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Chapter 11 – House-Hunting
“Let’s see. There are some decent properties with a monthly rent of 75 Kilig. What are you looking for?”
This was said by Kyson Mortis, a real-estate agent who had been introduced by Rossetta.
Kyson was a bearded man with a good physique. He looked exactly like the merchants depicted in pictures…and he probably didn’t have that bad of a personality, since he had been introduced by Rossetta. I couldn’t be negligent though.
“75 Kilig, is it? I can’t really answer that without seeing the properties.”
“Of course. Shall we head over to the nearby places?”
With that, we decided to go look at the houses together and walked along a beautiful paved road in the Eastern District.
We had obtained horses and a carriage, which were owned by the Count, and ridden them here. Setting aside the matter of the carriage, the surplus of horses that Forest Bird rode on were later taken to the Guild, which had them delivered to the Count as a favor. Dad had also arranged it.
Other than that, the rent was 75 Kilig per month, huh? We should briefly discuss the values Kyson had mentioned. Kilig refers to the Kilig Copper Coins. Since this currency is used on a daily basis, it was common to ask questions like “How many Kilig is it?”, or “How many Coppers is it?”
If you used gold coins as a basis, then one Sebel Gold Coin was equivalent to 20 Arben Silver Coins, 100 Rodel Large Copper Coins, 500 Kilig Copper Coins, or 5000 Moor, which had the lowest value.
Although this currency couldn’t realistically be compared to the Japanese Yen, since it was completely different, a sensible exchange rate would probably be one Kilig for 1000 Yen.
The monthly salary of a standard laborer was around 100 Kilig. With a rent of 75 Kilig per month, the majority of a month’s income would vanish into thin air. There were a large amount of people thought similarly. As expected of the expensive residential area of the Eastern District.
Perhaps Kyson was trying to estimate our personal budget, which was large enough to have him make a personal appearance.
Coincidentally…the amount of money I had been given when I left the house was 5000 Kilig.
It was composed of 9 Gold and 20 Silver Coins. Perhaps this amount of money was given in consideration of the fact that I might not be able to provide for myself, or because he had wanted to make me less dependent on him. To be honest, I thought that he was being overprotective.
The reward money from the ant extermination that had happened along the way had been split equally, and I was given 560 Kilig. Although it was debatable as to whether a reward of 560 Kilig was too high or too low for defeating a swarm of ants…it wasn’t worth complaining about, since I felt that it had been an easy profit.
Additionally, I had paid Forest Bird an extra 120 Kilig as their completion reward when we arrived at Termuilles, which brought their total reward up to 720 Kilig…Even if I deducted the costs of the various things we bought on the journey…the amount of money I currently had leftover was 4514 Kilig.
“By the way, what’s your reason for buying this house?”
In that case, it wouldn’t be renting, but paying off the loan for your own house…There were probably a lot of people who didn’t know the normal market prices of houses, so all of them often asked for the cost.
“Although it isn’t a new house, it’s still good. The price for this one is 29,300 Kilig. In this case, there will be an interest of 100 Kilig per month, in addition to the total amount. There is a possibility that you will be evicted if you are unable to maintain the house; however, if you decide to buy the house after renting it for a time, it’s possible to lower the total payment based on how much you’ve paid for its rent.”
…So if I paid 1200 Kilig per year, it would take 24 years to finish payments.
This kind of thing included the interest. You would understand if you looked at the fine print on the contract.
“Since you were introduced by Rossetta-sama, I’m more or less being allowed to study the market.”
“I would be sure to accommodate you if Henri were to contact me. You can also consult with me in regards to financing.”
Rossetta had said something similar. So, she wanted to visit every now and then, huh? I understood that she wanted me to be somewhere she could observe.
I’ll politely refuse Rossetta’s offer.
I should probably decide on buying a house after taking some time to look at them.
As of now, I wasn’t sure how much money I could earn and spend if I made a living by diving into the Labyrinth…
Although I had confidence in just earning money, it would cause fatigue, sickness, injuries, and other complications to my health if I pushed myself too hard. I wanted to save up money as well, so I would rather pass on leading a stressful life caused by a harsh working environment.
“Well? If you want to ask something, I can respond at any time, you know?”
Rossetta looked like she was thinking about something while showing a gentle smile. I wonder how long I could pay the house rent without needing to rely on dad?
“It’s a good deal no matter how you look at it. Well, you only have one servant, Grace, so if the maintenance is too much for you to deal with, you will have to look for another house.
“Though if that were to happen, I think that the maintenance would only be too much to deal with in the beginning? Ah, we have arrived. It’s that house.”
The house that Kyson showed us was a two-story building with white walls and a red roof…it was a relatively good house. A stone wall with an iron fence went around the house and there was a small garden within the grounds…When he said that it would only be too much to deal with in the beginning, was this why? The flowers were running wild in the garden.
“What is this?”
Grace knitted her eyebrows when she saw this.
“Well, we haven’t gotten around to hiring someone to maintain the outside. It’s quite pretty on the inside though, and we can also arrange for a gardener.”
“A gardener isn’t really needed. I think that the majority of the work will just be pulling out weeds and planting flowers. Should we talk about renting this place?”
Grace casted a glance my way.
If she was temporarily released from her cursed artifact, she could probably complete the weeding in one go.
This house had been built on School Street. It was in a quiet area, a short distance away from the heart of the school.
You could go to the Eastern District’s Main Street, the Marketplace, and, from there, to the entrance to the Labyrinth in a decent amount of time.
As the street’s name suggested, the school was right under its nose. Looking at the house’s location and its architecture…75 Kilig was probably quite cheap for it.
