mercenary vs adventurer

mercenary and adventurer both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
mercenary	Yes	Yes	No	No
adventurer	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, adventurer is a hypernym of mercenary; that is, adventurer is a word with a broader meaning than mercenary:

Other hypernyms of mercenary include venturer.

mercenary (noun)	adventurer (noun)
a person hired to fight for another country than their own	a person who enjoys taking risks
	someone who travels into little known regions (especially for some scientific purpose)

mercenary (adjective)	adventurer (adjective)
profit oriented
serving for wages in a foreign army
marked by materialism