“We really should have visited here sooner,” said Esperanza with a satisfied sigh after she finished off her double portion of the dinner the inn’s proprietor brought to their room. It was a rather unexpected good fortune that by some coincidence, the flavors of the food in Clearridge happened to be rather similar to what her mother used to cook for her when she was young.
There were differences of course. The ingredients used were quite a bit different. What passed for “pork” in Ephemera was more akin to boar meat than what modern people of her world were familiar with, with the animals being ranched probably somewhere halfway between domesticated pigs and wild boars. Similarly, the beans favored by the locals had a rather different flavor and a crunchier texture, and the corn had large kernels that sprout off a tiny cob instead of a multitude of small kernels on a large cob.
Even so, the local preference for food that was on the spicy side and their use of corn as their staple food resulted in cooking that was somewhat reminiscent of what Esperanza had in her younger days, which struck her with pangs of nostalgia. The villages and towns she visited before had different, simpler fare in comparison, but she guessed that Clearridge being a prosperous large city afforded the locals with more leeway in exploring the culinary arts.
Other than being unable to access the academy’s library, their scouting and observation of the city had gone well in the past three days. From rumors and hearsay, they guessed that there were three fourth tiers from the frontline fort a day’s travel away currently resting in city, along with around five thousand off-duty soldiers. The locals claimed that having soldiers take their break in city was the norm, which made sense given how the city’s southern region had been converted to cater to such soldiers.
Those soldiers also brought news from the frontlines, and apparently, the humans had some success in pushing the demons back so far, which brought the city into a mood for jubilation. Anytime Esperanza walked around the south side of the city, she saw soldiers toasting the locals to their cheers, more than a few of which regaled the local citizens with tales of the fighting.
It was useful information to know, as she had no need to get too close and risk discovery thanks to her sharp sense of hearing. Maybe walking around so many potential hostiles while in disguise was a way to gain experience for her shapeshifting skill too, as she had leveled her [A Mask to Don] skill regularly in the past month or so, especially when she was part of the group infiltrating the human town and villages.
In fact, just yesterday, after another peek at the academy and another aborted attempt to sneak into the library after she discovered that a fourth tier human combatant – likely from the fort – chatting with the academy’s headmaster who was also a fourth tier, she maxed out the skill and it evolved into a new one called [A Role to Play].
The new skill granted her even greater finesse in controlling her shapeshifting, which while not that helpful for combat, allowed her to take any guise she wanted with ease. With it, she altered her form in such a way that she was completely indistinguishable from a normal human, in every way thinkable. A close inspection was no longer a worry at that point.
Naturally Esperanza took on a guise that was identical to what she looked like before, when she was just a normal person living her life in a different world. She made sure to simulate heavy scarring on her face and body, though, in case someone did get curious and checked closely, in order to match the cover story they used.
Of course, she could make them go away at a moment’s notice too, as they were all just part of her body that took shape according to her mind’s wishes.
The skill’s evolution meant that she would have far greater options when she needed to infiltrate a place in the future, as she could easily turn herself into another person with ease. She was still limited by her original mass, however, and thus couldn’t really turn herself much larger or smaller in size.
Esperanza guessed that the proximity to such high-leveled people might have been what gave her skill the final push to hit its max level, but she wasn’t completely certain. Either way, despite the added danger and challenge of infiltrating the town while it was teeming with soldiers and had more high tier combatants, the whole thing has proven fruitful so far.
After her group and Resitia’s met at the eatery on their first evening in town, they pretended to “get along” with each other and went to the same inn where they booked four rooms for the lot of them. Fortunately the inn they went to still had enough room for them all, as many inns were full thanks to the visiting soldiers.
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Murad naturally roomed together with Mora, while Kurt and Leo shared another room. Resitia took another room with Tiara, which left Esperanza and Iryl together, to fit their cover story.
While the older spies showed little reaction, the younger Tiara – as well as Iryl and Resitia – were clearly quite surprised by what they saw in the city. Fortunately that surprise helped sell the impression that they were bumpkins from the countryside who were seeing a city for the first time, which made their cover story more believable, if anything.
During the day, the group split up into twos to check out the city. Esperanza actually went with Tiara during those jaunts, though, as it would be rather suspicious for two cloaked and hooded people to go around together. On top of that, while the older infiltrators were experienced and knew how to take care of themselves, Tiara was less so, so Esperanza decided to accompany the girl to keep her safe.
