บท 11: 11
The second the words 'standard business contract' left Finn's mouth, I already wanted to punch him in the dick. If I'd learned anything in my time on earth, it was that legalese is the language of bullshitters and scam artists, and all who practise its wretched tongues do so with the intent to bludgeon you to death with it.
My ire for this was such that when a serving girl with her tits almost popping out of her tiny maid dress delivered drinks to the table and leaned in to call me, "master", I ignored her completely and instead focused solely on the pile of bullshit put before me by the Loki familia captain. I was so focused on this that I didn't even laugh as Loki groaned and gave the girl a brief thumbs up before collapsing on the table again.
The first seven articles were not great as far as I could tell, on the surface it seemed to be basic trade language that amounted to 'we can trade' in overly verbose and excruciatingly defined terms. The problem is that I'm not fluent in bullshit and a lot of the legalese -particularly the obnoxious amount of references to local trade law- was too dense for me to parse. So there was a fair shot that even if they'd somehow written into here that the Loki familia now had full rights to my kidneys, I just wouldn't know.
That alone should have been enough for me to call it quits, but morbid curiosity kept me chugging on even as the brothel continued to spin along around me; Loki eventually getting bored and wandering off to go feel up some serving girls.
Articles nine and ten were where they started sprinkling in problems that I could actually understand; in this case the two articles focused on exclusivity and could be read in such a way that I could be punished for providing free potions to my own familia. Given that I hadn't even agreed to exclusivity in the first place, this is where I would normally decline this initial proposal, go to my lawyer and come back with a counter offer, wherein we'd then start debating minutiae.
Problem is that I don't have a lawyer, I don't particularly want to waste money on one, and I barely even want to sell my potions in the first place; time spent churning out potions is time not spent in the dungeon, even if it does help grind my alchemy.
Apparently my hope that the Loki lot would know enough about my situation to just skip this bullshit was in vain.
"You know I can't sign this." I stated, looking up at Finn; the man hadn't left his seat, on several occasions even declining freely offered lap dances to instead stay and wait for me to finish.
"I can lend you a lawyer if you need one, free of charge." The man smiled, and I just gave him the deadest look I could manage in return. What moron would trust a lawyer offered by an opposing party.
Finn let out an amused exhale, still smiling like it was just a joke. "Probably a long shot; how do you want to do this then?"
I leaned back, considering it for a second. "We set a basic price, you come to me if you need potions, run it like any store." I posited.
"Then you could just decline to sell to us, or have insufficient stock for our needs; there would also be nothing holding you to exclusivity."
"I never agreed to exclusivity." I counter.
"And we're only pushing for it to protect you, other familias will be far less nice than we have been."
"Did you not threaten me with a wargame?" I retort sharply.
"Yes." He responds without hesitation, his blue eyes unnaturally serious. "They won't stop at threats."
I roll my eyes. "That's irrelevant to the discussion; my safety is my own concern, if you want exclusivity then you need to offer something."
Finn sighs but reluctantly nods. How much it was played up for my sake I couldn't tell. "It'll depend on what you have in mind, but I'm sure we can come to some arrangement."
"Good, now in regards to your other points, it is the right of any shopkeep to decline service to shitty customers." That line got me a look. "And it's also obviously their right to run out of stock. I don't know what kind of quota bullshit you put in here." I tapped on the loose pile of documents. "But I would never sign anything that had a mandated labour quota from me; I've got better things to do with my time."
That got me an interested look, but Finn quickly refocused. "And I don't know how you're used to doing things, but at our level familias need certain quantities of resources by set times otherwise people will die."
I outright ignore him trying to thrust moral responsibility for his familia's lives onto me.
"Then respectfully, you can put in a request for a certain amount by a certain date." I tried instead. "I'm not accepting a potential punishment clause just because I happened to get stuck in the dungeon for too long."
"That isn't how my familia will see things when they don't have enough potions to go around." He tries again.
"You have other sources." I remind him.
"Yours are better."
"So are elixirs, I don't see you providing them to your rookies." He opened his mouth to counter and I decided to just be blunt. "The safety of your familia is not my mandate."
The 'it's yours' goes unsaid in its obviousness.
He pauses at that, before exhaling softly. "And if we offer more money to ensure our needs are met?"
"If you mean as an incentive for delivery met, then yes." He obviously didn't mean that, but positive reinforcement is a powerful tool and I wouldn't say no to free money.
"That's just a bribe." He responds with a deadpan.
"Yes." My bluntness at least got a laugh out of him.
