70: Going Through With A Plan

Going Through With A Plan

After it was all said and done, the owner of the tavern and I went back up to the bar area. He appeared to be slightly more energetic, filled with a rare optimistic feeling inside of his body.0

"Once again, thank you so much for doing all of this. It's just that the rat infestation had quite the negative effect on business-related matters... I-I mean, with my daughter and everything else going on, the situation was really looking bad for a while."

The last part of his sentence really caught my attention, simply due to the fact that he seemed like a man who lived alone in isolation, more out of choice than anything else. Raising an eyebrow, I addressed that fact.

"I didn't know that you had a daughter. She wasn't with you the other day, after all." He nodded in confirmation, sitting in a chair on my left. "Is she alright?"

My first thought had been whether or not she might have unfortunately acquired some type of sickness, which wouldn't have been surprising either given the fact that they were both essentially living in the slums.

Nodding once more, he couldn't prevent the solemn look on his face from coming to the surface. "There is no need to worry, Shalu is perfectly fine. However, it is difficult for me to even bring her near this place when it is in such a terrible state."

Humming to myself in contemplation, I glanced down at the table in front of us.

That made a lot of sense. If the man hasn't really told her much concerning his job except for the fact that he was a bartender, the thought that she could've already created some type of image inside of her head about what it looked like honestly wasn't farfetched.

To see what kind of state it was in at the moment would probably affect her negatively.

'Alright, that's enough. I'm going through with my plan from earlier.'

Turning towards the man sitting right next to me, I planted a hand on his shoulder.

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After a couple hours of speaking with the older man that owned the tavern, who's name was actually Drist Clover, I had just arrived back at the manor while the sun was beginning to go down.

Mother stood at the front of the gate with a seemingly infinite amount of patience, a loving smile beautifully drawn onto her gorgeous visage. As soon as I was within reach, Helena nearly tackled me to the ground with the strength behind her hug, but I immediately returned the affection with an internal understanding for her adoring gestures.

There was nothing else in the world that she loved more than her only child.

"Hey, mom. I missed you." I said, completely genuine about that statement.

Those words instantly brought a smile to Helena's face as she proceeded to assault me with a barrage of kisses to the face, not leaving a single area uncovered with her affection.

"I missed you too, my cute little baby boy!~" She giggled in delight, instinctively combing her fingers through my black strands of hair.

Tilting my head upwards in order to look the beautiful woman directly in her red slit eyes, which contained an endless amount of love for her precious son, I spoke with a hint of a professional tone in my voice. "Can we go inside and talk? I have recently come up with an idea that is most likely going to benefit this entire village."

With that kind of statement, especially coming from her own child, it immediately caught the interest of my mother.

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Four months later, I stood in front of the tavern with a feeling of accomplishment coursing through my body.

The building looked vastly different, due to the fact that it was rejuvenated to a much more attractive condition by a group of people that my mother hired for me. Everything about the establishment had been restored to life, as well as came with a few upgrades.

Before the restoration, the dilapidated tavern was just a regular bar. However, deciding to help out a couple of people that lived in the poor area of the village by giving them jobs, it served more than just one purpose now.

The new and improved tavern had been turned into this village's adventurer's guild as well.

Not only would this allow for people going through rough times to find another method to get some money, but it also served as a way for me to go through a different assortment of quests exclusively tailored to my liking. They were the one's I was going through in order to raise my reputation around the village.

Standing next to me in a purely awestruck silence was Drist Clover, who had been kept away from the area until now so that the new and improved tavern's appearance could serve as a pleasant surprise for the bartender. While I had spoken to him about my plans before all of this even started, there were a couple of things that I left out simply because it would've been boring to not have added in a few shocking revelations of my own.

Not to mention, I made sure to give him enough coins every month until the restoration was over so that he could take care of his daughter with a little extra spending money on the side. Drist had decided to just be completely truthful about all of it to his child, Shalu Clover, who I actually met around two months ago. It was more so because of how much she had been pestering her father about their mysterious savior.

At least, that's how it was described to me by Shalu.

In the beginning, the young girl was quite shy, which was due to the fact that she didn't have many friends. However, with each visit that I made over to their home, I noticed Shalu slowly coming out of her little shell and warming up to my presence. Over time, the girl started jumping onto me as soon as I walked through the door.

To be honest, it was pretty cute.

Drist eventually overcame his shock of the current situation, abruptly ending the silence that had been progressively filling the emptiness of the street.

Vocalizing his astonishment, the grizzled man suddenly turned around before lifting me up in a big hug, arms larger than my head proceeding to wrap around my torso in a vice grip. "This is incredible, what you've done for me, boy! Once you get a little older, there'll be a lifetime supply of alcohol waiting for you!" He guffawed in delight, the man's loud and boisterous laugh emitting a vibration that could be felt internally coming from his hairy chest.

His more eccentric persona didn't come as a surprise to me, which was mostly due to the fact that I had learned a lot about the older man over the past couple of months by spending what little time I did with him and his daughter. In turn, all three of us had warmed up and gained varying degrees of respect for one another.

"It was an easy decision to make, honestly... this is going to help out a lot of people too." Drist lowered me back down to the ground, humming in agreement at the end. "I'm glad that I went through with the initial plan." I said, patting the hefty man on the arm good-naturedly.

My part in the restoration of the establishment hadn't gone unnoticed either, which was very clear with the positive energy that was being given to me every day by the people that I repeatedly met on the streets. Before the building's upgrades had even finished, many of the village's residents had already become aware of the new changes that were being made to it.

A couple days later, the tavern was officially open for business, and it quickly rose in popularity within a very short amount of time.

For the rest of the year, I mostly spent my time doing small quests around the village that would raise my reputation, all the while continuing to make even more plans for future endeavors.

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