Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 73. Tuln Village.

“It even has walls,” Laien mentioned with a smile while looking towards the village, or rather towards what could be seen of the village through the wide-open gate. “They may be wooden, but they are walls. It is still right to call it a village?” he wondered aloud. If he recalled what Albert told them a few days ago correctly, this Tuln Village had fifty thousand people living in it. Compared to Neil City that had a million citizens or to the City of Palee that seemed to house well over ten million citizens, a place where fifty thousand people lived wasn’t all that impressive.

“Hmm, maybe it is just a village in the end,” he added with a shrug of his shoulders, pretty much answering his own question.

Reian raised his eyebrows a little at this slightly strange behavior of Laien’s, while Jasmine didn’t think much about it and added from herself. “For a village to be considered a small city, it needs to have a population of at least two hundred thousand people. In this part of the world, stone walls and multiple watch posts are also a requirement for any village to be granted city rights. Of course, the privileges granted to various cities vary greatly, but the degree of freedom and benefits even a small city enjoys can’t be compared to that of any village.”

“Mhm.” Laien nodded slightly. He didn’t remember the details, but he had been taught those things by Tei’ru. If the system of the Sarkcente Kingdom was any indication, then the rulers of the smaller and bigger cities enjoyed things ranging from the basic ones like making administrative decisions about their region of influence, through the benefit of keeping a portion of the taxes to themselves to even maintaining their own standing army and putting tariffs on the trade in the area. Still, however, those benefits weren’t without corresponding responsibilities such as maintaining an agreeable level of happiness amongst their people, caring for the roads, sending out patrols throughout the local areas and most importantly, paying their taxes to the sovereign.

As far as Laien was concerned, it was much less of a hassle to be a founder of a powerful Martial School, Magic Institute or Academy. Yet, this impression of his probably came from the fact that it wasn’t Rudford who was managing the Red Dragon School, but two other people; Rudford’s little brother, Vatras, and the Grand Elder, Roderick… Still, it showed that as long as one had dependable friends, then becoming the head of an organization wasn’t all that much of a hassle.

Seeing that Laien wasn’t about to ask her anything else, Jasmine left the subject alone. Had the boy been her student she would have drilled him to either give her a thorough explanation about the privileges and duties the various cities had or made him listen to an explanation of her own, but in the end Laien wasn’t her pupil and so she restrained her old habit that was making her want to lecture him.

“Are you going to stand there and watch the walls?” Sirius’s voice reached them from the front of the carriage, from the seat of the coachman. “Hurry up and go, we will wait for you here so you’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said loudly and without moving from his spot.

Laien, Yin and the others glanced to the side, but with the carriage in the way, they couldn’t see Sirius at all. On the other hand, they could see Kasha who was doing the job of the coachman for the carriage right behind theirs; for some reason, the woman had an amused smirk on her face. Was she thinking that the role of a coachman suited her teacher surprisingly well, or something along those lines? In truth, the way Sirius spoke to them just now was so coachman-like that all of them unwittingly revealed amused smiles; a thousand-year-old, dignified spiritual master finding his calling as a simple coachman. They couldn’t not at least smirk at the ridiculous idea.

“We might as well go,” Jasmine said with a slight smile. “As our head coachman said, there’s little point to us standing here,” she added casually, causing those around her to chuckle a little in addition to the contemptuous snort that came from the front of their carriage. By the looks of it, they had all been thinking along the same lines. Maybe Sirius had really been meant to be a coachman, but he missed his calling and became a doctor?

“Yeah, let’s go and get what we need,” Laien supported with a laugh. He could tell that Sirius wasn’t angry with them yet, but if they kept poking at him he would likely get annoyed soon. “Do we know what we want to buy? Horses for sure, some food too, but are we looking for anything else?” he glanced at Albert and inquired, partially because he wanted to change the subject and partially because he was curious.

At Laien’s words, Albert smiled somewhat awkwardly. “There’s that, but there are also many other things we could find a use for. The problem is that our resources are fairly limited…” he mentioned while scratching the back of his head. The subject of money had never come up in the last two days as none of them, none of those from the village were brash enough to ask such a question. They didn’t want to ask for more from those who were already helping them so much for nothing in return, whereas those helping ones… they hadn’t thought to make this matter clear at all.

