Lolibaba -Enjoying the Daily Life of a Mercenary From the Age of Six- Chapter 3

Machini. An existence that had existed since the ancient times at the Ishtaria continent. It was the name given to the iron giants piloted by people.

The Machini was an existence that was similar to a golem that moved by gathering mana from the Naagarain, a river of mana that flowed at the sky, but it would grow up despite being made of iron, and machiinis that lived for a long time could also bear offspring.

[Aiandinna], the machiini Bela was currently using, was about three meters high; it was a small sized young machiini. Its power and speed still weren´t very considerable, but it didn´t have conditioned habits for when piloting it; if it was to grow up like this, the machiini would definitely become the ideal machiini to Bela.

In order to have it grow up, it is necessary for the machiini to kill other machiinis or great beasts and steal their Frana. Whether it was to fight at battlefields or hunt down great beasts, at any rate, fighting was necessary for the iron giant to grow up.(TL note: Frana = spiritual energy ^^)

Piloting the young machiini [Aiandinna], Bela arrived at the town of Yarke after only a few hours pa.s.sed going through the main road to the city. It was about the same amount of distance the hooligans from before had been tailing her for. To begin with, there wasn´t much distance from the city to the river bank.(TL note: ->チンピラが追ってこれたぐらいだ<- -.-="" i="" just="" wrote="" what="" it="" literally="" meant,="" but="" even="" so,="" i´m="" not="" sure…-.-="">

Once Bela got close to the entrance of the city, still piloting her own machiini, a machiini that was guarding the place immediately stood in front of her machiini [Aiandinna], blocking her way.

“You again? Do you think I would let you go inside the town like this?”

“Hyahyahya, sorry there. I´ve been staying outside for longer than I thought, you see. So I had to rush back here.”

Bela laughed at the shouted voice of the guard.

“Whatever, just leave your machiini at the parking lot and get out of it. If you don´t, I will arrest you, s.h.i.+tty brat.”(TL note: It´s literally a parking lot, but it just feels weird to use this word…)

Being hurried by the full of energy guard, Bela led [Aiandinna] to the place the guard had pointed. It was a common rule for machiinis to not be allowed inside cities.

Stopping the machiini at the parking lot, Bela went down the machiini and entered inside the guardroom. After paying the fee for entering the city, she wrote down her name on the list.

“What is it, ojou-chan. Haven´t you become more beautiful than before?”

“Have I become beautiful?”

“Yes. After ten years, let me woo you for a bit.”

“Hyahya, then, when the time comes, let´s have some fun until the morning together.”

Differently from the guard piloting the machiini outside, the young guard inside the guardroom had better att.i.tude. After their quick exchange, Bela headed inside the city.

And then, once she closed the door of the guardroom and entered the city, the sun had pretty much already went down.

It was common sense that shops would open a bit after the sun has risen up and that they would close together with the sunset. This may not be the case for bars, but because it was still possible that this was close to the time the mercenary a.s.sociation would be closed, Bela immediately ran, rus.h.i.+ng to the mercenary a.s.sociation building.

—–

The doors of the mercenary a.s.sociation building opened up with a “bang”.

Because the gate keeper man already knew she would be coming soon, he didn´t particularly get surprised, but the other men looked at the girl that had just entered inside with weird gazes.

They had never seen something like a little girl hastily going inside the mercenary a.s.sociation. By looking at how she wasn´t wearing armor and had a war hammer hanging at her back, it was clear she was wearing clothes similar to the ones worn by their profession. Without being able to believe a child would be in such attire, some people thought she was of the korobo race, but the more they looked at her, the more they couldn´t see her as nothing more than a child.

The korobo, the race these men had mistaken her to, indeed have low stature, but as to be expected, a child and an adult had clear physical differences. In other words, the little girl Bela reflected to the eyes of the mercenaries as an unexplainable existence.

And then, without giving care to those gazes, Bela walked inside the a.s.sociation. There wasn´t any timidity in her att.i.tude. It was as if she was thinking that she could just simply crush the heads of whoever came to get trouble with her.

“Give me the money.”

“The first thing you say is that?”

Milan, the receptionist, gave a sigh. When he was just being troubled by how the problem child from before had come once again, the first thing she said were those words.

Of course, without paying mind to Milan´s feelings, Bela waved her hand in front of his eyes as if urging him to hand out the money. Looking at her (putting aside whether it was pleasant to the eyes or not), even though the girl in front of his eyes looked like she could be seen as a child, this didn´t matter to Milan.

“Well, fine then.”

While dropping his shoulders at Bela´s att.i.tude, he took out the coin purse that had been prepared for her and put it onto the table of the reception. Only by looking at that, the men at the surroundings had their eyes become even more wide open, wondering what in the world was happening. It was obvious that that wasn´t an amount of money that would be given to a child as pocket money. It was an amount that was as if she had subjugated a whole bandit group by herself.

“There are quite a lot of coin there.”

“Well, because you were in hurry, we couldn´t get the amount in the Agamas currency. This was the money we got by putting together all the money we had here, so please overlook this.”

While saying “Well, it´s fine though”, Bela started to count her reward money.

“Other than that, we purchase machiinis. Would you like to sell yours?”(TL note: f.u.c.k THIS SENTENCE ->それと鉄機兵(マキーニ)の買い取りも受け付けてますが、いかがします？<- t.t="" i="" can´t="" think="" of="" a="" way="" to="" translate="" this="" to="" english="" without="" it="" sounding="">

“I won´t sell.”

