Bottom-Tier Adventurer

I woke to a dry throat. After waiting for my senses to fully come back, I unbarred the door and stepped outside the room.

I went downstairs and asked the tavern owner for some water. He told me to draw it from the well out back. It was a different owner than yesterday.

Why are even the replacement staff middle-aged men? It is way too sweaty and rough in here.

I drew water from the well and filled a bucket that had been left nearby. Forming a cup with my hands, I scooped up some water to quench my thirst. I exhaled a quiet breath of relief, then used the water in the bucket to splash my face repeatedly.

The sun was directly overhead, so it seemed I had slept until midday. I had been drinking until dawn, so I suppose it could not be helped.

Since my sense of taste is stuck at grade-school level, alcohol is too bitter for me to drink normally. Even so, I had drunk a fair amount out of obligation yesterday.

I dislike the flavor, yet my body never gets drunk. I have always hated drinking parties. The drinks taste awful and I don’t even get tipsy enough to enjoy it. It’s basically a punishment game.

Thinking about that, I headed back into the tavern. As I paid for lunch and started eating, the three of them, Gonz and the others, came inside.

“Hey, Yajin. Waking up only now? Must be nice living that kind of life.”

“I had too much fun listening to Mr. Al’s stories yesterday, so I ended up drinking too much.”

“Yajin, just call me Al. No need for honorifics.”

“Same for me. Just Kimon.”

“What the hell, when did you all get so friendly? Yajin, you can call me Gonz too.”

“I could never call you without respect. Please let me call you Big Bro.”

“Big bro? I never said you could be my brother, but if you want to call me that, do as you like. Gahaha.”

Even though he told me to do as I pleased, Gonz looked extremely happy. He is too easy. If he were a cute girl, he would be in the pushover heroine category. Instead, he is more gorilla than I am.

Gonz, who was absurdly weak to flattery, was now in a good mood. Judging the atmosphere safe, I brought up the main topic.

“Big Bro, let me into your party, please?”

The moment I said that, Gonz’s good mood vanished.

“Hah? You trying to leech off us?”

Gonz glared at me.

“You just registered as an adventurer yesterday, didn’t ya? And can you even fight with that tiny body of yours? Huh?”

“I’ll be fine once I level up, even with a small body. Besides, even if I only get a little share until I can hold my own, I’d be grateful. If I became an adventurer knowing nothing, I’d be dead in no time.”

“Even if you say a small share is enough, if you’re useless you’re just a parasite.”

“Please… let me work as a scout. I’m good at recon, I really am.”

The moment I said that, Kimon and Al, who had looked indifferent until now, turned their strict eyes toward me.

“Do you even know what a scout does?”

“Isn’t it a job where you search for enemy traces, track them, survey the surroundings, help the party hunt efficiently, avoid ambushes, and protect everyone’s safety?”

“You really do not know anything, do you?”

“Gonz, Yajin seems to be from an incredibly remote countryside. Maybe he truly does not know.”

When Al said that, the harsh gazes on me seemed to soften a little.

“Yajin, why are you trying to become an adventurer?”

Being asked that by Gonz, I recited the cover story I had prepared.

My grandmother had been kidnapped and brought to this country as a slave. After many twists and turns, she was bought by the chief of a remote village. My mother was later given her freedom because of her contributions to the village.

As her son, I lived an ordinary life while helping the village chief with his work. When the chief died and his son took over, he began discriminating against me openly.

I was forced into dangerous tasks and treated unfairly. After my mother died, I left the village. My identity is unclear, and my appearance is unusual for this region.

Because of that, I cannot get proper employment.

Back in the village, they often made me track beasts and monsters in the forest. I thought I could make use of that skill and become an adventurer.

After I said that, Al asked me if I knew about basic stats and level thresholds. I answered that I did not.

Gonz clicked his tongue in disbelief and said, “How far out in the sticks did you live? Ordinary people all know that.”

The tense atmosphere softened, and I quietly breathed a sigh of relief. Gonz and the others then placed their orders for lunch.

While we ate the meals that had been brought out, Al explained levels, skills, base stats, and so on.

