Chapter 43: Expedition
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
Putting the scholarship issue aside for now, we put our focus on the cipher.
After school we head toward the library to have Elly look at the sample.
As usual she’s sitting behind the reception counter, pouring tea from a pot.
“Oh, welcome. Searching in the basement today?”
“Actually we’ve got something we want you to look at for us today.”
“This, it seems like a cipher.”
Master takes the cipher sample from his bag, and shows it to her.
Elly takes the notebook, pulls a pair of glasses from her pocket, and stares at it.
“Elly, you wear glasses?”
“Hm? Oh, these? Just when I’m reading. See, because when I’m wearing them I look kind of lame.”
“Really? I think they’re charming and cute.”
Grh, he hasn’t even said that to me before. So he calls anyone other than me cute just fine.
I guess this left eye and these scales really are ugly?
When I heard Master’s flattery and dejectedly hung my head, he called out to me in a hurry.
“I-I’m not saying you’re not cute Eir, that’s not what I mean!”
“Mm, don’t force it, okay?”
“I’m serious! Look, I can pet your head as proof.”
Master wildly strokes my head. He was being rough, and my hair got messy.
I’d definitely prefer he lay off on this treatment, so while trying not to seem cruel, I smoothly dodge his hand.
“It’s fine, I don’t have any such expectations.”
“Wha-, you could at least expect a little…”
“You two, could you wait until you get home for that stuff?”
“… Ah.”
Right, the cipher comes first right now.
While returning Master’s notebook, Elly frowns. Seems we won’t be hearing good results?
“Unfortunately I haven’t seen these letters before. This is the first I’ve seen of them as a code too.”
“Is… that so. I thought we might find a hint for deciphering it here, or maybe a dictionary for it.”
“Well, even I haven’t looked through all the books here, so it might be here somewhere. But at the very least it’s not in anything I’ve read through.”
“Just for reference, about how much have you read through?”
“The upper floor of the underground archives, I suppose.”
“I see—wait, hold on! Upper floor? Which means there’s a lower floor?”
“Of course. You’d better not be underestimating the worlds largest melting pot of knowledge.”
Master raises his voice in surprise at the new fact coming to light, to which Elly calmly puffs up with pride and responds.
We haven’t even gone through a tenth of what’s there in three months, and there’s actually more?
“Though I say that, they’re heavily damaged items stored in a separate room for preservation. When they get to the extent that we think, ‘ah, this is in danger’ we go, ‘then toss it in the basement’, for them.”
“Sorry, I don’t really want to hear any more than that. I’m scared.”
“Listen though! Because of that there’s no order to it at all, and if you mess with the wrong one, it’s like they all might fall, they’re piled so high—”
“Ah, we’ve got some stuff to do, gotta go! Well, see ya!”
“Yup, sorry Elly.”
“Ah, hey! Wait!”
She had entered complaint mode, so before she could catch us, we decided to make an immediate escape.
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
~*~
“So anyway, money.”
“The heck does “so anyway” mean?”
It was evening, and Master declared that to our usual dinner guests, Amy and Kevin.
By the way, Yig finished her meal early and went to her nighttime hot spring trip. It’s a little lonely not seeing her at night lately.
“Our finances are in dire straights.”
“You guys are earning plenty though. For your food budget you’re even bringing home huge meals, with meat.”
“Yep, the food is great, Rimuru!”
“Thank you very much.”
Tonight’s dinner is cream stew. My portion has extra komodo drake meat in it.
Using its chicken-like texture, he smashed it and rolled it into a meat ball, then put it in the stew.
The soft ground meat, overflowing with meaty juices, sucks up the stew and develops a complex flavor. It’s delicious.
“Hey, don’t ignore me.”
“Almost all my income from adventuring goes to rent and tuition. Most everything I had on hand went toward the advance payment for the house.”
“If you’re paying it fine, then what’s the problem?”
“I need a deposit for the study trip. That hasn’t been paid.”
“You could just not go.”
“That’s not going to work actually.”
If you don’t participate in the trip, then what you paid toward it will mostly be returned.
But just saying, “I’m not going, so I won’t pay” as your reason isn’t allowed.
The payment has to be made in full first. If it’s not paid, it’s treated the same as a default on your tuition payment, and you’ll end up expelled.
