18. Guild Request

I left the Salamus Trading Company—instructing them to have all my purchases delivered straight to the mansion—and began wandering around at random, deep in thought.

I guess I receive one lottery ticket for every three hundred silver coins spent.

I hadn’t pinned down the exact metrics of my purchases at first. I had been handed one ticket when I paid for Miu, and another single ticket when I spent three hundred silver coins on the custom paintings. Then, when I bought that batch of luxury harem bracelets for sixteen hundred silver coins, I received five tickets all at once.

When you do the math, it lines up cleanly: one lottery ticket for every three hundred silver coins.

That being the case, however, one specific thought bothered me. I remembered the list of prizes available at the lottery board. The 4th Prize was a 50% discount shopping coupon. If I used that coupon to buy things, would I earn a lottery ticket for every three hundred silver coins spent before the discount, or would the required spending threshold double to six hundred silver coins since I’d only be paying half the price?

Man, I really want to draw the lottery right now.

I had a total of seven tickets on hand. Since I’d already come this far, I knew I’d better save up three more tickets so I could do a full eleven-pull. But three hundred silver coins per ticket meant I needed another nine hundred silver coins’ worth of high-end shopping, and I didn’t feel like burning through cash that fast just to grind gacha pulls.

I paused, shook off the thought, and used my Warp Feather to relocate.

I warped out to the wilderness stretching between the cities of Roizen and Reyus—the very plains I used to ride across on horseback. Standing alone in the open field, I called out to the magic sword.

「Eleanor, I need you to summon the zombie soldiers.」 (The Army of the Dead? What’s going on all of a sudden?) 「Just do it, please.」

Eleanor had been able to access the lottery room with me before, but I was pretty sure she couldn’t actually see or interact with the physical lottery tickets out here in the real world. I didn’t feel like explaining the mechanics, so I just gave her a direct order.

(You’re always pushing me around like this. It’s not very nice.)

Eleanor complained, but right after her grumbling, a shadowy mass began to take shape in front of my eyes. True to form, she whined about it, but she didn’t actually refuse.

I gripped Eleanor tightly by the hilt. My plan was simple: hunt down the summoned skeletons and zombies to farm monster item drops in hopes of picking up a few more lottery tickets.

「Eh?」 I blinked. (Eh?) Eleanor echoed in surprise.

We had both voiced our confusion simultaneously. Eleanor had attempted to summon her skeleton warriors, but none of them had appeared. Instead, something entirely different materialized out of the dark mist: a young girl wearing a maid’s uniform. She looked vaguely familiar.

「……Aren’t you that ghost from the mansion?」 I muttered, pieces clicking together in my head.

Yes, it was definitely the ghost maid I had exorcised back at the estate. However, she didn’t emit any of the hostile, malicious spirit-energy I remembered from our first encounter. She looked a bit translucent, but other than that, she acted and felt like a completely normal human girl.

(Where… am I?) she asked, blinking around in a daze. 「……We’re out in the wilderness between Roizen and Reyus.」 (I know where Roizen is, but Reyus?)

She was holding a completely coherent, normal conversation.

「Eleanor, what’s the meaning of this?」 I asked the sword. (I’d like to know that myself!) 「Where are the zombie soldiers?」 (I tried summoning them just like always, but they aren’t responding at all! What the hell? This has literally never happened to me before.)

Apparently, she wasn’t lying; Eleanor’s voice echoed in my head, dripping with genuine distress and confusion.

「Try cycling this ghost in and out of summoning, just like you would with a zombie soldier,」 I instructed. (O-Okay…)

The ghost maid flickered out of existence and then reappeared a second later.

「Looks like you can control her manifestation just fine.」 (Why?! How is this even happening?) 「How would I know?」

All I knew was that Eleanor’s summoning spell had somehow bugged out from zombie soldiers into this ghost girl. And worse, it meant I probably couldn’t rely on farming her undead army to easily grind out lottery tickets anymore.

(My name is Tania, the girl introduced herself, puffing out her chest. Tania Chitiakis.) 「I’m Yuuki Kakeru. Do you recognize me?」

Tania stared up intently at my face for a moment. (Ah! The rude man who broke into the mansion!) 「Oh, so you do remember.」 (I remember now… wait. Am I actually outside the mansion right now?!) 「Could you seriously not leave the grounds before this?」 (Un. I was trapped inside those walls for a horribly long time. It was so boring, and seeing people outside having fun just made me angry and envious.) 「I guess that makes you a classic earthbound ghost, then.」

The core of her backstory practically explained itself. For reasons I couldn’t fully explain, dragging Eleanor around had apparently allowed me to bypass her boundary and pull the earthbound ghost right out of the mansion.

