Extra Chapter 1 – The Crown Prince Bothers the Civil Servant (1)
There were four big festivals every year in the capital. The first was for New Year's Day, followed by the Harvest Festival. The third was the entrance examination for the knights and magic schools, and the last was the emperor's birthday. One would think that the emperor's birthday would be the first to be celebrated, but it did not apply to high-ranking nobles in the imperial court, or to low-level civil servants like me. You had to be invited to a birthday party to actually enjoy it. At best, there was a night market and a parade with some tax breaks to commemorate His Majesty. I looked over at Demuir, who was humming excitedly while fiddling with the accounting documents next to him.
"His Majesty the Emperor's Birthday is over, so it'll be the Harvest Festival soon."
"It seems so."
In the days leading up to the Harvest Festival, even adventurers often returned to their hometowns or took a rest. Thanks to this, there wasn't much to do at work, so we only had to go in the morning. The entire office felt energized; everyone seemed to be looking forward to it, not just Demuir.
"Why don't you ask the bakery girl out front there on a date?" I asked slyly.
Demuir coughed and fidgeted around.
"Sh-should I? But what if I get rejected?"
"You scared? That's unlike you. If you get rejected, we'll just go for a consolation drink."
Demuir seemed nervous, and started talking slower.
"Today? But there's still a lot of time until the Harvest Festival..."
"Normally, you have to make an appointment a few days in advance so that the other person also has time to prepare. And that lady seems popular. John, the assistant at the Miliang Tailor, and Dormer, a silver plate adventurer, looked like they were eyeing her too."
Demuir's eyes opened wide in surprise.
"R-really?"
"Yes, so you should ask her out quickly. They say that a beautiful woman can only be won by a courageous man, so what are you going to do if you get there too late and the train leaves?"
Demuir grumbled nervously. "Easy for you to say, talking about someone else's business."
"I'm giving you advice like this because it's someone else's business. You can't give advice like this recklessly if it's your own business."
While Demuir and I were chatting and processing the documents, Dano, who was looking at the counter in the hall, opened the office door and called me. "Den, are you busy?"
"No, I'm almost done, I just have to finish up a few things. Why do you ask?"
Dano scratched the back of his head and said, "If you remember, we've received an official letter from the magic school and the knight's school asking for help in registering and practicing as an adventurer."
"Yes, we did."
The reason I gave a lecture in the Asteria Duchy, following the knights' school's subjugation training, and also the reason why I was sent to the magic school as an instructor after returning, was to train with the Adventurers' Guild every year. Students at the knights' school and the magic school had to temporarily register and work for the Adventurers' Guild. This wasn't just simply the Adventurers' Guild helping out with education, it was an activity that was beneficial to both parties, because the Guild could make students deal with small requests that Adventurers' Guild members didn't want to take on.
"This time, I auctioned off the magic wand and other auxiliary tools at the magic tower to be distributed to the magic school students, but I wasn't sure, even when I saw the samples sent from each tower." Dano explained.
"Ah, you want me to take a look?"
I felt a bit annoyed. If it was a state-of-the-art product, I'd be begging, but if it was to compare children's toys and calculate their unit price, it'd feel like a waste of time.
"Can't you just do it where you normally do it?" I asked.
Dano sighed at my words full annoyance. "Until last year, I received the goods from the Red Magic Tower, but as you know, the Red Magic Tower is still under reconstruction."
The skeleton, master of the Red Magic Tower, was ostensibly missing, and various tools and research materials inside the magic tower were lost as well, so they wouldn't be able to take orders for the next few years.
I jumped up from my seat. "Well, if it can't be helped, I'll take a look. Where is it?"
"Huh? Yea. Consulting room three."
"I'll go there now."
I quickly took the lead and headed to the consulting room next to the counter. It wasn't because I felt guilty or anything, I didn't do anything wrong.
Of course, of course! It's all that unnamed skeletons' fault!
Repeating that to myself, I made my way into consulting room three. It was quite a small room, and it was so full of boxes that it was impossible to open the door all the way.
"Uh... There are more than I thought." I said.
"It's because there were more than thirty magic towers that participated in this auction. And there's not only magic wands, but also simple magic protective equipment." Dano replied.
When I opened one of the many boxes, I found a magic wand, a bracelet with barrier magic, a coat with hardening and fatigue replenishing magic, and a leather breastplate with lightening and hardening magic for both men and women.
Because the Adventurers' Guild was buying so many goods, more than thirty towers participated in the auction. If the tower won the order and received a good evaluation, the Adventurer's Guild would continue buying from that same tower every year. So the magic towers must have really been driven to win it.Visit NovelPing for the full chapter.
I closed the box again and smiled. "Come to think of it, I think it's better to get an evaluation from a magician adventurer with lots of real battle experience."
Such bothersome work was definitely a no-go. I didn't feel guilty enough to work that hard, especially since it wasn't my fault!
Dano shook his head. "There are few magicians among adventurers, and there are even fewer magicians who we can trust to do this. In some cases, the magician that you request gets lobbied by a magic tower."
It was a very common story.
"And there was a time when we left it to an adventurer, who got lobbied by a magic tower. He suggested trash, which won the bid, and it led to big trouble."
The story was an unlikely one, but it had happened nonetheless.
"What about Mr. Dane Walker?"
"He went elsewhere due to commissions."
"Are there any other credible magicians?"
"At the moment, no. And any credible magician would be occupied."
"Then, how about letting the magic school take a look?"
"They'd only accept if we reduce the number and take the initiative."
Damn it, there's no retreat.
'Couldn't I also be lobbied?' was what I wanted to ask, but it was clear he'd just snort and dare me to try it. If I really did it, the impartial Guild Director Glont would definitely not make an exception for me.
