"5 gold? Heh heh heh... You're joking, right?"
"...Even that's not enough?"
The human warrior Kaiden, the party's leader, broke out in a cold sweat.
Kaiden hesitated for a moment, but he was the leader of the party, after all.
He quickly pulled himself together and spoke with a resolute expression.
"Isn't Arjen's cut already higher than the rest of the party's? And 5 gold is no small sum. No, the very concept of this 'support fee' is completely foreign to us."
"Exactly! We're not some carry service dragging you along—we're equal party members. And now you're saying we have to pay just for going to the dungeon together?"
As Kaiden spoke, the cat beastkin thief, who had been glaring at me with clear displeasure, chimed in.
"Is that so?"
"Of course! On top of that, we're the ones tanking the dangerous fights up front, while you just support from the back. Yet you get a higher share than regular members like us, and now you want money on top of that—5 gold, no less?"
"Hold on, Mia—"
"Shut it, Kai. Can you stand by while our party gets treated like this?"
The cat beastkin thrust her face toward me.
Her pupils had contracted into slits in her excitement.
"Don't make me laugh, you arrogant bitch."
She growled in a raspy voice.
It was the fury of a veteran mid-tier crawler who had survived countless brushes with death in the dungeon.
For anyone faint of heart, it would have crushed their will to resist entirely.
"Is that so?"
Even facing that threat head-on, my emotions remained as calm as a still lake.
It was true that such incidents had decreased since I'd gained some fame, but they were commonplace when forming party contracts in the past.
Unfortunately, this world was so primitive that I had to explain the most obvious facts every single time.
In the old days, I would have had to debate these malicious complainers in a boring, pedantic manner, but now there was no need.
"In that case, I'll join another party."
There was no reason to cling to any one party.
"Yeah! Go on, get lost! We've done just fine without trash like you!"
As I stood from my seat, the cat beastkin pumped her fist in approval.
"Wait, please wait, Miss Arjen."
But Kaiden grabbed at me as I tried to rise.
"...How much support fee would satisfy you?"
"Hey! Kai!"
The leader Kaiden held me back, and the cat beastkin exploded in anger.
"Why are you groveling like this? We've been fine so far! What's the point of begging someone so rude?"
"Please, just stay quiet, Mia."
"How can I, when she's treating our party like dogs with these ridiculous demands?!"
"I'm the leader. When the leader decides after careful thought, you follow. Even if you're a beast or a woman, you have to respect the party hierarchy, don't you?"
"King lizard!"
As the party's lizardman warrior moved to mark the cat beastkin, Kaiden let out a small sigh at the sight, then turned back to me.
"...May we continue the discussion?"
Hm.
There seemed to be a live bomb in the party, but the leader had decent qualities.
He was pretty proactive about the contract too...
-Don't you think it's worth talking a bit more? In my view as your goddess, this child doesn't seem to have a bad character.
'Indeed.'
As I sat back down, Kaiden breathed a sigh of relief.
'Though, sighing in relief already might be a bit premature.'
I'd only suspended judgment. If he didn't offer proper value, the talk was over.
All that mattered was how much 'sincerity' this man could show compared to Ratpot or Ratbek.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
After that, we discussed the contract details.
In the end, the split remained 7 for the original Kaiden Party and 3 for me.
Minor details stayed mostly the same, and we agreed on a support fee of 13 gold.
Half of the support fee would be paid by the leader, Kaiden, and the other half divided among the remaining three party members.
If issues arose with dungeon runs due to the Kaiden Party's circumstances after the contract—short of acts of god—the support fee would not be refunded.
"...Thank you for your efforts."
"The same to you, Mr. Kaiden."
Kaiden looked utterly drained.
And I, probably wearing a satisfied expression.
Between us lay the signed contract.
Once we had it notarized at the Crawler Guild, it would take effect.
As Kaiden and I headed to the reception desk with the contract, a voice full of resentment came from behind—the cat beastkin's.
"I... I just don't get it."
This continued even after submitting the contract to the guild and receiving our copies.
She seemed extremely aggrieved, her large eyes brimming with tears.
"Mia..."
"I don't want to hear it..."
Kaiden reached out to comfort the cat beastkin, but she brushed his hand away—not roughly, but with clear emotion.
Evidently not expecting the rejection, Kaiden's face showed genuine shock.
"I was proud of our party. Was that just me? Why do we have to put up with this treatment?"
"I..."
-A good kid, but a bit dense in some ways.
'A textbook case of a dutiful, rigid, responsible man who's poor at expressing his feelings.'
