Chapter 608: Decision

Translator: imperfectluck  Editor: Kurisu

The firewood burning in the hotel’s fireplace crackled. Little Red and the other members of my party were all enjoying this rare break from all the busyness. However, Casio’s young adventuring team was unable to relax.

Not only was the elf mage Yurtla unable to relax, Casio and Aivla also had tense expressions.

“Ha, don’t be so tense. Even if the sky collapses, a taller guy will hold it up for you. No matter how nervous or serious you are, what will come will still come. You might as well relax and do your own things instead. As long as you face things with a normal attitude, even the most difficult things will be resolved one day.”

Adam’s words made him sound like a respectable senior. His moving speech and convincing words were all quite heartwarming. However, the fact that he was also sneaking peeks at a book of jokes aimed at young teenagers and laughing to the point of almost crying while giving such a motivational speech made him seem unconvincing in the end.

“Youngsters, just keep normal mentalities, normal mentalities… Snore.”

Little Red’s mentality seemed overly normal as she said this as she fell asleep again by the fireplace. The way she looked like a little girl while acting like a senior mysteriously seemed rather… cute?

“Don’t listen to those two heartless bastards. They’re not worrying about anything, because others are worrying for them. They don’t need to use their brains, because there will always be others who will be in charge of thinking up plans to deal with the situation. They only need to beat people up,” I said as I glared at Adam. I didn’t want them to bring the youngsters down the wrong path. Adam and Little Red’s life attitude definitely wasn’t something for these youngsters to learn.

“Do you have the right to lecture us? At the very least, we managed to successfully teach Annie. Just look at all of your disciples. Is there a single normal one among them?”

Adam picked at his nose while looking down at me. He seemed absolutely nothing like the legendary Sword Saint that he was.

No normal disciples? How so? Elisa was slightly extreme… Fine, I admit that she was overly extreme. Perhaps she was somewhat in love with her father figure… Reyne was the same way… Glina? Recently, I felt more and more like I had no idea what she was thinking. I kept feeling like she was scheming something, and I didn’t even dare to ask what…

Cough, cough, but at least Cohen and Barton were more normal.

“Didn’t you basically let Cohen do whatever he wanted? He just tried to imitate the image he has of you as the “perfect Roland”, which is why he’s the most normal now. As for Barton, all you did was teach him martial arts for one year. He’s already become quite sly. If he learns from you for a few more years, it would be strange if he didn’t become just as sly and scheming as you.”

Harloys’ comment made me rather displeased. This made me sound like I was a source of mental pollution!

“You mean to say that you aren’t?”

[You are the biggest source of mental pollution! I personally guarantee this with my own personality as the evidence!]

Ahem, we should probably get back on topic now.

“Margaret, have you confirmed it for certain?”

I walked over to Margaret to confirm that the dimensional portal was in the elven capital. Although the odds of Margaret making a mistake were very small, investigation and prophecy magic would always have a fixed chance to fail. It would be impossible to find out anything with a 100% guarantee.

“Yes. I used twelve different magic spells, including six that are highly accurate. First, I viewed the history of this dagger. Two months ago, this dagger and its master were both in the Moonwheel Capital. Also, this dagger is enchanted in the elven style. According to my knowledge, this enchantment is something that only elven enchanters will know. This dagger is made of silver mixed with mithril. The weapon’s owner has a relatively high status in the elven tribe. I used alchemy to analyze the raw materials used to make this dagger. The silver was produced in the West Puton Mountains, which is in the elves’ territory…”

When talking about her magic specialties, even Margaret, who was usually so terse, would become talkative to the point of being a chatterbox. At first, I listened to her seriously. But when she said “I investigated all the data on moon elves’ emblems to determine the emblem on the dagger. I proved that the dagger’s owner was the eldest son of the Kaso Family. The Kaso Family is one of the ten highest-ranking moon elf families. Since he’s the eldest son who will inherit everything, it’s very unlikely that he would leave the capital”, I felt more and more like all of her other evidence had already became meaningless. As always, Margaret was overly serious.

“Ahem, I suppose that we can say that it’s confirmed, then.”

Margaret then glared at me. She basically meant “I worked so hard on this confirmation, yet you’re summarizing it so simply?” But then, she glanced over at the elf mage by her side. I pretty much understood why she had done things so seriously this time.

The elf mage Yurtla seemed like he was about to cry, so I should probably say less here.

“Margaret, do you think that we should notify the elves?”

“…You decide. You’re more skilled than I am with these types of political decisions.”

I glanced over at Yurtla again. Although Margaret didn’t directly take a side, her attitude of letting me decide already explained a lot.

With her typical motherly nature and status of the only normal person in our party, typically she would have directly requested for me to inform the elves. However, she also knew just how difficult it would be to deal with the elves.

The elves also had a poor relationship with the Mage Country. The elves always felt “We are the source of all magic. You should all be incredibly grateful that we’re teaching you magic”—a mysterious sense of superiority.

However, human mages constantly created new magic spells and types, bringing along greater power. Human mages had long since far exceeded the abilities of elven mages, who were overly traditional and unwilling to try new things. The elves were jealous, yet still maintained their mysterious sense of superiority. They forever felt they were better than human mages for no other apparent reason. The fracture between human and elven mages was incredibly apparent.

