Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Crossover Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 5===

“This is bad! This is really bad!!”

Heivia sighed while sitting around in one of the restaurant’s simple chairs.

“How is this bad, you ask? Cheerful Heivia here has been doing nothing but sigh since he got here. First we have to search a dungeon, then we have to march for days on end, and now we have to earn some money? Where are the silky blonde, long-eared elf girls or the mermaids with a harp in one hand? I’ll even take a half-naked princess captured by a giant octopus.”

The leaf swimsuit Zashiki Warashi sat directly on the round table instead of in a chair.

“Well, there’s no real family register here and our identity isn’t managed by a social security number, so finding a place to work shouldn’t be too difficult. Of course, I certainly don’t want to work.”

“It doesn’t sound like it’s actually that easy,” cut in Mikoto. “I asked the guy who runs the inn, but he won’t even give us a job washing dishes or cleaning floors.”

“Why not?” asked Quenser with a frown.

Mikoto shrugged.

“They only pass jobs down from father to son or from master to apprentice, so there’s nothing we can do without being in the bloodline or knowing someone in the area. This really did develop from a village society. Any outsiders won’t be able to buy anything and will just dry up.”

It was an impossible situation with any labor standards laws or employment equality laws, but an undeveloped culture was exactly this type of society that allowed these imperfections.

Higashikawa Mamoru groaned as he remembered the class on politics and economics he had taken just to fill up his schedule.

“Are you serious? So we have to get the village society to trust us before we can even begin searching for a job?”

“Hee hee hee. And if earning their trust requires a lot of gifts, we’re right back where we started.”

She was in just as much of a bind, but he bunny girl’s voice was inappropriately bright.

That was when Kamijou and Index entered the conversation.

They placed a few flyers on the table. Instead of paper, they were made from ink on something like animal skin.

“According to Index, these are the jobs outsiders like us can do.”

But Nanajou Kyouichirou grimaced.

“What’s this? These flyers look like you could summon a demon if you signed your name in blood. What do they say?”

“They’re based on runes, but the dialect or the details are quite unique. It uses the standard twenty-four futhark runes plus seven symbols I’ve never seen before. But from what I can tell…”

Index traced her slender pointer finger over the “magic writing” and revealed the help-wanted information.

“Go to the mountain and cut out some rocks. An average of thirteen tons a day!” (Average Weekly Death Rate: 30%)

“Become a rower on a galley. Row a top-class warship and cross the ocean!” (Average Weekly Death Rate: 80%)

“Make salt on the beach. On a white night, you can dry out the seawater all night long, too!” (Average Weekly Death Rate: 50%)

“Travel to the freezing north. If you collapse on the way, that’s your grave!” (Average Weekly Death Rate: 40%)

(*All units have been converted to modern values by Index)

Anzai Kyousuke tried to turn over the table like it was a tea table, but the Zashiki Warashi stopped him because she was sitting on it.

He decided to yell as a compromise and to vent his frustration.

“Hard labor!? And isn’t some of this the kind of social service work some eras and regions had criminals do!?”

“Hmm. That’s a village society for you. Assuming the undeveloped techniques and equipment of medieval Europe, all of these would just about kill you from overwork. Is this a new kind of formless murderer?” asked the Killer Queen while rubbing her temple with a finger. “And if this is the alternative, it might be more efficient and safer to search out a wanted poster for someone with a bounty on their head.”

“Um, wouldn’t that be a death game where outsiders hunt down other outsiders?”

Kamijou pointed out that problem just to be sure, but Quenser and Heivia began whispering to each other.

“With the Princess’s help, we could blow any wanted criminal to smithereens.”

“But who knows how many shells she has left. Not to mention we couldn’t get the bounty if they’re in smithereens. That monstrous weapon doesn’t have a ‘stun’ setting.”

However, they could not live in this city without earning enough money for the inn and food. And the city had developed enough that they would have difficulty living off of fish or fruit trees.

In fact, Waltraute had helped them with that during their long march, so it was unrealistic to expect them to continue supporting themselves out in the wild.

“Well, damn. So those were the only posters in the inn?”

