Chapter 10
At first, Jessica looked completely confused.
But she quickly recovered.
She had survived as a mercenary for several years.
Just from the sound of the coins inside the pouch, she could tell whether they were gron or shillings.
The drinkers nearby noticed as well.
But when Jessica swept her sharp gaze around the room, they awkwardly turned away.
While Jessica looked around, Jake calmly picked the money pouch back up.
"Tch."
Jessica clicked her tongue.
"Guess you're not some runaway noble kid."
She had looked disappointed when Jake retrieved the money.
If she had managed to quietly take the pouch first, she could have manipulated the contract more easily.
But the handsome boy in front of her was clearly not some inexperienced fool.
Jessica's expression immediately became pleasant.
"What a handsome young gentleman I've gotten as a customer."
She smiled brightly.
"What's your name?"
Jessica attracted attention from mercenaries not merely because female mercenaries were rare.
Even by herself...
She was attractive enough to draw eyes.
The moment her frown turned into a bright smile, she became quite a beauty.
"Ja—"
Jake nearly said his real name.
"Jay."
Jake stopped himself just in time.
Jake was a common name.
Still...
Safety came first.
And Jay was common enough that it should not cause any trouble.
"Hmm."
Jessica leaned forward.
"You said you want a two-month escort heading toward the Great Forest."
She smiled politely.
"Could you explain the details? I have my own schedule, so I'll need to think about whether I can accept."
Absolutely not.
She had no schedule.
And she had no need to think about it.
Still...
Starting from a strong bargaining position made negotiation easier.
Jessica was simply practicing the basics of business.
Jake had no intention of playing along.
"Grade 4 mercenary. Thief Jessica."
Jessica's smile stiffened.
"That's you, right?"
Jake continued.
"I saw your captain receive the Coronation Invitation earlier. I also saw your party disband."
His voice remained calm.
"So let's make this easy for both of us."
It was a cruel way to poke at a fresh wound.
But Jake had neither the time nor money to participate in Jessica's bargaining game.
Jessica's expression darkened.
Partly because the earlier events came rushing back.
But more importantly...
Because she was once again forced to acknowledge her current situation.
If Jake did not already know she was alone...
There would have been no reason for him to approach her personally for an escort job.
"What I want first is an escort to Lutetia."
Jake lowered his voice.
"It's a frontier city bordering the Great Forest."
Then he added quietly.
"And after that, I want support for a personal dungeon exploration."
"What?!"
Jessica raised her voice before she could stop herself.
"Are you really some runaway noble boy?"
Dungeon exploration.
As everyone knew...
Exploring a dungeon meant entering ancient ruins and searching for treasure.
The exact type varied.
Sometimes it meant exploring ruins from the Ancient Magic Empire and searching for magical artifacts.
Sometimes it meant hunting monsters that appeared after mana accumulated inside abandoned ruins.
But fundamentally...
Dungeon exploration always meant seeking out the remains of the ancient civilization.
The reason was simple.
Humanity still had not recovered all the territory once ruled by the Ancient Magic Empire.
The current empire possessed enormous magical ruins beneath the Imperial Capital.
Yet even the Palatino Empire controlled less than half of the continent.
Ignoring the southern kingdoms...
There was still the vast Great Forest to the east, much of which had never been properly explored.
And beyond it...
There were said to be lands inhabited by demi-humans.
Ancient ruins remained scattered across the entire continent, still waiting for human hands to reach them.
Within the empire...
"Exploring a dungeon" usually meant searching for unknown ruins hidden within the monster-filled Great Forest.
That was exactly the kind of work Jessica did.
Finding dungeons...
And exploring them.
But there was another method of locating ruins.
During the empire's expansion, some excavated sites contained records pointing toward the locations of other ancient ruins.
Coordinates carved into stone.
Coordinates preserved through magic.
Many led to destroyed sites.
Some pointed to worthless locations.
But occasionally...
They revealed another intact ruin.
Still...
Such information was useful only when the location was somewhere humans could actually reach.
