La La La, Can't Hear You

With Ramiza-san gone, things became considerably quieter.

She was a different kind of loud and lively compared to Princess Yupe.

The remaining magic stones were already packed in crates, so he just needed to have the magic stone dealer come pick them up.

Unprocessed gold would get lowballed at a pawnshop.

A blacksmith would pay more, since they could use it for decorative work.

"We're done handling the magic stones, so let's head back."

"Yes."

With the two of them in tow, he returned to the living room.

In the living room, Elza and Alexia had come out of the bath and were lying on the sofa, fast asleep.

They'd probably been too tired to bother walking back to their beds and picked the nearest option.

Their hair was still a bit damp, but neither seemed to care as they slept soundly.

They were wearing only shirts with blankets draped over them. Far too defenseless.

"Their manners aren't great, but it'd be cruel to wake them after they worked so hard. Azu, Orleans, can you towel-dry their hair for them? They might catch a cold. I'll go make breakfast in the meantime."

"Understood. Leave it to us."

Leaving the cleanup to them, he moved to the kitchen.

Since they'd woken up so early, he didn't have much of an appetite.

Salad with some warm soup and bread would be enough.

He diced bacon and ripening tomatoes and put them in a pot of water.

He set it on the fire and added salt and herbs.

Once it came to a boil, he took it off the heat and slowly stirred in beaten eggs.

Done this way, the eggs turned out light and fluffy.

On a separate plate, he roughly chopped vegetables and arranged them.

He mixed some rapeseed oil he'd been given with salt and lemon juice to make a dressing.

"You two, it's ready. Let's eat. I'll leave a note for Elza and Alexia, so they can eat when they wake up."

"They're not waking up, so it can't be helped. How do you sleep through a smell this good?"

"Let's eat."

The three of them had breakfast together.

Even after they finished eating and cleaned up, the two showed no signs of waking.

In the end, those two didn't get up until the evening.

"Ahh, I slept so well."

"I'm still a little sleepy."

"Elza, you've been sleeping too much lately. If you keep sleeping that much, you'll turn into a cow."

"I'd rather not be a cow."

Both of them arched their backs in a big stretch, working out the stiffness.

"Finally up, huh. Good work, you two."

"It was supposed to be just a simple quest and some spare change from a dungeon, but we got an unexpected windfall and wore ourselves out."

"On top of the magic stone bonus, we had the room all to ourselves. The tradeoff was that hauling everything back was brutal."

"Picking a spot where no other adventurers were around to avoid competition was a good call."

"You literally brought back a mountain of the stuff. I think it'll come to about forty gold coins total. I've already got buyers lined up for most of it."

Orleans reheated the leftover breakfast, and he set it in front of the two of them.

"Oh my, perfect timing. I was just getting hungry," Alexia said, and dug right in.

Elza began eating at a more leisurely pace.

"Forty gold coins, huh. Not bad, all things considered."

"I'd say that's quite a lot of money."

"If we had the full team and went to a dungeon suited to our rank, we'd earn even more. Material prices skyrocket at that level. But for a safe two-person run, sure, it's solid."

"When I was on my own, earning even a single silver coin was hard…"

That's right, Elza had sold herself into slavery because she'd been so strapped for money.

As a priestess, she could have earned plenty if she'd tried, but knowing Elza's personality, the idea of charging for healing probably never occurred to her. And being tied down at the orphanage probably left her no room to maneuver.

The food disappeared so quickly that he cut up an apple and served it as dessert.

"I hate to do this to you two since you just got back exhausted, but…"

Before he could finish, Alexia covered both ears with her hands.

"La la la, can't hear you. I can't hear anything. I must have gone hard of hearing from exhaustion."

Seeing that, Azu nearly burst out laughing and had to hold her stomach.

Apparently it hit her funny bone.

"Alexia-san, that's actually kind of hilarious."

"You don't need to laugh at me. This is an overworked person's one small act of defiance."

"When you put it that way, I do feel bad."

"Yes, yes. Whatever you say. This pitiful slave will do anything she's told."

Alexia spread her hands wide and laid on the sarcasm.

Well, this was a kind of indulgence in its own way.

She'd gauged that she could say this much without crossing the line.

Her face was smiling, so she wasn't genuinely upset.

Elza watched the whole scene with a warm smile.

Orleans wasn't quite sure how to read the situation and looked a little flustered.

"So, what was it?"

"The thing is…"

He told them about the quest from the viscount.

And also the information he'd gotten from Ramiza-san.

As he spoke, the smile gradually drained from Alexia's face until she was completely serious.

"Didn't I tell you not to accept quests from nobles so easily?"

"You might have… said something like that."

Alexia had coached him on all sorts of things about dealing with nobles.

That might have been among them.

"For a noble to go out of their way… and not just any noble, but one making a request that puts them in debt to a commoner who serves the queen? It's obviously going to be trouble. Nobles are all about face. They never show weakness. If they're asking someone else to handle it, that means the downsides of doing it themselves are that significant."

"It's quite convincing when a former noble like Alexia-sama says it."

Orleans said it with a perfectly straight face.

Since there wasn't a hint of snideness behind it, the person on the receiving end could hardly get angry.

"With Orleans, it's not like she's teasing, so it's hard to fire back at her."

"I apologize."

"You don't need to apologize… it just means you're honest."

Alexia sighed.

"Still, a dungeon filled with poison, huh. That's a pain to have in your territory. The monsters in places like that tend to be tricky."

"Apparently they're almost all poisonous. And we'd need to be prepared for dark-element attacks too."

"Just equipping soldiers with gear for that would drain a small-territory viscount's coffers dry. And if it's unconquered, they probably don't have the know-how to process and sell rare materials from it either."

"Dark-element resistance is really hard to come by. Blessings can mitigate it somewhat, but…"

"Ramiza-san seemed to have something in mind for the darkness issue, not just the poison…"

"Well, if she can nullify the poison, it can't be that high a difficulty, right? You're not going to tell us to go tomorrow, are you?"

"I'm not that much of a slave driver. The viscount said as soon as possible, but he didn't set a deadline. We'll need a few days to prepare, and you should rest. I'd like to wait for Finn, but I don't know when she'll be back."

"That little squirt will come home when she gets hungry."

"She's not a cat."

If Finn were here, she'd probably start a fight over being called a little squirt.

They decided to take a rest day and depart in two days.

He sent word to Ramiza-san as well.

… She was asleep, so he left a note with the fairy handling her housework.