To verify your own strength, you need an item known as an Artifact. These are magical tools with extraordinary capabilities that are occasionally discovered in dungeons.

With modern technology many of them can’t even be analyzed, let alone manufactured. Even artifacts used just to check level vary in effectiveness.

If you only want to confirm your level, you can have it checked at the church in a large city, though they’ll ask for a substantial donation.

Higher-performance artifacts let you check skills as well. But artifacts capable of revealing skills are extremely rare.

Because of that, only nobles with verified identities and some military units are permitted to use them.

Adventurers can’t verify their own skills, so they have to rely on feeling and intuition. Skills someone has learned are only known for sure to that person.

If someone says, “I have the XXX skill, so let me into your party,” there’s no way to verify that claim, so the speaker’s credibility matters.

Many adventurers prefer to hide their skills. Be careful when talking about skills, Al warned.

In the past, only level and skills could be confirmed, so people assumed those two things represented a person’s ability.

But that common sense was overturned.

A few hundred years ago, in the Labyrinth City of Maribel, a artifact recovered from a dungeon changed everything.

The artifact found in Maribel didn’t just show level and skills, it displayed numerical values measuring a person’s abilities.

Five items were shown. The lord of Maribel poured vast funds into researching what the numbers meant and how they related to level.

As a result, the details of those values were discovered.

Strength — physical power.

Fortitude — bodily toughness and stamina; resistance to status effects like poison, paralysis, and petrification.

Intelligence — magic-related aptitude (details unclear because nobles and the church monopolize magical knowledge).

Spirit — magic resistance and resistance to mental disorders such as panic, charm, and confusion.

Dexterity — manual skill; affects bow accuracy and effectiveness of production skills.

Normally a city would keep that kind of knowledge to itself. However, an incident prompted the information to be made public.

Maribel sits next to three dungeons. The various materials harvested from those dungeons brought great wealth to Maribel.

Each dungeon produced different types of monsters, so the city obtained a wide range of biological materials, ores, and medicinal herbs, and prospered.

The lordship of Maribel had been held for generations by the descendants of the adventurers who discovered the three dungeons. They were descendants of legendary explorers who had cleared the depths and knew the dungeons inside out.

Their territorial governance was very stable.

If dungeons aren’t managed properly they can stampede. A mass of monsters can burst forth out of them.

Monsters that overflow will rampage and destroy the surroundings, causing terrible damage.

The Labyrinth City produces enormous wealth, but it always carries the risk of ruin. It was hard to let anyone other than the dungeon-expert family, descendants of adventurers, manage the dungeons.

Still, a city that amassed too much power was viewed as a threat. The imperial capital coerced them with impossible demands and forced large payments, treating them unfairly.

The capital wanted to prevent the city from growing too strong. Naturally, the ruling family came to hate the capital’s bureaucrats, nobles, and royals.

Then the capital demanded the status data and the artifacts that it had spent so much time and money to acquire.

Hearing that, the ruling family finally snapped.

They refused the emperor’s demand, and then released their research data to the public. They said they wanted it used to fight monsters, humanity’s common enemy, and attached that message.

They even published it beyond human races, which was astonishing. If the capital was going to take everything by force, they might as well spill it all.

That must have been their thinking. You could feel the depth of the family’s anger.

The emperor was furious at the city’s rebellion. He sent troops against the ruling family.

Maribel, however prosperous, was still only a regional city. Everyone expected it would be crushed by the emperor’s forces. But then the ruling family of Maribel made an outrageous statement.

They declared that if the imperial army were sent against the Labyrinth City, they would deliberately trigger a stampede in the three dungeons, engulf the surrounding region, and destroy Maribel itself.

It was probably a bluff, yet if there were even the slightest chance it was true, it would be no laughing matter.

The distance between the Labyrinth City and the imperial capital was unexpectedly short. If all three dungeons triggered a stampede at the same time, the capital would be destroyed.

In fact, the entire Megad Empire might be wiped out.

The imperial family, terrified of a stampede. The great merchants who made their fortunes trading materials from the Labyrinth City. The nobles who received money from those merchants.