“So even if it comes back, I have to at least pay it first.”
“What a pain.”
“Mr. Wallack knows our financial situation, so if I ask him, we should be able to take about a week off. So we’ll take a more lengthy expedition in that time.”
“Well it’s fine by me I guess.”
“Works for me too.”
As if he was informed his amount of free time was noticed, Kevin scowls.
When it comes to a big week-long job, their impression of being troublesome comes first, even for adventurers.
Convenient local quests don’t provide much income, so taking on a reasonably grand and lengthy quest to earn a lot at once is the method we’re using.
“Neighborhood quests won’t earn us enough no matter how long we do them. I’m sure you’re running low on our earnings from last time too, right?”
“Well I mean… yeah.”
“The amount I need for my deposit is forty gold coins. I’d like to make a payment on the house too if possible, so a job with around three hundred gold as the reward would be good.”
One third of three hundred would give us one hundred gold coins. Even with forty set aside, that would sink sixty into the house payment. That’s about twenty percent of the price.
“I don’t want to take the last resort. As a man.”
“Well, not like I don’t understand.”
“Our ranks are still low, so one where we can be your assistants would be good, Kevin.”
High paying quests of course require adventurers to be high rank. The only one among us evaluated as being more than capable is Kevin, so we end up relying on him when it comes to taking quests.
If we’re talking three hundred gold, then it doesn’t have to be quite disaster beast level, but we’ll probably be fighting a pretty tough creature.
Or else something illegal.
“Well, alright, but I’m not gonna be able to decide myself, so you’re comin’ too, yeah?”
“Then tomorrow morning, we’ll meet up at my inn’s lobby.”
“Kinda sad, planning to meet up with a dude.”[1]
“Don’t ask for too much. You’re always meeting up with Amy anyway.”
“That’s not a relationship I asked for!”
“Wow, rude! I’m not giving any meat to kids who say things like that.”
Saying so, a fork flashes by and plunders the meatballs from Kevin’s stew dish.
That speed was plenty sharp enough to match a top rank adventurer. At the very least it was enough that Kevin couldn’t react.
Her sword skills are certainly improving… though it’s a table knife.
“Ah, you little…!”
“Not happeniiing!”
Trying to take back his stolen portion, Kevin attacks Amy’s dish, but is tragically fended off.
Following through, they continue clashing tableware, but they fail to settle the match. Thanks to that, the stew flew everywhere, and the table became a mess.
Who do they think is going to clean this up later? … Master will, of course.
“You two… keep this up and there’ll be no seconds, got it?”
“Hey, that’s too harsh!”
“I’m the victim here!”
Goodness gracious, they’re so wild. Meals are to be eaten more comfortably.
While thinking that, I swiped the meatballs from the two who Master was scolding.
“Eir, seriously now…”
“Y-you little…”
“Uwaah, you meanie~”
Dinner ended with me being scolded, while Kevin and Amy got seconds to make up for it.
Why…?
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
~*~
The next day we go to the academy early, and report the planned week long absence to Mr. Wallack.
At the same time, we gave a decisively refusal of the scholarship review.
“I see. Well, I’ll respect your view, but don’t do anything excessive.”
“Right, thank you very much. I will be fine though; I have Eir with me.”
Saying that, he gently my head as I stand next to him.
He messes up my hair. In doing so, his fingernails scratched at the horn on my forehead just a bit.
“Nhyau?!”
The tingling sensation brought a reflexive sound to my lips.
As a sensory organ, this horn actually responds to the slightest stimulation.
“Wh-what? Did it hurt somewhere?”
“Nnmuu… Master Rimuru, umm, don’ touch there. It’s sensitive.”
“What are you talking about?!”
“You two, leave that stuff for when you get home. Actually, don’t do it at home either. As an educator, I can’t endorse minors engaging in sexual activity.”
“That’s not what this is!”
It seems Master is being misunderstood, but I’ve got a grudge from last night, so I’m not going to cooperate.
Afterward we had plans to go to the guild after joining with Kevin, so we headed towards the inn he’s staying at.
As a renowned adventurer, Kevin is earning a fair bit, so he’s taking a room at a tidy lodging on the main road.
It’s not the standard inn with a bar on the first floor and rooms on the second. The second floor has rooms just the same, but the first floor has a lobby, and partitioned on the other side is a somewhat classy cafe.
