Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation - Volume 3

Chapter 12: Children and Warriors

Three weeks later, our party hit rank D. It felt like we were moving up pretty fast, so I finally got around to checking out the specific promotion criteria.

For an F-ranked adventurer to reach rank E, they needed to successfully complete ten F-rank jobs...or five E-rank jobs in a row. For an E-ranked adventurer to reach rank D, it took fifty F-rank jobs, twenty-five E-rank jobs, or ten D-rank jobs in a row. That general pattern stayed the same for the higher ranks, although the numbers started getting considerably bigger.

Demotion was also a possibility for those who messed up repeatedly. Failing five consecutive jobs with a rank lower than your own or ten consecutive jobs at your present rank would knock you down a peg. You couldn't be demoted by failing tasks at a higher rank than your own, but after five in a row you'd lose the privilege to accept them.

Jalil and Vizquel had been working diligently to knock out F- and E-rank jobs for us every single day, so we'd managed to get this far in no time at all. Now that we were D-ranked, we finally had access to more profitable C-rank tasks. Those were easy pickings for our party, so we'd probably pull ourselves up to rank C soon enough.

This might be the right time to cut off our arrangement with Jalil and Vizquel. They didn't seem to be abducting pets anymore, but I wasn't entirely sure what problems the whole job-swapping thing might cause in the long run. We'd saved up a decent amount of cash at this point, so we had the option of saying our goodbyes to our "business partners" and leaving Rikarisu behind for good.

After a bit of thought, however, I decided to keep milking them until we made it up to rank C. There didn't seem to be any issues at the moment, and it was hard to turn my back on such a low-stress money-making system. It wouldn't hurt to have more money in our wallet before we left.

At present, our savings amounted to one green ore coin, six iron coins, fourteen scrap iron coins, and thirty-five stone coins...or 1,875 stone coins in total. So...1,875 yen basically. Our entire assets amounted to less than the value of two Asuran large copper coins... 

Okay, cut it out. It doesn't matter what this would buy us on a different continent.

Once we hit rank C, we'd say goodbye to Jalil and Vizquel, then promptly leave this city. Seemed like a solid plan to me. Not long after reaching this conclusion, I spotted an "interesting" task on the Guild board:

TASK: Locate and Defeat Unknown Monster(s)
REWARD: 5 scrap iron coins (2 iron coins if defeated)
DETAILS: Find and destroy a specific monster
LOCATION: Southern Wood (Petrified Forest)
DURATION: Before the end of the month
DEADLINE: ASAP
CLIENT: Belberro the Merchant
NOTES: A large, slithering creature was spotted deep inside the forest. Please identify it, and destroy it if it's dangerous.

Jalil and I pondered the piece of paper with our hands on our chins. A mystery monster, huh? Talk about a vague job description. There was a chance this thing wasn't even there. And even if it were, how exactly were we supposed to prove that it was one monster or another?

Still, two iron coins was a very tempting reward. Especially since we could still get five scrap irons if we chose not to fight the thing.

"You interested in this one?"
"Well, the pay's really good. It does feel kind of fishy though."
Jalil nodded in agreement. "Looks like the kind of job where you might get stiffed. I'd think twice if I were you."

We'd already experienced something of the sort. Two weeks earlier, we'd accepted an ordinary-looking collection task for Acid Wolves. As usual, we'd hunted down the specified number of monsters and brought back their fangs and tails, only to be informed that the client wanted complete Acid Wolves—as in, their entire bodies. The description hadn't clarified this at all, but we still ended up having to pay a breach-of-contract fee. Just thinking about it made me feel intensely frustrated.