Chapter 36 - Leon Takes a Quest 1

  Leon POV

  It was another day of work as usual. Well, it was supposed to be. But when I go to the hunter’s guild for my patrol, I see a little girl around the age of 12-13 crying at the counter where people could issue quests.

  The guild’s clerk lady seems to be troubled and tries to appease the little girl, but it seems like it couldn’t be solved by just words, so I step up to ask her what the problem is.

  “Oh, Captain Leon. Good work out there”

  “You are working hard too, good work. Is there a problem here?”

  Seeing a stranger coming and asking a question, the little girl seems to be trying to suppress her crying voice. Trying to be mindful of other people even when you are in trouble? She seems to be well educated.

  “Uhh. This young lady over there is requesting a search quest for her missing mother. But the problem is, she doesn’t have enough money to give a decent reward, so I’m afraid that no hunter would take her quest”

  The little girl is still sobbing by the side. She balled her fist with so much force that it started to turn purple. I see, she is gripping all her money in that tiny hand.

  Sigh, and what should I do with this? Can’t be helped then. I lower down my body so my eye line leveled evenly with the little girl’s and tap her shoulder.

  “Well then, little girl, how much do you have?”

  After looking at me for a moment, I can see her lips moving a bit as she wants to say something, but I failed to hear it.

  “... ary”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Canary. My name is Canary. Not little girl”

  “Oh, I’m sorry then, let me start over. Canary, can you tell me your request and also tell me how much you can pay?”

  “My mom. She didn’t return home yesterday. So, I take all my savings to ask Sir Hunter to look for her. Mommy had told me that if I were in dire trouble, I should ask Sir Hunter to help, so I did. Oh, and I only have 23 copper”

  “Okay, can you tell me in detail about your mother’s appearance and the details about what happened the last time you saw her?”

  Canary then told me all I needed to know about her mother, Wren’s appearance, and the situation the last time she saw her. Wren is a seamstress, and she accepted sewing work from the neighbor for a living. Her age is 26. When she left, she wore a leather hood, white long-sleeved shirt, brown long skirt, brown leather corset, and a grey leather apron. She doesn’t seem like a struggling single mother from her clothing but then again the price of leather has been on all-time low along with other animal products thanks to the hunters activity and she is also a seamstress so she probably made her own clothing with all those cheap leather in the market.

  Now that I realized it, I can’t help but notice Canary’s clothing too. She is wearing a complete peasant girl dressing which should be impossible for a single mother to afford. I can’t help but feel rewarded because I also contribute to helping girls like her afford cheap food and clothing, but that’s not the point here.

  And yes, Wren is a single mother, Canary does not remember who her father was. She said that her mother told her that her father died long ago under the claws of the monsters outside, as her father was a town guard.

  That’s the reason why she comes here by herself and uses all of her personal savings in order to find her missing mother.

  Oh, and Wren also had darkish red colored long hair like Canary’s own hair color, but as it is hidden under her leather hood, I only knew it after directly asking her.

  And finally, the reason why she left yesterday was to return the order of her neighbor and receive payment for her service. But she never returned after that. Fearing the worst and knowing that swift action could lessen the risk of anything bad happening to her mother, Canary immediately asked for help the day after Wren went missing.

  “Good job, young miss, your work is done here. Now, it is time for us to work”

  As I said that, I slowly opened her balled fist and took the coins in her hand. Put it all on the counter and take a 1 copper coin from the small pile.

  “This copper coin will be my advanced payment for the quest. Don’t worry, little Canary, I will definitely find your mother now that I have taken your money” I tried to show her my gentlest smile to assure her that everything will be okay.

  “Is that so… then I’m… glad…”

  Seeing me smiling while giving her assurance, Canary seems to let go of all the tension building up in her and she immediately faints. I quickly catch her before she falls to check her condition.

  “How is her condition, Captain Leon?”

  “Just sleeping, it seems. Poor thing must have not gotten any sleep yesterday. Can you help me get her to bed? And perhaps let her stay in the orphanage for the time being”

  “Orders received. Rest assured, Captain Leon”

  People might ask why I bother helping Canary when she can only pay me with a few copper coins. Well, it was actually just a personal reason of mine. You see, I was not like most other orphans. Most other orphans were thrown out, sold, or abused before ending up in the orphanage, where they will suffer even more before the coming of Milo. Most of them don’t see their families in a good light. But it was different for me.

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  I came from a happy and caring family. I have a strict but caring father and a loving mother. My father was a tax officer in a town near Goldcastle. He was an honest and upright man, which caused him to be turned into a scapegoat for an embezzlement case by the lord governing the town. He then received the death penalty while my mother struggled to her last breath to protect her own honor when those scoundrels tried to dishonor her. And lastly, I was naturally sold to the orphanage in Goldcastle.

  How did I know all that? Well, as the victim of this foul play, of course I have the intention of doing revenge on them. And Milo helped me a lot with that. In fact, all of that information was coming from him too. I was still unaware of a lot of things at that age, after all.

  But before I even have a chance to enact my revenge, the town got swallowed by a monster horde and vanished.

  I almost went crazy at the time as I lost the target to put my resentment on. But thanks to Milo and everyone in the orphanage, I managed to embrace my past and let go of my resentment.

  Oh, about orphans being sold to orphanages? Those places are actually more to a child slave merchant than an actual orphanage.