To be honest, it doesn’t suit Kevin. He’s the type to be at a cheap inn’s bar, sinking his teeth into bony meat while downing a stein of ale.
And…
“Why are you here, Amy?”
“Why…? We’re taking a four person request anyway, so what’s the difference between three people looking and four people looking?”
We had them call for Kevin at the lobby, and when he came down the stairs Amy was next to him for some reason.
She’s making sense though. Kevin and Master are going to search for a quest, and I’m tagging along as an escort too. If three out of the five of us are acting together, then there’s nothing odd about having the fourth come too.
In fact, being able to consolidate our opinions on the spot makes it efficient.
Yig’s thoughts? Her opinions are irrelevant here. After all, she mostly wanders off on her own. Even this morning she was with some neighborhood kids and said, “I’m going to a secret base~” before flying off.
I feel like she’s getting more childlike lately. It matches her appearance though.
“Guess that makes sense. You came down from the second floor with Kevin, so I thought something happened.”
“N-nothing like that. Yep, nothing happened!”
“Seriously. Me and a woman like this—”
“Hey now! I take issue with that. What’s “a woman like this” supposed to mean?!”
“Uhh, I didn’t mean…”
I don’t really care, but could you stop having a shouting match at an inn’s lobby? The stares from around us are a bit painful.
Master is running a cold sweat from his forehead too. Since we’ve been moving in secret for so long, he’s probably not used to being in the public’s attention.
“Could you have your lover’s quarrel later? Otherwise some excessive rumors will get passed around.”
“Ugh?!”
“Stooop, don’t start any more strange gossip!”
The two, who began walking the path of loneliness because of the rumors Master spread, plainly expressed their horror.
Amy is afraid enough to crouch into a ball and hold her head.
In any case, after making the two of them powerless, Master began heading for the guild. Master, you’re scary.
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
1. The author seems to have made Kevin speak three times in a row here. I think it was supposed to be Kevin → Rimuru → Kevin, but the text only makes sense if it’s all Kevin. For translation purposes I have left it as is. Just know that the first three quotes in this block are assumed to be Kevin.
Chapter 43: Expedition
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
Putting the scholarship issue aside for now, we put our focus on the cipher.
After school we head toward the library to have Elly look at the sample.
As usual she’s sitting behind the reception counter, pouring tea from a pot.
“Oh, welcome. Searching in the basement today?”
“Actually we’ve got something we want you to look at for us today.”
“This, it seems like a cipher.”
Master takes the cipher sample from his bag, and shows it to her.
Elly takes the notebook, pulls a pair of glasses from her pocket, and stares at it.
“Elly, you wear glasses?”
“Hm? Oh, these? Just when I’m reading. See, because when I’m wearing them I look kind of lame.”
“Really? I think they’re charming and cute.”
Grh, he hasn’t even said that to me before. So he calls anyone other than me cute just fine.
I guess this left eye and these scales really are ugly?
When I heard Master’s flattery and dejectedly hung my head, he called out to me in a hurry.
“I-I’m not saying you’re not cute Eir, that’s not what I mean!”
“Mm, don’t force it, okay?”
“I’m serious! Look, I can pet your head as proof.”
Master wildly strokes my head. He was being rough, and my hair got messy.
I’d definitely prefer he lay off on this treatment, so while trying not to seem cruel, I smoothly dodge his hand.
“It’s fine, I don’t have any such expectations.”
“Wha-, you could at least expect a little…”
“You two, could you wait until you get home for that stuff?”
“… Ah.”
Right, the cipher comes first right now.
While returning Master’s notebook, Elly frowns. Seems we won’t be hearing good results?
“Unfortunately I haven’t seen these letters before. This is the first I’ve seen of them as a code too.”
“Is… that so. I thought we might find a hint for deciphering it here, or maybe a dictionary for it.”
“Well, even I haven’t looked through all the books here, so it might be here somewhere. But at the very least it’s not in anything I’ve read through.”
“Just for reference, about how much have you read through?”
“The upper floor of the underground archives, I suppose.”
“I see—wait, hold on! Upper floor? Which means there’s a lower floor?”
“Of course. You’d better not be underestimating the worlds largest melting pot of knowledge.”
Master raises his voice in surprise at the new fact coming to light, to which Elly calmly puffs up with pride and responds.
