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Chapter 175: Secrets and Disclosure

But for now, we needed to go negotiate. Technically, we hadn’t subdued the Goblin threat—at least, not in this timeline—but that didn’t mean we couldn’t get paid. Because what we lacked in results, we had in information.

On the way back to town, once we got close enough to start seeing others on the road, Erani had to switch Distortion Strike back on. Currently, Erani could keep the Spell active for around two hours before she’d totally run dry on Mana, so to keep safe, we took breaks every hour for her to regenerate her Mana and ensure we never ended up in a position where she was seen without it. Which worked just fine, since we had to take breaks every hour anyway so that I could re-equip Dark Plate, which hid my own identity. All we had to do was talk a ways off the path and away from any people while we did this—or, if we were in town itself, we could just walk into some random establishment and ask to use their bathroom.

Being forced to constantly take time off to refresh our Spells was irritating, and I honestly felt quite limited in how and where we could act in public, since most of our actions had to be based around that hour-long time limit before we needed to find another private spot we could spend some time.

But regardless, we eventually made it to the guild lobby and walked up to the receptionist’s desk. Over our walk, we’d discussed exactly how we’d go about negotiations, what we’d say, what we’d ask for, and how we’d ask for it. In the end, I felt like we had a solid plan. Though there were certainly unsure about some aspects of it. For example…

I walked up to the receptionist.

She looked up at me. “Hello, how can I help you?”

“Yeah, uh, who do we talk to if we want to negotiate pay? And how would we go about doing that?”

“Well, I’m not high-up enough to discuss pay with you, if that’s what you’re asking. But I can call a manager down, if you’d like. We have a small team that decides things like the payments that go on job requests.”

I nodded. “Perfect.”

She left her desk and disappeared through a door behind her, leaving us alone at the counter.

I turned to Erani. “Think this is gonna work?”

“I at least think it’s worth a shot. If we can end up getting enough out of them to pay for our room tonight, then I’d say it was worth it. And if we get them to fulfil any of our other requests…”

“It’d be pretty nice,” I agreed. “Let’s just hope these manager people aren’t total hardasses.”

“Hey,” I heard a voice from behind me. “Where’s the receptionist? I wanna accept a job.”

I turned back and saw someone, a man I’d seen around in the lobby a couple times before. “She’s just running an errand, grabbing someone for us. Won’t take more than a minute or two, I’d imagine.”

He sighed in exasperation, then paused, looking at us. “Wait a second, you two are those people that were asking Thorne about the Goblins, right? Didn’t you just head out to do the job?”

“Yeah,” I responded, “but we decided it was too dangerous and came back.”

He laughed. “Man, Thorne gave you a whole flamin’ speech! You sat and listened to a gold-degree talking about how you shouldn’t go out and do it, totally ignore his advice, go out anyway, and then instantly run off at the first sign of danger. Flamin’ idiots.”

I sighed. “We just wanted to see for ourselves before we wrote the job off entirely. No need to throw insults, man.”

“It’s not an insult when it’s just true,” he laughed. Then he turned to look back at the rest of the room. “Hey, Doria, y’know those silvers with the massive egos? Thought they could clear the Goblins? Well here they are! Ran off within the hour!”

I heard laughs at the man’s declaration, but just did my best to ignore them. They had no idea that we only left because of the Young Dragon that would’ve destroyed their town if we’d continued, so from their perspective, I was sure it seemed pretty humorous. A couple foreigners coming in town and thinking they were hot shit, taking on the things that were famous for killing newbies, and then losing before the fight even began. But I couldn’t correct their assumptions without giving away the fact that the Dragon was there, and I refused to give that information—our only bargaining chip—away for free.

After a couple minutes of me ignoring the laughs and shouts, the receptionist came back through the door. She smiled apologetically. “Sorry for the wait. We don’t actually have any managers in-house right now.”

“Oh. So we’ll need to come back another time?”

“Not necessarily. We do have the owner of the guild branch here, so I went ahead and asked him if he’d like to speak to you, and he isn’t busy right now. So if you’d like, you could go meet with him.”