Laien laughed lightheartedly, while the others with exception of Johan revealed understanding smiles. After what, to clear the confused looks on Albert’s and Johan’s faces, Laien said straightforwardly. “Money isn’t a problem, it won’t cost much to get those things for you to begin with. Just tell us what you need and leave the rest to us.”

Albeit wide-eyed, Albert managed to resist asking if Laien was being serious. Instead of blurting out a silly question, he thought about the matter calmly and came to the conclusion that to those people, a few hundred or even thousand gold coins might perhaps not be anything great. “Thank you, it will be of a great help to us. I’ll be sure to remember all the help you are giving us and if an opportunity ever arises, I will be sure to pay it back,” he assured politely and bowed his head, his voice filled with genuine gratitude. He had always been of the mind that all good and all evil needed to be repaid in kind, so was the more grateful to this group of people for helping them in their hour of need.

“Sure,” Laien nodded happily. Although he was pretty sure that none of them were helping those villagers because they intended to get something in return, it still felt good for their help to be appreciated. “Well,” he began saying but paused when he saw that Johan stepped closer to him. The eight-year-old looked like he wanted to bring something up, but couldn’t quite force the words out of his mouth.

“What is it?” he asked with a smile. Then, after Johan looked up at him only to look back down at his feet again, he added a bit helplessly. “Just tell me what it’s about, or do you want to stand here like that for the rest of the evening?”

“U-uh…” Johan perked up a little. He wanted to bring this thing up, but he also didn’t want the mood to be spoiled again after it just returned to being good. “It’s just…” he murmured quietly, but then grit his teeth and raised his head. “I was wondering if we couldn’t bring my sister with us after all… I’m sure she’s sorry, I don’t want her to be left there alone…” he explained, making use of all the mental fortitude he had to not look away from Laien while and after saying so.

The request startled Laien a little, but unexpectedly to Johan, it caused him to reveal a gentle smile right afterward. “If she keeps those comments to herself, she can feel free to come. I don’t really mind,” Laien said straightforwardly. He was rather impressed with Johan’s attitude, so there was no way he would refuse this request of his considering that he wasn’t all that angry with Sarah.

“Really?” Johan asked with some disbelief, not having thought that it would be so easy for Laien to change his mind. “Will it be okay?” he asked again, this time shifting his gaze towards Yin. He had gotten an okay from Laien, but if Yin didn’t want her to come then it couldn’t be helped.

“It will be okay,” Yin said with a quiet laugh. In fact, there was no need for Johan to ask him since when Laien gave the answer, he had already considered his feelings about the matter; of course, however, Johan couldn’t possibly have known about it and so he had still come asking with an anxious look on his face.

“Thank you, just wait a bit!” Overjoyed to see that Laien and Yin didn’t mind, Johan hurried back into the carriage with a flushed face.

Laien and Yin both chuckled a little. Compared to two days ago, Johan was already a lot less shy about everything; it made one thing that the boy originally had a very bright and playful personality, but had only turned into someone who couldn’t speak up properly due to how his life had been.

“I would have been worried before…” Reian thought quietly, a slight smile present on his face. He could see the intrigued look in Arslan’s eyes as the boy continued to look at Laien and Yin; it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Arslan was learning from those two and that he saw them as role models for himself. “I guess that’s what Jasmine was speaking about. A parent can only shape his kid so much, while the people and the peers of the kid will inevitably do the rest,” he mused in silence, and even allowed his emotions to unwittingly surface on his face.

As a result, Jasmine smirked just a little when she saw the look on her former pupil’s face. “You didn’t think you’d come to like those two boys, huh?” she asked quietly, controlling her voice with Qi so it would only reach Reian’s ears.

