It was still close to the middle of the day, well within the time that people would be working throughout the week, so as I walked on the clearly much better maintained road I was given the chance to see the skills of a Farmer in person.
Back at Mantlemount most people had small plots of dirt near their houses that they used to grow some food, but most of our food came from either hunting, foraging, or trade, so there were actually very few people with even a general skill related to it.
Watching this person work, I couldn’t help but wonder what Paths I would have been offered if things went differently on that mountain. By then it was pretty obvious to me that the lightning strike somehow improved my lightning affinity to the point that it completely drowned out all of the other possible mage classes I should have been offered. I should have at least had the default Mage path, but maybe that needs a larger breadth of affinities or something.
I shook my head of those thoughts and generated some lightning in my hands. This Path was still pretty cool, and might even be better than anything else I would have been offered. Maybe I could have gotten Life Mage or something, but I’m not sure I would have liked it that much.
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The sun was getting pretty close to the horizon, but it was still bright out as I finally neared the gates of the city. It didn’t have walls like I’d imagined, but it looked like there was still an inspection in order to get into the city regardless. The line was relatively short, so I didn’t mind too much, but it would still doubtlessly be quite annoying.
Whilst waiting I occupied myself by checking to see if I’d finally managed to level up walking, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it had actually increased.
General Skills [2/5] Walking 5 Condense Mana 2
Apparently the short time I’d had to practise Condense Mana was enough for a level. It looked like it was going to be much easier to level than Walking for now, but I suspected that would change soon enough.
The inspection process seemed to be much faster than I’d thought, since before I’d finished musing on the speed of levelling my skills, I noticed that it was already my turn to talk with the Guard and had to quickly pay attention to avoid seeming rude.
“Name, Class, and Age please,” He looked like he didn’t really care about my answer, but I imagine anyone would after asking the same question what must have easily been dozens of times just today.
“Robert Zeneki, Lightning Adept, 18,” For some reason my answer caused a flash of concern to cross his face before it fell back into a practised blank slate.
“Alright, go ahead,” For some reason he just lets me in without any further question, which for some reason strikes me as odd.
“Don’t you need to, like, verify it or something?”
He gives me an odd look and says, “You’ve never been to a city, have you?” At my nod he explains, “City Guards can get a skill to detect lies, so if you’re not too high a level we can tell easily enough if what you’re saying is true.”
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“Ah, that makes sense. Well, thanks for explaining, I’ll let you get back to work I guess.” I make to leave but, after a moment of hesitation, the guard calls out to me.
“Hey, kid. Before you go I should warn you, there’ve been a lot of mages disappearing around here lately, especially the ones with elemental focuses. Be careful, alright?” I nod and head deeper into the city, though I don’t really intend to change my plans over something that probably won’t even affect me in the end.
It’s probably a coincidence anyway, people in the cities love to exaggerate things. Or so I’ve heard.
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The first thing I planned on doing was finding an inn I could stay at for a while, until I gathered enough money for a house or something, so I wandered around aimlessly and checked a few places that looked promising. Unfortunately, whilst they were all inns, none of them had any room for some reason. I guessed a lot of people must be doing the same thing as me, namely coming to the city before managing to get work or a place to live.
In the last inn I’d checked, a place called The Red Hill, the Innkeeper had directed me to another place nearby that might still have had some room left. Apparently the Innkeeper wasn’t too good at cleaning the place, which was strange since they were supposed to get skills for that, or so the man had told me.
After a quick walk, I found myself in front of a building with a sign that read The Haggard Hoarbear. Glancing down the rest of the street, it was certainly in worse condition than its surroundings, but it wasn’t really that bad.
Walking inside I could see that it was clearly emptier than anywhere else I’d checked that day. There were a few people here and there, sitting alone with a mug of beer, and a single group of three chatting animatedly whilst eating a meal, but otherwise all of the tables were clear.
I went to the bar to speak with who I could only assume to be the Innkeeper, although I did still ask just to be sure, and ask what the cost for a room would be.
“2 pieces a night, and if ya buy 5 in advance ya get free breakfast too,” He spoke gruffly, with none of the, admittedly obviously fake, cheer that the others I’d met had.
“Copper?” I only had 24 coppers, which is less than a quarter of a silver piece.
He gave me an incredulous look before he spoke, “Of course it’s copper, do ya think ya walked into the Gold Palace or somethin’?” That was a relief, if it was silver I would have had to find some work fast.
“Sorry, I’ve never stayed in an inn before, I have no idea how much it would cost,” I say as I count out 10 coppers, obviously not planning to say no to the free breakfasts.
“Ah, so ye’re one of them adventurers here fer the bounty then? Ya think a little greenhorn can handle someone like that?”
What? Was this guy messing with me? I haven’t heard about any bounties.
Something must have shown on my face, because he soon followed up by saying, “What, ya really don’t know? Ya sure did choose an interestin’ time ta come ta Ironhold didn’ ya?” He laughed for a moment, but now I was even more lost than before.
He once again read me like a book and decided to actually explain what was going on to me, “Someone’s been killin’ mages ‘round here fer a good while now, ‘cept recently they managed to kill the daughter of some big shot merchant up near tha’ capital. Now they’ve put out a massive bounty on ‘im, and it keeps growin’ too. Last I ‘eard it was close to a full gold coin.”
I was shocked to think there was a serial killer with a bounty worth so much right where I’d decided to start my new life. A full gold coin, I could hardly comprehend the amount that I could buy with that. I’d heard someone in the village talking about how they’d found out their cousin was a high level farmer that made 86 copper a week, and even that only added up to a little under 45 silver a year. A full gold coin would probably be able to last me at least 2 years if I didn’t spend too much, maybe 3.
“Hey, yer not thinkin’ about goin’ after ‘im are ya? People say he must be nearly level 30, and you’re probably barely past level 1,” I was already level 4, but I decided that wouldn’t help.
“I wasn’t really considering it, but that’s a lot of money. Is that why all of the other inns were full?”
“Lots of adventurers like yerself are comin’ to have a chance of that gold, ‘course none of ‘em are past level 20 so no one’s got a good chance of actually findin’ the bastard, but it’s good fer business so I can’t complain,” I also decided not to correct his belief that I was an adventurer, it didn’t really matter to me what someone else thinks I do for a living, and I’d probably be out of this place soon enough.
After that our conversation died off and I was handed the key to my room, room 3 apparently, so I quickly headed up to check it out. It was smaller than my old room, but not by that much, and it was sparsely furnished by a bed, a bedside table, and a wooden chest that was unfortunately empty. Out the window all I could see was the alley between this building and the next one, but if I leaned partially out of it I could see the sky that had already noticeably darkened whilst I was talking to the innkeeper.
Oh wait, I didn’t even get his name, or give him mine.
Well, it didn’t really matter much anyway, and I was too tired to go back down and ask him for it, so I decided to just drop my stuff in the trunk, not even bothering to unpack anything, and lay in bed, quickly falling asleep and dreaming of endless, empty grey roads.