Chapter 45

Xan stood there for a second or two, with eyes wide and unblinking, before he composed himself and then promptly began laughing. It was embarrassing, the whole thing.

“Stop it!” I hissed at him. “It isn’t funny. I could have knocked your head right off.”

“I highly doubt it,” he said in between laughs.

I couldn’t even bring myself to check whether anyone was watching us, but I was sure they were. They might not have seen what had happened, but I was certain that at least one person actually did and they would tell everyone else soon enough.

“I was about to congratulate you for holding it together for so long,” he said, after most of his laughter had passed. “Even if you win no fights, this, this was priceless.”

“Why were you standing so close to me?”

“I didn’t know you had issues with personal space,” he said.

“It’s me! Of course I have issues with personal space,” I said turning back to face the counter, and the animus receptionist, as I added, “I thought you were starting to understand me.”

Having released some of the tension I had had, I was finally able to pay proper attention to the receptionist. Since Xan hadn’t said anything about the animus being feminine in general as a species, I assumed the receptionist to be a female of her species, dropping my gaze a little confirmed that assessment. Seriously, what was it with receptionists and big chest areas? I returned my gaze to her face almost immediately as that thought crossed my mind.

What I had thought was white hair, was actually white gold with streaks of black. If I had to guess, the individual strands were actually white, gold or black. The hair was long, falling down past her shoulders, with the front strands held back by black clips to keep them behind her flurry ears, which were to the side of the head, and not on top of it as anime would have me believe. Her golden-brown eyes were slightly big for her face, in comparison to a human that is, and they were staring directly at me. Shit, I must have been staring for a while.

Dropping my gaze to the counter, I realized that she had already returned my card, and with it came a key with a room number, which was…

“Oh my Mesily! One-twelve! Xan,” I exclaimed as I turned back around to my companion, pushing the key to his face, the embarrassment of being caught staring long forgotten, “look at it. What number is this?”

“You already said it,” he said, leaning back a little to create a bit of space between him and the key.

“I want you to say it,” I insisted, pushing the key further into his face.

“It doesn’t mean anything. They could be assigning the rooms at random,” he said as he leaned to the side to face the receptionist directly. “Right?”

I turned just in time to find her shaking her head, with a slight twist to her lips that could be construed as a smile, like she had already picked up on what the issue was.

“How many competitors are you expecting?” I asked her, just to get a rough estimate of how late I was. May be I was smack-dab in the middle.

“One hundred twenty-four,” she replied, completely dashing my hopes, and had those being elongated canines?

I shook my head as I got back on the more important issue, turning to face Xan again with a mortified expression. He at least had the decency to look apologetic.

“In my defense, it has hardly been more than a day,” he said with slightly raised hands.

After a few seconds, I deflated. What was done, was done. There was nothing else that I could do about it, but I vowed to myself, come the Duchies, I would make sure that I wasn’t among the last people to get assigned their rooms. I turned back to the counter, retrieved my card and gave the receptionist a weak thank you before heading for the stairs to the left.

The journey through the stairs to the first floor was unceremoniously quiet, each of us preferring to stay quiet for our own reasons, mine being that I felt like I didn’t have any more energy left in me to interact. It had been a long day, which I spent around people. The splitting headache was still with me, and based on prior experience, it wouldn’t go away until I took a nap, a long one advisably.

I came to a stop at the first floor though, and not because that was my floor. No, at the side of the hallway the stairs ended at, there was a plate with ‘I – XXX’ etched in it. And yes, it was in Roman numerals. I looked at my key, which had the number in the Arabic numerals, then back again at the plate.

“Are you coming up?” Xan asked. I looked up to find him already on the stairs leading up to the second floor.

I looked back at my key before pointing to the plate, saying, “This, they are different.”

“Yeah, I can see that. It means this floor is for guests, non-competitors,” he said, and I could hear the irritation creeping in to his tone, maybe the long day was getting to him too.

I hurried up the stairs and joined him as we went to the second floor, and true enough, the plate there had the numbers ‘1 - 30’ etched in it, which had me wondering.

“What do you call them? These numbers and the ones in the first floor,” I asked as we took the stairs to the third floor.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Numbers,” he answered.

“No, like how do you differentiate between the two?” I asked for clarification as I figured there was no way they called them Arabic and Roman numerals, I wasn’t sure if I was explaining myself well though.

“The ones in the first floor are human numerals, while these,” he pointed to the plate at the third floor with ’31 - 80’ etched in it, “and the ones in your key are elf numerals.”

“Hmm… what about the other species? Do they have numerals of their own?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not much for history, but I do know that there are arguments on the origin of the human numerals.”

That pique my interest, I liked learning about how things came to be. “Oh! Like they came from a divine source, a god descended from up high and bestowed them to humans?”

“God!?” he asked in amusement, shaking his head. “If something gave the humans anything it would be a demon. No, I meant whether or not humans are actually the source species for the human numerals. Dwarves too are known to have used them as far back as our history goes. Some argue that it was the dwarves that created them and the humans copied them; others claim that it was an independent development on both species; and some claim that the two species worked together to come up with them. After all, dwarves and humans relations go way back.”

As Xan finished the statement, we finally made it to the fourth floor where the floor-plate indicated my room was. There were no more stairs so it had to be the top most floor the Inn had.

