The Frontier Town Called Framas

When Leon reached the crossroad, he could still see many people leaving from the roads in the middle and on the right, however, he noticed that the road to the frontier town on the left was empty. No one was leaving the town like the other places.

Luckily for Leon, this time the sign existed and pointed towards the left lane saying:

Frontier Town, Framas

By the time Leon could see the town, the moon had boosted itself high into the sky. Leon entered the town incredibly late into the night, but he didn't want to sleep outside again so he made the effort to finish the trip without stopping.

Making a complete 180-degree turn, Framas was like a ghost town at night, which was the complete opposite to the bustling town of Mifis.

Framas itself wasn't small by any means, but compared to Mifis it was like comparing a drop of water to a lake. The town itself was close to about half the size of Verin, but the town was obviously less developed as sometimes there would be huge gaps of land that had nothing on it.

Leon found a small inn near the entrance and luckily it ran 24 hours a day, so the sleep-deprived receptionist tried to look awake as he introduced Leon to the prices. The price of the inn was quite cheap and only cost Leon two bronze coins a night.

When Leon first entered the inn, he was worried about the fact that they might not take the Parthian coins, but he later found out that pretty much everywhere in the Coalition accepted the Parthian coin since the Coalition used something similar.

Unlike in Mifis, Leon didn't prepay for a set amount of time but instead chose to do daily payments in which he would pay the inn daily at night if he continued to stay. Leon gave the two bronze coins to the receptionist before he groggily gave Leon his room key and the moment Leon left. The receptionist slumped down in his sleep as he tried to fight off the urge to sleep.

Leon on the other had already stowed his horse in the private stable connected to the inn and had taken just his clothes, food, and canteen, before he made his way to his room where he entered the sweet, supple, embrace of sleep.

The next day came onto Leon in an instant. He felt like he had just fallen down on the bed a minute ago, but he went against his instinct and got up. Yawning, Leon raised his hands as he stretched like a cat after a nap.

Taking Ensis and strapping the precious sword to his waist, Leon spoke aloud in his mind.

'Good sleep Ensis?'

The sword felt like it almost rolled its eyes, as it spoke in its monotone voice.

「You should know that I don't sleep…」

Leon gave a smirk and let out a chuckle in his mind.

'Hahaa, relax Ensis, it was a joke.'

The sword merely stayed silent, but Leon didn't mind as he took what was left of his dried rations and walked out of the inn. As Leon chewed on a tough piece of dried meat, he explored the town a little bit and found what he was looking for.

In the small town square, a series of bulletin boards existed, luckily for Leon one of them was for mercenaries looking for jobs. Unfortunately, as Leon joined one of the six people looking at the board, he came to find out that none of them were really impressive at all.

Although Leon thought he might've been missing something, so he inquired about the information from another person staring at the board. The man looked rather plain and could pass off as a villager, but he luckily answered all of Leon's questions.

Leon found out a series of things from the old man. Mercenary jobs worked differently in Framas compared to other places. Apparently, the board always had some sort of job, but they usually consisted of labor-related stuff like finding a lost pet or providing an extra set of hands for a nearby farmer.

This was disappointing to Leon, but what the plain-looking man said next gave Leon some hope.

"Some mercenaries don't mind the small jobs and do them for the small monetary rewards. However, there are some who wait for the more lucrative jobs. You see, while the jobs currently on the board are all quite small. Occasionally some more valuable jobs are posted on the board and some of the bigger mercenaries come out and fight for the job."

Leon looked at the old man with the life slowly coming back to his eyes.

"So what are the valuable jobs like?"

The plain-looking man responded to Leon by pointing in the distance.

"Well, the jobs here are affected by what makes Framas different from other cities. The barbarian land. Most of the time, the more lucrative jobs are usually people seeking protection from barbarians as they do god knows what, but I wouldn't know since I'm just a regular person with no magic so I usually stick with the small jobs."

Leon looked slightly happy as he now knew there was a slight chance that he would still find adventure in Framas, so he wanted to find out when he should expect a new job.

"So how often do those jobs come in?"

The plain-looking man stroked his stubble of a beard as he thought of the answer.

"Hmm, I've been here for about ten years now, but I'd say they're pretty random? There's no schedule since sometimes there could be many in a week or none in a month. Although it's been a decent amount of time since one showed up, so if your looking for one I wouldn't be too down."

Giving a bow, Leon gave a thanks towards the plain-looking man before he decided on a course of action.

'I guess I could just wait for a big job to come in and just due some of these smaller jobs for the time being.'

Although Leon would normally wince at the thought of doing some of the small jobs, his time relaxing from the constant fighting had made Leon come to see that constantly fighting monsters shouldn't be his goal.

Soon Leon would earn the moniker from his plan. The small job slayer.