If the site lay in unexplored territory, there was no choice but to abandon it.
Those abandoned locations were then preserved in records.
Noble diaries.
Historical books stored in libraries.
And after many years, as imperial territory expanded...
Those forgotten records gained value again.
"I'm not a noble."
Jake tapped his temple with a finger.
"But I know where a dungeon is."
Technically...
He had been a noble.
But he could no longer use that family name.
And unlike what Jessica was imagining...
Jake knew not merely one undiscovered dungeon.
He knew several.
That did not mean he intended to spend his life exploring dungeons.
Right now...
He simply needed to enter one in order to gain power.
Whether Jake was a noble or not no longer mattered to Jessica.
The moment she heard that he knew the location of a dungeon...
Her eyes looked ready to devour him.
"Let's move somewhere private."
Jessica looked as though she might grab Jake by the collar immediately.
However...
When Jake asked where they should go, she looked awkward.
Because of what had happened earlier, returning to the guild headquarters would be uncomfortable.
And now that her party had broken apart...
She could hardly go to the inn where her former party members were staying.
In the end...
The two moved to Jake's room on the second floor.
Under normal circumstances, Jessica would never have followed a man into a room where he was staying alone.
Right now...
She was too focused on the dungeon to care.
Inside the room, the two negotiated the contract.
There were many conditions.
Still...
Most of them ended up exactly as Jake wanted.
Jessica would escort Jake to Lutetia, the frontier city bordering the Great Forest.
She would also help him hire people and provide various support for the dungeon expedition.
How the loot would be divided would be discussed after they reached Lutetia.
"Then for the initial payment..."
Jake spoke calmly.
"Fifty shillings for the two-month escort to Lutetia."
"..."
Jessica looked miserable.
The word dungeon had distracted her so completely that Jake had controlled the entire negotiation.
Many of the other conditions also subtly favored Jake.
And her fee had been cut by more than half.
Of course...
She had already been considering traveling back to the Great Forest without any job at all.
Still...
Knowing that did not make the lost money hurt any less.
"How old are you, anyway?!"
The moment they agreed to sign the contract, Jessica's speech returned to normal.
Part of it seemed to be deliberate because she felt she had lost the negotiation.
But Jake was satisfied with the contract.
So her behavior only seemed amusing to him.
"That dungeon better be real."
Jessica glared.
"If it's wrong, I'll make you pay several times the money after piling interest on top of interest."
Of course...
There was no such clause in the contract.
Still...
If the dungeon information really turned out to be false, she looked perfectly capable of causing trouble.
After complaining for some time, Jessica finally seemed to calm down.
Then she looked puzzled.
"But why did you choose me?"
She tilted her head.
"If you're going to Lutetia anyway, couldn't you just find someone there to help with the dungeon?"
Jake shook his head.
The question had only now appeared.
There were many reasons he had chosen Jessica.
Her party had just broken apart, allowing Jake to hire her cheaply.
Traveling together for two months would let him judge her personality.
They could become familiar with one another.
And along the way...
Jake could learn about dungeon exploration from her.
But more than all those reasons...
Jake wanted her talent.
Her former captain Conrad had not received the Coronation Invitation because he was already a Grade 3 mercenary.
Nor because he had learned to sense mana at a young age.
The criterion for receiving a Coronation Invitation was not current talent or skill.
It was future success.
Conrad received the invitation because ten years from now...
He would become one of the five greatest swordsmen in the empire.
In the future Jake remembered, Conrad became the leader of the empire's most powerful mercenary company.
He displayed the power of a Great Swordmaster throughout countless battles and wars.
The emperor had seen the same future as Jake.
Naturally, Conrad had received an invitation.
But there was something Jake knew that the emperor did not.
How Conrad became a Great Swordmaster.
The emperor had probably noticed only the famous Great Swordmaster Conrad.
He had not cared about the exact path that led him there.
Jake, however...
Had once been a scribe.
And he had carefully read Conrad's official report.
Conrad became a Great Swordmaster because of an artifact discovered inside a dungeon.
A treasure from the Ancient Magic Empire.