All of those factions opposed sending the army to the Labyrinth City.

The emperor, whose authority had already been weakened by the Forest Sanctuary incident, could not force his own will through.

After negotiations, the Labyrinth City of Maribel was allowed to exist as a special administrative zone with a high degree of autonomy.

For that reason, the relationship between level and the five types of abilities that do not appear on the status screen became widely known.

Each of the five numerical values has what is called a base value. This value is determined at birth and becomes fixed at age eighteen.

It represents the body’s performance once physical growth is complete. The base value is set at birth, and even if a child trains during youth, the value never changes. These base values are considered extremely important.

A person’s abilities are determined by adding two things together: the value obtained by multiplying the base value by a coefficient, and the total of all base values.

For example, if someone has a Strength base value of 10 and is Level 2:

Base value: 10

Coefficient at Level 2: 0.2

10 × 0.2 = 2

This “2” becomes the level bonus. In other words:

Base value 10 + level bonus 2 = 12.

So a person with Strength base value 10 at Level 2 has a Strength of 12.

Any increase gained from physical training is then added on top of this 12.

For instance:

Base value 10 + level bonus 2 + intense training worth 3 = 15.

This person’s Strength becomes 15.

The benefit from training is smaller than the benefit from base values, but it is still worthwhile.

The coefficient for level correction increases as level increases. Only scholars are said to know the exact figures.

In other words, the higher one’s level becomes, the larger the difference created by differing base values.

Base value might as well be called talent.

The other way to increase the five ability values is skills.

Skills such as Swordsmanship or Axe Mastery apply bonuses to Strength and Endurance. Even two people with the same base values and level can end up with different numbers because of this.

Because of this, it is suspected that skills also have levels, even though no one can verify them.

However, the level of weapon-handling skills is not taken very seriously. This is because the sword strokes of someone who has just learned the skill and someone who seems to have a very high skill level show no noticeable difference.

If raising a skill level only provides physical bonuses, it is faster to raise your actual level. As you continue fighting, your skill levels will rise on their own anyway.

For that reason, while the existence of a skill itself is considered important, the idea that “it might have a level” is treated lightly, and skill levels are not valued.

What matters in this world are base values and level. Yet levels apparently have thresholds at every five levels.

These thresholds are categorized by something called “Rank.”

To break through the Level 5 threshold, you must defeat a monster of Rank 2 or higher. For Level 10, it would be a Rank 3 monster, and so on.

Adventurers usually accept subjugation requests that match their own Rank. Monsters one Rank above you are, quite literally, on a different level.

Crossing a level threshold is said to be a life-or-death endeavor.

Apart from these numerical thresholds, there is something known as the Level 15 Wall. More than eighty percent of adventurers stall at Level 15.

Why can’t they get past Level 15? The reason is extremely simple: money. That is the entire reason.

To defeat a Rank 4 monster, iron weapons are not enough.

There exists an ore called black-steel, harder and sharper than regular steel. Unless your weapons are forged from this ore, they cannot stand up to Rank 4 monsters.

Iron in this world is extraordinarily expensive. Obtaining charcoal alone is difficult. Going into the forest to cut wood means dealing with monsters, so escorts are required.

Because of the labor costs, lumber becomes expensive. That expensive lumber must then be processed into charcoal. The already costly charcoal is then consumed in large quantities to refine iron. The refined iron is worked further to produce iron goods.

High fuel costs and the craftsmen’s labor fees. Considering all of that, it is easy to imagine why iron products are expensive.

Black-steel requires even higher temperatures to process and needs high-grade charcoal. On top of that, only a small number of craftsmen have the skill to work it. This drives the price up even further.

Adventurers do earn more than ordinary people. That is true. Even so, black-steel gear is not something they can buy lightly.

Adventurers have a ranking system. Gonz and his group are apparently Rank 6 adventurers. In this world’s Adventurers’ Guild, Rank 10 is the lowest and Rank 1 is the highest.

To reach Rank 5, you must have surpassed the Level 15 Wall, and adventurers of Rank 5 or higher are considered noteworthy figures.