Resitia and Iryl should be fine on their own, as while Resitia was a bit of a hothead, Iryl tended to be calmer and would hopefully keep her out of trouble.
As for Tiara, the young girl played the part of an excited, naive country girl taking her unfortunate friend out for a walk flawlessly. She simply radiated a force of personality that occupied the attention of the people that interacted with them, which left Esperanza a lot of leeway to stay out of people’s attention while she kept an eye out for things of interest.
Other than the Academy and the soldiers though, the city itself didn’t have that many points of interest otherwise. Esperanza thought they could stay for a week or so, while she attempted to get into the library during that time. Keeping things quiet was still their priority, however, as they were still far too weak to get into a direct confrontation with either the humans or the demons.
As for the rest of the group who waited for them deep in the forest north of the city, she was not worried. There was nothing in the forest in question that could threaten the group, and they stayed in the deepest region of the forest where third tier wild animals ran around. It was a place that was safe to use as a hideout as the local hunters almost never dared to venture that deep.
At worst, the biggest issue they would have to face would be boredom as they would have little to do but to wait for the infiltration team to return. They knew what to expect though, and Esperanza had also already told them beforehand that her group might stay in the city for a week or more, though if she chose to stay longer, she would notify them.
If there was no notification from her after eight days and nobody from the infiltration groups had returned either, that meant that they likely ran into trouble, in which case, the rest would force their way through the city if they needed to.
While they walked around the city actively in the day, once the sun was close to setting Esperanza’s group mostly stayed in the inn. The city itself had a rather active nightlife, which often got rather rowdy with all the drunk soldiers around. They avoided it for the most part, though Murad, Mora, Kurt, and Leo still regularly went out to listen in on the conversations those soldiers had while drinking as well.
The main reason Esperanza’s group avoided the night was because when crawls happened, things could get complicated if they were to get caught up in one. The members of their group were very powerful, and after fighting for their lives in the wilderness for so long, tended to react to violence reflexively, which could easily blow their cover.
As such, they mostly stayed in their rooms once darkness fell. That night was the same, as Esperanza sat by the room’s window – the inn they stayed in was situated at the corner of a major crossroad, close to the center of the city, and her room had a good vantage point to look at the city center from afar – while she munched on a few links of sausage left over from her dinner.
The local sausages were small, each only about as large as her index finger, made from roughly minced pork that was flavored with some herbs and spices – which included spicy chilies – stuffed into small intestines and then smoked for preservation. The taste sort of reminded her of chorizo, even if it was not quite the same. Perhaps it was just the nostalgia that spoke.
Honestly, it was also the first real instance she had of spicy food since she was summoned to Ephemera. While early on her new body’s senses were rather chaotic and confusing to her, she had long since gained control of it, and discovered that she could do things like numb her sense of taste – quite useful when literally devouring opponents – or make her sense of taste approximate that of a human being instead.
She mostly did so while eating proper food as she was quite curious about the local cooking, but perhaps due to how most places had to think of survival first, the culinary art of Ephemera seemed rather limited to her, at least until she reached Clearridge, where the locals showed more creativity with their food. She also learned that spicy foods were not very popular as amongst humans it was seen as more of a low-class thing.
Amongst demons on the other hand, Tesh’kas could not handle spicy foods, while on the other hand, the Ma’Varok does not notice spiciness at all. As such, spicy foods were rarely seen in demon cities as well, as while hybrid demons might have taste buds more akin to a human’s, the cultural norms alone was enough to keep spicy things from being common.
While she munched on a link of sausage, Esperanza suddenly saw something that made her sit up straight in surprise. Despite the darkness and the distance, she was able to see the people that walked through the city center clearly, as her eyes were not exactly human eyes and were capable of far more than what most races’ eyes could do, as far as she could tell.
What made her sit up in surprise was the familiar face that walked through the city center and headed towards the north side of the city. It was a face that looked somewhat thinner and harder than what she remembered, with a noticeable tiredness in its miens, but Esperanza still recognized it as the features of one of the very few people she’d call a friend back in her previous world.
And also someone she knew had been summoned into Ephemera as one of the [Heroes], as she recalled seeing her back when she first came to be in this new world..