One Step At a Time

"Ah, you two again, you look cleaner than before, Sawyer," Sumia commented.

We went back to the guild office to retrieve more quests. However, I had something else in mind too. Maybe I could help the villagers to do their day-to-day tasks more efficiently if there were any.

"Yeah, he returned to his usual self. Anyway, we'll go to the quest board for now," I said.

I headed for the quest board to choose any quest that had the same enormous amount of rewards. There was more than one disappearance mission, but the bounty hunting was in large amount as well. So, I chose the bounty hunting mission.

I put the paper on top of the administration table. Sumia then gave us two pieces of paper containing the details of the target and where he lived.

The target lived around thirty kilometers to our west inside of a mansion estate, it seemed. The contract stated that the mercenaries to guard him consisted of magical archers, elite swordsmen, and former royal guards.

The target was a tall white man. He had brown hair with a short cut. His eye colors were grey. His signature look was a scar stretching on his neck. Lastly, he carried a rapier decorated in gold. The reward for this bounty was 20,000 Aureum, double the previous amount.

"You know, you two can take a quest that will positively affect this village," Sumia commented.

"Such as?" I asked.

"Hunting mission, herbs gathering, and so on," Sumia said.

Well, it would serve our final purpose and create a closer rapport with the people inside of this village. However, it wouldn't be any profitable, would it? Still, in the grand scheme of things, it would be advantageous.

"Alfie, I think you can help the villagers," Sawyer said as he took the papers.

"And what'll you do?"

"I'll kill the bounty, of course. What? Don't you think I haven't done something like this?" Sawyer challenged him.

"Fine, sure, go ahead," I said.

"Alright, thanks for trusting me," Sawyer said as he left the guild building to kill the guy.

Sawyer and assassination. Well, quite a pair, to be honest, considering that he might have staged a coup once or twice in his entire life. Doing assassination like this would be child play for him.

Now, it was left to me to do the deeds for the village. Well, luckily, I could do a thing or two about this humanitarian crisis in this village.

"Sumia, any suggestions for me?" I asked her.

"Well, the village has quite a food shortage since the last hunter is currently wounded," Sumia said.

"Wounded? Wounded from what?" I asked.

"The person that you treated yesterday is the hunter. Now, due to this injury, it has become too dangerous to hunt," Sumia said.

"Alright, I'll take it pro bono, how many animals that this village need?" I asked.

"As much as you are able to hunt. Be careful though, hunting is a long and tedious process, even with a bow and arrow," Sumia said.

"How will you store a lot of animals, though? Do you even have a cool place to store it?" I joked.

"Well, the cellar of the hunter has cooling magic. We usually store a lot of food in there," Sumia said.

So, this village had some sort of fridge, eh? Pretty nice, to be honest. Now, the only problem was that the ammo that I equipped was for humans, not animals. For animals, I'd need a hollow point bullet to make the killing as fast as possible.

"Alright, I'll be right back," I said.

"As usual, you can use my horse," Sumia said.

"Really? Thanks," I said.

I exited the guild office. As I closed the door of the guild office, someone approached me. It was the most hated person I could find in this village, Lobus. I just put on a smile for him.

"Ah, stranger, what are you going to do today?" Lobus asked, maybe pretending that he cared, however, I wouldn't buy it.

"Just hunting, to be honest, why do you ask?" I asked him back as I climbed to the top of Sumia's horse.

"No, but since you have been very helpful, can you help me?" Lobus asked me for a favor.

Really? I didn't know what you were thinking, but both of us weren't exactly close, were we? Plus, I hadn't known you for good things.

"Let me hear it first, Sumia tasked me with something else," I replied.

"Sumia? That self-proclaimed guild master? Look, you better work for me, help me collect taxes from these people," Lobus said.

"Taxes? I thought this is a no man's land," I said.

"Well, no, this is the territory of Imperium Kingdom. Since I'm the head of the village, without any taxes, this village can't even function," Lobus said.

Was this dude playing with me? Like, you didn't even manage to establish the village, and where the hell was you when Sumia had worn her plate armor to fight the bandits.

"Say, I give you your tax, what'll you do?" I asked.

"I'll make this village better. With the taxes, Imperium Kingdom will provide security for this village," Lobus said.

"I'll see what I can do," I accepted the request but I wouldn't promise that anything would happen in this village. Right now, Sumia's request would be far more sensible, and so far, I did think that she had done more than the village chief.

I paced the horse to the ruined mansion. As usual, I tied down the horse to the pole and I headed to the vending machine in the bunker. I opened the interface menu of the vending machine to see what item was available.

[Item Vending Terminal]

[Item Search:]

[Filter]

[Credits: 1,000]

Where did the 5,000 go? Thinking about it, Sawyer must have bought armor for himself. Well, if that was the case, then he would go very very loud on this assault. I bought 60 rounds of hollow-point 5.56x45 for 100 credits alongside two new p-mag magazines for 30 credits.

I loaded the hollow points bullets into the new magazine. The magazine color was also different to help me differentiate the content between hollow points and the armor-piercing bullets. I put the magazines in my pockets.

I headed upstairs and went to the horse again. My goal was to hunt around 2 or 3 wild bison for the whole village. It should be enough to feed them all for a week or so. Of course, in this case, the more would be the better.

As I wanted to get out of the mansion, a woman with a sword walked in my direction. She was limping while walking toward me. The woman was none other than Sumia. I approached her and asked, "Sumia, what are you doing here?"

"What am I doing? I'm helping you, of course," Sumia said.

"What's with the way of walking?" I asked.

Sumia lifted her left pants, revealing a wooden leg. She then put the side of the pants down again. Now I knew why she didn't get out to defend the village, her limp leg would make her vulnerable before she even arrived at the combat scene.

However, in this scenario, she could act as a spotter for my hunt. I helped her to get on top of the horse and we embarked from the broken mansion. I could see bison even from the mansion itself. It was in the range of my M16.

I stopped the horse on its track and aimed my M16 at the bison. I pulled the trigger, the loud gunshot echoed through the grassland as the 5.56 bullet flew through the thin air and hit the bison right into his head. The bison immediately fell to the ground.

"Woah, what the hell is that black staff?" Sumia asked as the bullet echoed through thin air.

"This black staff? The name's M16 assault rifle chambered in 5.56x45 mm bullets. Well, that's the short, though," I replied as I disembarked from the horse to approach the bison.

"Hmm, you know, I'll call the other villagers, can you stay put in here?" Sumia asked as she took control of the horse.

"Sure, I can't carry that bison on my own, can I?" I commented.

I walked toward another herd of bison. I pulled the trigger of my rifle twice to kill two of them at once. Two bison dropped dead on the ground. Three should be enough, right? Or should I hunt for more? There might be more than 1,000 kg of meat there.

The other villagers arrived to skin the dead bison alongside Sumia on top of her horse. I sat down on the grassland to take a rest. Even though this was easy, this should help our goal of recruiting this village under our hands.