If we hadn't signed the contract, it might have been different, but now it was notarized at the Crawler Guild.
These were comrades we'd be running dungeons with for at least two weeks, so some traffic control was needed.
A little friction was fine, but if outright hostility persisted into the dungeon, it would get exhausting.
After all, internal party conflicts accounted for half the reasons parties got fully wiped in dungeons.
"Mr. Kaiden sought me out for the sake of the party."
"What?"
The cat beastkin, who had been sniffling under Kaiden's gaze, shot me a look full of resentment.
"Do you know what people looking for a class like mine usually have in common?"
"...How should I know."
"They're usually at their limit with the current situation... or they've recently had an experience where a comrade was in danger."
"...Huh?"
At my words, the cat beastkin's eyes widened round, and the tension eased a bit.
"Actually, the one who arranged this meeting gave me a heads-up. You had a close call on your last dungeon run, right?"
"Kuh."
"I heard it could have resulted in casualties if things went wrong."
"But we survived!"
Bam!
"We trusted and relied on each other through the brink of death, overcame the crisis, and all returned safely!"
"But if luck had been against you, someone might have died. That's the dungeon for you."
"..."
Seeming to recall something, the cat beastkin opened and closed her mouth a few times before falling silent.
"Crawlers who've crossed the line of death countless times. Sounds great, but it also means one slip-up ends it all. And if luck fails and you lose a party member... the tighter the bonds, the worse the fallout tends to be."
At those words, the cat beastkin didn't respond. She pondered for a moment, then looked around at her comrades.
As if imagining something, she squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to think further.
"Still..."
"..."
"Still, are you saying you're worth that much concession compared to us who've survived the brink together?"
"I wouldn't go that far in my arrogance."
In truth, that's exactly what I thought.
"But I do have that value."
Currently, over 20,000 crawlers were registered in this dungeon city.
And roughly 5,000 to 6,000 priests registered at the pantheon within the city.
One might think, 'Not bad, right?'
In fact, some people were registered at both the Crawler Guild and temples, so the effective ratio of crawlers to priests was around 3.5:1.
On the surface, that meant a standard four-man party could easily include one priest.
'On the surface.'
But among priests who served gods, only about half could use the miracle of Blessing.
And among those, the ones who could perform as a proper crawler in real combat like dungeons dropped to half or less again.
Already under 1 in 10.
The problem was that even among those remaining priests, few went into dungeons.
Priests were valuable resources.
Not just as dungeon-exploring crawlers, but as 'social' resources too.
In this world, priests were superior to doctors in most situations.
Especially in surgery, they were overwhelming.
Instead of anesthesia, suturing, dressing, disinfecting against infection, and praying for recovery, one Blessing skipped all those surgical steps.
They were in high demand socially without even risking dungeons.
In fact, the priests who did dungeon runs were like the field chaplains of my past world—fanatics bound by faith and conviction.
Parties with priests did have high survival rates, but deaths still happened in dungeons.
Thus, temples didn't want skilled dungeon-capable priests heading in.
And most of those precious, capable priests belonged to clans that had reached the lower floors.
Mid-layer parties like Kaiden's—unless they were truly promising—didn't have proper priests.
Upper-layer parties? Unless it was some childhood friend trope where one luckily became a priest, forget it.
In past-life RPG subculture, healer slots were mandatory in adventurer parties... but this dungeon city suffered from a horrific support shortage.
'If it were a game, they'd try events for support training or dungeon balance tweaks.'
This was stark reality.
Gods existed in this world, but dungeon history showed they weren't omnipotent enough to rewrite rules.
Even if they tried game-like fixes, most games never fully solved ratpot or ratbek issues anyway.
Thus, in this dungeon city, support class value was never cheap.
For an middling party like Kaiden's, paying a support fee was only natural.
"Does that explain it?"
"...I get the reason, more or less."
Her face still full of dissatisfaction, but the cat beastkin gave a small nod, indicating understanding.
"...But you're still servants of the gods. Is it okay to be this money-grubbing?"
"Fair labor deserves fair value. My goddess wouldn't want me undervalued."
-...It's true I want my one and only daughter treasured... but not to this extent.
I let the goddess's sighing mutter go in one ear and out the other.
DPS mains like these never appreciated favors; hunting with them for free just spoiled them.
I couldn't fathom why other priests skipped support fees.
"Are we done talking?"
As the discussion wrapped up, the lizardman warrior spoke in a voice like scraping metal.
"The contract is signed. That human female is a temporary comrade now, at least. Shall we eat together?"