Quenser sounded like he was setting their problem aside for the moment.

“I doubt we’ll find anything, but it may be better to search out some posters elsewhere. If we’re going to despair, how about waiting until we’ve searched the entire city for any proper help-wanted ads?”

There were no objections. Or rather, no one had the guts to choose anything with those death rates.

So without time to take a break, Kamijou and the others started to leave the inn.

“Wait a second! Touma, do I really have to walk around outside like this again!?”

“Don’t worry, Index. We all look strange to the people of this world.”

“Then how about we trade?”

“A guy in a nude cape!? Are you trying to summon depthless darkness into this world!?”

But they had no other option besides “remove all equipment”, so Index, Mikoto, and the other girls had to go along with it.

They made their way outside, but the situation took a turn at the first step out of the building.

“Mwah hah hah!! Strangers, you have the troubled look of someone who needs weapons to fight the powerful monsters around the village but lacks the money to visit the weapons shop. But there is always help somewhere!!”

A strange person suddenly called out to them.

The strange person was a tall woman of about twenty who had long silver ringlet curls, half white skin, and half pale bluish skin. Her outfit resembled a wedding dress, but it was as transparent as ice. That gave a full view of the bikini armor style outfit made of narrow chains, leather, and precious metal she wore below.

Kamijou turned toward the voice and briefly froze in place.

For one thing, this woman had not had any real reaction to Index’s nude cape or Satsuki’s dancer outfit, so she obviously fell under the category of “strange”.

Even Waltraute had been disturbed by those outfits.

When he added it all together, tears welled up in Kamijou Touma’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, everyone!! Something big is probably about to happen here. After all, a strange person – a female one no less – just appeared before normal high school boy Kamijou Touma!!!!!!”

“Don’t worry, boy. She’s around twenty, so you can’t call her a ‘beautiful girl’. That means this isn’t necessarily following the standard path, right?”

Quenser tried to soothe Kamijou, but Heivia muttered something ominous next to him.

“(You have to be kidding. As a soldier, anyone over twenty is usually really important. So is this following our world’s rules? Is some huge war between monstrous weapons about to begin?)”

However, the ice dress woman did not seem to care.

She placed her thumb and forefinger at a right angle to form a gun, pointed it at the group, and spoke.

“You’re trying to find work, aren’t you? That’s what people like me are for. I was waiting outside because the village society will kick me out too if I hang around an inn for strangers too much.”

“So are you an intermediary or middleman or something?”

“Correct, leaf swimsuit girl!! For one thing, a lot of people in the warrior or farmer classes can’t read the wanted posters. And forest witches like me need reading and writing jobs to make a living. It’s a give-and-take kind of thing, see?”

“Forest witch?”

Mikoto frowned and the strange woman meaninglessly placed her hands on her hips.

“I also work a bit as a minstrel, so I wear these really showy clothes. You can think of them as a stage costume. But really, I’m just afraid of getting chemicals on me, so I want something like a raincoat to cover me.”

This may have been a time before the invention of lab coats.

But more importantly, she had a legitimate reason!

“Uuh… I’m so glad to find someone like us,” muttered the middle school girl in bikini armor who was feeling faint.

Meanwhile, the strange woman or stage costume witch snapped her fingers.

“To be blunt, the only posters left there are the ones for people who want to work themselves to death. If you want to eat and sleep properly, I recommend getting some help from a specialist.”

Her white skin and bluish skin mixed together in a marble pattern while Kamijou and the others exchanged a quick glance.

“I feel like things are really starting to get moving, but what should we do? Should we go along with it?” (Nanajou)

“I’d rather not. This is clearly going to get us in trouble. And we don’t have the frog-faced doctor here, so I bet I’ll really die this time!! Actually, don’t I end up in the hospital way too often? At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out my entire body has been gradually turned into a cyborg!” (Kamijou)

“But doesn’t this looks like a forced scenario? <strike>I bet if we choose ‘no’, we’ll be stuck in an eternal question loop.</strike>” (Heivia)

“Or if we refuse, <strike>we’ll shift away from the normal route and end up on an ‘everyone dies’ quest or an ‘aliens attack’ quest.</strike> That might sound crazy, <strike>but if this is a fully open world and not a linear scenario,</strike> that kind of Absurdity could easily happen.” (Higashikawa)

They were cautious, but they still overlooked something.