(Did… did Kakeru actually free me from the mansion?) 「I can’t say for certain, but I’m guessing that’s what just happened.」 (Really?! Thank you so much!)

Overjoyed, Tania rushed forward and threw her arms around me—though since she was still a translucent spirit, she just phased right through my torso.

(Thank you, Kakeru!)

Watching Tania beam with such a bright, genuine smile, I decided having a ghost maid around was infinitely better than fighting rotting skeletons and zombies anyway.

When I warped back to the mansion later that day, I discovered that Andreu—the owner of the Andreu Trading Company—was waiting for me in the parlor.

I usually dropped off my mountain oxen at his storefront, so this was the first time he had ever visited my private residence. We sat down facing each other across the table.

「To what do I owe the pleasure?」 I asked. 「I have a rather urgent favor to ask of you, Yuuki-sama.」 「Is it about the mountain oxen supply?」 「No, your deliveries have been flawless. In fact, if you could continue supplying the oxen while helping me with this separate issue, I would be eternally grateful.」 「What’s going on?」 「Are you familiar with a man named Alexis?」 「Alexis…… Oh, you mean that party leader quartet.」

Andreu nodded grimly. Alexis was the leader of the veteran hunter group that had been operating at the top of the Andreu Trading Company when I first arrived in town. Since I visited the trading post nearly every day to cash in my hunts, I had run into him a few times and even exchanged a few words. He had been considered an absolute ace of the company—right up until I completely outclassed him.

「What happened to Alexis?」 「He has been seriously injured.」 「Hm?」 I furrowed my brow. 「A few days ago, a massive swarm of monsters suddenly began spawning in a designated sector of the wilderness. It used to be an empty dead zone, but due to the sudden surge, the Adventurer’s Guild in Roizen issued an urgent subjugation quest. By the way, I happen to sit on the board of directors for the Adventurer’s Guild as well.」

An Adventurer’s Guild, huh? I didn’t even know this city had one.

「The monsters themselves aren’t overwhelmingly strong individually,」 Andreu continued, wiping his brow. 「However, their reproduction and multiplication speed are completely abnormal. The Guild investigated and scrambled nearly all of their registered adventurers to contain it. But the sheer numbers turned it into a brutal war of attrition.」 「So, let me guess. Alexis got caught up in the thick of it and took a heavy hit.」 「Yes. And to make matters worse, his entire party suffered critical injuries. They’re completely bedridden and won’t be able to move for at least a month. With Alexis and his elite team out of commission, the Guild’s frontlines have collapsed from bad to catastrophic.」 「So you want me to step in and wipe them out.」 「Precisely. Naturally, I will compensate you handsomely for your trouble. To be frank, this is the worst crisis the Adventurer’s Guild has faced since its founding, so name your price—I am willing to pay whatever it takes.」 「Got it.」

I accepted immediately. Defeat monsters, collect a massive payout, and—best of all—there was a high probability those monsters would drop a few more lottery tickets along the way. It was a request I had zero reasons to turn down.

To officially take the job, I was required to register as an adventurer with the local Adventurer’s Guild so the subjugation could be logged under their official roster. That part was fine, though I was mildly annoyed when the receptionist processed my paperwork and bluntly assigned me a Rank D card.

I understood that newbies were supposed to start at the bottom, but considering Alexis was ranked A, being dropped at the bottom felt silly. I figured I’d just blow through the quest and force a massive rank-up all at once when this was over.

The Guild guides led me out to the designated forest zone where the monster swarm was concentrated.

「Hey, this area looks awfully familiar,」 I muttered, scanning the trees. (……) Eleanor stayed silent on my hip. 「And those monsters roaming around up ahead look pretty familiar, too.」 (──♪)

Eleanor let out a terribly unconvincing whistle inside my head. She was being way too deliberate about it.

The guides had led us straight to the exact same dense forest where I had rescued Mari just a few days ago. Stumbling through the treeline ahead of us were packs of skeletons, shambling zombies, and other deeply familiar undead monstrosities.

「We’re going to have a long talk later tonight, Eleanor.」 (It’s not my fault!) she shrieked defensively.

Sighing, I drew Eleanor—who was nervously pulsing with a faint black aura—and strode forward into the monster-infested woods. The moment the horde spotted us, the front-line skeletons and zombies locked eyes with the magic sword, froze in place, and instantly scrambled backward in absolute terror.

I’m sorry, guys, but unlike those human soldiers I let go back at the fort, I’m definitely not letting you walk away.