Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyou Survival [WN] - Chapter 144.1

Cutlass

The desert town of Cutlass.

It was founded by a group of adventurers and ruffians who gathered in the desert, and it was named after the curved sword favored by the people of the desert.

Evident by the fact that the name of the weapon became the name of the town, this town, where adventurers and ruffians gathered, was known as a lawless area where only those with power could profit.

“It is such a disorderly town with no order, but there are at least a few rules. The Kirli Trading Company of the Cruzians, who deal in food, and the Hogloss Trading Company of the dwarves, who organize weapons and adventurers… These two call themselves a trading company, but neither of them was a proper merchant house. Then there was the Monza, a group of ruffians made up of beastmen, and the Liezan, a group that runs the gambling and entertainment district, regardless of race. This town was controlled mainly by these four organizations.”

The master of the first tavern we found after entering this town of Cutlass said this without appearing amused, and served our meals at the counter where we were sitting.

He was a resident of this town, so we couldn’t trust him with everything, but he wasn’t a bad person either. At least he seemed to have enough common sense to know that we were Mercenian women and told us to get out of town before we got into a bad situation.

The meal we were served was bread made from sorghum flour and baked, like Naan, which that woman “knows”, and fruit water that was light green.

It tasted only mildly bitter and slightly sweet, but it was said to be nutritious.

I took a mouthful of the foul-smelling juice, made sure the bread wasn’t poisonous either, and nodded to Elena, who was sitting next to me, that it was okay.

“So? Which one do you belong to?”

“None of them. If I had to pick one, I’d say the Fifth Power. In short, the poor and the powerless who can’t belong anywhere else. If this place went under, there would be fewer places to drink, and that’s why there were only a few of us left. What do you think? The food here tastes bad, doesn’t it?”

When the master asked Elena, who was bringing a small slice of bread to her mouth, Elena kept her hood up and smiled vaguely with her mouth only.

“If I belong to the Kirli Trading Company, I can get decent food, but it’s ridiculously expensive, and if I run a store with it, I’ll have to pay for the cost of the food. If I fail to pay, I would be stripped of my clothes and made a work slave in no time. The dwarves were relatively better off, but they would come out and crush you if someone stronger than the Dwarves came out.”

The tavern master, who had been frightened at first after I slaughtered a customer who got involved, had now either calmed down or given up, and told me about the town.

He was a former adventurer, I was told, but he was spotted by the Hogloss Trading Company, which replaced the Adventurers’ Guild and controlled the adventurers, and crushed one of his legs. He said that his fellow adventurers at the time used [Heal], but he was unable to provide a complete treatment and was cut off from being an adventurer.

The customer I eliminated seemed to be a lower-ranking member of the Liezan group that ran the red-light district, but I was told that there would be no retaliation from the organization because he was too far from the end of the line. The dead body was apparently cleaned up by a low-ranking adventurer from a human race, who was worried about a bill from the Hogloss Chamber of Commerce, so I gave him a few silver coins for his information.

Perhaps the master was pleased with this, or perhaps he was bored now that there were no more customers, so he gave us some advice as we were about to leave the store.

“Now that you’re here, I know you’re strong, but don’t show off too much. It’s not unusual to have a fight at the bottom ranks, but if you mess around with the executives of the organization, even if you’re a woman, they’ll come and crush your face.”

*

“Elena, how was it?”

“Well… At least it didn’t feel like a lie. I think he liked you, Aria.”

Elena smiled slightly as we walked out of the bar and into town. She didn’t speak up at the bar because of our Cleydale accents and I didn’t want Elena’s language to draw unnecessary scrutiny, but most of all because I was asking her, who was a good judge of character, to examine the information.

“He’s not lying, but he’s reluctant to give out information about the organization…it’s like there are things he can’t say for his own safety. Either way, it’s dangerous to make decisions based on one person’s information, so let’s start gathering information from now on.”

“Understood.”

With our faces hidden by our cloaks and hoods, we were seen to a certain extent, but no one got involved because of it.

In a town like this, suspicious people were everywhere. Adventurers, drifters, and decent people would never come to a place like this. If they did, it would only be criminals who had been chased out of their countries or those with bad reputation.

If we hid our whole body with hoods, they could not see us and make accurate [appraisals]. Maybe that’s why we saw several people in town dressed like us.

We were headed to a relatively safe Inn in this town.

According to the master of that bar, if we wanted to buy safety in this town, the best way was to use an inn run by an organization. Among them, the Kirli Trading Company, which dealt in food and daily necessities, would not antagonize us as long as we had money, and there were several inns that were used by merchants from Khalfaan’s empire who came to this town.

When I entered one of those inns, a middle-aged woman at the reception desk gave me a suspicious look, but when I handed her a small gold coin, she instantly smiled and treated me as a privileged guest.

The cost of one night’s lodging, without meals, was two silver coins per person. The room I was shown to was a small room similar to a room in a rural area but costing about five small silver coins per night.

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Also check out my other novels: Reincarnated into a Game as the Hero’s Friend, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, and A Girl Who Was Told “You Have No Talent” Turned Out To Be A Talented Monster