Walking down the streets of Aruna. Jessica saw the bustling city in a new light. Possibly because of her own melancholy, she felt an urging to get stronger. This strange calling came from inside herself. Not for any particular reason, she could still feel it urging her forward, unlike before. Instead, like an invisible hand on her back, she left as if she was being hurried forward. For this reason, when she came to a crossroad, she stopped briefly.
Taking a left, would have her reach Uncle Beast’s shop, with a rough ten-minute walk. Watching the busy streets she saw people from humans, dwarfs, and a few in between. Those in between were those she suspected of being goblins and beast people. If they were dragons, it would be impossible to tell at her level. These people had their heads down and were covered from head to toe. As an open city it was impossible to know, in fact she was likely just being overly sensitive with her recent encounter.
Goblins weren’t that rare this far east. Beast people were still rare, at least those that could be seen obviously like Ken. Only Aruna was pretty far south of the northern boarder. While the rest of the continent was split, the dwarf cities lined the entire east coast. This was the only place that wasn’t split between north and south. The two were just two invisible lines drawn on paper, they didn’t actual exist to begin with. And yet the importance of this invisible line was blown so far out of proportion, it wasn’t surprising why peace lasting this long was rare.
Dwarves had shown the world it was possible to find peace between all races. Unfortunately, this only stayed true within their boarders. While Mercury city was just as open, the location was in a natural neutral zone that wasn’t exactly owned by any race or country. Filled to the brim with magical beast and dangerous zones that caused even Grade B’s to not rashly travel randomly inside.
Jessica had to narrow her eyes as the number of fully covered individuals felt far higher than before. For this reason, she lost the fight rather decisively. The invisible hand that was constantly pushing her was able to lead her straight instead of turning left.
Jessica continued forward until she reached a point the traffic hit a snag. The number of carriages lowered as the road skewed inward, as it was possible for multiple carriages to ride on the normal streets, side by side. When the desolate nature of the area took over, the road became more for traveling by foot, as only a single carriage could use the road. Even still, not a single carriage could be seen. Soon she reached a strange place, not unfamiliar. The guard from before saw her and waved as he was checking someone else's identity.
Being given a knowing look, the guard in charge of her turned to the first and having received a nod he allowed her free passage. Having no interest in going inside the dungeon, she was still surprised by the unfettered access. When she left it wasn’t exactly on the best of departures. She was fairly certain her uncle would have said something to the guards. He was that angry when she saw him last. In the end, she wasn’t willing to look a gifted horse in the mouth.
Moving to the halfway point, the road was missing some bricks. As the nature of a dungeon, the mana in the soil caused most materials to break. After wasting so much money, most locations that tried to keep up with maintenance gave up. What was left was an artistically desolate display of civilization losing to the power of nature. It was both beautiful and horrifying look. This became a common display on the path leading to the dungeon. Making a turn she found a road that had the same display. This time there were a few more bricks with breaks.
As one continued on, the road became more stable as the special place she was going had lowered the mana in the soil, therefore the road was able to be maintained. To Jessica, it seemed pointless, and yet, management deemed it important enough to keep spending money on it. There was likely a reason for it, even if she couldn’t pinpoint it. Eventually, her scattered thoughts focused on the building in front of her.
Not very tall, this single story building was made with fancy materials. The large suite she was able to obtain was not as nice looking as this building. In fact, it was pointlessly impressive. The outside didn’t need to match the inside. All that mattered was the use of the building itself. Only this building wasn’t managed by a single force. There were a number of companies that were able to maintain it. The profits obtained weren’t managed directly by the dwarf officials themselves.
Having tossed this nightmare of management off to the merchants that called this place home. All work on the building from building and maintaining were all handled by local business. Contrary to believe, the majority of the workers were human. With the dexterous blessing of their race, dwarves were generally too skilled to focus on such matters. The only fully dwarf jobs in the city were actually the guards.
Outside those duties, humans were in charge of numerous things in the city. This was by designed. Many people had different thoughts on this. When she brought it up to her uncle, he said something that she could only scoff at, “Obviously this should be handled by the humans, dwarves are too skilled to do such meaningless things. Even still, have you ever seen a dwarf starving because they lacked money?”
Saying this was a truth she could only helplessly agree with, but at the time she scoffed because the one telling her this was someone that she had to rush out to save. Not a week before he said this, Jessica had to fight the heat to rush down the stairs to his workshop because she hadn’t seen him in half a month. When she went down, he was seemingly dying on the floor, looking like a stick figure. Rushing to get food and water, she had to rush down the stairs with full arms, almost falling a few times.
Moving inside, Jessica was met with a fancy looking counter. It was clear, the wood used was fancy without any discoloration and picked specifically for its beautiful grain design. Sitting behind the counter was an employee. Looking up at her, he smiled gently with a professional business smile, “Are you looking to rent a room?”
“Of course.” She finally got to do something she had always wanted to do since she was a child and seen it in a book and even once in real life. “Give me a high grade room.” Throwing the crystal on the counter, she made it clear she wanted him to hurry. Seeing his reaction, she felt great inside as she tried to keep a straight face.
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Seeing him move quicker was somehow satisfying. Seemingly about to ask how long she was staying, the man paused slightly. His eyes grew a bit wider, but as a talented employee, he was able to keep his facial expression from displaying the shock he was feeling. Not opening his mouth again, he continued to work a lot faster. She was slightly disappointed. Jessica’s plan was to sum it up with a dominating line along the lines of, “I will pay when I leave.” Or something along those lines. It wasn’t her money, so she was planning to splurge a little.