“Uh…” I glanced over at Erani. She shrugged. “Sure.”

“Great!” She led us back through the same door she’d just come through, behind her desk, and walked us down a hallway that was lined with office doors. Eventually she stopped at one of them, a little placard set on the wall beside it that read Vanvol Lighthammer. “Here we are. Just head through there, he’s ready to see you.”

So we opened the door and stepped through, into a large, plain office. With its bare walls and floors, a set of windows on the back wall shining light inside, I’d have thought it wasn’t done being decorated yet. However, despite the overall lack of anything in the ten-pace-square room, it certainly didn’t look poorly made. The floors shined, the walls didn’t have a speck of dirt on them, and the desk—the only object in the room—was perfectly set, straight and center, with a comfortable-looking chair to go with it.

In the chair, a muscular man with short, straight hair sat. He was already looking at the door when we entered, so his eyes immediately met mine, catching me slightly off-guard.

“Hello,” he said in a deep voice. “Come. Sit.”

“Um,” I glanced around the empty room. “I don’t see any—”

“Ah, my mistake,” he waved his hand and suddenly, in front of the desk, two simple wooden chairs appeared, seemingly constructing themselves out of thin air.

After a moment’s surprise, I nodded. “Sure.”

Hesitatingly, I walked forward and sat in the chair, making sure to subtly test that it was actually solid before I put my weight on it. Erani did the same.

Index?

“He used a Spell that pulls materials from a nearby source and shapes them into an object of the user’s choice. Has a bunch of logs sitting out back that he can draw from, and it seems like he disassembles the objects back into their original log shape whenever he’s done, by the looks of them. Not dangerous.”

What’s it called?

“Reshape.”

I nodded, and looked up at the man. “Nice usage of Reshape. I didn’t recognize it for a minute there, but it seems like you make good use of it.”

“Ah,” he smiled. “Are you a fellow Paladin? I consider myself quite the fan of the Class; fairly convenient to have the fighting capabilities of a Melee-Type, while also being allowed to take some utility Spells to assist my daily administration duties. Though I can’t say I recognize that Spell that’s creating your magical armor.”

I tensed up when he mentioned Dark Plate—or, rather, when he seemed to instantly recognize that it was made from a Spell, and not a regular physical object. But I responded as naturally as I could, “No, no, I’m not a Paladin. I’ve just met a couple.”

“Spell comes at Level 20,” Index said, sensing I wanted more information on it.

I continued the moment she told me the number, “Though none of them actually got to a high enough Level to acquire the Spell. One of them aimed for it, though, so maybe he’s gotten there by now.”

“Mm,” he nodded. “Well, as you most likely know, I am Vanvol Lighthammer, owner of this fine establishment. Though you can call me Vanvol, my friend. Now, I believe I have heard of you, but I’m afraid what I heard did not include your names.”

“Annor Ton,” I said, giving him my fake name.

“And I’m Eita Niin,” Erani said. With Distortion Strike active, her voice was disfigured, but still perfectly understandable.

Vanvol nodded. “It is nice to meet you both. I’ve heard the two of you have made something of a ruckus among the adventurers here in town, with your strange magic and…propensity for arguments, but as long as you don’t break the rules, you’re fine by me. So, what did you wish to discuss?”

I took a breath, readying myself to start negotiations. Technically, I’d already begun the plan we’d made beforehand—attempting to establish a friendly relationship with the man using knowledge from Index was step one—but the stakes wouldn’t be truly high until he knew we were here to ask for money. Which I was sure would instantly turn this from a friendly conversation into a cutthroat business discussion.

But I steeled my nerves and spoke. “We recently took a job to clear out the Goblins in the southeast forest, by Empire’s Edge.”

“Mm, I am very familiar with that forest. They’ve been giving us quite a bit of trouble, especially lately. Were you here to ask for a higher reward in exchange for the job? I’m aware not many people are keen on taking on such dangerous—and irritating—foes.”