Reian glanced at Jasmine, then let out a sigh and smiled at her. There was no point denying that; he really came to think that those two boys would make good friends for Arslan. He had been pretty doubtful about this escapade in the begging when Mustafa had ordered him to go through with it, but he needed to admit that it was worth the hassle. Not only were those two’s characters very agreeable, their strength and background were absolutely top-class too. Even if he tried, he doubted he would be able to find more fitting youths for Arslan to befriend.

A moment later, Johan got out of the carriage with Sarah following right behind him. The expression of the eight-year-old’s appeared to still contain some worry in it, but more than that it looked happy and relieved. Sarah, on the other hand, had a troubled look on her face and she couldn’t bring herself to look directly at Laien or Yin. It didn’t look like she had any intentions of apologizing, but since it wasn’t what Laien requested of her no one pushed for it to happen either.

“Let’s-…” Laien merely opened his mouth, when a certain man jumped out of the second carriage and began running up to them. Unlike before, the man wasn’t wearing ragged clothes, his beard had been shaved clean and his hair had been cut. The man had also eaten well and rested for two days, but regardless, it was pretty amazing how big of a change he had gone through. Was it not for his blue eyes and characteristic, slim facial features, he would have been unrecognizable. Previously he had looked like nothing else than a wreck of a human, but now he was actually quite handsome, especially in those white-grey clothes which he and the others had received from Reian.

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“I apologize for interrupting so suddenly, but don’t you think I could go with you?” the man asked politely after stopping near Laien, Yin and the others. “I couldn’t do anything useful so far, while my children were doing so much. If there happens to be anything I can help with, I would like to do so,” he explained with a somewhat apologetic, timid smile on his face. Paired up with his recovered good looks, this way of asking could stir up the hearts of quite a few women, but in this case, it wasn’t quite the reaction he ended up provoking.

“What did you come here for?” Sarah asked angrily, though she kept her words relatively quiet as she was feeling awkward because of her own clash with Laien and Yin from a few moments ago. “You won’t be able to help with anything or do anything, like always, so just go back there and wait,” she said outright, caring little for her father’s good intentions. So what if he had good intentions? It was impossible to change anything with them alone, as her father had proved countless times.

Despite being berated in this way, Sarah’s father continued smiling amicably, though the smile of his did indeed lose some of its liveness.

“It’s not like you can do all that much either,” Laien commented with a shrug of his shoulders. “I get that you dislike your father, but he seems to want to be of use. Why not give him a chance?” he suggested, opting to take a fairly neutral stance. After all, if it was his own family, then he wouldn’t give up so easily no matter what the other party might have or might not have done.

The look on Sarah’s face turned grim, but she didn’t try to argue with Laien. She was of the mind that no matter what kind of ‘chances’ were given to her father, it would all turn out to be a waste of time nonetheless. Yet, she realized well enough that she was in no position to voice any complaints, so she could only bite her tongue, what she indeed ended up doing.

As for Sarah’s father, whose name Laien had completely forgotten, he kept smiling but didn’t appear to be either happy or sad. He was very much aware of how little he could do and he sympathized with his daughter; he even thought that if he was in her place, he would have also hated himself. He sometimes quietly wished he could be more than a mere martial practitioner of the third rank with no hopes of advancing any further in his lifetime, but he didn’t allow himself to daydream too often. The most he could do was to try and make life simpler for his children… and he had been attempting to do so, to the best of his little ability.

“Okay, enough. Let’s get going,” Laien said with a hint of impatience and looked around, waiting to see if there wouldn’t be more interruptions. Thankfully, it didn’t look like they were going to be delayed again, so Laien contentedly headed towards the wooden gate of the village.

Since they weren’t all that far away from the walls, merely four or five hundred meters, it took them just a few minutes to reach the gate while walking at a leisure pace.

“The guards here sure are leisure,” Reian said with a slight frown. They were already at the gate and they had been standing on the road for quite a while, but no one seemed to have noticed them yet. Compared to the standards of Makarash, the people living here were way too undisciplined. “Wasn’t Ulme Village like that too?” he mused silently, wondering if there wasn’t a reason for the complacency of the people in Eulene. Was it because after the Bloody Dusk, everyone has had enough of fighting and killing and so, the last two months or so had been unnaturally peaceful?

