145 Bullying

"...Are you trying to put me out of a job or something?" Rachel asked with a surprised, and slightly annoyed, expression. She looked at Foster, who had been showing her a smug grin throughout this whole conversation, before he replied, "Hey, all I want is to figure out how to cast spells properly. And having a porter that we don't need to pay is better for all of us, right?"

The party's handler crossed her arms, tapping her foot in thought, "If this Samria fellow said that he can introduce you to someone who can teach you, then that's fine. People in the tower are obviously going to have a much better connection with that sort of thing than I ever could. But I think you're underestimating a porter's workload. It's not something that a Golem would be able to do."

"If we just split the work up within the party, it's fine, isn't it? We just need to pick up the stuff that the dead monsters drop and put it into a bag anyway, right?" Foster replied, but Rachel quickly picked up on a misunderstanding between the two, "Foster, you realize that you won't always be able to just go on dungeon dives, right? You could, but that would be really damn stupid. And while the bodies of dungeon monsters disappear, for the most part at least, you're going to have to take the bodies of other monsters outside of dungeons apart yourselves. A porter would usually do that for you while you take a breather after the fight."

Foster stopped walking for a moment, and stared at the woman that had been walking beside him. He then slowly turned toward Lynol, "Did you know about this?"

"...That monster corpses outside of dungeons don't just disappear? I was aware." He replied bluntly, "But yes, of course we won't always just go dungeon diving. Rather, we should only enter dungeons for the purpose of diving deeper than the last time we went. We have to go through every floor again and again to reach a point where we actually benefit financially and experience-wise, and then the same once we are done."

"Exactly. Regular adventurers at your rank would get away with it, but you guys are a bit too strong for that already. You'd just stagnate if you did nothing but try and head into the basement." Rachel agreed, "So yeah, you're still going to need a porter for everything beside dungeon-diving."

Foster clicked his tongue and turned his head away. He was actually sort of excited about the idea of making a golem to use for that sort of thing. It seemed pretty fun to him, "Fine, I guess. But I'm still gonna meet with the guy Samria wanted to introduce me to. Apparently he's some magic-circle specialist and wanted to learn more about necromancy spells anyway, so it's a good opportunity."

"Speaking of opportunity, I found some jobs for you guys to do in the city, since you said you didn't want to leave right away without finding a more permanent place to stay here. It's nothing special, but it's a good way to spread the word about you, and let you be taken into consideration for better jobs," Rachel pushed her hand into her bag and pulled down a stack of papers, which she promptly handed to Lynol, "Take a look at those and tell me if any of them interest you. Oh, you also don't have to actually do them all together. I picked them out to fit your guys' skillsets, but you can figure out who of you actually heads out at your own discretion for most of them."

Foster peaked at the sheets of paper curiously, trying to see what sort of things they might be working on in the future. But when he saw the descriptions of them, he didn't know what to think, "...'Item Transport', 'Investigation of a lost object'... 'Bodyguard', 'Extra Security'? That sounds sorta..."

"Easy?" Rachel finished with a smirk, seeing Foster's perplexed expression. He stared at her and replied, "No, boring. What's with this? I thought we'd get to hunt some monsters or something."

Rachel let out a deep sigh, noticing that Lynol seemed a little surprised as well, "Listen, this sort of thing is the norm here. There aren't any random monsters in the city in the first place, and if there were, then some Knights or Guards would take care of it, and in rare cases, private guilds might be hired. Public guilds mostly get this sort of job for stuff happening in the city. There are some things a bit further away when it comes to hunting, but for the most part, those are too high-rank for you. In smaller towns or villages, you get a lot more of monster-hunting quests, since they're more of a threat there. But this city is safe, at least in regard to monster-attacks. So nobody puts out requests for that sort of thing."

After a moment of silence, Foster placed his hand onto Lynol's shoulder, "Well... you take care of this, then. I'll be... erm... training?"

"Wait, we still-"

"Huh? Sorry, I can't hear you, it's too loud aorund here." Foster replied as he started to simply walk away in the opposite direction that him, Lynol and Rachel had been heading toward. Of course, it was obvious that Foster simply didn't want to deal with this anymore, instead leaving Lynol to do the sort of boring work he didn't care for.