“Or maybe it was the dwarves that stole the numerals from humans,” I pointed out as we began heading to where my room would be, near the other end of floor based on the alternate numbering of the rooms.

“If there was any stealing, it was done by the humans, not the dwarves,” Xan said, already steps ahead of me as we neared the middle of the floor.

“Really? You are making it sound like humans are the bad guys here, where is the sense of solidarity?” I asked him. I honestly didn’t care that much which species had which history, as long as they were no longer openly fighting each other, I was good.

Xan gave me a questioning gaze as we neared my room. I had assumed wrong before, I wasn’t near the end of the floor, rather near the middle of the floor. If I remembered the numbers etched in the floor-plate correctly, the floor housed numbers eighty-one through one-thirty. If there were one-twenty-four expected competitors, then several rooms would be left vacant for the entire two weeks of the Counties.

“Do you actually know nothing of your own history?” Xan asked as we came to stop in front of what would be my room for the two weeks of the Counties.

“What?” I asked in confusion, having lost track of what we had been talking about. Just to cover up for that fact, I asked, “Why?”

Xan just shook his head, then said, “Humans have been the instigator of all major conflicts in Mesily, even most pandemics, sometimes intentionally, it is argued.”

I had been right when I asked Clare why all my options leaned towards the evil side. At the time, I had subconsciously not included humans in that statement, but I should have. I was also more than certain that goblins had at one point of their history being minions to the humans. Call it a gut feeling.

I opened the door and walked into the room. I had been right; it was exactly like the one I had resided in for the Baronies. The overall layout might have been different, but the size of the room, what it contained, the reading desk, the bed, the hangar, and the extra door I was sure led to the washroom, they were all the same.

“Home sweet home,” I said flatly as I walked into the room properly, directly going to confirm that the washroom was indeed the same.

“Not bad,” I heard Xan say as he closed the door behind him.

“Everything is as it was in my last room. It doesn’t even feel like I left Sjuma, like I could walk out and I’d meet Paul and Lina at our usual table,” I said as I returned to the main room.

Xan was seated at the desk, looking rather worn out for the day. It was the worst I had ever seen him, then again, I hadn’t known him for long, maybe that was his usual appearance every day at the end of the day.

“Let’s go, so I can get my things and you can rest. You look like you might collapse at any time,” I said as I went for the door.

“How are you not tired after all we have done today?” he asked getting up from the chair.

“Competitor, remember? Plus, I’m tired too, emotionally.”

“Yeah, but you’ve only been a competitor for like what? A week? How much difference does that make?” he asked as we began how long walk back to his room. It is his room now that I have a room to call my own.

…

In the end, I ended up sleeping at Xan’s for the night, one last time, he called it. Early morning found me up and ready to go to my new room, but there was a slight problem, I didn’t know the way to it. During my day-and-half stay at Choska, I had managed to memorize no routes at all. The first day, we had spent it at the concert hall; half of the second day was spend at the bazaar, and the rest jumping from stall to stall while we played at armor. When it actually mattered for me to know my way around, I realized I hadn’t done anything to help me in that regards.

I had to wait for over an hour for Xan to wake up and be done with his morning duties. Then he complained about how he had to have breakfast first, which I hadn’t ordered because I didn’t know how to do that.

Then it was off to my new room.

I carried everything I owned myself, not wanting to burden Xan anymore. There were the four staffs on my shoulder I called my weapons, my backpack with my old clothes and boots, and then a handheld bag with my new sets of clothes and boots. Safe to say, it was ungainly and very heavy. Individually, the items didn’t pack that much weight, but when carried altogether at the same time, it was a different matter. It felt like I was carrying more than half my own weight, which was impossible.

By the time we exited the building, I was already sweating. Xan set out at a slow pace at first, but that was just torture.

“If you want to be helpful, then we need to get there as fast as possible without actually running,” I told him through strained teeth as I tried, and failed, to step out of the way of an oncoming passerby.

After a third failed attempt at that, I gave up on getting out of the way, as it was, I was more than hundred plus kilos in combined weight, if anyone thought they could easily bump me off the way, they were in for a surprise.

Xan picked up the pace, and after nearly getting knocked down, I began walking in a more forceful gait, strong heavy steps with a more rigid core. It had the benefit of helping dissuade anyone from just trying to push me aside, but the downside was that all my muscles were screaming before we even walked what felt like hundred meters. I didn’t know how far The Competitors’ Inn was, but I didn’t think I would be able to make it without taking a rest first.

I occasionally felt the staffs slipping from my grasp, forcing me to lean forward a little to get them back on balance. When I felt the fingers holding the handheld bag grow numb, I stopped to switch hands with the staffs. The handheld bag had the most expensive items for me, with a numb hand, it would be so easy for someone to easily snatch the whole bag from me. As I was thinking of switching the staffs and the handheld bag again, I saw the Inn pop into view, and I nearly broke into a jog in my eagerness to get the trip over and done with.

I sighed in relief when I made it inside, right before I reached the stairs and nearly collapsed in dejection. Xan caught up with me then, and I didn’t complain at all as he took the handheld bag from me. I still struggled a little on the stairs though, forcing me to actually estimate the weight of the things I was carrying. It came up to around fifteen kilos. FIFTEEN!! I could easily have carried ninety kilos for the same distance with the same effort in my previous life. Was that how low my strength was? I had thought it was at a respectable level, guess it needed to be higher than that, way higher.