“Don’t you two think so too?” he called out when they were around ten meters away from the gate. “Aren’t you a bit too leisure? Dozing off on duty so badly that you might as well be sleeping. I pity whoever is the one paying your wages,” he added with a laugh, successfully startling the two men awake.

Seeing a group of white-clothed people going through the gates of their village, the two men wanted to shout and curse at them, but they just barely managed to swallow whatever words they had been about to unleash. They might have been dozing off, but it was incredibly rare to see common travelers going around in mostly uniform clothing; a group that all wore white and care little of making fun of them, who else but nobles could they be?

Either way, it just so happened that Laien and Yin both liked to wear clothes that were mainly white, while Sarah and the others were wearing the servant-clothes given to them by Reian. Given that Reian and Jasmine had the pure white clothes of the White Guard, albeit without any sigils, on themselves, their group truly looked like nobles would… and well. The looks weren’t deceitful; with the exception of the villagers, the rest of them were all nobles, and very high-class ones at that.

“Who is now the head of the village?” Reian stopped briefly and asked one of the two men, both of which had fearful looks in their eyes.

“M-makir Turukan, my lord,” the man answered hurriedly and bowed, not daring to as much as look up at Reian’s face. He had been almost sure that this group was one of the nobles before, but now that Reian stood before him he could clearly feel the suffocating pressure of a martial master. He had no doubts that one word or one blow from the man before him would be enough to end his life.

“And where can we find him?” Reian asked without beating around the bush and with his indifferent militaristic attitude on a full display.

“You just need to keep walking forward until you reach the main plaza, my lord. Makir Turukan’s house is the largest one there, with the tiger sigil above the entrance,”

“Tiger?” Reian repeated, the displeasure present in his voice almost causing the poor man to faint. “To think there are still Ikarians who dare to use the sigil of the tiger as their own,” he commented in a rather dangerous tone, but just as the man was about to lose consciousness he turned away and went to join his companions who were waiting a dozen steps away.

Jasmine smiled at the approaching Reian and said with clear amusement. “Let us see who is the fool using a sigil of the tiger for himself. A Makir is a decently high military rank, he really shouldn’t have been so stupid.”

“Hey,” Laien cut in with an intrigued smile on his face. “Aren’t you being a bit too oversensitive about it? It’s not like I saw any of you wearing that thing anyway,” he pointed out curiously. Had someone in the Sarkcente Kingdom dared to use the sigils of the Great Martial Schools, it would have surely developed into an unpleasant situation, but was it the same in Arkaria?

“Because normally we don’t wear it.” Arslan was happy to explain. “If our soldiers wear the sigil, it means they are setting out to fight. The same goes for my father and me,” he said with a smile, happy to be able to tell Laien about something he wasn’t aware of beforehand.

“Huh,” Laien raised his eyebrows a little, but he nodded in understanding right afterward. Although there was something lacking in this explanation, it certainly made enough sense for him not to question it or think about it too much.

“There’s also the second part to it,” Reian said with a laugh. “Makarash is one thing, but it’s often convenient not to reveal our status outside of our home turf. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s not like I see you wearing your black dragon sigil at all,” he mentioned and sent a smirk towards Laien.

A second later, Laien’s expression changed and he laughed at himself. How could he have not thought about something so simple? He must have for some reason assumed that all nobles in the world were the brash and unpleasant types without an ounce of brain, but he should have realized it wasn’t so even without this small exchange right now. “Okay, my bad for being stupid. Let’s go,” he said and laughed at himself again, embarrassed not to have thought about something so simple. He quickly began walking down the road, wanting to avoid being teased over this silly mishap of his.

With a content and unusually warm smile, Reian followed after the three little masters. As they walked, he noticed the wry smile on Jasmine’s face; he looked at her questioningly, but she only chuckled and refused to explain what it was about, thus leaving him wondering.

