Arc 6. A seemingly endless loss
Road to a Hero:
Three Chances in Another World
Chapter 23. Shopping
Walking about the bustling roads of Constal, Edward, Peter, and Lance are imbued with wonder. The brick roads spiral towards the center, the large buildings towering over them, and tons of art everywhere, it’s almost too much.
Peter: “IT’S SOOO COOL!”
Lance: “Could you shut up? Stop being so loud.”
Edward looks at Lance with a nine-yard stare, scaring him into silence.
Edward: “We can look around, but we’re out here to pick up masks first. Then we can party later, but we can’t be out too long. Julius told me that we’re going to meet the mayor and his family tomorrow.”
Peter: “Uggggg, can we just chill for a second? We gotta go here, then here, and oh wait? Now we gotta go here.”
Edward: “I understand where you’re coming from, but if you didn’t wanna go you should have stayed in Greenvale.”
Lance: “Ooooooooo.”
Peter pushes Lance, trying to get him to shut up, but Lance pushes him back. They begin drawing attention, due to the fact they’re about to break out into a fight, but luckily Edward puts a stop to it. He picks Lance up off of Peter, tossing him to the side.
Edward: “Do you guys need to go back to the cottage?”
Peter: “He can, I wanna look around for those animal masks.”
Edward: “Okay, now let’s go to that store over there, it has masks on display so it must be selling them.”
So they begin to walk over there, entering the shop. A small bell rings, notifying the shop owner that someone has entered. Two older women holding measuring tapes.
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Edward: “Oh high we were just looking for some -”
They both cut Edward off, speaking at the same time.
Ping: “Hi, I’m Ping!”
Ting: “Hi, I’m Ting!”
Ping & Ting: “My my, what different body types, we’ll have masks that fit your personality and shape size faster than an Ever-Mander.”
They quickly measure their faces, then run off to the shelves. And in just a few seconds they present all three of them with masks. A wolf for Edward, a dragon for Lance, and a rabbit for Peter. Lance puts his mask on, and once he sees Peter’s rabbit mask he begins laughing. Though the wolf and dragon masks look like how you would think, the rabbit mask has a little more detail put into it. Blue swirling eyebrows, a blue swirling handlebar mustache right under the pink nose, and hot pink for the inner ear. Peter gets extremely aggravated by Lance’s laughter, but instead of doing anything, he lets it rest. But it’s important to keep in mind that his laughter cuts deep, extremely deep. Edward takes out a gold coin, causing the shop owners to get extremely happy.
Ping & Ting: “Oh you’re so kind, you’re too kind, but we’ll take it if you will.”
Edward freezes, due to the fact he was going to ask if they could trade the gold coins for silver coins, but they take the gold coin instead, running off into the back of the shop.
Lance: “Did you just get robbed?”
Edward: “I think so? Whatever, let’s go look around some more.”
So that they do, looking at all the wondrous things. Statues of previous kings and queens in the city squares, how there are strangely only humans, with a lack of any other culture. Though the foods are different, using Demi-human styles of cooking, including their use of spice, cuts of meat, and techniques of cooking such meats. Soldiers walk about, seemingly a bit lazily. Everyone is a bit heavier, having bigger bellies than most, showing their richness. Though, just like any other city, they do have a homelessness issue, it’s been regulated to certain areas, where they can have places to eat and sleep. Clean water, clean streets, plentiful amounts of food and other resources. Even if the skies are always a bit cloudy and gloomy at least what’s on the ground is bright and happy. Peter drags Edward and Lance into each blacksmith shop, staring at every single small invention. He begs Edward for a small amount of money to spend, which Edard obliges. Peter then takes out a list, marking off everything he needs for an invention.
Edward: “What are you making?”
Peter: “A couple of different things, I want to see if I can make my rifle shoot faster, make a smaller machine to craft my ammo, make a shock glove, and most importantly, a small steam engine for the Silver Chariot mark two!”
Lance: “You’re really into all this stuff aren’t you rabbit.”
Peter throws a pebble at Lance, causing Lance to get angry enough to try and hit Peter, but Edward stops it once more.
Peter: “Alright, we just need…to get a lot of metal, coal, flame crystals, screws…a lot of stuff.”
Edward: “Alright, well I guess we can help you get it.”
Lance: “Ugh.”
A few hours pass as they collect the items, big bags of materials, and the location of their cottage so they can ship the bigger items. It takes all day, but they finally get everything Peter needs, so they can finally make it back to the cottage. And surprisingly on their way back, they find Gray, Soku, and Rosemary walking out of the mask shop they visited earlier.
Edward: “You guys finally woke up. We were just heading back.”
Gray: “Um, yeah, I think those sisters in there robbed us. We got these cool masks though.”
Rosemary holds up the mask they got, a skull mask for Gray, a fox mask for Soku, and a cat mask for Rosemary.
Soku: “And yet you didn’t let me bargain with them, or get the money back.”
Rosemary: “Don’t be rash, we have a lot of money.”
Soku: “AND WE COULD HAVE A LOT MORE!”
Gray begins to chuckle, stopping the discourse between them.
Lance: “We’re about to head back, the nightlife starts soon so we gotta get his trash off of us before the fun begins.”
Peter is annoyed by Lance’s words, then he’s even more annoyed when Lance moves closer to Soku. But she ends it quickly by blasting and pushing him, which causes him to fall due to the heavy weight of the bags. Lance gets angry when everyone begins laughing at him, but he shrugs it off, walking off with his ego a bit wounded.
Peter: “Dick head.”
End of Chapter Twenty-three