Back when Margaret studied in the elven kingdoms for the sake of learning more magic, she had been bullied quite often there. Since holding a grudge forever was basically a passive ability of all intelligent women, even though Margaret was now a greatly successful mage, she still lacked patience towards the elves.

Now, she was willing to help Yurtla simply because they were both mages. There was also the fact that this was greatly important and indeed needed multiple sources of confirmation.

I glanced at all the other bastards in my party. Not a single one of them seemed like they intended to give me any ideas.

“How much longer until the first demon wave explosively arrives?”

“According to historical records… Actually, every time has always been a sudden arrival with zero hints beforehand. However, even for pure creatures of Chaos like demons, gathering such a large-scale fighting force will require time. We still probably have at least one or two months.”

“Then no matter what decision we make, we’ll have to act swiftly.”

Should we simply do nothing with this information? That seemed like too much of a waste. While I was still hesitating, a pitch-black bat suddenly flapped its way into our room through the window, landed on my shoulder, and tossed a fairies’ special edition report onto my hand.

<<Why did three Main Gods suddenly fight each other in the middle of last night? Why was Anslo seriously injured?>>

“Damn, the fairies are so good at writing super headlines that will attract attention!”

I glanced over the report and saw that most of it was only speculation. However, there were some things that were confirmed. This fight took place in Anslo’s personal Divine Kingdom. The three Chaos Main Gods who fought there were Anslo, the Guardian God of the Elves, Abyss Prince Karwenz, and Sophocles the Deceiver. I checked the date to see when “last night” was, and saw that it had only occurred two nights ago. The result of this fight was quite obvious already from the headline.

Any Main God who was seriously injured would require far more than one or two years to recover. I truly couldn’t understand what had happened.

“The elves are going to be finished in this case?”

I no longer hesitated. Since Anslo had been rendered useless for the time being, it would be inconceivable for the demons not to hurry and use this time to do something. It seemed quite likely that the first demon wave might happen at any moment.

If there had been half a year, the elves could have attempted to directly try and conquer human kingdoms’ territory. If there had been three months, the elves could have organized a major escape. But if there was only one month, the number of things that could be done would be quite limited.

“I’ll discuss things with the fairies and have them sell this information to the moon elves as the fairies’ information channels are the quickest. I’ll give 60% of the money earned to your adventuring team since this information was mainly your accomplishment. The remainder…”

“Cough, cough, cough.”

The dwarf priest who had been silent up until now suddenly interrupted me. I instantly understood what he wanted when he awkwardly pointed at the gold coin emblem on his chest.

“I’ll give 50% to your adventuring team, and 20% to the Church of Wealth to shut Beyana up. The rest will belong to us.”

It wasn’t that we lacked money. It was that these were simply the rules of society. Since we were participating in this incident as adventurers, we would naturally receive payment according to adventurers’ rules.

This wasn’t only because adventurers needed money. If doing good deeds had no benefits whatsoever, adventurers would definitely stop helping out as often. The main reason why adventurers would be able to complete highly difficult missions so often was because missions would always pay a reward according to the difficulty scale.

“I can save the world, but you must pay me a fee on the scale of saving the world.”

From a certain standpoint, this was the foundational reason why adventurers could commonly be found in every dimension.

Currently, giving half of the information sale proceeds to the adventuring team could be considered quite generous since we had basically saved their lives with our intervention. According to adventurers’ rules, splitting the reward 50-50 in such a situation would be normal. Also, Beyana had guided this adventuring team all the way here too. It would have been impossible for this adventuring team to reach the 100th level of the Chaos Abyss without her assistance, so Beyana also had the right to be paid. Still, giving half to the original adventuring team who had put in most of the effort was the right thing to do.

Even though this was only a piece of information, it was critical information relevant to the potential destruction of an entire species. With the fairies who were such skilled extortionists acting as our intermediary, and considering the moon elves’ astonishing wealth, I felt that we would likely receive at least several pieces of God Equipment in exchange for the information.

However, the dwarf priest cracked an awkward, wry smile.

“…My Goddess Beyana says she wants 30%. Apart from her personal portion, she also needs to pay that Holy Knight group their fees and condolence money for the deceased.”

“Okay, that’s fine.”

I would have forgotten about that Holy Knight group if Beyana hadn’t mentioned them. Although they hadn’t been very useful, they had tried their best, and several of them had died. After the fight against Donatis concluded, the surviving Holy Knights told us that they had their own path of retreat, so we split up back at the 100th level.

“Did they successfully return to the mortal plane? Or did Donatis find them?”

The bearded dwarf priest nodded at me and confirmed that the Holy Knight group had safely returned. This was good news.

Now then, the rest would be our own tasks.

What, you’re asking why we weren’t going to the Moonwheel Capital battlefield? I had no intention of being sent back to Hell to reincarnate again. Not even a Main God would likely be able to directly resist against the first demon wave.

“Ahem, since everyone’s here now for our party, let’s go grind against a boss first, a Main God level boss.”

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