With a smile, Rachel looked at the swordsman in front of her, "Don't worry, I can go through everything with you. It's not that much."

"...Thanks." Lynol replied, staring down at the sheets of black and white in his hands.

--- 

Foster walked through the city randomly without a destination in mind. He just wanted to take a look around, maybe find some hidden gems here and there. A nice restaurant, or a bar that had some good alcohol to offer. Right now, he was walking along the top layer of the city, enjoying the afternoon sun. And that was when he suddenly heard a bit of a commotion going on nearby. Those didn't happen all too seldomly in this place. A city filled with adventurers, mercenaries and dungeon divers would obviously have a lot of loud conflicts going on. The fact that a street like the 'red riverside' existed showed that more than well enough already. For the most part, Foster didn't really care about it all too much, choosing to just ignore it. But when he walked by, he got a glance of the people involved.

At the center were a group of three, two men and one woman, as well as an elderly man. The group of three seemed pretty well-off, wearing vibrant clothes and practically beaming with energy. That man, though, was quite the opposite. He wasn't directly dirty, but you could see from his rough, dry skin that he didn't get many chances to clean himself. His gray hair was matted and unkempt, thinning in some places and thick like a bush in others. The man's face was slightly red from drinking, but he was so thin that it would make sense if he couldn't answer if someone asked him when he last ate. And most importantly, he carried a large bag on his back, overflowing with blankets and clothes that might as well be older than Foster himself, and they hadn't been cleaned for that long either. Just from here, the stench practically assaulted him. All of these things were more than just familiar to Foster. The man was homeless.

"How annoying, can't you just head back down there where you belong?" One of the group of three exclaimed, wearing a smug expression on his face. The other two weren't much better themselves. Foster knew this kind of person. They would do this sort of thing, acting as if they were doing everyone a favor by bullying people that already had it tough enough in life.

"Well..." and just as Foster was thinking that he maybe should do something about this himself, the elderly man replied, with a slight smile on his face, "...I could, but I don't really want to?"

"Hah? What's that supposed to mean? Seriously, people like you are the worst. Can't you see that you're bothering everyone?" 

"And how am I doing that, young man?" The man replied, before the girl in the group scoffed and answered, "Did you live in your own garbage for so long that you can't even smell yourself anymore? You stink, just get out of here already."

"Oh... I see..." with a slightly dejected expression, the man looked down at his body, before raising his head again as if he just had an epiphany. He held his thin, bony hand forward toward the three of them, "So, are you going to give me the money to get myself cleaned up? To get some new clothes?"

"What? Why would we do something like that? Just get a job or something, it's not that hard to earn money." One of them said in an annoyed tone, letting out a deep sigh, "You're just lazy, and now you're taking it out on everyone else."

The elderly man looked at the group of three in front of him, smiled brightly, and responded to them, "And you three are rotten youths, and are now taking it out on everyone else."

While two of them didn't seem to care about being called rotten, it apparently struck a nerve with the third. He stepped forward and grabbed the elderly man by his collar, "The fuck's that supposed to mean? Out of the two of us, I think you're the rotten one." With an angry glare, he pushed the man down onto the ground. Luckily, his large bag caught the fall and he didn't seem to get injured. There weren't that many people around, and most of them seemed to not care about what was happening, as Foster had expected. But Foster himself became rather pissed off.

"Yo." He said, stepping up to the guy that pushed the elderly man. He seemed to be just a few years younger than Foster, but right at the age where he wanted to painfully impress others around him by acting tough. He turned around and looked at Foster confused, "What d'ya want, fuc-"

Before he was able to finish his sentence, he already had Foster's fist in his face. He fell backward, tripping over the elderly man's leg. Startled, him and his two friends looked at Foster, completely confused.

"What the hell was that for? Are you crazy?!" One of the other two yelled out, stepping inbetween Foster and his friend. But before he knew it, he was pushed back as well, feeling his stomach cave in after getting a heavy kick into it.

The third of the group looked at Foster confused, taking a step back, "Wh-What? What are you looking at me for?" 

"Grab your friends and fuck off. If I ever see you around here again, it won't stop at that. You hear me?"