Wandering around a new town was surprisingly fun and informative. Turned out there're weapon and armor stores as well as two different blacksmiths, one of them worked on goods like nails and horseshoes while the other does custom orders for weapons and armor. I asked someone about it and it turned out the goods smith was the apprentice to the gear smith and after working enough metal they unlocked the smith class and now to level up they need to make things to gain xp.
I also found a church and figured I would check it out for a bit, see if what that god said was true, it was. A statue that is supposed to represent him is an armored warrior with a sword raised over head and several heads around his feet, all of them various kinds of demihumans. I asked one of the civilians in the back about him and they asked if I was dropped as a child to not know of Varros god of victory. I told him I was just from a small village that didn't have a church, he thought it was a little odd but bought it.
The tales of Varros can be summed up as 'he helps the humans overcome the demonic powers the other races have'. By demonic powers they just meant everything that makes those races special, like elven agility or dwarf smithing skill. It was basically a collection of propaganda and hate speech designed to make worshippers hate anything non-human with a passion. So it seems he was right, his world is screwed because hate is so deeply rooted in everyone since birth that it is impossible to change anyone from here.
After that I finally found the library but it was getting late, so I had to head back to the inn for the night, got some dinner, veggies and meat, and headed up to my room. Seems individial rooms were pretty good, a fair sized bed and a small personal light crystal that can be controlled by tapping it, like a three way bulb. Now that I was alone and sitting I could see what changed about my bag and the stuff in it.
First off it's made of some kind of soft leather instead of cotton, and the zippers were replaced with buckles, as well as now only having two smaller pockets instead of four. My swiss army knife was broken into 6 separate tools and made bigger. Duct tape is replaced by a small jar of glue, with a warning label saying it can bond anything together FOREVER, which makes a twisted kind of sense. Fishing line was simply replaced with line of some other material and there was less of it. Finally, my book was swapped to something that seemed to be about building up from scratch.
Looking out the window, it seems to be getting late, spent some time flipping through my new book and I can't really think of anything else I can do in the middle of the night.... I'm totally gonna miss the internet for a while.
----------------------------------------
Breakfast at the inn was eggs and chicken, it was okay but I liked ketchup with my eggs, just something else I'll need to get used to . I also paid to have the room for the rest of the week before heading out to the library. I hoped it had something more informative about the world and the creatures in it than the church did, but I doubted it. I bet it will be mostly propaganda.
-One walk later.-
... I hated being right about this. The books were in some ways even worse than the church. For instance, the drawing of an elf in the book about elves makes them look even more evil then the head Varros was standing over in the statue, it's ridiculous. I think the one on the demon ants is the worst, people here see them all the time but the drawing has them looking like hulking beasts made entirely of armor and spikes. It also went into detail about various horrible things they do to people like sucking out their brains or ripping someone's heart out and eating it in front of them before they died.
This, of course, clashed entirely with how I saw them fight the other day. They seemed to do everything in their power to avoid killing people. I can only think the city has something they want badly enough to fight for, but they don't actually want to kill anyone to get it, if I knew what that something was, maybe I could begin that mission to stop the fighting. I doubt Koral would stop killing any they see but if I could get them to stop attacking and just defend themselves, it would be a start.
With the library being a bust, and it already being the afternoon, I see if there are any other food places around instead of eating at the inn every time. I find a nice little shop that has tea and bagels, no toppings, but bagels are pretty good plain. I had almost finished my bagel when I once more heard the three bongs meaning a demon ant attack. I stood up, grabbed my bagel, and started walking towards the gap in the wall. It isn't long before I could hear the sounds of fighting and from looking around, no one seemed worried, guess they trust the guards and adventurers will handle it quick enough.
The sounds stopped when I'm about a block away and shortly after that I see the menagerie of fighters heading back towards the guild. Turning down the road towards the hole in the wall I see it had gotten a couple of meters thinner, those earth mages worked fast. I see the guards doing the work of piling the bodies again, I also see the ground around where they are piling is scorched, so I suppose they dispose of them with fire. As I get close enough one of the guards stopped me and asked "what are you doing over here?"
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
"I was just reading about the demon ants at the library this morning and while having lunch I heard the alarm bell, so I wanted to get a closer look at them after the battle." I answered
"Studying the enemy, huh? Sure, go nuts. Hmm, that one is the most intact," he said while pointing to one of the bodies not in the pile
I wave him off and approached the body. Getting a close look at it I noticed a few things that were hard to make out at a distance. It is only about a meter and a half tall, the mouth is a regular ant mandible but around the eyes is skin instead of exoskeleton. The abdomen is relatively small if you think about the ratio on an earth ant. It also had a very feminine body type in spite of the exoskelton coating them. I suppose it makes sense with all the fighter and worker ants on earth being female, and this world being full of demihumans, the male ants probably only mated and died afterwards.