"I'll consider it." He said noncommittally. "To clarify, is there nothing the Loki familia can do to get you to consider a contract?"
I shook my head. "I'm not dealing with mandates or contracts full stop." I pushed away the documents to emphasise my point. "Too much potential liability when this is already more of an annoyance than a gain."
Finn looked contemplative for a second, before shaking his head with a smile. "I don't think I've ever had a merchant from Orario refuse to do business with us before."
"Elves?" I asked curiously. If he was specifying Orario then someone outside of it was refusing to do business with a powerhouse like the Loki familia, and that was information that would be good to know if I ever had need of craftsmen from the outside.
"Riveria takes care of them." Finn smirked, content to remind me of his familia's impressive connections. "No, the issue is amazons. They'll treat anyone not like them -especially men- poorly. And then when you beat them in one of their little contests, suddenly you have to deal with the other side of amazons." He sighed wearily.
My friend, the same one that got me into Danmachi in the first place, had informed me about what Finn was talking about; how amazons, when beaten by someone they were sexually interested in, would become infatuated with said someone.
To me it had sounded like the author was just inserting his barely disguised fetish into the story, but unfortunately, this is my world now and thus tanned, jacked women who kidnap men and rape them to death are a genuine threat that I need to watch out for.
Finn hit me with a weary stare. "Don't deal with amazons, trust me."
I chuckled. "Got no intentions of it."
"Moral concerns?" Finn hummed, looking at me with a reassessing eye.
I shake my head, denying him the insight into my mentality. "We're getting off track." I remind him, and the cheeky shit just smirks at me. "I'm probably in the same vein as your amazons; refusing to do business on your terms precisely because we're not merchants, and we have other interests."
"So I have to make it worth your while…" Finn said the obvious part out loud contemplatively, seemingly buying himself a few seconds to think. "We're already providing you with a training group, you're seemingly not interested in money, but you went out of your way to ingratiate yourself with us… so, Elric Carne, what do you want from the Loki familia?" He asked at last, opening things up for me to present my terms.
I held up three fingers. "Three favours." I lowered two. "Two to be called in today." I put down the last. "One to be held."
Surprisingly, Finn looks intrigued. "I can accept that, as long as the favours are reasonable." Left unsaid was the fact that under this arrangement he could simply decline any request I made.
"If you decline a favour for stupid reasons, I'll stop trading with you." I inform him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. If both sides have something they want from the other, they're more likely to uphold their side of any deal, especially one as loose as this; that of course applied to me as well, which was probably why Finn seemed eager despite it coming at a cost to him.
"Of course." Finn chuckled. "Let's hear these favours then."
"The first is to join one of your expeditions."
An expedition was a minimum two week round trip down into the bowels of the dungeon, it took that long just so the party could reach the areas where high level adventurers like the Loki executives could fight monsters on their level and thus grind.
To sustain such an expedition they needed porters to carry food, and other resources as well as carrying back up the spoils, which then necessitated more high/mid rank adventurers in turn to protect them. Basically, the deeper you go and the more you want to carry back, the more complex the operation becomes, with more and more people needed.
There was a lot of value in watching one unfold for me; I'd always been a visual learner, and just seeing the monsters with my own eyes would be a significant step up from trying to force myself to sit through a guild lecture on the subject. Likewise learning the techniques the Loki familia used to deal with each, what routes they took down and what areas they camped in were all valuable info.
But more importantly than all of that was the idea that because of limited baggage, the Loki familia would more than likely leave behind all of the drop items and crystals from the less valuable floors. Drop items that I had already confirmed could be used in alchemy, on top of potentially large enough crystals to be used in enchanting. If I could stumble across useful alchemy recipes or get started on enchanting down there then even a two week break from levelling could easily be worth it.
"The second is a favour from Loki-sama." Finn's gaze and thus mine automatically tracked over to where Loki was trying to bury her face between a prostitute's asscheeks.
"Right." He said blandly, pulling my gaze away from the sight. "Well, I can't speak for her so we'll put that one on hold. As for your first request, it's difficult… a lot of our methods for dealing with the dungeon are familia secrets, showing an outsider isn't a simple thing."
"Don't you collaborate with other familias?" I remember the Hephaestus familia going down with them at one point.
"I was just getting to that." He nodded. "There's a precedent of mutual collaboration between familias; can you see where I'm going with this?" And I could, though I felt like he was playing the 'familia secret' angle in order to gain an advantage, I couldn't say that I wasn't willing. Functioning as an apothecary for the expedition would cover my alchemical experimentation nicely.
"You want me as an apothecary? That's fine as long as you're paying for the potions." I didn't really care about the money given how little they cost me, but it was more the principle of the thing.
