# Interlude II: Advanced peasantry

I got a bit bored of talking about the foxes, so here's a peasant.

His name was Bob 4, since society no longer used wordful second names.

Bob lived in a house on the central continent,

inside of some boring realm of little relevance.

He had not met the king, but thought of him as a nice enough man.

Due to the continent's location, it was subject to many wars,

with the edge kingdoms being rather small,

and a few larger ones dominating the middle.

Bob lived near the "south" edge.

It was rather dangerous due to the occasional monster attacks,

but the knights had thanklessly defended the lands, so he couldn't complain.

4 ran a small pawn shop business near the beach.

Even though this left him wide open,

the view of its multicolored sands was worth it.

Overall, his life wasn't very bad,

and he got to see some rather interesting things every once in a while.

Right now, he was looking at some fruit a knight had found.

4 had heard about all kinds of exotic,

mutated plants occurring in the southern continent,

but he didn't get to see them very often.

It superficially resembled a lemon,

except that it was very large, its skin was extraordinarily rough,

and one end of it opened into several tentacles.

To him, it appeared as some strange collectible,

but definitely not something he would eat.

Bob preferred his regular lemons,

and no amount of citrousy fragrance coming from such

a malign presence would convince him otherwise.

'Maybe someone will be crazy enough to buy it, methinks',

but didn't really care, since they had given it to him for free.

'Maybe it's evil, and they wanted to get rid of it.'

It definitely looked like it could start moving and eat him.

'I should put it inside one of those glass containers.'

Maybe feeding it could appease the thing?

He didn't know that he was just looking at BUDDHA'S OPEN HAND.

Apart from winning the county show, totally normal.

Upon concluding that he should store the find in a jar until it dried up,

he went along with his day.

Pawning was not a very popular or lucrative business in his place,

but Bob enjoyed the job anyways.

One of his most esteemed possessions was a lava lamp.

Just like the energizer bunny, it kept going and going,

even though it wasn't plugged anywhere.

One of his most dangerous possessions was a bottle that said 'DROP IT AND DIE!'

The customer also warned him about shaking it, and he didn't want to find out.

The hand definitely was among one of his weirder finds,

but was surpassed by the bowel-releasing item known as "The Polyp".

A lot of people frowned on his collections,

but he contributed enough to for the king to give him a pass.

Just in case, one or another knight would watch his wares,

which made him feel even more safe.

He was also lucky to own a two-story house and be rather well-read.

Today he was going to pay his fortnightly licenses.

They were a bit on the expensive side,

probably because of the difficulty with handling his goods and such.

He sipped a cup of black tea with milk while filling the forms.

He had gotten it from some faraway lands, and was happy to enjoy it,

although it was also fairly expensive.

After filling the documents and putting on his robe,

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Bob got out of his house and headed towards the administrative building.

The buildings towards the coast were rather sparse,

but they rapidly got more cramped.

Fortunately, the streets were decently clean and

well-maintained in spite of the heavy traffic.

The administrative building was around twenty floors

of unpainted concrete and ceramic tiling.

He approached one of the counters.

4: Hello, 42.

42: Hi. I wager that you're here to pay for the licences.

There weren't necessarily forty-two people with the same name.

4: Correct. Here's the documents and payments.

42: Let's see...

A few minutes later...

42: They are fine. Need anything else?

4: Yes. Can you give me a pass for the pub?

42: Sure. Same as always?

4: Yeah, 8 hours, Drunken Mermaid.

Some people had used public spaces to conduct shady deals,

so they could be sanctioned for loitering.

42: I'll be late. Boss asked me to redo the inventory.

Apparently some bread suddenly disappeared.

4: Don't worry, I'll put one in for ya.

42: Thanks. Going anywhere else?

4: Yes. I told Paul that I would be visiting his house on 585 Carpenter's.

I want 4 hours.

42: Before of after going to the pub?

4: After.

42: Is that everything?

4: Yes.

42: Alright, let me do the papers.

After that, Bob went to the pub. He was a regular there.

5499: Morning, Bob.

4: Hello, 4-eye. Any news?

5499: Nothing's out of the ordinary. Apparently bread is low on stock. Again.

4: I heard so much from 42. Did anything interesting happen?

Some man was reading the newspaper.

911: 'The eastern front is running out of troops. Reinforcements required.'

4: Well, I sure wouldn't like getting drafted.

911: Pfft. You better do. One less weirdo running around.

4: I think four-eye here would be a better match.

5499: Nah, I could buy my way out of it.

4: With what, pocket change?

4>911: Does it say anything about the south?

911: 'Large monsters encountered, battle ensues!'

5499: What I'd give for them to finally get rid of them.

4: Nah, if they went extinct, we'd run out of wares.

It's enough for the knights to keep them at bay.

5499: You damn monster fetishist. I bet you wank off to pictures of them.

4: And I bet you wank off to a keg of ale.

911: Heh.

4: I'll have half a Carousel for me and Editor, please. And one for yourself?

5499: Sure, I'll have the fruit juice.

911>4: Going fancy, huh?

4: I just sold a bunch of stuff, and found a monster lemon.

5499: I don't even want to imagine what that looks like.

4: Oh I'll tell ya.

He spent a large chunk of the day on the pub,

since he didn't have much to do on weekends.

After that, he went to Paul's house.

His had only one floor but a large garden.

4: So, what do you want, Paul?

69420: Oh, just talk. The tea plants seem to be doing alright.

4: Not to sound like a jerk, but I don't think they'll survive this winter.

69420: What do you mean? The winters are super tame in here.

4: Yeah, but nobody has managed to grow these outside of the inner center.

6920: What do you mean?

You think that they have to be blessed by the gods or something?

4: No, it's just that all plants just refuse to grow outside their habitats.

You know what happened to some deathsmoke flower I got from the south?

6920: You and your obsession with those unholy things.

4: Well, the thing is, It came in a pot,

with dirt extracted from the same continent.

I made sure to water it everyday and give it the right amount of sun,

and you know what happened?

69420: Go on.

4: It withered away! I lost a bunch of money to a stupid plant!

69420: Nonsense. The royal gardens have all kinds of plants.

4: Well, I'm no expert, but I haven't seen them plant any polyps,

so they must be limited to what's already present on the local area.

69420: If so, why can't I just plant some stupid tea from the same continent?

4: Well, have you seen them grow any tea?

69420: Uhhh. No?

4: See?

69420: Ugh, Fine. But if my tea survives, you'll owe me a beer.

4: Fair enough.

The poor saps couldn't see what was coming for them.