Even though I know their race is probably like 95% female I still feel kinda awful thinking about a bunch of women dying horribly in a war they don't want to be in. I just can't think of something worth this senseless meatgrinder, I really don't think the ants will ever make it past the people defending, the wall will just make it extra impossible. Only thing I can do is try to figure out what they want and get myself prepared for that caravan to Merriat.
----------------------------------------
The next day and I managed to get a small job, but it was still useful. I was a temp assistant to the general goods smith. I mostly just moved things around and wrote down orders. I also finally realized how odd it is that the people here speak and write in english, but I can only chalk it up to ether coincidence or a god copied it from someone else's world. While moving some stuff I asked the guy about his exp for smithing, he explained that doing anything that takes skill gives some, but doing something that matches your class skills gives more. So while adventurers gained a lot of exp from killing things a smith would make a fraction of that for the same kill, but make a lot more for making metal things.
----------------------------------------
Day 4 of being in town. The smith was letting me watch him work, I can't touch any of the in progress orders but he says what he is doing and why he is doing it while working. It is actually not quite as helpful as it could be because the metal bends more then it should every time he hits it. When I asked him, he explained it's due to one of the passives of the Smith class, at his current level it has acceleration factor of three. The master smith on the other hand had gotten to a factor of six and his creations are stronger then physically possible for the material being used.
It also turned out the ant attacks are daily and they always try to retreat when they get down to ten left. They also managed to hurt someone today, broke a guards arm because the adventurers were too slow to reinforce since they had to stream out the wall hole in single file. With the speed those earth mages worked at I think the wall will be finished by tomorrow.
----------------------------------------
Day 5 in town. I was right, the hole is gone and the top of the wall is level. Due to my dedication with the smith he decided to let my try making a few nails while he does some himself. The first one looked okay but it snapped in the middle instead of bending, I had no idea why that happened, but smith says it was because I hit it too hard. Next one was better but instead bent too easily, because I apparently hit it too lightly. I am pretty sure the rules of smithing are different in this world than the earth.
Surprisingly, there was no ant attack today, so they must of had enough tactical sense that the wall finally made them realize their attacks were useless. I still haven't found anything that looked like an ant artifact. I even checked out the town hall and asked them if they knew why the ants stepped up their attacks and all I got was "it's just what demons do". This hate has gotten extremely annoying, so many of these people become completely irrational when the topic is about any of the other races.
----------------------------------------
Day 6 in this damn town. Since there was no attack the other day a couple adventurers went out and captured an ant to parade her around town and just toment her. They just dragged her around on a rope while the civilians threw things at her. This ended with her being brought to front of the town hall and being beheaded. I could at least understand killing someone in self defence, but this level of maliciousness to hunt people down to make their life hell before killing them is something else entirely.
I am glad the caravan arrived today, I signed up as soon as I could, but they are doing goods trading today and wont leave until tomorrow morning. I told the goods smith I woukd be leaving with the caravan tomorrow and he thanked me for my service and gave me a dagger. I was apparently the best assitant he ever had, and if he was high enough level to handle an apprentice he would have taken me. It's really weird, all I did was follow his instructions to the letter. Do a lot of people think they know better when they do jobs? Whatever, I'll be out of here soon enough.
----------------------------------------
Day 7, so long suckers. I woke up right on time, grabbed two servings of breakfast for energy on the road and sheathed the dagger in a new leather belt I got for a silver. It's amazing how little happens in podunk backwards thinking towns. All I had to say is so long, hope to never see you again. I got to the caravan and asked where I should be, they questioned me about my status like the guild lady and when they heard I had no class they immediately placed me slightly behind the middle. It was the second most protected spot, the exact middle was the most important and had two kids that are also going to the city for a class on a cart.
After about an hour of waiting we set off down the road, leaving through the same gate I came in from at the start of the week. The road stretched off into the distance, it was rather straight for something made by hand but I guess magic was involved. It was rather peaceful walking with a large group. Around mid afternoon there was a sudden call to halt, one of the cart drivers looked around warrily. I drew my dagger and tried to spot whatever the problem was too. There was massive rustling from the woods on the right side of the path. The adventurers and guards with the caravan rushed into a defensive formation. A swarm of demon ants burst forth from the woods, guess the caravan was carrying what they wanted.