PART 1/2

Erani and I walked through the gates and entered the town of Salvation. It was evening, probably around seven in the afternoon, so we needed to get our living accommodations sorted out. We’d need someplace to sleep, after all, and for that, we’d need money. Lyr, or eyt, or whatever the people here called the currency—Bon and the others had made it sound so confusing.

So I walked into the town and looked around.

“Y’know, compared to the kingdom,” I remarked, strolling down the street alongside Erani, “this place is pretty different.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, yeah. Like, not better or worse. Just different.”

“Hmm, their architectural styles are quite divergent. I mean, back in Ordensville and Carth, I was so used to seeing those pointed roofs. But here, it feels like nine out of ten buildings have domed roofs. It's peculiar."

"I hadn't even noticed," I frowned. Erani was right though, all the roofs in this town were indeed domed.

"Well, then what did you notice?"

"There are way more windows."

"Windows?" Erani chuckled.

I nodded. “You don’t see it? Feels like there’s one in every wall. And they all have glass! Where I come from, I hardly ever saw either—windows or glass. This place isn’t rich or anything, is it? ‘Cause I feel like I’m just seeing silver pieces embedded in every single wall around here. It’s crazy.”

“Well, I don’t think there are really that many more holes in their walls than there were in ours, but I do notice what you mean about the abundance of glass windows. I believe the empire has more desert? Well, I know they have a larger territory than Koinkar, but just proportionately. If I remember right, we import a lot of glass from them.”

“Imported,” I corrected. “Not anymore, according to what those border guards said. Apparently trade has been cut off.”

“Well, that doesn't surprise me. I certainly wouldn’t want to associate with us, if I were them.”

I snorted. “Nah, that’s just cowardly. I mean, the kingdom still makes Enchanted stuff, right? Can’t believe they’d be scared off from us so easily. Especially when cutting off trade means missing out on Enchanted gear. It just weakens them, plain and simple.”

“But it's obviously a risky proposition to continue trading.”

"Sure, there are risks. But they have no reason to believe—" I paused, glancing around at the surrounding crowd. With a lowered voice, I leaned closer to Erani. “No reason to believe there’s anything suspicious going on with Koinkar’s leadership being compromised. Not like they expect to suddenly get a shipment of swords that blow them up, or anything. So what, you’re trading with some folks with a bad reputation. Big whoop, as long as they get the job done and the Enchantments are still high quality. Just doesn’t make sense why they’d be scared off so easily.”

“I’m surprised you think that way. Don’t you kind of hate the kingdom? For deciding you should…y’know…die?”

“Well yeah. But I’m not biased. I don’t exactly appreciate it, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take a deal where they give me a bunch of Enchanted shit every week. Not like it has cooties.”

“I think you are biased. You sure this isn't influenced by your desire for the empire to have more Enchanted gear for you to buy?”

I rolled my eyes. “That has nothing to do with it. Yeah, it’d help me if they made that decision. But it’s still the objectively…”

I stopped speaking as we passed by something on the side of the street. A flowerbed.

"What's the matter?" Erani asked.

“They really seem to like those, huh?”

“What?”

“The flowers. I feel like we’ve passed ten of them in, like, twenty paces.” I looked back. Sure enough, there were those same stone flowerbeds lining the streets, both sides, every few paces. And in them were the same little, white-petaled flowers.

“Well, they’re pretty.”

“Yeah, not that pretty, though. You’d think they’d at least want some more color. Or to spend their money on something more functional than a thousand flowerpots.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Erani shrugged, looking down at them. Then she got a curious expression on her face—one that I could barely see, with her Distortion Strike active. But she pursed her lips, staring at the flowers. “Are they…glowing?”

I turned my attention back to the white flowers. Sure enough, upon closer inspection, I realized they emitted a faint light. Individually, it was subtle, but together, it created a radiant glow. Then I looked around, and realized there was nothing else lighting the streets. At this time, the sun was setting, and the town should’ve been going dark. But it wasn’t. Normally, in the kingdom, the richer towns had perpetual lighting effects from Spells or Enchantments, but this place didn’t have that.

“They’re lighting fixtures,” I realized. “They're using these flowers to light up the streets.”

"Oh," Erani responded, her gaze sweeping across the scene as comprehension dawned. "Yes, that's interesting. It's a clever solution, I suppose."

“Yeah. I like it. Adds to the mystical feel, I guess,” I laughed. “Certainly feels like a work of the gods, finally finding myself here.”

Erani nodded in agreement.