“Uh, not necessarily. We actually already went down to the forest and began investigating. See, I have some very useful Divination magic that can allow me to gain information on some subjects without their knowledge. And one piece of information I gained through use of this magic was that this forest is much, much more dangerous than meets the eye. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that any group of adventurers traveling into the forest to kill the Goblins would be killed. We were lucky to have the information we have before entering, because otherwise we’d have been slaughtered instantly. And I would wager the same would happen even if we were gold instead of silver. Or if we had a team of four, rather than two. Even a team of five or six would die to this forest.”

He frowned at my assessment. “Thank you for the warning. What is it that makes these Goblins so dangerous?”

“That’s what we came here to tell you. However, we do want compensation for the risk we took to acquire the information. See, we did not just find that the forest was dangerous and come right back. We actively risked our lives to gather as much information as we could before we returned, that way we could assist you as much as possible. And as such, I believe exchanging this information for the full reward listed on the Goblin slaying job would be fair.”

“That would be impossible,” he said without hesitation. “We cannot pay out such a sum to a group that did not complete a job. I thank you for taking the personal risk in order to Divine this information, but it would be very bad business to pay for such a thing. I am sure you understand. So if you could please tell us, that way we can keep our people safe, I would be happy to buy you a drink at the bar.”

“If we don’t get paid eight thousand eyt, we do not tell you what the issue with the forest is,” I said.

He smiled politely. “That is perfectly fine with me. We will just modify the job to ask people to look into the forest themselves, in exchange for a much smaller sum than eight thousand. And, of course, you will be blacklisted from claiming a reward from this job, as punishment for—and I hope you understand that I am just stating facts when I say this—attempting to extort money from our establishment. Now please go on your way.”

“That’s fine with me as well,” I said. “Though, I do have to ask, how many deaths will it take before you come back and accept my offer? I just want to know so I can have an idea of how long I should wait before expecting you at my door.”

“I assure you, I will ensure our adventurers will not die on the job. We use only the best safety measures. Even then, adventuring is a dangerous occupation. Those who work with us understand the risks.”

“I’m not talking about adventurers. How many innocent people in this city need to die before you decide it’s worth the eyt? I’m asking for a modest sum in order to save hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. People who did not sign up to be in the line of fire.”

“What could possibly happen to harm the town’s citizens?”

“That is precisely the sort of thing I will tell you in exchange for eight thousand eyt. But I assure you, it will happen if you send adventurers in there not knowing what exactly resides within.”

“And you are effectively holding them hostage.”

“I’m telling you I went through a lot to get this information. I spent a lot of resources. And it is your place to pay money to those who risk themselves to save people. I am not holding anyone hostage in the same way that any other adventurer in this Empire is holding the populace hostage. If they stopped working, the people would get overrun and die, so you pay them to ensure they continue to help. This is exactly that situation.”

He sighed. “You certainly make a point. However, I cannot pay money to receive this information when I have no idea whether it is actually important. Who’s to say you aren’t lying to me? Or you aren’t mistaken about this supposed danger?”

After a moment, I took a breath and leaned back in my chair. It was clear he didn’t want to pay us like this. Which I totally understood; at the end of the day, he had no idea if this information was actually worth what I was asking. Even if he used a Truth Stone, that would only be able to ascertain if I thought it was worth eight thousand. I could think the information was worth that much and just be mistaken. So we were effectively at an impasse here. He wasn’t going to take the deal as it was.

But I knew he most likely wouldn’t bite on this going in. I had to at least try, and I also got a good amount of information about the way he negotiated from the interaction, too. Namely, he liked to shut down my offers the moment I brought them up. He barely even listened to what I had to say before he said no, most likely to try and decrease my confidence and make me more likely to just tell him what I knew and leave, defeated. But I was much too confident in what I knew to be coerced into giving it up for free just yet.

“Okay,” I said. “How about we make a different deal?”

“And what’s that?”

“You pay us nothing for the information up-front. We tell you right now for free. However, you cannot tell anyone else about what we tell you. You can’t create a new public job asking people to take care of the problem, and you can’t change the existing job to warn people about it. Instead, if you decide that this threat is genuinely dangerous and worth paying to take care of, you have to take down the Goblin job and make an exclusive deal with us.”

