162 -) The Expedition
Around 100 people finished their education in academies, and 40 of them were selected as suited to be questers. The remaining ones were distributed to artisans, labor jobs, and kinds as apprentices. There were even woodcutters, handcart pullers, porters, etc. But there was no doubt that they were the most educated laborers. It will surely come in handy when needed since the places they are working in are mostly connected to the guild or directly to me.
As the guild became bigger, not only workers, but also the number of partners and clients started to increase. It is still not profitable, but the deficit is getting more stable lately. Especially since I have been accumulating goods for winter at low prices and am ready to sell them for top price. I even processed most of those goods, so they will be sold at several times their initial price.
I was not just buying the items, but collecting them too. Likewise, I have formed a few expeditions to collect herbs for my herbalist and alchemists to process. Since they were visiting wild locations, I had to prepare guards to accompany them.
It increased the cost. However, it was also an opportunity. I put more people to collect materials, not just herbs but anything that would sell. That also increased the needed guards, so I naturally put more people, mainly from the guild, as quests.
This served as an experience for them. It increased their individual fighting power, their group coordination, and naturally the number of finished quests in the guild. In the process, both the quality and quantity of questers increased. That brought another problem. There were some suspicious people who joined the guild lately.
At late noon, Silas Vane came. He knocked on the door two times and entered the room.
“Good evening, sir.” He smiled softly, but there was a serious expression on his face.
“Good evening. So…” I replied with a soft smile too and looked at him with expectant eyes before asking, “Did you find anything?”
“Unfortunately, yes, sir.” He replied with a grim expression. “When you said to inspect every person who joined the guild without taking lessons at the academy thoroughly, I thought that it was a bit excessive. But their movements seem to be a bit weird.”
As the guild got bigger and more well-known, more and better people started to join. There was a group of 6 people, all of them at knight-level, for example. Knight level means people like jobs with knight, adventurer, sword master, etc.
When a knight-level individual wants to join, they would be given a temporary silver rank until they got used to the guild’s rules and proved themselves. I was planning to give the gold rank to high knight-level people and platinum rank to royal knight-level people, but there have been none yet.
What Silas was talking about is people who are just a group of 2, but seemed to be performing much better than a full group. They did this well while both of their jobs were sword master.
They either have powerful equipment or artifacts, are sword geniuses, or something is wrong with them, like they can hide their job or they are like me.
The third option is the lowest possibility among all of them. Since I came to this world, I have not encountered anyone who is like me. I suspect some people like the emperor’s advisor or some people from gossip, but these are far from believable at this rate.
The first option is also not very likely since if they have something like that, what are they doing here? They must already be rich. But if it is the second one, they would be valuable assets.
Regardless of what option is correct, I can’t ignore them. There were also other people who needed to be checked, so we thought of a method. Since I can’t meet every person one by one, we will gather them together.
“What are their routines?” I asked. “What did you find about them?”
“They act normal most of the time.” Silas started to report their movements. “They take quests nearly every day. One of the two has a bit of an eye-catching look. He is said to be a bit loud from time to time and often debates various topics with people around him. The other one is mostly silent. He is said to carve things and create small things in his free time.”
Silas described their overall characteristics, then started to mention the problematic part, “It was hard to notice since it was just before the sun set, since most people would be active at that time. However, they always went to the same place.”
“Where is it?” I asked
“... The temple.” He said hesitantly. “It would be normal to be pious, but time is the problem. Most of the people would not go at that hour. We could push it aside by saying that they are just different, but we noticed that they are not the only ones.”
He continued, “There is a group of 6 people that you might have heard. They are all temporary silver ranks. They and these two people joined only a few days apart.” As he said, it was indeed suspicious. “So we sent someone inside to see whether they are related or not.”
“... So? Were they?” I tilted my head to the side and asked when he did not continue right away.
“It was weird, sir.” He looked agitated. “The man we sent said that they are being well regarded inside the temple. They may be religious, but they are new here. So it took some time, but he managed to learn a few things.”
He took a note and continued as he looked at the note as confirmation, “It seemed like they were meeting there every time they went. They looked like they were devoted to gods and prayed for an hour before starting to discuss. Then they would part ways and act like they don’t know each other at all on the outside.”
“... What did they talk about?” I asked without expecting anything in return.
“I am sorry, sir.” He bowed his head and apologized. “We don’t know. This is all we can learn about them.”
“It is okay.” I soothed him. “They did not do anything wrong, not yet at least. So all we can do is be on guard. Stop following them to every place, but keep an eye on them in case they attempt something.”
“Yes, sir.” He replied like a soldier.
“So how are the preparations going?” I asked Silas with expectation.
“It is done, sir. They will depart tomorrow at dawn. We expect them to return in 2 weeks.”
“That is good.” I nodded happily.
The preparations I mentioned were for an expedition. As I mentioned, the workers will continue to work even in the winter. Since we can’t find necessary materials during that time because of many reasons that due to harsh winter conditions, I accumulated many resources.
However, there is still some time before we should stay indoors. So I thought of a way to both go for a herb collection event, make guards hunt as many monsters as possible, and make the questers gain as much experience as possible.
There will be 88 people, and 10 carriages will be participating in this expedition. The main mission is to collect as many valuable herbs and materials as possible on the outskirts of the forest of dungeons.
There will be 40 workers and 10 slaves who will be participating to gain experience as both questers and herbalists. They are selected mostly from the academy, and some of them are taking their quester tests since they are apprentices.
If they collect enough herbs, they will gain herbalist jobs, and some will gain combat-based jobs while hunting. 5 herbalists in the group will be coordinating these people in collecting herbs. And there is one alchemist who will be overseeing the whole expedition except for the guard duty.
We added 24 experienced questers as guards. Around half of them are slaves I initially assigned as questers. This is for security purposes since there are 8 more people whom we are wary of.
These 8 people are the people we mentioned: the group of 6 silver-rank and two silver-rank suspicious individuals who are in contact with them. One of the reasons we prepared this expedition was to test both them and their skills.
We prepared a quest in the guild, and people applied to it. Aside from the personnel we assigned ourselves, the remaining ones are people who genuinely wanted to participate in the quest, get the reward, and even earn additional bonuses based on performance.
Since we added clauses like giving additional rewards based on monsters they hunt, herbs they collect, or materials they find, the participation limit filled quite fast. The only thing left is waiting and seeing the outcome.
“Warn our men to be on guard,” I said as a final warning. “Don’t make it sound like something bad might happen or someone is untrustworthy. We can’t make them not trust each other. Just say that there are a lot of apprentices and test takers, so it won’t hurt to be on alert.”
“Yes, sir.” He bowed as our conversation ended. He left the room after saying, “I will finish the instructions and check both the personnel and carriages.”