We continued walking aimlessly down the main road, the darkness slowly descending, and the streets sparsely populated. Still, I couldn’t help but notice the treatment we received from those who did cross our path. Obviously, they didn’t exactly like our looks. The black, spiked armor covering my body, the wafting smoke covering Erani’s…Hells, even I emitted wisps of mist due to my constant practice of Noxious Grasp.

I was careful not to touch anyone but Erani, since Noxious Grasp would damage anyone who did brush past me. But that still left the mist wafting from my faceplate and all other cracks in the armor. I was somewhat worried about accidently touching the wrong person, but honestly, with Dark Plate on, I’d be surprised if anyone willingly got closer than a couple paces from me, much less walked up and tapped me on the shoulder. And if they did, could they really be surprised that it did some retaliatory damage? I was covered in spikes, after all. So it probably wouldn’t be an issue. And it was yet more encouragement for nobody to deal any damage to me—accidentally or otherwise.

If someone stumbled and bumped into me, if they accidentally poked me with a weapon, hells, if someone tried to mug me and ran off when they realized I was Classed and had too many Stats to knock around. Any of that could end up forcing me to waste a Time Loop to undo their gaining that forbidden knowledge of my Class. Either that or getting them to shut up some other way. Any damage dealt to me would give them a System notification talking about the Minute Mage Class, and if they saw something about a Class they’d never heard about, they’d ask people, spread the word, and eventually it would get to the Demons that I was here. So yeah, I definitely wanted to broadcast as strongly as possible: Do not approach me, do not touch me, do not provoke me. And if that meant ruffling a few feathers, well, so be it.

My business wasn’t with the civilians, anyway. Erani and I knew where we needed to get money, and it wasn’t by interacting with randos off the street.

“You think they have a lodge for the Adventurer’s Guild? Or just a job board?” I asked Erani.

“Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

After some asking around—which wasn’t exactly easy, given our appearances—we eventually got directions to a place we could find work as adventurers. And it was a full guild lodge, which was nice. I hadn’t honestly expected one, given the size of the town—job boards were much more common among smaller places like these, especially when their income was lower—but hey, it was a pleasant surprise.

The building was short and wide, double front doors inviting us in. So we walked up, already hearing the sound of commotion coming from inside.

When we opened the doors, the noise of a dozen conversations and probably a couple arguments greeted us, alongside the unmistakable warm glow of a tavern interior. Tables littered the lodge floor, with people sitting all around slamming beers down with their buddies. It was around dinnertime, so the borderline irresistible scent of good food wafted into my nose.

“It’s taking everything I have not to just run up and start eating right off of everyone’s plates,” Erani muttered to me with a chuckle.

“Sounds like a good idea,” I laughed back. “I think we should just rob ‘em all for all the meat and bread they have.”

“Yeah, rob a room of Classers. Perfect plan.”

We walked into the room. It wasn’t like it was all tavern, of course—the guild served as a rest lodge for adventurers, but its main purpose was a place of business. Down, past the bar was a desk with a receptionist, where we could bring job orders we wanted to accept, and on a few walls were big boards with dozens of papers pinned up—all of them offers that could make us some money.

As we stepped into the lodge, my boots thunking against the wooden boards, I definitely caught a few suspicious glares, but it was honestly less than I’d expected. Though, in retrospect, it made sense. Or, at least, it did when I took note of the way half of these Classers looked. Most had some form of armor on—probably all coming from jobs, themselves—and many of them had some sort of magical effect going. Sure, not all were quite as obvious as Erani’s Distortion Strike, but I noticed a couple people with glowing halos of light floating above their heads, some others with bright green light shining from their eyes, and one guy even had his entire head on fire—though the flames themselves seemed harmless.

Yeah, among Classers, we at least didn’t look too weird. Some people probably even recognized Erani’s Spell as Distortion Strike, with it being a somewhat known Spell of a somewhat common Class.

So we carefully moved our way through the room—again, with me keeping my distance from the surrounding people. Not as easy when they weren’t actively afraid or creeped out by my appearance, but I tried to give my best menacing glare to anyone to walk by, which effectively signaled for them to take a step to the side, and I kept my distance from the more crowded center of the room.

There were a few boards put up all along the different walls of the room, none of which were labeled, so we just walked up to a random one. This one, when we got close enough, we realized wasn’t for available jobs, but rather a ‘looking for party’ board, where individual adventurers could put up requests for larger parties to take them in, that way they could take on higher-difficulty jobs with less risk. Not what we wanted, so we moved on.

The next one we looked at was what we were searching for. A job board. Perfect. Time to find some work.