“Twenty goblins and one bugbear. The bounty comes to 17 gold and 4 silver.”
“Investigation Quest No. 701. Reward: 30 gold.”
“Altogether, that’s 47 gold and 4 silver.”
The short-haired girl’s flat, unhurried voice reached Xia Nan’s ears.
He hefted the heavy coin pouch in his hand, and an almost intoxicating sense of accomplishment welled up inside him.
He loosened the mouth of the pouch just enough to peek inside. A gleam of gold met his eyes, and the corners of his mouth rose before he could stop them.
He did not count the coins on the spot.
For one thing, the Adventurers’ Association operated across the whole of Aifala Continent. It was a colossal organization by any measure. There was no reason for something that large to shortchange an insignificant adventurer like him over a few coins.
Besides, judging from how quickly the girl had processed everything, the collection and tallying of spoils clearly were not handled manually. The odds of a mistake were low.
For another, the hall was crowded with people coming and going.
Xia Nan knew perfectly well that wealth was best kept out of sight.
If he was still worried, he could count everything carefully once he had settled somewhere safe.
While he was thinking, the girl’s bored voice came from across the counter again.
“The party badge. Do you want to cancel the registration?”
Xia Nan had no idea how that worked.
“What happens if I don’t?”
“The captain pays 20 gold in party dues every year.”
“Cancel it.”
His answer came without hesitation.
It was not because Xia Nan could not bear to part with 20 gold…
All right. Twenty gold was pretty expensive.
But more importantly, he was now the only person left in the Ragtag Party.
He was a novice adventurer with almost no field experience. There was no point clinging to an empty party, and in his current state, he would not be able to recruit anyone worth having anyway.
What he really needed was a party suited to his level, one he could join as an ordinary member while he learned everything he needed to know about this world.
Or he could simply work alone, starting with the easiest, least dangerous quests and taking things one step at a time.
Either option made more sense than keeping the Ragtag Party alive in name only.
So Xia Nan handed over the black-iron badge without another thought.
He still had plenty of things to take care of. He stuffed the gold into his backpack and was about to leave when something suddenly occurred to him.
“Do you know where I can buy a healing potion?”
Xia Nan still remembered the mouthful of healing potion Maji had taken during the fight with the bugbear.
The stuff had practically been an immortal elixir.
Minor wounds healed almost instantly, and even someone on the verge of death could be kept alive.
A single healing potion was another trump card.
Another layer of insurance on his life.
If something like that could be bought with money, he had no intention of ignoring it.
“Turn right. Last shop.”
The short-haired girl did not even look up.
Xia Nan’s eyes lit up.
He thanked her at once and headed off.
Sure enough, tucked into a corner of the hall was a small shop bearing the sign:
[Alchemists’ Association]
Its decor followed the same natural style as the rest of the association branch, strongly reminiscent of the Misty Forest.
The shelves, however, were packed with bottles and jars of every size.
[Truth Serum]: 150 gold
[Deadly Poison]: 200 gold
[Radiant Resistance Potion]: 300 gold
[…]
Xia Nan only had to glance at the prices before his head started to spin.
[Yeah. I’m definitely not the target customer here.]
His steps through the aisles immediately became more careful.
At these prices, knocking a random bottle off a shelf might be enough to wipe out his entire fortune.
Soon, however, he spotted what he was looking for in the most prominent part of the shop.
[Healing Potion]: 50 gold
[…That’s not too bad.]
After the visual assault of the prices he’d just seen, fifty gold somehow sounded almost reasonable.
Then Xia Nan remembered that all the money he currently had on him did not even add up to fifty gold.
His expression stiffened.
Right.
Still expensive.
The shopkeeper seemed to notice his hesitation.
A bald man in an off-white robe wandered over with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Newcomer?”
Xia Nan nodded.
The man casually pointed toward a shelf behind him.
“Healing potions aren’t very cost-effective for people at your level. You won’t use them often either.”
“I’d actually recommend this instead.”
Xia Nan followed his finger.
Several leather pouches marked with a familiar medicinal-herb symbol had been tossed into one corner of the shelf.
[Medical Kit]: 5 gold
Each kit contained enough bandages, salves, and splints for ten uses.
“I don’t keep many in stock,” the bald man said. “Nobody comes to an alchemy shop to buy this kind of thing. The general stores outside have piles of them.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
Xia Nan nodded, genuinely grateful.
His gaze, however, drifted right back to the healing potion.
As far as he was concerned, life-saving medicine like this had the highest possible priority.
It was expensive, yes.
But he did not need to buy it immediately.
He still had plenty of loot to sell, and he had not accepted his next quest yet. Once he had sorted out his finances, he could decide whether fifty gold was an expense he could justify.
“Are all the potions here this expensive?”
The bald man seemed easy enough to talk to, so Xia Nan voiced the question that had been bothering him.
“You get what you pay for.”
The shopkeeper waved a hand.
“Everything here was brewed by professional alchemists from the association. The quality’s guaranteed.”
Then he glanced toward the staircase at the rear of the hall.
“Besides, what I sell down here is the cheap stuff.”
“The really good things are upstairs.”
“Keen-Eye Potion. Potion of Gaseous Form. Potion of Hill Giant Strength…” He clicked his tongue appreciatively, nodding as he rattled off the names. “Now those are something.”
His expression turned wistful.
“Of course, the prices are something too. Not the kind of thing people like us can afford.”
“Upstairs?”
Xia Nan had only just arrived in Rivervale Town. He knew next to nothing about the Adventurers’ Association’s internal structure.
“The second floor is where the real adventurers take jobs.”
The bald man glanced at him.
“The ones with class levels.”
“You can’t expect people like that to spend every day scraping together a few coins around the edge of the forest like you lot, can you?”
There was no real contempt in his tone. He was simply stating a fact.
Xia Nan had no reason to take offense.
If anything, the words only made him more curious.
He was about to seize the opportunity and ask a few more questions when someone called from the shop entrance.
“Boss! Where are you? I’m paying!”
“Coming.”
The bald man ambled away with his hands still clasped behind his back.
Before leaving, he tossed Xia Nan one last piece of advice.
“There are stalls outside the association that sell handbooks. Since you’re new, buy one and read it. Should save you some trouble.”
Xia Nan had already finished his business here and had been planning to leave anyway.
So he did exactly that.
After asking a vendor a couple of questions, he quickly found the “handbook” the shopkeeper had mentioned.
Price: 3 silver.
Not exactly cheap, but not painful enough to make him walk away either.
Xia Nan gritted his teeth and bought it.
The cover was surprisingly well made. Two lines of large, neat lettering had been printed across it in a typeface he did not recognize.
[Adventurer’s Handbook]
(Rivervale Town Branch Special Edition)
Below that was a line of smaller white text.
“Revised Edition – 21st of the Claw of Sunsets (Ches), Arcane Calendar Year 1019”