Small Village Tridente Chapter 23

When you're taking an Uber and the driver starts talking to you. I'm not paying you to talk to me, I'm paying you to drive! We'll probably never meet again so why bother asking?! If I wanted to talk about my life I'd get a girlfriend or something.
Stop babbling and watch the road!

Don't even get me started on the GPS.

Small Village Tridente – Chapter 023

rawr:

July – August, 2XX7

Subjugation Quest

A few days since Pochi became the guard of Tridente there had been several monster attacks, but it seems Pochi was able to repel them properly.

Even if he's a child, he's the child of a rare monster, the raging wolf. So it looks like he's much stronger than generic low cla.s.s monsters.

Pochi, unlike us, will die the moment he becomes incapacitated once. But since we told him to run away immediately if he's in danger, he'll probably be fine.

「Looks like Hachi finally got used to being a watchdog.」

「It's Pochi.」

「It is Ultimate Cabbage Tarou.」

…by the way, we still haven't decided its name.

One day, a party of two came to visit Tridente.

「Excuse m~e! We'd like to speak with the representative of Tridente.」

Representative…? We haven't decided who will represent us…

I glanced at Saya and, understanding what I meant, she smiled and nodded..

Ehehe, I wonder if this what you call tacit understanding.

「Mari here is the representative of Tridente.」

「Eeh! That's not what I meant!!!」

「Eeh? Didn't your eyes convey you wanted to do it just now!?」

Since I didn't want to do it, I appealed to Saya to do it but I was splendidly misunderstood.

「The representative can be anyone. For the time being, I will listen to them.」

Ooh… The president is actually being student council president-ish.

The president went forward as the representative and asked about the pair's business.

「The truth is we'd like to request something of everyone in Tridente…」

A quest… is that what they mean?

In this game, there aren't any NPCs so quests that have been prepared by the management don't exist. So it's become commonplace for players to do exchanges amongst each other by requesting help from people who accept quests posted on the boards. The contents are either getting materials used for crafting or protecting their home while they're logged out, but there are also requests for PKs among them.

「A request… for us?」

「Yes. The reward will be 18 rare materials we have prepared…」

「Ei-eighteen!?」

Do they mean all of the materials that drop when a rare monster is defeated by an alliance…

How dreadful are the contents of the request, I wonder? I stared hard at the clients…

(Wait? These people, where have I seen them…)

「Ah! The person from the raging wolf subjugation party!」

The client also noticed when they saw me who had shouted reflexively.

「Ah, from that time… So you were from Tridente!」

「Ah, yes. Thanks for that time.」

I bowed my head.

However, the situation just turned bad… These people are the ones responsible for hunting the raging wolf. But even if I say they're responsible, it's not like they're in the wrong. That's just one of the things that you naturally do in a game… However, for Pochi whose parent was killed, the client in front of our eyes is one of the people who are his parent's killers.

Pochi also naturally understood that and approached us. He was shaking with rage as he threatened the client.

「Uwah! The child of the raging wolf from that time…? You didn't kill it!?」

I stopped Pochi who seemed like he would leap at them at any moment and explained the details of how Pochi became Tridente's watchdog to the confused client.

「So you had those kinds of reasons. But this is pretty bad… The truth is that we hunted the raging wolf so we could use it as a reward for the quest we wanted to request to Tridente…」

From what I heard, these two seem to be residents from a village to the north called 【Cyber Fish】. Cyber Fish is a village that was built by a group of people whose main activities are in the sea. At first, they built their s.h.i.+p as the first step towards their voyage, but when they went out to sea an incident occurred.

『After a while out in the open sea, we suddenly heard a singing voice. At first we thought it was one of the sailors singing but…』

As the sailors kept listening to the singing voice, their consciousness became hazy and their vision blurred, they said.

「Their consciousness became hazy…? Is it a charm or an abnormal sleep status?」

「Yes, we think that's probably it.」

The owner of that singing voice gained control of the s.h.i.+p that around 20 players had boarded, killed all of the sailors, and sank the s.h.i.+p in the end.

I've heard a similar kind of story in Greek mythology… If I'm right, its name was…

「Siren…」

「Like I thought, you think that too? We also believe that a siren did it.」

After that, they rebuilt the s.h.i.+p and went out to sea again, but it ended the same way. Every time, their s.h.i.+p is sunk in the same way so they can't properly sail the seas.

「Since a s.h.i.+p requires an enormous amount of materials, we can't just keep doing it again and again, so we talked about requesting strong people to subjugate the siren.」

And so, they hunted the rare monster raging wolf to use its materials as a bargaining chip for the request negotiation.

「Strong people…? We're a small village with only three people though…」

Saya tilted her head to the side in confusion.

「Wait, you don't know? If you speak of Tridente, then it's about that rumored PKer, Nos.4 Tsurugi of Break, being defeated by a slightly famous group of 3 in this area.」

I see… after that, the NW Company was flooded with questions regarding the log in restrictions on some users, so they officially announced the existence of Nos. skills and explained that the cause was the special effect of account break, if I remember right.

Well, because they implemented a system with the possibility of producing that kind of effect, in the end they just ended up fanning the flames…

「Well, I just ran into them after the battle ended so I'm basically unrelated, though.」

「Even so, just being a Nos. is rea.s.suring. Moreover, aren't you number 1!?」

At the time of the enforcer incident, the Nos. that were announced were 7 people. Including two of those among them and Tsurugi-san as well, three of them are people from Tridente. It certainly isn't strange that it became a rumor.

「But since we're that raging wolf's enemies, then I guess it's impossible for you to accept.」

I tried to soothe and calm down Pochi who had still continued to intimidate them. I decided to discuss it with Saya and the president.

「I'm sorry. We can't accept this quest.」

As a result of our discussion, we replied that taking Pochi into consideration, we couldn't accept the reward.

「I see…」

For the sake of this request, they went through the trouble of obtaining rare materials. The requester's shoulders drooped down.

「That's why, instead of as a quest, we will personally investigate the siren.」

「Then…!」

「We also want to go out into the sea someday, after all.」

In the end, we went to subjugate the siren. The materials in the village were somehow enough for a s.h.i.+p, so Saya and I crafted to build the s.h.i.+p.

While I was crafting the s.h.i.+p, I had a certain doubt.

Siren… because it was the first time that I heard about a fictional creature being in this world that's filled with nothing but monster's based on the real world's insects and animals.

I wonder if it's really the mysterious bird siren, or maybe…

Although I was feeling a little anxious, I became excited about finding out the true ident.i.ty of the unknown owner of the singing voice as I advanced with our preparations.

Chapter 23 END

Trash to Trash
a.s.s to a.s.s