Gonz and his group are known as the strongest party in Rock Cliff, and even though they are Rank 6, their income is said to be far beyond anything an ordinary person could ever earn.

However, while adventurers earn a lot, their expenses are just as high. Weapons are expensive. If a weapon breaks during battle, the loss alone guarantees a deficit. Maintaining equipment costs money as well, and there are consumables like healing salves and potions.

If you get injured, you cannot work until you recover. If you fail a request, you must pay double the request fee as a penalty.

Some clients even aim for that penalty money, hiding information or deliberately giving false details to cause a failure.

The worst cases involve collusion between the client and a guild employee. In those situations, nothing can be done.

Even when it is not that malicious, many clients underreport the size of a monster group to reduce the request fee.

Gonz’s party once got caught by a malicious client like that. They struggled to pay the penalty and nearly ended up as debt slaves.

Of course, if a client is excessively malicious, they are put on the Adventurers’ Guild blacklist. Because of that, extreme cases are rare, but clever and calculating clients still push things right to the edge.

No matter how careful you are, you cannot completely avoid these kinds of troubles.

Because of the stress of risking their lives fighting monsters, many adventurers turn to alcohol and women, which is not uncommon. After a battle, their adrenaline is especially high, and they say the desire for women becomes overwhelming.

Adventurers push through all kinds of problems, resist the temptations of drink and women, and desperately save money. Even so, many die suddenly from stress or exhaustion despite all their effort.

Buying enough black-steel weapons for an entire party is extremely difficult.

Those who receive financial support from the start, such as wealthy hobbyists or the illegitimate children of nobles, are exceptions. Most ordinary adventurers never manage to buy black-steel gear and remain stuck in place.

I asked whether they could use clever tricks instead, such as aiming for the eyes with iron weapons or setting traps, but that seems to be very difficult.

Monsters of Rank 4 and above are truly on another level. Almost no one succeeds in fighting them without the proper equipment.

Because of this, many adventurers end up stuck at Level 15. That is what Al said.

I wondered what any of this had to do with being a scout. Maybe it showed on my face, because he explained again from the beginning.

The higher your level becomes, the more important your base values are. But even at low levels, the difference between base values is huge. Since most adventurers stop at Level 15, the difference in base values directly becomes a difference in actual combat ability.

If someone has a base value of 15 and another person has a base value of 10, their level coefficients will not differ dramatically.

However, because 15 is one and a half times 10, even if the level bonus is similar, the final total is completely different.

Even someone as dense as I am could understand that. While I was thinking that, Al added that the two things adventurers need most are Strength and Endurance.

Strength directly affects attack power, and stamina is essential.

This world has no space–time magic and no item storage. There are magic bags, but they are dungeon-born artifacts, and their prices are so high that only great nobles or wealthy merchants can afford them.

In other words, you have to carry whatever you hunt by yourself. Living creatures are extremely heavy, so you need considerable strength and stamina.

The more strength and stamina you have, the more prey you can carry. That directly translates into income.

“This is where the real point begins,” Al said. “According to the investigations, people who are naturally well-built tend to have higher base values in Strength and Endurance.”

That explained why so many adventurers were huge. Around twenty to thirty percent of adventurers were women, yet all of them were tall. In the Adventurers’ Guild, I was probably the shortest.

I was 170 centimeters tall. Average in Japan, but everyone in the guild was over 180 centimeters.

Short adventurers were not accepted into any party. They either overextended themselves and died in a ditch as solo adventurers, or they fell into banditry.

There is, however, another way to get into a party. That is the role called a scout, which really means decoy. You act as bait to lure monsters.

Because you are useless in direct combat, you use your life as bait to pull enemies toward the party. Even then, because you contribute nothing in the fight itself, adventurers look down on you and call you a parasite.

“People use the word ‘scout’ as a sarcastic way of referring to adventurers at the very bottom who lack talent,” Al said awkwardly.

Ah, I had completely stepped in it. No wonder Gonz and the others made those faces. Saying “use me as your scout” was basically telling them, “So you are the kind of awful party that burns through disposable weaklings as decoys, right?”

I really messed up. What was I going to do? I held my head in my hands.