Interlude – Rani’s Recollection ~The Ideal Party~
Ugh, the worst again.
Why is it nothing but complaints with this lot?
They aren’t even strong, and they won’t go around the dungeons and get stronger either. They laze about resting and pour out gripes about being adventurers, and then the moment anything gets the least bit dangerous it’s somebody else’s fault.
To top it off, the leader tries to get me into his room. When it’s that obvious what he’s after, as if I’d go. Beastfolk women turning down weak men is supposed to be famous, so why does he think he has a chance when he’s weaker than I am?
And on top of that, once he worked out he couldn’t win on strength:
“A jinx like you can get out of the party!”
Or words to that effect.
Everyone knows you got hit for pushing yourself on me, though. Honestly, are you stupid?
Ahh, but what do I do. That makes twice I’ve been thrown out. Maybe I just work solo from here. Or I could go looking for a childhood friend of mine who became an adventurer before I did.
I was thinking all that and scouting a decent party outside the Guild when I spotted a slightly odd pair. A party of a mister about forty and a girl younger than me, twelve or thirteen or so.
Far too unalike for parent and child, and the mister is plainly a commoner while the girl is probably ex-nobility or something. A noble young lady and her escort, maybe? Except the mister doesn’t have the air of escort work about him.
When the two of them went past in front of me I took a sniff. I’m wolf beastfolk, so smelling a person tells me roughly what sort of person they are. Which didn’t stop me from being in a party like that one, because I had no other choices… anyway, these two.
The mister smelled seriously strong. Plain physical strength, sort of? My dad might have smelled like that. I was little, so I hardly remember.
The girl smells like nobility after all. Or maybe I only thought so because it’s a smell I’ve never smelled before.
The good part, though, was that the girl didn’t smell of the mister—or so I thought, anyway. By the look of her she likes him, and it isn’t as if he’s doing anything strange to her.
I followed them into the Guild and the two of them were talking with the receptionist, a woman called Mariane-san. Mariane-san is famous for being an odd one herself, and watching them deal with her like it was nothing was interesting too. The mister speaks politely, and he doesn’t work at looking strong when there’s no call for it, which is a good sign too, maybe.
Listening in, I found out they were both E-rank, the same as me, and they were right in the middle of taking a subjugation request. So I went straight over and spoke to them.
The mister and the girl… Soshi and Freinil’s party turned out to be my ideal party.
We go into a dungeon nearly every day, and even when the monsters come out in swarms because of me every one of them goes down without so much as a hard fight.
The special training Soshi is supposed to have worked out is something else, too. You move your body the way he tells you and you can feel the skills climbing, that’s the thing. The training itself is no holiday for it, but you get stronger, so who’s complaining, right?
The biggest surprise since joining Soshi’s party, though, might be the two dungeon bosses coming out at once. Kill them and you get two skills, and both of mine were ones I wanted. Soshi said it was chance, but wolf instinct tells me that was absolutely not chance.
“With Rani along the monsters come out in numbers, so we get stronger and we earn more. Nothing but good in it. I’m glad Rani joined the party.”
Soshi said that to me one time, and it made me so happy. Nobody until then had ever told me my ‘jinx’ was a good thing.
“Right? That’s exactly it! And nobody would see it, which honestly used to make me furious.”
“Though maybe theirs is the normal way to see it.”
“So we’re the ones who aren’t normal?”
“No question we’re a black company.”
I didn’t know what the words ‘black company’ meant, but to me they could only sound like good words. Because if keeping things ‘black company’ is what makes you strong, well then.
And besides, my goal is the strongest adventurer, you know?