We haven’t even gone through a tenth of what’s there in three months, and there’s actually more?
“Though I say that, they’re heavily damaged items stored in a separate room for preservation. When they get to the extent that we think, ‘ah, this is in danger’ we go, ‘then toss it in the basement’, for them.”
“Sorry, I don’t really want to hear any more than that. I’m scared.”
“Listen though! Because of that there’s no order to it at all, and if you mess with the wrong one, it’s like they all might fall, they’re piled so high—”
“Ah, we’ve got some stuff to do, gotta go! Well, see ya!”
“Yup, sorry Elly.”
“Ah, hey! Wait!”
She had entered complaint mode, so before she could catch us, we decided to make an immediate escape.
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
~*~
“So anyway, money.”
“The heck does “so anyway” mean?”
It was evening, and Master declared that to our usual dinner guests, Amy and Kevin.
By the way, Yig finished her meal early and went to her nighttime hot spring trip. It’s a little lonely not seeing her at night lately.
“Our finances are in dire straights.”
“You guys are earning plenty though. For your food budget you’re even bringing home huge meals, with meat.”
“Yep, the food is great, Rimuru!”
“Thank you very much.”
Tonight’s dinner is cream stew. My portion has extra komodo drake meat in it.
Using its chicken-like texture, he smashed it and rolled it into a meat ball, then put it in the stew.
The soft ground meat, overflowing with meaty juices, sucks up the stew and develops a complex flavor. It’s delicious.
“Hey, don’t ignore me.”
“Almost all my income from adventuring goes to rent and tuition. Most everything I had on hand went toward the advance payment for the house.”
“If you’re paying it fine, then what’s the problem?”
“I need a deposit for the study trip. That hasn’t been paid.”
“You could just not go.”
“That’s not going to work actually.”
If you don’t participate in the trip, then what you paid toward it will mostly be returned.
But just saying, “I’m not going, so I won’t pay” as your reason isn’t allowed.
The payment has to be made in full first. If it’s not paid, it’s treated the same as a default on your tuition payment, and you’ll end up expelled.
“So even if it comes back, I have to at least pay it first.”
“What a pain.”
“Mr. Wallack knows our financial situation, so if I ask him, we should be able to take about a week off. So we’ll take a more lengthy expedition in that time.”
“Well it’s fine by me I guess.”
“Works for me too.”
As if he was informed his amount of free time was noticed, Kevin scowls.
When it comes to a big week-long job, their impression of being troublesome comes first, even for adventurers.
Convenient local quests don’t provide much income, so taking on a reasonably grand and lengthy quest to earn a lot at once is the method we’re using.
“Neighborhood quests won’t earn us enough no matter how long we do them. I’m sure you’re running low on our earnings from last time too, right?”
“Well I mean… yeah.”
“The amount I need for my deposit is forty gold coins. I’d like to make a payment on the house too if possible, so a job with around three hundred gold as the reward would be good.”
One third of three hundred would give us one hundred gold coins. Even with forty set aside, that would sink sixty into the house payment. That’s about twenty percent of the price.
“I don’t want to take the last resort. As a man.”
“Well, not like I don’t understand.”
“Our ranks are still low, so one where we can be your assistants would be good, Kevin.”
High paying quests of course require adventurers to be high rank. The only one among us evaluated as being more than capable is Kevin, so we end up relying on him when it comes to taking quests.
If we’re talking three hundred gold, then it doesn’t have to be quite disaster beast level, but we’ll probably be fighting a pretty tough creature.
Or else something illegal.
“Well, alright, but I’m not gonna be able to decide myself, so you’re comin’ too, yeah?”
“Then tomorrow morning, we’ll meet up at my inn’s lobby.”
“Kinda sad, planning to meet up with a dude.”[1]
“Don’t ask for too much. You’re always meeting up with Amy anyway.”
“That’s not a relationship I asked for!”
“Wow, rude! I’m not giving any meat to kids who say things like that.”
Saying so, a fork flashes by and plunders the meatballs from Kevin’s stew dish.
That speed was plenty sharp enough to match a top rank adventurer. At the very least it was enough that Kevin couldn’t react.
Her sword skills are certainly improving… though it’s a table knife.
“Ah, you little…!”
“Not happeniiing!”
