Confidence
“Holy shit we’re amazing! The designated subjugation was for only 20 Frogs yet we ended up hunting 30 instead!!”
“Umm, since one kill was worth 2 copper coins……the final reward would be 6 silver coins right? That’s like 3 silver each of us!!”
Having subjugated the entirety of Loud Frogs around the Fields, they were high fiving and getting all happy about the amount of money they had earned today.
Until now, their earnings per day was 5 copper total yet today they had ended up making many times that. As someone who went through this exact process, it’s not like I don’t get their excitement.
“Didn’t I tell you two? This’ll be easy with you abilities.”
“…….Say Chris……….I, really am getting stronger, aren’t I ?!”
Ralf was quivering with fear before the battle began yet after today’s battle, he was holding his sword tightly and muttered confidently to himself.
As expected, experiencing it yourself is the best way to realize your own self worth.
Well in Ralf’s case, I’m not sure why he was pessimistic about himself in the first place.
“Of course you have, I personally trained you after all. It’ll be a problem if you hadn’t gotten stronger instead. I frankly don’t get why you were so afraid in the first place.”
“That’s obviously because–!……….. I kept getting trounced by you. I could only get a win once every couple dozen matches. With a record like that, it’s impossible to feel any sort of confidence at your own skill!”
“See now you’re just underestimating me instead. You may have the upper hand in terms of raw stats, and my job may be decided as [farmer] but I didn’t train in the way of the sword since birth for nothing. You won’t beat me that easily, let alone when you’re injured.”
“—–Alright alright I got it! After today I understand, it’s not that I’m super weak it’s just that you’re stronger that’s all yeah?”
“……….Well, precisely. So have some confidence in yourself.”
For a moment, I wanted to retort with “there’s many who are far stronger than me!” —–But, there’s no point in making Ralf even more depressed about himself so I chose to encourage him instead.
He’s an idiot alright but he does tend to overthink things sometimes.
Well, it’d be a pain if he got too cocky but I can’t have him constantly moping around either; what a pain.
“Esta, you seem to have become pretty adept with magic already, no? This is my time actually seeing you in a live battle but your firepower might even already be in Silver rank instead.”
“Oh no, no way, I still have much to learn. Though I’m certainly confident in its effectiveness against higher ranks but…….in that moment if Chris-san hadn’t warned us, we would have perished there and then. At the end of the day, I still lack experience so I want to stick with bronze rank and slowly learn by fighting various monsters and increase my experience first.”
I feel Esta is a bit too serious and strict on herself, but at least I don’t have to get worried about her getting carried away and fucking things up I suppose.
She’s a fast learner as well as good at analysing her own mistakes.
Unlike Ralf, even without my supervision she’ll continue getting stronger at a fast rate.
“Anyway, I won’t be escorting you two from next time around so focus on finishing as many requests together as possible okay?”
“If its anything like today, it’ll be a piece of cake!”
“I must agree. As long as we don’t get too careless, we shouldn’t have problems finishing requests of this rank.”
“Remember, our main objective right now is to save up 5 platinum coins. And to use that to heal Ralf’s injury. And once that is done……..we can actually start functioning as a proper party.”
“Once I have healed eh. Never did I think I’d be able to earn 5 platinum coins when I was making just 5 copper a day but……..now I can see it actually happening!”
“Let us all work together and make it happen! I too will do my hardest as well!”
We once again resolved ourselves to focus on our primary goal of collecting 5 platinum coins after finishing up our discussion on the Fields.
It’ll take some time but at this pace, it’s not gonna take too much effort to save that much.
Having seen their growth with my own eyes, I was confident in my assessment.