Li Ke had never been one to indulge people who blindly begged to be kept. They always talked a big game, but the moment he actually whipped out the cash, every single one of them turned into a bashful, stuttering mess.
"I... I, um... that is, I..."
Roche's head was spinning, her eyes practically turning into literal anime swirls. Her face flushed a deep crimson, and white steam began rising from her red hair. She looked every bit the innocent, sheltered child.
But Li Ke merely let out a cold smirk, pressing his psychological attack even further.
"If you're willing, I can completely sponsor you, you know. As long as you agree, you'll get a five-gold-coin bonus every single time you help me out. And if we take things a step further, I can give you ten gold coins a pop."
This massive temptation echoed relentlessly inside Roche's mind. Though her completely overwhelmed brain had already crashed, her remaining cognitive resources automatically translated those gold coins into visuals of bread, chicken legs, stews, and all kinds of meat pies and bowls of rice, which floated vividly through her thoughts.
Countless meals... Just by agreeing once, she could get a mountain of chicken legs and rice!
The sheer allure caused Roche's logic to rapidly evaporate from her brain, and her willpower began to crumble. She opened her mouth, completely torn between refusing or agreeing. Because her brain had effectively short-circuited, she could only repeat a single word like a broken record.
"I-I-I-I-I..."
Li Ke found her tense, adorable reaction highly entertaining. He jingled the gold coins next to Roche's ear once more, murmuring in a low whisper.
"Just five gold coins for one time. Besides, it's a very simple arrangement, right?"
Li Ke was only teasing Roche for his own amusement. After all, even though Roche claimed to be an adult, her physical stature and naive personality made that incredibly hard to believe.
He was just playing a joke on her.
However, right as he was about to put an end to his teasing—
"If you don't stop right now, I'm calling the guards."
A crisp, disciplined voice cut through the air right next to Li Ke. Both he and Roche looked toward the source of the sound at the same time. Standing there was a female Fighter wearing the exact same style of martial arts uniform as Jialina and Tangji. Her physique was far more proportional than theirs—practically a textbook model of a perfect athletic build.
Her face, however, carried a much stronger sense of heroic grit. While she still possessed feminine beauty, her stern, dignified aura made it genuinely difficult to view her as just an ordinary woman.
"You are..."
Li Ke pointed a finger at the female Fighter in front of him, then pointed back in the general direction of Tangji's territory.
The female Fighter stood casually with her arms crossed over her chest, staring coldly down at Li Ke. She delivered the exact answer he was expecting.
"I am Ruohua. You must be the rookie adventurer Tangji hired me to guide, right? Let's get one thing straight: even though Tangji paid me fifteen gold coins for this job, if you actually turn out to be a piece-of-trash scumbag, I won't hesitate to throw that money right back at you."
So it really is her.
Li Ke rubbed his face in slight exasperation. He ruffled Roche's hair one last time, using her head as a handrest to push himself back up to his feet.
"Don't let her small stature fool you, she's actually an adult. Besides, I was just teasing her."
Li Ke chuckled softly, giving Roche's head one final pat.
"After all, with a short, stubby physique like hers, I completely lose all interest!"
His highly righteous-sounding words instantly snapped Roche out of her daze. She aggressively slapped Li Ke's hand away, glaring at him with pure hatred.
"You absolute bastard! You knew I was short and you still used my head as a handrest?! I'm going to bite you to death today!"
True to her word, before Li Ke could even react, Roche lunged forward, grabbed his arm, and bit down hard. The sudden sting made Li Ke let out a sharp cry of pain.
Wincing from the bite, Li Ke instinctively yanked his arm upward. To his utter shock, Roche was incredibly light! In a split second, he had lifted her completely off the ground as she hung onto his arm like a koala, still gnawing away.
"Are you a dog?!" Li Ke blurted out, grabbing Roche by her hair as he desperately tried to pry her off his arm.
"..."
Well, he doesn't seem like a bad guy.
Watching this ridiculous spectacle, the female Fighter couldn't help but shake her head.
Though the guy seemed a bit unreliable, their dynamic was so playful that their relationship clearly wasn't the sketchy arrangement she had initially suspected.
Still, letting them keep messing around wasn't getting them anywhere. After watching Li Ke and Roche squabble for a bit, Ruohua waved her hand to get their attention.
"Let's move out. We need to catch up with the caravan."
"A caravan?"
"Yes. Since Tangji asked me to show you the ropes, it's only natural that you learn how real adventurers make a living. Did you honestly think we just grab our weapons and dive straight into the forest? Doing that is just looking for a death sentence."
Li Ke and Roche exchanged glances before choosing to follow this highly organized, older-sister figure.
Ruohua wasn't stingy with her knowledge either. As she led them down the main street, she began explaining the reality of an adventurer's ecosystem to Li Ke.
"People use the word 'adventurer,' but most of them aren't out here to achieve some grand heroic destiny. The vast majority do it either to get rich quick or because their families can no longer afford to feed them. Because of that, most adventurers are desperately poor. It's actually quite common to see people beating each other half to death over a prize pool of just ten or twenty gold coins."
Ruohua continued her explanation as they walked.
"Monsters—specifically Goblins—are constantly multiplying. Every now and then, local villages get raided, robbed, or even massacred by them. Because of this, villagers frequently put up requests to clear out Goblin nests. The rewards for these quests are extremely low, but since the strongest opponent you'll face is maybe one or two Minotaurs, it serves as the primary source of income for most low-level adventurers."
"Aside from that, because many merchant caravans can't afford to hire professional mercenaries, they hire adventurers in bulk. Rookies usually start here to broaden their horizons and earn a steady wage."
Finishing her explanation, she paused for a moment and pointed toward a row of heavily laden carriages.
"That's the caravan we'll be escorting."
Curious, Li Ke couldn't help but ask another question.
"What about the adventurers who don't clear Goblins or escort caravans?"
He noticed Ruohua's shoulders flinch slightly, as if she had suddenly remembered something deeply unpleasant, before she let out a helpless sigh.
"Those people are either dead, or..."
She pointed toward a specific group of adventurers bringing up the absolute rear of the caravan. Every single one of these adventurers was female, but there was one glaring detail that set them apart—
They were wearing next to nothing.