“That boy, does he even realize it?” Jasmine thought in amusement as she glanced at Reian. This big kid would easily be able to notice and accurately describe Arslan’s personality as one that was extremely slow and reluctant to trust, but could he see that he himself was the same? Yet, just like Arslan, he had warmed up to those two, and to Laien in particular, very quickly and probably without any self-awareness accompanying the process. There truly was something in that boy’s blatantly honest and straightforward attitude that drew people close to him and allowed him to make friends effortlessly; in a sense, he was so very much like Mustafa in his youth… it was truly mysterious.

Meanwhile, as their group was heading down the main road towards the plaza, the two men guarding the gate were still gaping in shock.

“Hey…” one of the men, the one who hadn’t spoken yet, brought up in a clearly terrified voice. “Their talk about the tiger sigil… they couldn’t be...? Or could they?”

The second man gulped down loudly. He had already been awestruck when a Makir was assigned as a leader of their village, but if those people were who he thought they were… then a great storm was about to sweep over their Tuln Village. The White Guard from Makarash…! What kind of concept was that to them, the peasants living in a rural area of Eulene? The difference was like the one between mud and clouds; there simply was no comparison between the two.

“Our leader might change today…” the second man added grimly. Turukan turned out to be a much better head of the village compared to the previous one and even though it had only been two months since he took over, the village was beginning to prosper and grow. If all possible, he wished Turukan could remain at his spot; ah, why did his sigil need to be a tiger…?

“We are drawing quite a bit of attention,” Arslan commented, feeling a little uncomfortable with all the wary looks the villagers were giving them. It was quite different compared to when he had arrived in the City of Palee with his father and everyone; people here seemed to be distrustful of their presence. Was it because they didn’t know who their group was that they were so nervous?

“We are, but I think it’s pretty fun,” Laien said merrily. With his experiences so far, he was more than used to being stared at in various kinds of ways. Thus, with time, instead of getting agitated by what couldn’t be helped he came to see the benefits of those situations instead of just getting annoyed.

“Why?” Arslan asked simplistically. Why was it fun to be stared at by those people like that? Wasn’t it only uncomfortable?

“It’s better to draw attention than to not draw any at all, at least in this case,” Laien said with an amused smile. “It’s easier to establish yourself in a new place and make some reputation for your group if you do draw an attention of any kind. This way, you don’t need to rely on luck nor do you need to stir up trouble on your own to make people interested. The trouble will usually come to you,” he explained, then chuckled when the expression on Arslan’s face changed into one saying ‘Oh, that makes sense!’.

“Stop teaching him bad things,” Yin said with a laugh. Was Laien trying to turn Arslan into as much of a troublemaker as he was himself?

“So you say.” Laien grinned at Yin. “But aren’t you looking forward to the trouble yourself, hm?” he asked wryly; there was no way for Yin to hide his emotions from him, so there was no point lying! He could tell that although Yin preferred to be cautious, he had ended up getting swallowed up by his pace somewhere along the way and now looked forward to their adventures no less than he did.

“True,” Yin agreed a bit helplessly, but with an unchangingly playful smile on his face. “Do we need to corrupt others too, though? Who knows when our luck is going to end and we end up getting into some serious trouble with no way out,” he mentioned half-jokingly, half-seriously and exchanged a meaningful glance with Laien. The incident in the Grand Palace of Palee City was a good example; had they not been extremely fortunate, they could have been enslaved or killed back there. Well, it was also true that they had been extremely unlucky to have Mustafa arrive earlier than planned by a random chance, but they couldn’t rely on everything always going according to their plan.

“No, it’s okay,” Arslan intersected with a calm smile on his face. “I will only get corrupted a little, so don’t worry about me,” he said with apparent seriousness, causing Laien, Yin and everyone else to become a little speechless. Was this little guy trying to be cute? Because if so, then he sure enough was doing a very good job at that, such that all of them couldn’t help but smile at his words.

A few moments later, their group finally arrived at the plaza and soon spotted the building the guards had told them about. Above the entrance, there indeed was a sigil of a tiger along with the sigil of a sword which represented one of the three Houses of Ikarians. However, the former one wasn’t quite what Reian, Jasmine and the rest expected to see.