As for the location, I would have preferred if it was closer to the entrance of the Labyrinth…The shrine– in other words, within the vicinity of the Emperor’s Palace, I would be able to use the buildings that belonged to the Emperor’s Palace and those that were associated with the Labyrinth as my residence.
Although the Eastern District was as prosperous as a city by itself, there were extremely rich guys living there. I decided to pass on that, since the prices would naturally get much higher.
On the other hand, if I went to a fairly cheap location…it would be a problem, since areas like the Port Town on the west side had worse public security than the east. The Fort personnel were in complete power of their eastern territories. In other words, the west was where the Thieves Guild and the Slums were located. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to live in the Western District just because it was cheap. The public security of the area had to be good if I was thinking about living together with Grace.
Speaking of being close to the school, there is a positive aspect to it from a security point of view. Its economy is prosperous and there are a lot of people with a high level of education and knowledge in the area. It is also natural for the Emperor to have many soldiers patrol the area in order to maintain peace.
If I were to live somewhere, it might as well be in the Eastern District…It was fine to consider buying a house with money, since the prices were already considerably high.
I might come to like the interior of this house later on, too. Well then.
We entered the house after Kyson opened the door.
From the entrance hall, I could see stairs that continued on to the second floor, as well as a passageway to the inside. Although there were stairs at the end of the passageway that lead towards the basement…I decided to look around the first floor first.
“The dining area is over on my right, and over on my left is a guest room. The living room, kitchen, and a restroom are past this corridor.”
Although there was a clear view of the garden from the guest room, which was facing the front of the street…well, the garden was in a terrible state.
Apparently, it was possible to go directly to the dining area and the guest room from the kitchen. There was also a door at the back of the kitchen. We peeked through the back door before heading out to the back of the house. A pool of water, which had been pulled up from nearby aqueducts and waterways, was located right next to the door. This was, without a doubt, convenient in various ways.
It was fine to just draw water with water magic, and in my case, even doing hard labor was trivial.
The toilet drew water from the aqueducts. It was quite sanitary to let the water flow into the small tank and let it flush. Boundary City, with its own water and sewage system, was an amazing place for its culture.
However, speaking of the sewage system the Boundary City has, it only flowed downwards, into the lower levels of the Labyrinth, via aqueducts. This was a bit of a problem.
The problem was that, due to the Labyrinth’s nature of the gathering elements of a similar nature, it created an unpleasant area in the lower levels.
It was also known as the Corrupt Desolate Lake. As long as I didn’t have any business there, I didn’t want to go to such a poisonous area…Though there were also areas that required one to pass through that place. Regardless of whether I needed to pass through it, its nature was bad.
If I were to describe the place, the Kanji used in its name was more or less correct.
It was a sludge lake with narrow scaffolds interspersed through it. It was a lovely area where Tar Demons would ambush you from inside of the sludge. Even if you were carefully watching the ground, there were feathered, human-faced insects and monsters similar to them that were flying around high in the sky.
It became quite a traumatic experience to Beginner Players, since they would be poisoned, taken by surprise, and suffer terribly until they were slaughtered.
Although BFO had been called a VR previously, it was, perhaps, more suited to that name now.
“What about this door?”
After I shook off some unpleasant memories, we went through the door that led to the toilet.
“Here is the bathhouse and the bathroom.”
This was the bathroom? This was always better than going to a public bath and bathing yourself there. Just like the toilet, it seemed that water was drawn from the aqueducts that were connected to the reservoir. The bathtub was rather large and relaxing. Even if one didn’t know magic used for daily life, it looked like it was necessary to place magic stones into the depressions in the wall in order to boil the water.
Speaking of magic stones, they were crystals that could be created by extracting them from harvested Demon parts.
Since they had a high affinity with magic, they could easily store specific spells if one used the inscribing skill.
Inscribing wasn’t a skill that was too difficult to utilize, and a magician could use it in various ways if they were the one casting it.
However, since the magical tools that were embedded with complicated and advanced patterns were all handmade, they were astonishingly expensive. Most commoners would have never seen them before.
Since magic stones were not used through a special skill and were just a way to store Mana, there were various applications for them, creating a constant demand for them as consumable goods. However, a heat circulation bath, huh?…It might not be that bad. Was 75 Kilig a month cheap for this?
“Another guest room and the master bedroom is on the second floor. There’s also a terrace and an attic.”
We turned around and went upstairs, following Kyson. There were three guest rooms. The hallway was quite long.
A terrace and the servants living quarters were connected to the master bedroom.
“And the basement?”
“I think it would be useful as a storage room.”
A storage room, was it? When we went down into the basement, we saw that the walls were made of solid stone. –Wasn’t it fine to establish a transfer magic formation here? The attic was also usually used as a storage room.
“What do you think about this, Grace?”
“A wide kitchen is convenient for kitchen work. After that is the toilet and the bath? It seems like the aqueducts’ role is to recycle wastewater?”
“That’s true. It will be fine if we shut the rooms we won’t use. Can you handle it?”
“Please leave it to me.”
Grace responded brightly. She’s reliable.
“What do you think, Theodore-sama?”
“I want to go see if there are any other attractive places.”
Whether or not he understood, Kyson appeared to be happy as he asked that…Let’s at least compare it with some other houses.
Although we went to many houses afterwards, none of them suited my needs very well. In the end, I chose the house with a rent of 75 Kilig per month.
//
If it was unreasonable to downgrade it and it looked like I would be capable of doing it, I will consider buying the house.
Thanks for doing this chapter😄
The description of the Corrupt Desolate Lake had me thinking of Blighttown