As someone that always felt the pain, she wanted to teach the old man a lesson in giving her his bank crystal without any restrictions. He never once cared about money, and it somehow irked her from time to time. Being fully ready to have to pay it back in the future, she was still willing to take the risk. As she wasn’t the account holder, she couldn’t use all the money on it anyway. With nothing to do, she could only size up the man behind the counter as he diligently tried to work as fast as he could.
Looking at him once more, she found him slightly familiar, only she was decent with faces. She was sure she hadn’t seen this person before. If it was just a glance, it wouldn’t be this strong of a recollection. He had black hair and a pair of dark brown to the point of being black eyes. He wasn’t what one would say was handsome, but he wasn’t terrible to look at. His business expressions were very well-trained, and he appeared to be good at his job.
He was using all the information from the crystal to do his job. After implying she was in a hurry, he didn’t pause and worked diligently without having to wait or bother her to reply the information he needed. While the records wouldn’t be as clean. There was enough information on the crystal for him to have enough. It was only at this moment she realized she didn’t know what level crystal it was. Clearly being able to pay for this place, it was above Grade D. Considering she was going to need to stay here for at least one month, it likely was a full Grade C or possibly a Grade B. Now she felt slightly frightful.
She was about to be spending a very large amount of money, it was not something she could pay back so fast or easily. Only at that moment did she see the emblem on the man’s sleeve. It was at that moment she looked at his face and finally placed why he looked so familiar. With only a short time passing the man used both hands to hand her back the crystal and a small piece of rectangular wood with the best smile he could muster, “Everything is done, if you need anything please don’t hesitate to use the system inside. This will allow you to request any assistance you might need. Your room is the fifth door in. Please enjoy your stay.”
Taking the crystal and piece of wood, there was a five beautifully carved onto the easy to hold piece of wood. She could feel a large flux of mana inside the wood. Once she walked past the few doors she reached one with a similar five. Once she reached for the door handle, there was a click before she was able to open it. Moving inside, she tried to keep a straight face as she had heard about these places but had never been inside one before.
The room wasn’t very large to begin with. A large bed, magic circle, and a large cabinet. Ignoring the wall that also had a magic circle on it. This was because everything in the room had magic formations craved into them. From the obvious circle on the ground that took up the majority of the room, all the way to the bed and cabinet. She had heard about this place, but only once inside did she realize she had spent way too much money.
A cultivation chamber was simply a building that made use of the surplus mana that was generated in a dungeon. In this way, a dungeon could be controlled to not grow in strength. In a way, cultivation chambers were used as a limiting and controlling factor for dungeons. Inside was generally a magic circle and a bed. The medium and high level rooms had a cabinet that housed a series of formation that delivered food and kept them in perfect condition.
Normally, a bed wasn’t really that special, at least not like this one. She ran her hand across and felt like she was touching a cloud. She had only heard about medium-sized rooms, the high level rooms were very expensive. This being because those that entered them were privileged individuals. Those that could make that type of money were those with good talent, so why would they need such a place? For those like her with less than desirable talent, she could use this place to speed up her slow progression. While the talent had a small block in terms of difficulty, the largest issue was the speed one gathered mana.
If one had enough money to live in a room like this, that meant even someone with the worst talent could possibly reach Grade A. Moving over to the cabinet, opening it, she saw a variety of dishes that almost made her want to devour the food immediately. Still, she ended up closing the cabinet before placing her items down on the ground near the bed. Moving over to the wall with the formations, she sent her mana in for a moment before moving to the magic circle on the floor. There was a soft beeping for a few seconds.
From a range of around ten feet across, the magic circle was one of the largest she had ever seen. There were stories about teleportation circles measuring around thirty feet across. Those were only heard about in stories. The resources to use something like that was not something she could even see the formation, let alone be able to use it. A comfortable cushion could be seen, sitting in the middle of the magic circle. Sitting down, she felt again like she just wanted to lay down and let this cloud take her far away.
Before she could calm herself down, she felt like she truly was going to be taken by the wind. There wasn’t an actual wind, however once the beeping stopped there was a fluctuation as a makeshift wind was created. The density in the air changed as mana was rushing into the circle as it lit up. Soon she could feel the influx of mana without entering a meditative state. Within a few moments she gained a hypersensitivity to the mana allowing her to ease into a meditative state far quicker. The deepness of the state was enough that she felt the world around her darken as the small spherical lights were brighter as she started to collect the mana in her surroundings.
Sitting outside, he couldn’t help but look at the display that showed that mana was being distributed to room five. During a short time together. He had noticed she was watching him intently. At first, she only browsed his features before she gave off a bored countenance in her gaze. Her gaze drifted away or lost focus. He tried to focus on the work, as a merchant he was still sensitive to gazes. What drew his attention was that when she saw his family emblem she paid another look to his face where she looked more intensely before. She seemed to recognize him in one way or another. It appeared she had met a family member of his before. Looking down at the round black shield, he couldn’t help but wonder who.
They had only just recently moved here after his grandfather took an old friend up on an offer to take up one of the positions to manage this place. It would bring him enough profits he could enjoy his time in the countryside without having to manage the family. Instead, this would allow him to take a step back and finally retire.