Chapter 541

Meeting with Alizée and the Wildcat Claws
After Rumaja left, I immediately gathered Alizée and everyone from the Wildcat Claws to discuss what to do about Rumaja's proposal.
Honestly, I feel sad about having the Wildcat Claws, who have been my guards until now, leave, but considering their careers, I think it would be best for us to part ways for a while.
So, what should we do?

“To be frank, I think we should accept Rumaja’s offer.”

“So you are in favor then, Alizée.”

“Yes. As far as protection goes, as long as we have Plum, Talat, and Kiblinki Saltas, there’s no problem at all. But besides that, there’s also the external appearance to consider. Since we have the chance, it wouldn’t hurt to hire a top-ranked adventurer party.”

“I see. And the Wildcat Claws?”

“Honestly, we also feel that guarding you, who has become a platinum-ranked merchant, is more than we can handle. For a silver-ranked merchant, having red-ranked adventurers wouldn’t be strange, but for one of the few platinum-ranked merchants in the world to have only red-ranked adventurers as guards looks bad publicly. Since this is Lady Rumaja’s proposal, there shouldn’t be any adventurers with bad reputations.”

So they’re in favor too.
Alright, then…

“Alizée, what do you think would be the fastest route for the Wildcat Claws to rank up?”

“Lady Lily!?”

“Let’s see. Since you have such strong ties with the nobles in the Vardmoi Marquis’ faction, using those connections to build a record of taking requests from noble houses and gaining their trust would be the quickest way. As a platinum-ranked merchant, you can be one of their sponsors, but having just one is weak. I think the Vardmoi Marquis would also sponsor them, but that’s still just two. To be safe, we’d want about three more sponsors.”

“About three more… Who would be good?”

I run through the list of noble houses I’m friendly with in my head. While I get along well with many in the Vardmoi faction, I’m especially close with only a few. Among them, the ones who might hire them would be…

“Baron Korst’s household, where that muscle-brained grandpa is from. They’d take in strong adventurers regardless of whether they’re men or women.”

“True. Who else?”

“How about Viscount Jeneb? We do a lot of business with them, and with the track record of having served as my guards for years, I think they’d hire them as guards.”

“It would be good to have at least one viscount family. Any other candidates?”

“Maybe the Baron Oxitt household and Viscount Agri. Viscount Agri has been troubled by monster attacks, so they’d probably trust them if they helped thin them out. The Oxitt household family still isn’t particularly wealthy, so if a red-ranked adventurer party offered to guard them, they’d be happy.”

“It’s good to see you understand the situation in each territory. That matches my own assessment. Any noble family will require several years of service to truly earn their trust, but what these women need most is simply the time to earn it.”

“Understood. Is everyone fine with that?”

“Yes, that’s fine. In fact, we couldn’t ask for a better opportunity since you’d be helping push us toward copper rank… Though honestly, we’ve come to think of you as a younger sister, so it’s a little lonely.”

“I’ll be lonely too, but it can’t be helped. I’ll discuss with the Vardmoi Marquis about how best to send you off, so please keep guarding me a little longer.”

“Yes. We’ll definitely come back as copper-ranked adventurers.”

It seems the Wildcat Claws’ last job will be to help us select the new guards.
We’ve known each other since shortly after I came to Vardmoi, so it really is sad, but a time will always come when a client and their guards part ways.
We’ll meet again someday, so I have to send them off with a smile.

What do you think about this chapter?