the wooden sticks and planks piled on the cart and nodded.
“From far enough away they’d pass.”
“Hmph. Pulled together in the time you had. The merchants were paying close attention, by the look of it.”
The Seventh confirmed the load was ready.
Hand these out to the assembled adventurers — a hundred thirty of them — and from a distance they’d look like soldiers.
(Everything else is ready too.)
“—The Aria girl is here.”
I shifted my eyes. There she was, the red-haired Rockward.
Novem said nothing. Said nothing — but seemed slightly relieved.
“Wouldn’t not coming be better for her?”
Novem shook her head.
“She’s that kind of person to begin with. She would have regretted it later. From that regret, she might have gone wrong… Just my guess.”
Most of the personnel had no real job. Hired purely to come stand at the location. Real work fell to less than a tenth of the group.
A “stand-around” job. That was the pitch — and the campaign had been loud.
For lack of time, the headcount was lower than I’d planned.
“You know it, Lyle. The war has already started.”
I nodded silently at the Seventh.
“Right — moving out.”
Novem nodded.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
The abandoned mine near Darion—.
There, with his accumulated treasures behind him, a man sat on a wooden crate.
A red gem in his hand.
He held it in his right palm, looking at it, and was laughing.
“Quite the find. Thanks to this, I cleaned out the monsters that had moved in around here.”
A bushy-bearded giant, over two meters tall.
The man who’d founded the bandit gang and ravaged region after region.
Twenty-three subordinates, fawning, laughed with him.
“As expected of the boss. Still — the noble’s brat doesn’t even suspect we know everything.”
A subordinate. The big man burst out laughing.
In front of the twenty-three, he laid out the situation.
“He’s running a campaign about it through the Guild — of course we know. And he doesn’t even know my men are embedded in there. Let him bring his cardboard soldiers right to us.”
Lyle’s intel was fully exposed.
Twenty-six men total. Three of them had been operating as Darion adventurers.
They’d been buying supplies in town and preparing to absorb the whole gang when Lyle’s information came across.
From the intel, the boss had read the bulk of the force as adventurers carrying wooden sticks and wooden shields — and not skilled adventurers, either.
“He thinks we’ll be shocked by the numbers and accept a surrender call. …Not happening. We’re not finishing here.”
The big man had ambitions.
To climb out of “bandit” status and lead a mercenary company.
And one day, to take a country.
He carried the ambition to stand in the line of legendary men who’d risen from mercenary captain to lord.
He’d drifted into Darion, set up a network among the townspeople, slipped his men in one by one, and was preparing to sell off the loot to capitalize his independence.
The reason they hadn’t plundered in Darion was to live as a mercenary company from here on.
The hand that would buy them that future was in his palm right now.
“With this Gem, there’s nothing to fear. The noble brat shows up, I’ll have his head.”
“Boss! That brat’s got a real beauty with him!”
A man spoke up. The boss laughed.
“That so? I’ll have a taste, then loan her around.”
“Heheh, much obliged, boss. I had my eye on her since I saw her at the Guild.”
The infiltrators at the Adventurers’ Guild had been feeding the gang Lyle’s movements.
They meant to use it to make their names.
“The chance to make our name has walked itself to us. Pull yourselves together!”
"""Yeah!"""
The gang’s morale was high.
The reason: the red Gem the big man held.
It held a Skill specialized for close combat.
It was House Rockward’s hereditary Gem, passed down for generations.
— Lyle’s group: the bandits were waiting for them at the abandoned mine.