-I see.

Avian replied, having not much to ask anymore as he basically heard everything he wanted to know, Cornelia though was a bit surprised as she expected Avian to dig a bit a deeper and have more questions, then again even if she was currently being repressed by Avian, she still thought highly of herself which is why maybe she was wrong.

But while thinking about this, Cornelia couldn’t help but suddenly ask as she realized something from recollecting the events from the last 6 days.

-Hey…Lukas…why did you never ask me what my blessing was when you started making me train?

The question itself was pretty fair considering her situation and Avian’s actions as telling someone your blessing would make it easier to train them, but Avian simply turned towards her before looking unimpressed and a bit disappointed before saying.

-Rather than answer this question, how about I ask you something instead, why do you think I am training you the way I am?

-Training me the way you are? You mean why you are making me run while carrying heavy rocks or making me learn how to use weapons and then spar with you?

-Yes, for what purpose do you think I am making you do this, obviously I already knew that you were pretty fast on your feet and swift with your limbs by simply observing you, but think deeper than that, you are a [Thief] obviously you would be fast and dexterous, those are your strong points, but what is it that you are lacking?

Cornelia momentarily thought about it, recalling the training she did every day and combining with Avian’s question, she could only come to one conclusion as she answered hesitantly.

-uhm…my stamina?

Avian nodded, going back to his cleaning as he continued explaining.

-Yes, but more precisely, your constitution, remember back to when you saw me fight, do you think it’s easy to fight so many bandits at once even with the help of my crows? No, the amount of energy I spent is far more then you can imagine, the reason I could fight for so long was because I had a lot of stamina and energy to spare because of my powerful constitution, your speed and agility won’t mean anything if you can’t keep it up, for example right now if you tried to run away from me I obviously wouldn’t be able to catch you immediately since I am not as fast as you, but I won’t need to catch up to you and simply would need to continue my pace while keeping track of you until you are dead tired and I can easily catch you, fighting is the same, those who win fights are without a doubt those who are stronger, but they are also those who usually can last longer, take more hits and endure more pain, since I am going to be taking care of you for the next 3 years, I expect you to be able to carry yourself without me constantly looking out for you so that I can make my job easier, which is why regardless of what your blessing was going to be, you are no use to me if you can’t even keep up with me.

-…

The long dialogue seemed to be put Cornelia into a slight stupor as she tried to digest it all, up until now, Avian didn’t once explain why he demanded Cornelia to train, Cornelia herself simply made the conclusion that he wanted her to become stronger, but only now she understood that she wasn’t training to become stronger, but rather not to become a nuisance to Avian, from the way he was talking Cornelia realized that Avian’s intentions for training her was because he would going somewhere that would require her to be strong if she wanted to follow him, she also realized that she didn’t even know why Avian was going to Alimdal in the first place, even though she told me her story and her reason, she knew next to nothing about Avian’s reason for going to a place like Alimdal, heck even the most basic thing like your companions blessing was completely unknown to her.

Cornelia didn’t like that, even though she was experiencing so much pain and sadness every day for the past 6 days while painstakingly following Avian’s every command no matter how painful and exhausting, the fact that he didn’t even deem her worthy of knowing his blessing that most companions like them would share to each other didn’t feel right to her, admittedly it had only been 6 days, but for Cornelia who experienced so much for the past 6 days it almost felt like an eternity.

She wanted to know, she wanted to know at least that much, why she felt so entitled or stubborn was something Cornelia didn’t understand, but she wanted Avian to trust her even a little bit.

She may get punished for doing what she was about to do, but she didn’t feel fear and simply looked at Avian with a bit of determination before asking.

-Lukas…what is your blessing?

Avian, didn’t even twitch when he heard the question almost as if he heard a common line or a meaningless sentence, he simply snapped his finger before a crow which was perched atop the carriage suddenly swooped down and landed onto Avian’s shoulder with a caw.

-Shouldn’t you have already guessed? I am a [Monster Tamer].

-Hah?!

Cornelia exclaimed, dumbfounded as she could have never guessed the strong and cold Avian to possess such a notorious and weak blessing, she even considering whether or not he was lying to her, but seeing him control the crow and many more at that, she could only accept this reality as well as she started to whether or not she was actually safe with the person who she was entrusted to.

Avian didn’t care what Cornelia was thinking, him revealing his blessing to her was something inevitable so he did it without a second thought since tomorrow they would finally arrive in Alimdal, obviously Avian would never tell Cornelia about his second blessing or anyone else for the matter as that was a secret he needed to keep to his grave if he didn’t want to have an early death or turned into a research subject.