"Of course." He smiled. "I'll have someone get back to you with the details of our next dive, assuming that you don't want to delay?" I gave an easy nod, I didn't particularly want to wait on this. Finn hummed. "Most likely it'll be in a month, so if something comes up on your end…"
"I'll let you know." I promise, the biggest source of stress when you were managing a party/raid was always some random player dropping out at the last minute and not telling anyone.
Finn nods appreciatively. "Now, the price?"
"Five percent under the market average for a medium potion." I throw out without much care; from the research I'd done in the past few days, my potions were both better and worse than a medium depending on the consumer's level. Setting my potion's price to the market average spared me from having to micromanage that shit.
"Twenty under." Finn offered with an amused glint in his eye.
"Ten." I counter, already feeling juvenile just partaking in this stupid bartering 'technique'.
"Fifteen."
"Twelve." I gave him a flat look, to which he just smiled, stood and offered his hand.
"Negotiating with you is certainly an experience, Captain Carne." He said as I rose to tower over him, before having to stoop so we could shake hands. Pallums.
"Likewise." I said dryly.
I followed Finn's gaze as he locked onto Loki, who was in the midst of dragging Bete into an alcove alongside a group of dancers, harem outfits and all. He sighed. "I'll go collect Loki-sama so we can finish up."
I stayed standing as Finn left, instead glancing around the room to get another feel for the place. Given that my gaze kept wandering, it was surprising that a familiar dwarf wound up getting my attention; his gaze solidly met mine as he waved me over to the seating area that I'd first found Finn in.
"Elric Carne…" He rumbled as I approached. "I heard what you did for Magni's young'uns." He didn't quite smile, but there was definitely a lightening of his hard features as he offered me a drink. Meanwhile my mind spun, I'd definitely heard that name before-
Ah.
"Gareth Landrock. They were good people." I greeted the Loki executive while playing off my actions with as little dialogue as I could manage, because -while they were good people- I didn't technically save them. I caused the stampede that put the group in danger, so me pulling them out wasn't so much saving them as preventing a disaster I almost caused.
Given that there was a literal lie detector on the way, I obviously didn't want to talk about it overly much. So I just pulled my blades from their rigging, accepted the offered drink and settled onto a couch, content to drink in silence if that's what it took.
"Dwarves don't think much of humility; a man should be able to talk about their accomplishments with their chest." Gareth stated gravely, apparently misunderstanding my reticence. "...But you're not a dwarf, and Finn has shown me the value of humility often enough." He went on in that slow, deep cadence of his. "So well met, Elric Carne."
I didn't really know what to say to that, so I just raised my glass in cheers, "well met," and then drank the bitter pisswater alongside him.
What I wouldn't give for a good English cider.
"Well gaki? Whaddya want?" The tomboyish slang of Loki reached my ears just as I was finishing my swig and, upon peering over the brim of the mug, I found a surprisingly cautious looking Loki, her usual cocksure attitude not quite able to override the slight weariness she was regarding me with now.
I snorted into my beer.
"Oi!" She did not take that well. "Show me some goddamn respect ya stupid brat!"
Besides me Gareth rumbled out a laugh, earning himself a betrayed glare from Loki.
"Finn asked you about the favour?" I questioned, just to make sure we were all on the same page as Finn walked up beside his Goddess, ever present smile upon his face as he took in my current place.
"Obviously." Loki's hand cut through the air impatiently. "Now come on, let's hear it already." Surprisingly there was an eagerness in her forced dismissive tone; she seemed genuinely interested in what I wanted.
I hummed. "What do you think of backing Hestia up on my title?" At my words, the Goddess blinked and then gave me a funny look.
"Hah? That's ya favour? Yer a year too early to be worried about that, brat."
"Can you do it, yes or no?"
"Just for what ya said earlier I should say no..." She eyed me aggressively for a moment, before sighing. "I doubt it, they- we don't respect itty bitty brats like you. Gotta get some more levels before ya can get a name that isn't…"
"I know." I cut in, restraining myself from rolling my eyes. "I'm not asking for a perfect title straight away, I just need a certain phrase in there."
"Hoh? At least y'know how we work a little, what's this phrase then brat?"
"Sword Saint." I enunciated, knowing exactly what kind of mockery I was signing up for here.
The thing with titles is that they're more important than people in this world realise; if your public perception can affect your Falna and the skills you gain? Then getting the right title is worth any amount of insults.