While thinking there wouldn´t be any idiot that would sell their future companion, Bela gave an immediate response.

“Right.”

Milan had already guessed she would give this answer and only asked her that because he had promised someone he would. Then, finis.h.i.+ng what he had to say about business, Milan asked Bela about a certain point he was curious about regarding the harvest he had received.

“By the way, I have one thing I would like to ask.”

“What is it? I am in a good mood right now. If you are going to ask, I can give you my answer.”

Laughing, while checking out the contents of the pouch, Bela spoke.

“The heads that had been given us all had been busted at the back. Is there any reason for that?”

“What is it? It is beautiful like that, so it´s fine, isn´t it?

There were no problems with the identification of the heads, but its smell was intense and it was hard to clean it up. This was something he didn´t really want to be doing often.

“Yes. Well, it´s just something I got curious about.”

Bela answered with a serious face to Milan´s question.

“Isn´t it the human nature to want to crush people´s heads when you see them?”

Milan was mentally muttering to himself “Yes, in the end, she is really weird”, but it seems those thoughts didn´t reach Bela.

“Well, I just wanted to relax a bit, you see. But unfortunately, it seems I got a “miss” for all of them.”(TL note: That thing about popcicles. I have no idea how this is supposed to be called in english ¬¬)

“Are there “winning” ones?”

Going with the flow of the conversation, MIlan ended up asking.

“Winning ones, right? It would be like… You see, since long ago, I would always feel annoyed when I didn´t break something. So I was wondering if I would feel better if I smashed some heads.”(TL note: I guess she is saying that she wondered if she would feel refreshed if she smashed heads, so after smas.h.i.+ng some heads and not feeling refreshed, she decided all of them were “misses”)

“Please, don´t smash my head, ok?”

To those words, Bela responded by saying “Isn´t it refres.h.i.+ng if you smash things even if a little bit?” but Milan ignored it. He didn´t want to know how it would be to feel “relieved”.

“Now then, please sign here.”

“Alright.”

Then, after Milan confirmed Bela´s sign, he now officially could give the coin pouch to Bela.

The very heavy pouch had eight million nine hundred thousand Goldin inside. This was an amount that wouldn´t be seen unless it a mercenary group would have done a big job; jobs like this wouldn´t be possible to be completed alone to begin with.

“I wonder if this much isn´t enough for what I´ve been planning on buying.”

“Oya? Do you have plans to purchase something?”

To Milan´s words, Bela laughed, saying “Just some slaves”.

“Slaves? Well, if it is this amount of money, it would be possible to purchase some slaves, wouldn´t it?”

“I want those that won´t break up right away though. Would this much be enough?”

Milan started to think about what Bela had said.

“So you really want battle slaves. If it is average warriors, there wouldn´t be any problems on buying five or six of them, but if you want first rate ones, it would be difficult. The cheapest would be a ten million. Depending of the place, it can be twenty or thirty million instead. I´ve heard that just recently, because some n.o.bles were disputing one of them, it had reached the price of a hundred million.”

“Is that so? Well, it is fine as long as they have good build and acceptable looks. It looks like those first rate are more disputed than I thought after all, and it would be a pain if I had to fight for them each time, you know?”

“Well, in either of those two, you don´t really have enough money.”

While shrugging his shoulders, Milan said.

“I don´t really mind getting more money little by little, but it´s not like I want to work on low paying jobs. So, I want something threatening there.”

Saying “I see”, Milan nodded. After thinking for a bit, he answered.

“In that case, what do you think about going to city of battle slaves after some time?”(TL note: でしたら少し待ってからWhat does he mean by saying after waiting a while? Is it because of the war? I guess there might be other stuff you can do to get good money at the city, but… It doesn´t really make any sense ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬)

“City of battle slaves?”

Bela leaned her head to the side to the name she had never heard of.

“It is a city at the north from here that gathers battle slaves and make them fight each other.”

“Are you talking about a Colossus?”

When Bela said the name of the city she was supposed to be sold to, Milan nodded. It seems her guess wasn´t wrong.

“Yes, it seems that the war with the neighboring kingdom of Paroma is about to be over, so I´ve heard that soon a new batch of goods will be coming.

Once a battle is over, the captured soldiers are sold as battle slaves. Depending on the negotiations, there are times the person is given back to their country for a high price, but for the most of them, such wouldn´t happen, and they would become battle slaves.

“I see. But, is this war still going on?”

Bela knew of the situation around here, but Bela wanted to aim for bigger jobs.

“Yes.”

“In that case, they should still be searching for mercenaries, right?”

To Bela´s smile, Miran answered, saying “please, do as you wish”.

It was difficult to capture someone alive in the middle of the war, where friends and foes are jumbled together. Most of the battle slaves were soldiers that had surrendered after their army had resigned.

“I have a machiini with me for the people recruiting. I guess that´s reasonable.”

After finis.h.i.+ng hearing the girls nonsense, Miran went back to his word. And then, with her laughing that was unlike of a little girl echoing through the a.s.sociation, Bela left the mercenary a.s.sociation.

She didn´t have any business with this town anymore. Bela´s heart was already set towards the city of battle slaves, Colossus.