“No. If we do that and your news actually is worth sending in a team over, then you can just demand however high a sum you want. And even then, there’s a significant chance you simply do not know what you’re talking about and—”

“And if we don’t know what we’re talking about, then there’s no issue, right? It isn’t dangerous after all, so iou just don’t make that deal with us, keep sending people to go out and kill the Goblins, and they’ll find and deal with the problem on their own, right?”

“Perhaps. But there’s still the problem of—”

“And we won’t be charging you a ridiculous sum, because that sum will be pre-negotiated. We can decide on it right now, before the deal is made.”

“It is unreasonable to negotiate pay for a job when I don’t even know what that job will be.”

“How about fifty thousand?”

“Did you not just hear me? I cannot negotiate for this. It’s impossible. Besides, if you were able to take care of whatever is causing this issue, why wouldn’t you go and do that and then ask for pay like everyone else does?”

“We can’t take care of them. We’d need the help of at least one other team of adventurers. Which is why we need a pay pre-negotiated—we need to be able to advertise that pay to another adventuring group before doing so.”

“That doesn’t answer how I’m supposed to negotiate pay for a job whose difficulty I don’t know.”

“You have a basic idea of the difficulty. It’s something that would need two teams to complete, so it would need to be enough to fairly compensate two bodies when split in half. And if the number we settle on ends up being too much for what ends up being an easy job, you can simply refuse to hire us and, as you said, wait for someone else to go clean up the mess.”

He sat and looked at me for a few moments. He reached his hands up so he could rest his chin on his interlocked fingers. Second after second ticked away, with him just staring at me. And then he opened his mouth.

“Twenty thousand.”

And I knew I was in.

“Forty-five,” I responded. “Remember, we need to be able to pay ourselves and a separate team.”

“And I need insurance that, if this is something that needs to be dealt with, but is not as pressing as you make it seem, that I will not be bankrupted over only a mid-sized threat. Thirty.”

“Remember, we’re only getting half of this. And, if we are to take care of this threat, we would also be, by consequence, taking care of the Goblins. Which means, after spending our day and many of our resources on the Goblins today, and then spending yet another day—or even longer—on this second job, we would take home fifteen thousand on our side. Eight thousand of that goes to the original Goblin job according to its original pay, which only leaves seven thousand for this other job. That seems hardly reasonable. Forty thousand seems to be a decent middle ground, no?”

“That may be true, but I simply cannot devote more than thirty to this project. If you need more, request a better cut from whatever team you get to help you.”

“Even then, thirty thousand just isn’t fair. Again, if it’s easy enough for someone else to take it out without issue, then you don’t have to pay us at all. If you must, though, the lowest I’m willing to go would be thirty-two thousand, but only if you give half up-front. That way, if we split half and half with another team, we get eight thousand now—the price of the Goblin job—and another eight thousand upon completion. While I maintain that this would be you extremely underpaying us, I suppose I would be fine with that since it’s an exclusive job. But I absolutely can’t go lower.”

He sat and looked at me for another stretch of time, then closed his eyes. After one long exhale, he opened them, and said, “Fine. I agree that if I decide this needs a dedicated job, we will go directly to you and we will pay you according to those terms. However, do not expect to see this money anytime soon. It could be days, even weeks. I will need to think this over and discuss it with multiple people before I can have my answer as to whether or not we will need your assistance.”

“That’s absolutely fine,” I nodded.

“So then, what is this threat that you say lurks in the forest?”

I looked at him. “The Goblins aren’t acting of their own free will. They’ve been enslaved and forced to expand as relentlessly as possible.”

“Enslaved? By whom?”

“By a Young Dragon. Level 22. Extremely aggressive. In fact, I have it on good information that if this thing knew your town was so close by, it would attack immediately.”

A moment of silence passed by, and then he stood, placing his hands on the desk. “Let me get you a Truth Stone to verify that, and then we will get to drafting that job contract. Thirty-two thousand, you said? Expect for us to be ready to move you out by tomorrow at the latest.”