A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation

Since hearing about the trip back to the archipelago, Quattro had been working hard.

Basically, he took on daily requests and, when he went with Rizel and the others, he received an equal share of the rewards. Most of the requests involved monster hunting, but when he went with Jill, he had to work desperately because Jill would kill the monsters before he could.

It wasn’t out of meanness. Rizel had told him that it was good practice, and Jill didn’t need to hold back in any way. It wasn’t intentional, so it wasn’t mean.

“Hurry up.”

“Ugh...”

Since he wasn’t registered as part of the party, Quattro had to kill a specified number of designated monsters on his own. But Jill would finish them off first. However, Jill was just killing them at his own pace and wasn’t trying to get in the way, something Quattro understood well enough.

“Five more.”

“Finish before mealtime, okay?”

Maybe at Rizel’s request, Jill stayed with Quattro until the request was completed. But that was never as a guardian—it was purely to toughen Quattro up. And on top of that, Jill offered no advice or kindness, only telling him to finish quickly, so Quattro was desperate.

At this point, he wasn’t sure if his enemy was the monsters or Jill. He always had to be aware of Jill’s movements, somehow slipping past and killing his prey before Jill could. There was no sense of camaraderie at all. He thought he might have attacked Jill once or twice, but that was probably just his imagination.

“That’s what I was thinking—a battle slave’s hunting style would be like hunting in a team... well, never mind.”

Those were Rizel’s words when she learned of the situation. She nodded thoughtfully at the end, but Quattro didn’t know why.

And on days when he had to challenge monsters with everything he had just to even touch them, he would sleep like the dead after completing such requests. By taking on these jobs, he had saved up quite a bit of money.

Rizel had various considerations regarding combat, but she didn’t seem to intend to raise Quattro as an adventurer.

His Guild Card was purely identification for going to the archipelago. The requests he could accept were only for earning funds for his trip home. He was told most things he asked, but he rarely learned from Rizel the knowledge necessary as an adventurer.

That was probably because such knowledge wouldn’t be necessary if Quattro chose to live on the archipelago.

“Traps are difficult.”

“Maybe they’re just not for you, to begin with.”

Rizel smiled as Eleven tricked and trapped Quattro repeatedly, and even when not deceived, Quattro still fell into traps.

“Maybe it’s the instinct of a battle slave to face those things head-on and return them.”

While saying this, Rizel operated some wall panels and opened a door. Those kinds of things were difficult too.

But things like mechanical traps were left entirely to Rizel by Jill and Eleven, so Quattro never got depressed about being unable to deal with them. There was a difference between being able to do something if you tried, sometimes able to do it, or almost never able to do it no matter how hard you tried—but because he never actually tried, it was all the same.

“If you’re interested, shall we practice a bit?”

“Practice?”

“To deal with traps, you need insight to find them, dexterity to disable them, and reflexes for if they trigger unexpectedly.”

The fact that it was hearsay cut the credibility in half, but obedient Quattro nodded sincerely. Behind him, Jill and Eleven looked on as if wondering where he had heard that from.

“You’ve got reflexes, and insight is...”

“Hey, trap there.”

“! ...?!”

Quattro stopped his feet instinctively when told “trap,” and a spear fell straight down from above. He dodged it.

If it had been a trap that involved the surroundings, Eleven wouldn’t have tried to trap him. Quattro, having been toyed with so much, had become wary of everything Eleven said, but since his actions were so well read, it was probably easy for Eleven not to let traps trigger.