"What if I took a vacation starting tomorrow? I still have a lot of vacation days left."
"You can do it when you return."
I frowned at his reply.
Perhaps feeling sorry for me, he patted my shoulder and said, "But besides this, I will ask the guild director to take you off most of the other projects. And if you need anything, just let me know."
I bitterly opened the box again and took out a catalog.
"It'll take a couple of days. There'll be ones with fake samples too, so we'll need to go to the magic towers and check their manufacturing lines."
"I'll leave it to you. Tell me if you want something to eat. I'll buy you anything."
It was annoying, but there was still some time left, so I would at least not have to work overtime.
"I don't need anything to eat, just please cover the night shift for me instead."
"Oh, that's a bit much."
Tch, you told me to ask for anything.
* * *
In the end, we agreed to have me withdrawn from the night shift while I was working on the magic tower auctioning matter. I hummed as I opened another box.
"… What? What's all this garbage?"
I didn't understand how they submitted such shoddy things with any confidence.
"Let's see, the desired price is two-thousand-five-hundred pelk per unit, not even a set? These bastards, it may be tax-free but that's too much. How can you charge that much for this?"
That amount of pelk was about the same as a year's worth of rent for a single-person home. Since there were four to a set, the price per set was ten-thousand pelk. Factoring in a little extra for leeway, they were offering thirty sets, so the total cost of their merchandise was three million pelk. This was enough to operate a small territory for two or three months. I could see why thirty places participated in the bidding. Considering the production costs and labor costs for high-quality magicians, it would be stupid not to participate.
The price points were so ridiculous that I snorted and checked the samples of the other magic towers. Desired prices per unit varied widely, between two-thousand pelk at the lowest, and five-thousand pelk at the highest. I removed the poor quality samples, no matter how cheap they were.
"Ah, how annoying. Shouldn't we have stricter standards for elimination?"
It was highly likely that trouble would ensue if the reason for elimination was not logged properly. Those who failed to be selected would likely kick up a fuss as to why. To be honest, I didn't like any of the samples there. If I had made one myself, I could've made something ten times better for less than half the price. Of course, I wouldn't do something so arrogant. Still, it wasn't difficult to identify the worst half of the trash that couldn't be used. The problem was that for the other half, the price and quality were all similar.
I wrote 'eliminated' on the boxes of trash and went down to the office.
"Demuir, are you off work?"
I grabbed his arm as he was about to pack up and leave.
"Let's take a look at the accounting books and the budget for the second half of the year."Read the latest chapters at novelping(.)com.
Demuir made a face of outright disgust.
"No, you shouldn't catch people leaving work like that. Let's do it tomorrow."
"It's lunch time anyway. Would you like to work for a little bit now? Either that, or you could swing by the magic towers with me tomorrow..."
Demuir didn't even let me finish. "Okay! Where do you need it from?"
"I want to check the entire budget for the first half of the year, the budget allocated for the magic tools purchase, and where the money will go in the future." I said with a smirk.
In any case, the products would ultimately be selected by looking at the production line of the magic towers, but things could be filtered out more based on the budget.
"Let's see... Is this enough?"
Demuir competently took out exactly the data I wanted and put it on the desk. Of course, the stack of documents was so dense that it towered over the both of us. I checked the allocated budget and cross-referenced it with the future schedule to see how much Guild Director Glont would exceed the budget by. The Adventurers' Guilds tended to be tight on funds. It was good to save money, but if they went over budget and asked me to select a company again later, I would have to start over from the beginning. So I planned to calculate the money that we would go over from the beginning and finish all the work at once.
"You're amazing. You're analyzing the entire accounting administration of the Adventurers' Guild to avoid working twice?"
I gave Demuir a short smile.
"It's pretty simple. Not much different from what I usually do."
Of course, it wasn't me or Demuir who did all of these documents. Most of them were filled out by senior executives upstairs. The Adventurers' Guild didn't give us people at the bottom of the ladder much work, but when you got to the upper management positions, the work they had to do would grind anyone down. Still, with a rough understanding of the data, I marked the business and divided them into two groups. The magic towers in group one were those currently within the budget, and the magic towers in group two were estimated to go over budget. Once the information was all collected, Demuir put the documents back in and locked them with a key.
"There's nothing else you need from me, right?"
"No, there isn't. If there was, it'd be to get you to ask the bakery lady on a date before someone else snatches her first."
Demuir blushed.
"I'll take care of it!"
I chuckled as Demuir left the office with an embarrassed face.
I'll have to tease him if he gets dumped.
Then, Fiona walked into the office. "Why was Demuir leaving with a flushed face? Did you guys fight?"
I answered Fiona with a playful smile. "Fighting? I just gave him a little encouragement."
Fiona tilted her head, confused, but said what she was going to say anyway.
"Den, you have a guest."
"Guest?"
"Yes. He was a very handsome blond man. I showed him to consulting room one. Would you like to go up and see him?"
I wasn't expecting anybody, and I didn't know any blonde man. I wondered who it might be, but more than anything I was ready to call it a day.
"I was going to go home."
All my work for the day was done.
"I know that, but the guest seems to be a high-ranking noble. If you ignore him, you might get in trouble later."
I couldn't leave work and risk it, so I just clicked my tongue and nodded. "It can't be helped. I'll go see him and go home."
"Thank you. Please let me know if anything happens."
I gave her a light shrug.
"Who would make a fuss in an Adventurers' Guild with Guild Director Glont here?"
With that said, I headed to the consulting room two. I opened the door, revealing a man sipping gracefully on a cup of tea. His face was oddly familiar.
"Long time no see, do you remember me? You helped me during the New Year's Festival."
His words jogged my memory.
"Ah, wallet!"