  Some bastards in the past realized that they could earn quite good money from ‘recommending’ the orphans in the orphanage that they manage to ‘work’ at rich people’s places. And it has spiraled out of control since then.

  Anyway, let’s start with the tracking quest.

  I take 2 scouts with me on the mission. Webber and Path. Those are their names. And remember, the scouts are considered the elite in Milo’s army. So it should be sufficient to bring the two with me.

  This is a tracking mission inside the capital after all, I can’t bring too many people with me, and I’m not foolish enough to do the mission myself.

  Webber has the knack for tinkering with traps and mechanism so he is an excellent talent to have in manoeuvering the city, while Path is an excellent tracker. Both could help me greatly in finding Wren.

  I left two of my other patrol teams to continue their daily jobs while the three of us slacking off our duty. Well, Milo would understand our dilemma.

  So without further ado, we go straight to Wren’s last known destination, the house of the person who asked her for a tailoring job.

  Unfortunately, or I might have expected it, the person who ordered the clothing seems to be missing. His house seems to be empty, with visible roughing here and there.

  I can deduce that the client might have been involved in trouble by the time Wren came to deliver her work, so she got involved by accident. Well, it is only a temporary conclusion, nevertheless, it is very unfortunate for her.

  Good thing I invited Path with me. He immediately finds some trace left behind, and we go straight tracking it.

  It seems like Wren is someone with a good head on her shoulder. She seems to deliberately left behind crumbs for us to track. Of course not anything obvious but Path found many needles on the street and we easily managed to reach the place suspected to hold Wren inside.

  According to Milo’s briefing before entering the capital, the army should never act overly righteous and try to end every evil thing in it. It is the capital after all, and the web of power inside is extremely intricate. Even if Milo is a noble, he is but from the extended family and powerless. The army could not bear retaliation from any dangerous crime organization that might or might not be backed by nobles and royals.

  So with that in mind, Jane’s intelligence team had been collecting information about who is untouchable and who is not.

  Even then, there are those that can be touched but still have high potential risk. So it will be up to my judgement on how to approach things later on.

  It is just a power play between those who are powerful after all. As much as I hated it, I am still weak, just a nobody. Although I don’t feel good about letting evil run rampant as my family was one of its victims, I need to stay alive first for now if I want to fix the problem.

  I just have too much debt of gratitude to a certain someone that won’t let me just become the brutal avenger that I wanted to be.

  Anyway, while dealing with the local criminal syndicate, the first rule is to not kill or maim any of them. The second rule is to hide our appearances. And lastly, remember that money talks. If we have to, we can use money to ask the crime syndicate to release the kidnapped woman. Milo’s honor and reputation will be at risk if we reach that point, but he always reminds us to survive at whatever cost.

  You just make it harder for me to pay my debt, won’t you?

  … Let’s focus on our mission.

  Our army is ready for this kind of operation. Our operative training is not any simple knightly brutish frontal attack. In fact, our operatives are equipped with balaclavas, a kind of cloth mask that Milo invented with the strange name that he gave to it. He said that it was the place where this type of garment was invented. Thankfully, his naming sense for the orphans did not go way too creative like that.

  Anyway, wearing balaclavas, we can more or less hide our identities. Added to the change in our gear, we will be even harder to identify. Milo’s army set is not that conspicuous, but it is still a unique clothing set that will betray our identity, so we also wear a hooded cloak on top of our infiltration gear, or ninja set as Milo calls it.

  Sadly, I have to leave my heavy sword behind. It negates everything about being inconspicuous, and using it to battle inside a building also would cause major disturbance and destruction. So I opted for a smaller, but still could function as a shield, wide sword.

  A wide sword is just a broadsword whose blade part got expanded wider. Wide enough to cover my hand at least, as it also could be used as a shield.

  “Captain, this is the place”

  Oh, while I’m thinking about other things, Path has managed to find the right place. I need to focus more on the job.

  The place that Path brought us is just another dilapidated building in the slum. And this is in the chaotic area where no underground boss managed to reign. At least that was what I know from Jane’s information.

  This is a good start. Using this area as a hideout means that the bandit group might be a group without a backer. We might get away without any heavy retaliation now.

  “What’s the situation inside?”

  “I detected around 15 to 20 men and a single woman in the underground. There’s 1 powerful presence on the upper floor, which I assume the boss”

  “Is he someone on the list?”

  “Eyepatch on the right eye, limping posture. There’s a 90% similarity to Mad Wolf in the file”

  Mad Wolf, a once infamous gang member in the past but he is abandoned now. Since he suffered that injury that blind one of his eyes and made him lame. But don’t think that he is easy prey. No, far from that, he is still a strong Tier 3 knight. Even if his mobility is impaired, his raw upper body strength is still present. And a building interior is the best place for him to fight.

  Weird, his being lame because of an old wound is something easily healable with magic. His blinded eye aside, he should still be treated like a prized possession for the ones playing with power. It seems that there are more stories hidden behind, but that’s not my problem. I should focus on how I could save Wren.

  First plan is, like always, be sneaky and extract her without alarming the enemies. The second plan is also always non-lethal takedowns.

  “It should not be a problem to extract the lady’s out”, said Path as he deactivated his mirror water spell for visual enhancement.

  We are currently on top of a nearby building being hidden away while we assess the situation in our surroundings. Can’t lie, even I can’t help but feel excited when doing clandestine activities like this.

  Following the shadows from the surrounding buildings, we infiltrate the suspected kidnapper base.