Loki managed to go two seconds before she burst out in mocking laughter. "You want us to give you a title like that? Kid, that's the kind of thing we'd give out on our own!" Loki chuckled, waving her hand. "Flashing Blade Sword Saint of the Dawn! You want something like that?"
I struggled to keep myself from cringing, the chunni-ness was expected and I'd braced myself somewhat, but the fact that I was asking for it, and that it was said in a language I could actually understand somehow made it worse.
"If you could take off the end part, I can make it work." I tried with a weak smile.
"Hah, doubt the others would go for it, but I don't mind cashing in an owed favour for something as dumb as this~" She exclaimed with a wide grin. "Sword Saint huh? You got a fetish or something?"
"You're too deep in your inside jokes to get it." I shook my head. "The everyday man takes your joke titles seriously, having a title like that so early in my career means something completely different to them."
"Tch." Loki's face flipped from mocking to annoyed in no time flat. "Boring! You're so boring, brat!"
"Don't pout; isn't that part of the fun?" I asked. "That mortals aren't in on the joke?"
"It would be, if you weren't both in on it and playing right into it." She huffed. "You should only get to pick one!"
"Can you do it or not?" I try, watching as Loki glances over at Finn and seems to communicate silently with her captain.
"Fine." She bites out. "But I'm refining that nickname you brat! When it comes out of the Denatus you're gonna die from cringe and we'll see who's the weeb then!" With her piece said, she stormed off back to the land of poontang with an overly dramatic swagger.
"If it helps." Finn began into a somewhat awkward silence. "She'll probably forget about it by the time you level up."
Given that I planned on levelling up before the expedition, I didn't think there was much of a chance of that. But then again, I also didn't think Loki would manage to come up with anything truly worse than her first attempt. Not without violating the conventions the Gods use for naming, and the spirit of our 'favour' at least.
"Probably." I said noncommittally, and with my work done, I stood up to leave. "If that's all?"
Surprisingly it was Gareth that motioned for me to stay. "A word of advice before you go lad." He spoke up, voice rumbling. "Trying to control how the common man sees you is the realm of the old; just ignore all that and focus on getting stronger. Get strong enough and it'll sort itself out."
"I can't really agree without being a hypocrite, but Gareth isn't wrong." Finn smiled self-deprecatingly. "Public perception is a fickle thing and it takes a lot of work and resources to manage, it's worth it for us, but…" Gareth grumbled at that, clearly not agreeing, but also seeming to not want to spark up an old argument between the two.
I hummed, taking the advice for what it was; a competitor trying to talk me out of a field of business. "I'll bear that in mind."
"Take care of yourself out there, the world isn't kind to solo adventurers." Finn spoke up as Gareth nodded his farewell.
"I will, take care Loki familia." I left with a polite smile, weaving my way between scores of Loki adventurers and dancers, and trying to keep my eyes skipping over the latter.
Without important negotiations taking up my focus however, my usual dual monitor ass brain was kicking in and my eyes kept wandering, taking in a veritable feast of half naked flesh. This place was designed to tempt men, and after more than a month stuck in medieval land without a computer, I was getting fucking tempted.
I didn't really have a reason to not partake, did I?
Unwittingly my thoughts turned to another rather captivating woman; one I still haven't sat down with for sake under the moonlight.
I shook my head.
It's just sex, exclusivity is for when you're actually dating someone.
Then who fucking cares? If it's just sex then what's the point?
My thoughts ground to a screeching halt as I half stopped myself from bumping into something soft. Blinking down, I found my gaze caught by the same blonde dancer who welcomed me, her hands creeping up my armour as she gave me the exact same look.
"Your conversation looked rather stressful, Lord Adventurer." She spoke softly, big blue eyes blinking up at me. "Do you want to… unwind with me?"
Ah, that's the point.
ความคิดของผู้สร้าง 
One_Fall_Leaf
One_Fall_Leaf Weird chapter to write, but I had fun.
For notes; I suppose the title thing probably comes across as a little weird? It’s a bit hard to explain, but basically the Gods give all adventurers who become level two a ‘title’, and generally it’s a mocking parody name like Mikoto’s is ‘Absolute+Shadow’. Elric already knows that getting a normal title is a lost cause at this point, so this is his attempt at shaping what his title will become in future.
In regards to any lawyers reading, I regret nothing.
Magni is the name of the God of the two dwarves that Elric ‘saved’ a couple chapters back. He runs a familia that apparently only has dwarves in it, very Deep Rock of him.
Amazons are indeed a grave threat, and if any of you spam death by snu-snu in my comments I will… do something.
That’s about it; thanks for reading, like on your way out, have a good one.
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