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“Uh, it’s nice to meet you,” he responded.

She stared at him. “...And you are?”

He bit down on the inside of his mouth. Should he give a fake name? Would that even stop them from tracking him down? Surely, giving a fake name would only make them suspect him more, right? He had to respond quickly, so he just said, “Oh, I’m Zeth. Sorry.”

“Uh-huh,” she responded, continuing to look at him intently.

“Well, I’m Erza,” one of the robed men said, holding out a hand to shake. He was dressed in cool blue cloth that looked just as well-crafted and expensive as the plate armor Rosalie wore. His blond hair was shaggy and unkempt, contrasting with his well-maintained robes and the polished staff in his hands. From the looks of it all, most of the objects on his person were magic in nature. Zeth even noticed the staff, his robes, and some items on his belt were letting out some sort of strange, otherworldly glow. He stared at the items, trying to parse out what was causing it.

Erza cleared his throat, and Zeth looked back up at his face. He was wearing a curious expression, but it shifted back to a polite smile after a moment. He nodded over at the other man sitting across from him, who wore white robes, with short, plain brown hair and a much simpler appearance overall. An indifferent expression rested on his face. “That’s Alfon.”

Alfon nodded to him, laid his head down on the table, and closed his eyes like he was going to sleep.

“R-right,” Zeth said, “it’s nice to meet both of you, too. Uh, listen, I’m not sure—”

“So you wanted to work with us, right?” Rosalie asked, that same intense look persisting in her eyes. “We heard from our employer that you were talking about being an assistant, or a squire.”

Zeth chuckled nervously. How could he escape this situation? “Y-yeah, I was asking her about that.”

She nodded. “What are your skills? Anything you’re particularly good at? Do you have a Class?”

The mention of a Class sent anxiety shooting through Zeth’s spine. “Um, nope, no Class. Just some physical strength from working in the mines and stuff; I was really just asking your employer if she needed someone to carry heavy stuff around for her.”

“Hm. I suppose it would be nice to have someone around that could carry some of my gear. Though, I’m not sure if someone without a Class would be capable of lifting any of it. If you’d like, I could let you try, but—”

“Nah, I doubt I could,” Zeth said. “Oh, well. Thanks for coming and meeting with me, but I guess I should be going.”

Just as he was about to stand up, though, the man in the blue robes, Erza, spoke up. His voice was suspicious. “Wait a second.”

Zeth froze. “...What is it?”

“You said you don’t have a Class?”

Zeth fought to keep himself from sweating. Could this guy detect he was lying, or something? Zeth had always thought the only way to read someone’s Status was with the Inquisitor Class, and they could only do so after a difficult, extended process. Not to mention nobody was even allowed to have that Class unless they joined the Empire’s squad of them. Whatever. It was too late to go back on his word now.

He put his best nonchalant voice on. “Nope. None.”

Two seconds of silence passed, but it felt like two hours. Zeth’s legs tensed, ready to take off the moment he felt a hint of movement. But eventually Erza just said, “How would you like to work for me?”

Slowly, Zeth settled back into his seat, practically screaming inside his head, C’mon, why is this guy talking to me?! He just wanted to get out of here as fast as possible. “...Why do you ask?”

Once again, Erza was silent for an unnaturally long moment before speaking. “Just a hunch.”

Alarm bells were ringing in Zeth’s head. He chuckled nervously. “Uh, well, I appreciate the offer, but I guess I’m just looking for a safer job than one that would entail working with you guys. Y’know, risking your lives fighting and all that. Sorry for wasting your—”

“It wouldn’t involve any fighting,” Erza said. “No need to worry.”

“...What would it be, then?”

“Like Rosalie said, you’d mainly just be hauling around some gear for me and helping me keep track of it all.” He looked over at her and chuckled. “Only, I’m not a total meathead, so you might be able to actually pick some of it up.”

She rolled her eyes, but said nothing.

Zeth’s fears were somewhat assuaged. At least this guy was relaxed enough to be making jokes. It sure sounded like he knew something, but he at least didn’t seem to know Zeth was the man they were looking for. Unless he was pretending to be relaxed. Was Zeth just being paranoid? He decided to put the issue aside for now. He just needed to find some sort of excuse he could use to decline Erza’s offer and get out of here. “So, carrying around gear? What, uh, situations would I be carrying it into?”

Erza smiled. “Don’t worry so much. I’m not asking you to charge into battle for me. Think about it like, I just want you to manage my inventory. Handle storage. Now, the three of us are trying to catch some criminal that’s apparently been running around, but we don’t even know where that person is, so currently we’re just looking for leads on where to find them.”

