Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)

Volume 4 - Ch 3.11

Of course, she would think like that. After all, she heard something that clearly pointed to me being dissatisfied with her lack of the Master Smith Job, even though I was only mumbling it to myself under my breath without any intention to be heard by others at all, and it hurts even more since Sherry seems to be thinking that I am going to be searching for other Master Smiths who would craft items and equipment for me, while in truth my plan is to have Sherry become a Master Smith so that she could be the one providing those services for us. I never wanted to taunt her with my words or anything. . . . . . . . . Once again, this just goes to show that as the leader of the Party and someone who has been put in charge of others, I should make sure to pick literally every word I say with the utmost care and carefulness.

Do not worry about that, Sherry! Trust me, giving it your all while helping master explore the Labyrinths is more than enough, and no one is never going to demand more than that from you!

R-Right, I will make sure to always do my best.

Ohhh, what a nice follow-up, Roxanne! Those words are bound to cheer Sherry back up! Man how glad I am that you are here!

By the way, Sherry.

Yes, master?

In order to make the atmosphere between the three of us lighter again, I decided to change the subject to something more pleasant to talk about.

Earlier you mentioned that there are actually people who managed to become Master Smiths even after they have reached Explorer Lv.10.

Hmm. . . . . . yes, I have indeed said that.

So I was just curious. . . . how exactly do they do that, because I thought the level requirement is something of an absolute that cannot be circumvented in any way?

Normally it is, but there is one alternative. The ones who want to become Master Smiths even after already achieving Lv.10 as Master Smiths have to use the services provided by the temple of Elen.

Temple of. . . . . . . . . Elen? What is that?

The Temple of Elen is not like any other Guild Temple that offers only a specific Job, but the place where you go to leave which Job you are going to end up with up in the hands of Fate. Rumors have it that it is not strictly randomized though, but rather that the blessing of the Temple of Elen is going to bestow upon you the Job that you are the most suited for.

Roxanne explained that to me.

According to one of the general rules of this world, once you become a member of one Guild in order to obtain a Job that is associated with that Guild, you cannot change your Guild membership to another one, or at least doing so is not that simple, because while you can change your Job if you pray at the temple of the other Guild you wish to join, Roxanne told me that the process itself can be a rather pricey one. To put it all simply, if you become a Merchant associated with Merchants Guild, you either stay a Merchant, or you can possibly pay a hefty sum of money in order to become, let us say. . . . . . . . . . . . an Explorer associated with the Explorers Guild as long as you pray for a Job Change in the Explorers Guilds Temple. That is what I already knew after talking about it with Roxanne a while back, but hearing that there are actually temples that offer you a random Job Change was definitely a first for me. Then again, I guess that is one of the staples of the RPG and MMORPG genre of games: some temples have a lot of restrictions, some of them have less of them, or in the rare cases, there are even the ones that do not have any kind of restrictions placed upon the at all, but these are among the rarest of the rare ones.

I see. Thank you for the explanation, Roxanne.

You are welcome, master.

However, the most important question here, and the one that has yet to be answered, is what kind of random the Job Change at the Temple Of Elen is? Can it offer to randomly give you a new Job by selecting one from the pool of the ones that you have already unlocked, or is it actually that it can offer to give you an entirely random new Job, even if you do not meet the requirements for obtaining it in a normal way? Because If I had to guess, if getting a Job that you do not meet the requirements for is impossible in the normal temples, then why would this Temple of Elen be any different? Then again, maybe it is an exception to the rule, so it might be worth my time to imply about it a little bit more.

Are there any legends or rumors about famous people from the empire who were using the services of the Temple of Elen?

In this case, my fake backstory of being from a country far, far away to the east and thus not knowing much about the empires history and customs can actually prove to be quite useful.

There actually is. As luck would have it, the empires first Emperor was the one who received his Hero Job from the Temple of Elen.

Huh? Well now, would you look at that! Talk about a lucky coincidence! Since I already know that much, then maybe I should try inquiring about the persona of the first Emperor a bit more to see if I can learn something more about the Hero Job?

Hmm. . . . . . . . . . . then, do the mythos that surround the first Emperor, are there any that mention him singlehandedly exterminating a band of Bandits?

That was the situation in which I have obtained that Job when I was first spirited away into this world, so maybe it is going to have something to do with one of the legends describing the first Emperors heroics, assuming that there will even be any that are going to match the criteria that I have just specified.

There are. Supposedly, one of the first heroic deeds attributed to the first Emperor of this empire was that he has repelled a group of Bandits that have ambushed his Party after nightfall all by himself.

Sherry continued to deliver the good news to me. The exact circumstances differ slightly from what I have been through, bit otherwise. . . bingo, I guess? Looks like the condition that has to be fulfilled in order to obtain the Job of a Hero is to singlehandedly exterminate a group of Bandits, or at least everything seems to be pointing towards it. But is that all there is to it? No, it cannot be. If the condition for obtaining a Job that is supposed to be so rare that there was only one person in the recorded history of the empire who managed to get it would be to simply dispatch a group of brigands, then the world would be literally breaming with Heroes, because that feature could be easily achieved by powerful Adventurers who would target a group of weak, low-level enough Bandits. Then maybe the condition is that you have to defeat a group of Bandits during yourfirst everbattle? Nah, I am only thinking like that because that is how it was in my case, which might have been nothing more but a sheer coincidence. Besides, even if we assume that the First Emperor had encountered this Bandit night ambush situation at a relatively young age, the chances of that particular encounter being his first ever battle in the world that is filled with Labyrinths and monsters are pretty slim, and if he was not trained enough in combat at that time, he would have probably not survived that ambush, much less defeated all of the enemies by himself. No matter what the exact conditions are, it remains a fact that that battle with the Bandits was the trigger that gave the first Emperor his Hero Job, and since he got it at that time, then it means that he did not get it, an entirely new Job, when he went to pray at the Temple of Elen, but instead, that means that his visit to the temple simply assigned him a Job that he had already unlocked, much in the same way as my Party Job Settings work.