In anyway, Cornelia and Avian spend the night just like the always did, as soon as they woke up next morning, they got onto the carriage and continued their journey, after 6 hours of traveling, from a distance both Avian and Cornelia could finally see their destination which was a large town surrounded by forests and mountains.

As they got closer the smell of burning coal and molten iron could be discerned as the clanking and beating of metal could be heard.

Black pillars of smoke rose to the sky from all kinds of different places even though it wasn’t that cold in this season, making it clear the pillars were here for another reason connected with the sound of beating metal.

Even though Alimdal was a pretty new town in the frontier, it already had distinguished its specialty as one of the up and coming best metal manufacturing towns and metal producers.

As they finally entered the town through its gates, Avian and Cornelia saw numerous adventures and merchants walking its streets and selling their wares.

The town was bumbling and bustling, it was truly a place full of opportunity.

Avian smiled as he watched, raising the hood from his cloak before Cornelia followed suit as they got off the carriage.

========================

-Ah! I’ve been expecting you! The owners of the general store, I am so delighted to see you, I was getting worried that you wouldn’t come to our humble town! Now don’t let me hold you up in ceremony, please sit down and have a cup of tea! I am sure you are tired from the long journey you experienced.

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Tanner, the lord’s representative aka the governor or one in charge, exclaimed as soon as Avian and Cornelia entered the town hall and showed him the proof of ownership.

Being approximately 170cms tall and being on the thinner side, Tanner wore some formal but humble set of clothes while holding a diplomatic smile on his face coupled with his dark yellow hair and sharp brown eyes, he was no fighter that was clear from his build alone, but Avian still didn’t underestimate him, as people like Tanner were far more dangerous than most axe wielding warriors, in fact Avian would rather deal with a crazed axe wielding madman then deal with someone like Tanner as Tanner was in the category of people Avian had to deal the most with back on earth.

Government officials or more precisely local official in this case, how he hated dealing with tax collectors, even here he couldn’t avoid them, but that was just life.

-Thank you.

Avian curtly accepted the offer and sat down on a chair in front of Tanner while Cornelia followed suit in silence, before coming here Avian had already told Cornelia what she had to do before entering, he didn’t want her to talk without his approval and if she was talked to he wanted her to steer the conversation to Avian so he could deal with it, Cornelia understood none of this which is why she was more than happy to let Avian deal with everything troublesome before sitting down smiling joyfully as she couldn’t wait to finally taste tea again after so much time.

Not too far off a women stood near the door to the office behind them, she was quite the mature women, exuding an intellectual beauty with her glasses and hourglass figure, her hair was jet black while her eyes were mostly brown with a tint of yellow as she stood straight and in a modest fashion observing the three with her eagle like eyes.

Tanner had already introduced this woman Shalila who was his secretary and a local, normally you would assume a secretary like her to be someone who does odd-jobs for the person in charge, like making tea, but in this case it wasn’t it all as Tanner was the one who was making and serving the fragrant tea while the secretary simply stood there and continued to observe, Avian even sensed the same amount of [Aura] distributed over Shalila’s body just like Avrid, sensing this Avian immediately knew what Shalila’s real role here was as he turned towards Tanner without touching the tea that was served.

-Since I already presented the deed, I’d like this to finish more quickly if you don’t mind governor Tanner.

-Oh, very eager one you are Lukas, a young one at that too, so young in fact that I didn’t expect to see someone like you with the deed, but I feel that too is a good thing as this town is still in its infancy and will need young people like you.

Tanner said, making Avian feel as if he was implying something, but her shrugged it off since he didn’t particularly have anything to hide or did something illegal for the deed.

Tanner noticed this and thought that this young boy who only just seemed to have come of age who came here with the deed to be an interesting character, Tanner didn’t actually know who would come to show him the deed and become the new owner of the small general store only that they were coming and that they had some interesting circumstances that were kept secret.

His eyes that were flowing around Avian gently couldn’t help but move towards the other person present which was a young missus that had a noble demeanor to her with the way she drank her tea, already Tanner found himself imagining all kinds of scenarios with the prominent one being that the boy called Lukas was the young women’s caretaker, but looking at their age Tanner found it to be extremely strange and odd as the age for something like this didn’t match for how young the boy looked.

In the end Tanner couldn’t figure out anything and the fact that the young lady stayed silent through all this told Tanner everything he really needed to know as he returned back to Avian who still hadn’t touched his tea.

-(cautious this one is)

Tanner observed, before looking at the deed in more detail to check that there was no problem and stamping the deed for his approval of the change of ownership before giving it back to Avian.