“Oh, really?” Zeth asked. “W-who is it?”

“It’s a Blood Mage,” Rosalie said, disdain clear in her voice. “We found him commanding a summoned demon, causing mayhem in town, but weren’t able to catch him. And when we asked around after he got away, it sounded like he’d been terrorizing this place for the past week. The guards seemed to think they’d already caught the culprit for some reason, but obviously not. We ended up negotiating with the local precinct for a reward if we managed to find the criminal, so now we’re working on that after hours.”

Erza scoffed. “More like I negotiated while you offered to do it for free. Your fanaticism really gets in the way of my entrepreneurial efforts, Rosalie.”

“Ah,” Zeth said. “W-well, I’m not sure if it’s too good an idea to go after someone like that. They seem pretty dangerous to mess with, and it’s not like people are out dying in the streets, y’know?”

Rosalie shook her head. “You clearly don’t understand the kind of person you’re talking about. I won’t try to claim that anyone who has a prohibited Class is some kind of horrible person; things like unlicensed explosion magic have been used by good people in the past. But a Blood Mage? Nothing but bad news comes from a Class whose main method of Leveling up is committing murder. And just the fact that they’d summoned a demon—not many people know this, but in order to secure a demon’s help, you have to allow it to kill at least one person, if not more. The fact that there was a demon in this town means it’s confirmed this Blood Mage has a body count. There’s no excuse for that.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“...Mhm,” Zeth said with a cautious nod. Just how much did she know about Blood Mages? Ironically, he might end up learning something from her about what kind of Skills his enemy may have.

Erza chuckled. “You seem like you’re getting nervous. Don’t worry; we’ll have your back in case something unexpected happens. Rosalie’s got some specialized countermeasures against stuff like demons, and I’ve got about a hundred tricks up my sleeves. I can capture people and hold them in place, I can hide myself with stealth magic, and, of course, if all else fails, there’s always good old Fireball.”

“And when we do catch them,” Rosalie said, a dark look on her face, “we’ll be sure they pay for everything they’ve done. Wielding a horrible Class like that…They’ll wish it was just the guards that caught them.”

Erza rolled his eyes at her. “Do you think implying torture in front of someone you just met is a good idea when trying to hire them? Not everyone is as insane as you.”

She just stared at him intensely.

As Zeth listened to their argument, the other man who had yet to speak so far—Erza had introduced him as Alfon—yawned, shifting slightly in his resting spot on the table. Zeth, however, was feeling anything but bored. More and more, he got the sense that he needed to leave this building immediately.

What would they do if they realized who he was? Zeth had the feeling this Rosalie woman wouldn’t be particularly eager to hear out the reasoning for his actions.

He chuckled nervously. “I—I dunno, this all just seems…I came here to just talk about working with a merchant. And now you’re talking about bounty hunting, and…”

Rosalie sighed. “If you don’t want to work with us, don’t. It’s dangerous; I understand why you wouldn’t want to do it. Go ahead and leave, and we can—”

“Hey,” Erza interrupted, looking at her incredulously, “this is my potential apprentice you’re talking to! Don’t try to chase him off! I think he’d make a valuable addition to the team, so if you don’t care, then you don’t talk to him. I’ll handle negotiations, yeah?”

“Why do you even want this guy so badly?” she asked. “If you want an apprentice, go ask someone who’s eager to work under you. He doesn’t have a Class, and from the sounds of it, he doesn’t have any experience with magic. Just leave the poor guy alone.”

He placed his hands on the table, ignoring her words and turning to look straight at Zeth. “Alright. How much do you want?”

Zeth blinked. “What?”

“Money. How much do I have to pay you? We can say it’ll be by the hour worked.”

“I don’t know,” Zeth said, frowning in confusion. What was all this about?

“You don’t know how much money you want? Isn’t this what this was all about earlier? You need money? How much do you need?”

Zeth shrugged. “A million gold pieces.”

Erza rolled his eyes. “Be reasonable. Look, where did you work before now?”

“...I worked at Otis and Roul’s.”

“Otis and Roul’s?”

“The local mining guild.”

“And you quit because they weren’t paying you enough?”

Zeth pursed his lips. “...Uh, no. They fired me.”

“Well, whatever. How much were they paying you?”

“I—” Zeth breathed out. “You won’t be able to match it. They pay more than anyone else, and taxes are way too high for non-guild work for you to be able to—”

“Just tell me.”