A masterpiece of magic impossible to create in the current era and extremely difficult to find.
An Ego Sword.
A sword with a living personality.
A weapon that increased the abilities of its owner and offered advice.
For a swordsman...
There could hardly be a greater treasure.
The sword Conrad discovered had passed through the hands of countless swordmasters throughout the centuries.
It contained enormous quantities of swordsmanship knowledge.
Experience.
And mana.
Conrad treated the Ego Sword as his teacher.
Through its instruction, he trained his swordsmanship until he finally rose to become a Great Swordmaster.
But when Conrad reached that level...
Exactly one former party member was no longer by his side.
Jessica.
The woman sitting directly in front of Jake.
The dungeon containing the Ego Sword possessed unimaginable difficulty.
Countless adventurers challenged it and died.
Even after the dungeon was discovered, no one successfully conquered it for a very long time.
Conrad's party eventually became the first to clear it.
But there...
Conrad lost his childhood friend Jessica.
She stayed behind inside the collapsing dungeon so the rest of the party could escape.
After losing her, Conrad abandoned his dream of becoming a knight.
He wandered as a mercenary instead.
Still...
Great Swordmaster Conrad had not been created alone.
Then the invitation sent to Conrad is basically a worthless check now, isn't it?
Jake himself had sealed the official report about Conrad in the future.
That meant the emperor had no way of knowing the details.
Without the Ego Sword...
Conrad was simply a skilled swordsman.
If anything...
Jessica possessed even greater talent than he did.
Jake had not known every adventurer in the future.
But he had never heard of another adventurer who successfully conquered a dungeon more dangerous than the one where Jessica found the Ego Sword.
From Jake's perspective...
This was tremendous luck.
It was like finding a golden stalk of grain after the entire harvest was already finished.
And he had managed to hire that golden stalk cheaply.
After finishing their discussion, the two went to the guild headquarters and signed an official contract.
Naturally, the guild charged a fee.
Still...
It was necessary.
Otherwise, there was nothing preventing a mercenary from turning into a robber halfway through the journey or simply disappearing.
Problems sometimes happened even with guild-backed contracts.
But compared to the Southern Kingdoms, where mercenaries were often treated as little different from bandits...
The empire's mercenary culture existed on an entirely different level.
Jake and Jessica decided to leave the Imperial Capital the next morning.
Jake would have preferred leaving immediately.
The sooner he escaped the city, the better.
But traveling required preparation.
Jake himself had wandered through many places after the empire collapsed.
Still...
A professional mercenary could prepare much more efficiently.
Jerky.
Various dried foods.
Travel equipment Jake would need.
And even a small cargo wagon pulled by an old horse.
The preparations consumed a considerable amount of money.
Fortunately, Jessica aggressively negotiated every purchase.
Thanks to her, Jake did not run out.
Even an old horse is unbelievably expensive.
Jake sighed inwardly.
Looks like I really will have to stop by that place like I originally planned.
The money from the ancient gold coins was limited.
He had hired Jessica cheaply.
That did not mean he had much left over.
Once the preparations were complete...
Jessica shared one final drinking session with her former party members.
Jake reorganized the travel schedule.
Then he went to sleep.
The next morning...
Jessica's eyes were red from not having fully recovered from drinking.
Jake kept his head lowered to avoid people's gazes.
Together...
They rode their cargo wagon toward the western gate of the Imperial Capital.
Fortunately, Jake's travel permit caused no problems.
However...
They were not able to leave immediately.
Several carriages protected by knights and soldiers had blocked the road ahead.
Jessica asked a soldier what was happening.
After hearing the explanation...
Jake looked at the luxurious carriage in front of them with a bitter expression.
The person inside belonged to the ducal family that controlled the enormous territory guarding the western gateway of the empire.
The same ducal family whose city Jake was heading toward.
House Lutetia.
And inside the carriage was its eldest daughter.
Rachel Lutetia.
The unfortunate crown princess whose engagement had been canceled by an emperor who had seen the future.
That was the carriage she was riding in.