Trying to take back his stolen portion, Kevin attacks Amy’s dish, but is tragically fended off.
Following through, they continue clashing tableware, but they fail to settle the match. Thanks to that, the stew flew everywhere, and the table became a mess.
Who do they think is going to clean this up later? … Master will, of course.
“You two… keep this up and there’ll be no seconds, got it?”
“Hey, that’s too harsh!”
“I’m the victim here!”
Goodness gracious, they’re so wild. Meals are to be eaten more comfortably.
While thinking that, I swiped the meatballs from the two who Master was scolding.
“Eir, seriously now…”
“Y-you little…”
“Uwaah, you meanie~”
Dinner ended with me being scolded, while Kevin and Amy got seconds to make up for it.
Why…?
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
~*~
The next day we go to the academy early, and report the planned week long absence to Mr. Wallack.
At the same time, we gave a decisively refusal of the scholarship review.
“I see. Well, I’ll respect your view, but don’t do anything excessive.”
“Right, thank you very much. I will be fine though; I have Eir with me.”
Saying that, he gently my head as I stand next to him.
He messes up my hair. In doing so, his fingernails scratched at the horn on my forehead just a bit.
“Nhyau?!”
The tingling sensation brought a reflexive sound to my lips.
As a sensory organ, this horn actually responds to the slightest stimulation.
“Wh-what? Did it hurt somewhere?”
“Nnmuu… Master Rimuru, umm, don’ touch there. It’s sensitive.”
“What are you talking about?!”
“You two, leave that stuff for when you get home. Actually, don’t do it at home either. As an educator, I can’t endorse minors engaging in sexual activity.”
“That’s not what this is!”
It seems Master is being misunderstood, but I’ve got a grudge from last night, so I’m not going to cooperate.
Afterward we had plans to go to the guild after joining with Kevin, so we headed towards the inn he’s staying at.
As a renowned adventurer, Kevin is earning a fair bit, so he’s taking a room at a tidy lodging on the main road.
It’s not the standard inn with a bar on the first floor and rooms on the second. The second floor has rooms just the same, but the first floor has a lobby, and partitioned on the other side is a somewhat classy cafe.
To be honest, it doesn’t suit Kevin. He’s the type to be at a cheap inn’s bar, sinking his teeth into bony meat while downing a stein of ale.
And…
“Why are you here, Amy?”
“Why…? We’re taking a four person request anyway, so what’s the difference between three people looking and four people looking?”
We had them call for Kevin at the lobby, and when he came down the stairs Amy was next to him for some reason.
She’s making sense though. Kevin and Master are going to search for a quest, and I’m tagging along as an escort too. If three out of the five of us are acting together, then there’s nothing odd about having the fourth come too.
In fact, being able to consolidate our opinions on the spot makes it efficient.
Yig’s thoughts? Her opinions are irrelevant here. After all, she mostly wanders off on her own. Even this morning she was with some neighborhood kids and said, “I’m going to a secret base~” before flying off.
I feel like she’s getting more childlike lately. It matches her appearance though.
“Guess that makes sense. You came down from the second floor with Kevin, so I thought something happened.”
“N-nothing like that. Yep, nothing happened!”
“Seriously. Me and a woman like this—”
“Hey now! I take issue with that. What’s “a woman like this” supposed to mean?!”
“Uhh, I didn’t mean…”
I don’t really care, but could you stop having a shouting match at an inn’s lobby? The stares from around us are a bit painful.
Master is running a cold sweat from his forehead too. Since we’ve been moving in secret for so long, he’s probably not used to being in the public’s attention.
“Could you have your lover’s quarrel later? Otherwise some excessive rumors will get passed around.”
“Ugh?!”
“Stooop, don’t start any more strange gossip!”
The two, who began walking the path of loneliness because of the rumors Master spread, plainly expressed their horror.
Amy is afraid enough to crouch into a ball and hold her head.
In any case, after making the two of them powerless, Master began heading for the guild. Master, you’re scary.
Translated by Soyokaze Translations: soyokazetranslation . Com
1. The author seems to have made Kevin speak three times in a row here. I think it was supposed to be Kevin → Rimuru → Kevin, but the text only makes sense if it’s all Kevin. For translation purposes I have left it as is. Just know that the first three quotes in this block are assumed to be Kevin.