He shook his head in defeat. “I dunno; it depended on the job. Normally I could expect maybe…ten, eleven copper at the end of a day’s work?”

Rosalie’s eyes widened. “They were paying you ten copper?! For eight full hours of manual labor? That’s barely over a single copper an hour! And you said this was the most anyone in this town paid?”

Zeth blinked in surprise at her reaction. “...Actually, a normal work day for them would be closer to twelve hours.”

“They pay less than a single copper coin per hour?,” she asked, voice just as aggressive as it’d been when she was talking about what she’d do to the Blood Mage. “Are they insane?!”

“I, uh, yeah,” he stuttered, taken aback by her sudden anger. “I mean, I know they’re pretty awful to work for, but why are you…?”

“That is a ridiculously low amount of money,” she said. “Why hasn’t any other company come and offered better wages?”

“It’s like I tried to tell you,” he said. “Non-guild work is taxed really heavily. Most businesses try to offer five times what they do, but it still comes out as less by the time it reaches our pockets.”

“And why is this guild exempt from these taxes?”

Zeth shrugged. “It’s not like I’m in the room when they work out the deals. The guild’s built a lot of infrastructure for the town and stuff, though, so I assume it’s as repayment, or something.”

Her face fell into her hands. “Gods, it’s worse than I thought. You people are being exploited. Far more than you seem to realize.”

Erza held out a hand in front of her. “Hey, I said I’d do the negotiating, remember?” He looked back at Zeth. “How much until I break through those taxes? I could offer, say…three copper per hour.”

He pursed his lips. “I don’t know exactly how it’d work out, but that’d probably end up as something more like half a copper per hour after taxes. L-listen, I think we’ve gotten way off-track. I never said I’d take this job, and honestly, I kind of agree with Rosalie’s questions regarding why you even want me so much in the first place. So I think I’m just going to leave, if that’s all you—”

“How about fifty copper per hour?”

Zeth froze mid-word.

“By your math, that’d work out to be something like eight copper after taxes? Almost ten times what that guild paid you.”

“...Are you serious?”

Rosalie looked at Erza with wide eyes, as well. “That’s…a lot of money.”

He shook his head. “Shame most of it’ll be thrown to the government. Still, I wouldn’t have taken you for one to complain about coin, Rosalie.”

“I’m not complaining,” she said. “Just surprised you’re so eager to give your money away.”

He grinned. “Well, if you’d like to help out this struggling commoner, feel free to give away some of your own, too.”

“I’d rather just cut down whoever is responsible for these predatory tax laws.”

“Probably not a good idea to come into a new town and start threatening to kill government officials, yeah?”

Zeth sat and listened to them, still in shock at the massive figure Erza had thrown out.

He looked over at him. “So? You ready to work with us?”

“...You’re serious about the money?”

Erza nodded.

Zeth felt trapped. Erza was acting extremely suspicious—especially now that he’d quoted this insane sum—but what would be even more suspicious would be if Zeth refused. He’d explicitly stated already that he was here to make some money after losing his old job, and they were clearly offering the best job available, with no reason to refuse. Meaning if Erza really was offering so much money because he was suspicious about Zeth, refusing the offer would only confirm those suspicions. And presumably, this entire situation was created on purpose by the man. Zeth was being tested. Accept, and be proven innocent, or refuse, and be proven guilty.

Also…that was a lot of money. If Erza was genuinely going to pay him that much, how could he not at least consider the possibilities? Forget paying for those mercenaries his mom wanted to hire, Zeth could buy anything he wanted after a couple weeks. It was dangerous to work so closely to these people, but really, it may have given some additional advantages to counteract the risk. In this one conversation, Erza had mentioned several of his own abilities that Zeth would need to look out for. And why would the man actively inform Zeth of his capabilities if he was just planning on killing him?

Though, that wasn’t to say there wasn’t something strange going on with Erza. He’d been consistently dodging the question of why he cared so much about specifically convincing Zeth to work for him—to the point that even Rosalie asked him what was up. It made Zeth extremely suspicious about the man’s motives. But on the other hand, it also made Zeth suspect that even if he said no here and walked right out, he wouldn’t be left alone. Perhaps it really was the wisest decision to simply say yes, lay low, and figure out what this guy’s deal was.

He took a breath. At the very least, this job made for a good excuse for why he might be missing at any given hour. And really, that was all he was looking for. “Okay. Sure. I’ll work with you.”

Erza grinned. “Fantastic. I look forward to getting to know you better, Zeth.”