The seal of king was something Tanner rarely had seen, it brought with it tons of authority which is why he didn’t dare to be too inquiring about these two even if he was curious.

Thinking this was over, Tanner thought the steely boy would get up and leave, but surprisingly he still stood still and suddenly asked.

-I’d like to also submit for a local trade permit.

-Eh? You…you want a local trade permit?

Tanner asked, slightly ludicrous as he didn’t expect to hear something like this from Avian who by all accounts looked incredibly young but also had a strange air of maturity and wisdom to him that Tanner couldn’t deny.

His curiosity was even more stoked after this, but he kept mum before pulling out a piece of parchment from under his table with something written on it, he slid it over the table towards Avian, Avian took it reading the parchment basically already knowing what It had written on it but reading it again just to make sure.

The contract was something called a local trade permit, it was a contract with the lord of this region that allowed the person who had it to sell items in the lord’s territory.

Avian already knew of this before even coming here as he had researched about this, this contract was actually a pretty new innovation that the lord of this region came up with by herself, a pretty good innovation in Avian’s opinion even if it was slightly inferior as it set the rules straight for foreign trade and any other trade that went on in this territory.

Basically there were 2 kinds of contracts or permits, the first being a foreign trade permit, the second being a local trade permit.

The foreign trade permit was for people like peddling merchants who came from other territories to sell their wares, these merchants could freely and without hassle trade their wares in small villages, but as soon as they entered a town with the lord’s representative watching over it, they would need to show a foreign trade permit to be allowed to even sell anything in that town.

How this worked was that the foreign merchant in question would go to the town hall where the lord’s representative was and ask for the permit which cost money, once they got the permit they would then also need to pay more money to have it stamped so that they could sell their wares in that town or city, they would later have it stamped again for free to signify that they had finished their business in that town or city, the stamps of all towns and cities were unique and once it is was known that they didn’t stamp it when they left or entered then a serious penalty would be given out with either needing to pay or dealing with the town guards which usually meant arrest.

The permit itself was some secret magical item that could not be forged and could only be acquired through the lord’s representative who acquired it from the lord herself.

This all made foreign trade fairly streamlined in a sense, but if it was Avian he would tax each individual item for a portion of its market price and get even more money that way, but Avian wasn’t the lord and if he suggested that he would shoot his own leg instead of helping himself.

The second permit which Avian was asking for was the local trade permit, this permit can only be acquired by people who possess property or rather the deed to a property like Avian in a town or city. Smithy’s, stores, bakeries all used this permit and the way it worked was that they were given a booklet and once every month a tax collector would come to stamp the booklet and collect taxes for that month which was a fixed amount that rarely changed, the booklet was ordinary but the stamp was a magical item so that once the booklet is stamped it proved that the person who owned the store had paid his or her taxes.

This was a lot easier to manage, the stamps themselves could also never be stolen or used by others as they had a type of secret to them that didn’t allow for it which only the lord knew.

Avian read the contract a few times and seeing that nothing was wrong with it he accepted it as he pricked his thumb with a small dagger on his body before putting a bloody thumb print on the contract.

Tanner gave Avian another contract to stamp with his stamp on it, not a bloody one but a real and magical one which Avian too stamped before Tanner gave Avian his booklet with both of them having a copy of the contract.

After everything was finished, Tanner didn’t know what to think as he watched Avian put away the contract with the booklet, he wanted to continue talking but Avian had jumped him to the punch as he suddenly asked once more.

-The contract said that I would be exempt from taxes for the first 6 months, does that mean that I can immediately start selling my wares in my stores if I want to?

-Ehh…yes! If I may ask, what are you intending on selling? To be graced by such a young and ambitious young man I feel like I wouldn’t be deserving of my position if I didn’t know more!

-Heh…really?

Avian replied with a smile, recognizing the shrewdness of Tanner as he tried to use compliments to get more info out of Avian, but he likely understood that he wouldn’t get much as he could only smile wryly, business seemed to have concluded at this point and both parties were ready to leave, Cornelia had already finished her first cup of tea was close to finishing her second cup which she poured herself without the other 3 noticing somehow.

Seeing that things were about to concluded Cornelia quickly finished her cup with delish.

They two sides stood up, Tanner about to go for a handshake, but just as he was about to do it, the door to his office suddenly slammed open.

Shalila the secretary jumped forward as she faced the door with her hand drawing two short swords from who knows where.

Everyone else too was focused on the sudden commotion, but upon closer inspection they immediately identified the person to be a guard as he wore the uniform the guards around here wore, while sweating and panting as he looked alarmed and in a hurry.

-Governor! It’s an emergency! A monster horde is head this way!

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