Amongst the surrounding countries—even within the technologically more advanced Theocracy—the thought of having to cover the roads of an entire city in stones would make most cower. Of course it wasn't possible to do the same for every city within the Empire, but the fact that the capital of the Empire was capable of achieving this further reinforced its might. It was something which often made the diplomats from other countries sigh.
Especially the design of the roads; when one walked on them, one would immediately be able to appreciate their elegance and practicality.
Unlike the typical roads seen elsewhere, the roads in the capital were segregated into separate lanes where the ones in the center were the driveways for carriages and the lanes on the two sides were the sidewalks for pedestrians.
To ensure safety, the sidewalks were raised higher from the ground and were protected by a fence. At night, street lights which were placed in sets on the side of the roads lit up, powered by magic. Furthermore, platoons of knights regularly patrolled the streets to ensure the peace.
On one of these roads within the Empire's capital, a young man could be seen humming and smiling as he strolled leisurely on the sidewalk. The man was maybe 170 cm in height, and looked around twenty years old. With blonde hair, blue eyes, and a healthy skin color that suggested he had regularly been exposed to sunlight, the man's features could only be described as common throughout the Empire.
He was not the pretty boy type. If put in a group of ten people, the man would definitely not stand out. However, an indescribable charm radiated from him which seemed to attract other people. It might be because of the invigorating smile on his face, or his confident way of walking.
With every step he took, a metallic jingling which sounded like it was caused by the friction of chains could be heard from beneath his. Knowledgeable observers would realise that it was the noise made from wearing chainmail.
Two swords hung from his waist. From their length, they seemed to be short swords. Parts of the handles were completely covered by the hand guard, with the blades hidden in the sheaths. One could tell that they were definitely not cheap. And finally, a mace and a yoroidoshi were stored behind his waist.
[TL-Note: A Yoroidoshi (鎧通し) is a variant of the tanto and lit. an “armor piercer”. For more information, click here.]
Possessing two weapons was considered normal for this world. However, it was quite uncommon to see someone with weapons which could be used to slash, pierce, and make bludgeoning attacks.
To an average person, the man would seem like an adventurer. However, the well-informed ones would be able to tell that he was a worker simply from the fact that adventurers were required to wear metallic plates around their necks.
Worker. This word was used to describe people who left the career path of an Adventurer.
The work given to adventurers was directly provided by the Adventurer's Guild, where the content and difficulty of the tasks were thoroughly investigated beforehand. Only the ones that were deemed suitable were assigned to adventurers and had corresponding ranks according to the difficulty of the task. In other words, work that were deemed inappropriate such as ones that might endanger the safety of the public, or the law-breaking kind of work like investigating the plant materials used in the creation of narcotics. Those kind of requests would be instantly rejected by the Adventurer's Guild.
Also, work that might damage the ecological balance of an area was also rejected. For example, the Adventurer's Guild would never issue requests involving the removal of monsters that play certain roles in an ecosystem. This was due to fear that the removal of the monster might trigger the collapse of the ecological balance in an area, which might result in hordes of other monsters leaving their habitats and causing damage to human settlements. However, if said monster left its habitat by itself and entered human territory, it would be treated as a separate matter entirely.
In other words, adventurers were friends of justice.
However, the world did not operate on that principle alone.
Regardless of how one described things, there were people who were willing to take on high-risk work simply for the reward. There also existed the kind of people that simply enjoyed slaying monsters.
These people, when compared against the adventurers that stood in the light, preferred to stay in the darkness. The "dropouts" amongst the adventurers. That was what some people called them.
However, not all workers were the kind of people that were previously mentioned.
Hypothetically speaking, if a young village boy was heavily injured and an adventurer group that was capable of performing healing magic happened to pass by, were they allowed to cast the spells to save the boy?
The answer was no.
There was a rule that strictly forbade adventurers from using healing magic on the common people unless a certain fee was paid to the adventurers.
This was because the common usage of healing magic was restricted by the temples, where patients were required to come to the temples and pay a certain fee in order to receive healing. If the adventurers ignored this system and freely went around healing people, the temples would become unable to feed themselves.
For this reason, the temples had strongly pressured the Adventurer's Guild into enforcing this regulation.
If adventurers were unable to obey the rules, then they could opt to become a worker.
Although this made the temples seem like the bad guys, this was not without good reason. Due to the influence of magic on the daily lives of people, magic could be considered as another political tool for power. In order for the temples to provide benefits to the people without becoming controlled by politics, the only source of income they could receive would be from the people. In exchange, the temples provided healing, cleansing of the undead, as well as researching and developing new healing spells.
If the adventurers ignored the regulations and used their healing spells freely, the temples would be forced to become more secular, and their initial ideologies would become corrupted.
As such, there were always two sides to a story. Without light, there would be no shadow. The existence of workers could be described in the same way. For money, they were willing to ignore regulations and often make a mess of things, however, there were also cases where they had brought benefits to the people, such as the creation of cheaper medicine.
Having said that, this was the kind of profession this man had—Hekkeran Termite.
"Hmm... what to buy?"
There were simply too many magical items Hekkeran wanted. For the time being, he should probably focus on defensive items first. After that, there was one more that he wanted due to special reasons.