The ice dress witch clapped her hands twice and made an announcement.

“Boo, boo! Time’s up! Now you’re stuck with me!!”

“Oh, damn!! <strike>I let my guard down because a digital timer didn’t pop up!!</strike>”

Anzai Kyousuke tore at his hair, but it seemed there were no redos.

You only got one life. <strike>Unless you found a 1-up somewhere.</strike>

“Okay, okay. Leave it all to me. These are the jobs strangers like you can do!!”

The stage costume witch displayed some help-wanted information.

“Let’s carry some corpses!” (Average Weekly Death Rate: 0%)

“Let’s bite into the world tree’s roots!” (Average Weekly Death Rate: 0%)

“Let’s whip the sick and elderly!” (Average Weekly Death Rate: 0%)

“Let’s gather the nails of the dead and build a giant boat!” (Average Weekly Death Rate: 0%)

(*All units have been converted to modern values by the stage costume witch)

“Hold iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!! There were two corpse-related jobs mixed in there!!”

“Oh, so the rumors of jobs washing or gathering up corpses have even reached this fantasy world, have they?”

Kamijou’s shout and Mikoto’s dull comment mixed together while Anzai Kyousuke said “I’m so glad I didn’t bring Harumi with me” with an utterly dark look on his face.

Meanwhile, Quenser and Heivia spoke up.

“Hey, that one about gnawing on tree roots sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before?”

“Are you thinking about how the Island Nation used to force-feed the sap in tree roots to POWs? What a dreadful story.”

“It’s called gobou, Westerner.”

As the tropical leaf swimsuit Zashiki Warashi gave a casual correction, the bunny girl and Satsuki muttered to each other.

“But if we exclude the corpse ones and the tree roots, doesn’t that only leave one of them?”

“In a way, I think that one would be the hardest on us. We might end up with a lifetime of nightmares for just a little bit of money.”

Meanwhile, the stage costume witch pouted her lips at having all of her options rejected.

“C’mon, what’s this? I went out of my way to give you some jobs, but you keep complaining that they’re not a good match? You make it sound like you have a choice in the matter.”

“Next time, add a value for mental health. <strike>All of those will clearly wear down our SAN in no time.</strike>”

“I only have one proper job left, but it would be really boring and just plain not worth doing. <strike>I can’t make any guarantees about your SAN, though.</strike>”

“I’m really afraid of what you would call a ‘proper job’ after happily introducing this lineup,” said a dejected Index.

“Fine, but this is really the last thing I have,” said the witch while raising her index finger.

“Gather dropped items along the road and at the bottom of a cliff.” (Average Weekly Death Rate 90%)

“Merchants often want someone to gather the products that fell off of a carriage and the ones at the bottom of a cliff are hard for amateurs to reach. However, gathering up what someone else dropped is considered unmanly in Norse culture, so make sure no one sees you. Here, people don’t dig up treasure; they fight a monster to take it.”

The witch sounded reluctant, but Kamijou was finally on board with one of her ideas.

“That’s it! That’s great! There are no corpses involved, it won’t tear us apart mentally, it won’t cause anyone any trouble, and it’ll make someone happy. Yeah, this finally feels like a real job!!”

“Oh, really? Then I’ll give you a map of the road and you can do what you want. The client will directly pay you half the cost of whatever you find, so you don’t earn a thing if you don’t bring anything back.”

“(Hey, Quenser. Wouldn’t we make more if we just kept the stuff for ourselves?)”

“(I would avoid doing anything noticeable before we know how the laws work here. I don’t want to be burned at the stake.)”

With that, the party made their way out to a cliff-side road to earn their keep.

However…

“But…” began the leaf swimsuit Zashiki Warashi.

“Hm? What is it?” asked Mikoto.

“If it’s just gathering lost items, why was the average weekly death rate at 90%? (Not that it matters to a Youkai like me.)”