The son had crossed the sky, but it was still a few hours before sunset.
After the sparring session, Lucien had spent the rest of the time training with the rest of the army,
It was somewhat difficult for him to find a way to train with everyone. He couldn’t cast magic, he couldn’t use a bow, and he couldn’t be a part of the shield walls, or do anything that required the use of two hands for that matter.
Thankfully, he could still make himself useful. He would spar with people when given the chance, and would pitch in his thoughts whenever he noticed someone that needed help.
When he didn’t have the chance to help the others, he would go about training the same way he had over the past decades. He focused on strength and stamina training, considering he already had plenty of other chances to practice his swordsmanship.
But he couldn’t just spend the entire day practicing. He knew that wasn’t good for him, neither physically nor mentally. He took breaks when the other’s did, had meals when he should. And most importantly, he spent a lot of his time learning as much as he could about the army’s plan of attack.
He wasn’t able to learn everything. There just simply wasn’t enough time. Neither was he in a position to know everything. But he was satisfied with what he could learn from Captain Vernon and the rest of the soldiers.
He was on his way back to the barracks, as he had something that he wanted to do now that he had the time. Reaching his bed, he pulled his trunk out, opened it, and took out his satchel.
It’s about time I sell these things. He emptied out his personal belongings into the trunk, leaving just the things he had looted on his travels remaining in the satchel.
Putting the trunk back under, he strolled back out of the barracks.
He was a little, unsure, about where to go to sell these things. He assumed that there would be plenty of shops interested in magical beast parts, but he had not been here nearly long enough to know where they would be.
He didn’t even know where to start. And that confusion and uncertainty was plain to see.
“Need some help?”
Lucien was caught off guard slightly, but smiled when he saw that it was someone that he knew. It was the large farmer who towered over even him.
“Ah, William. That would be very nice, actually. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could sell these, do you?”
“Maybe, what have you got in there?” he asked curiously.
Spotting a bench nearby, Lucien walked over, nodding for WIlliam to follow him. He would much rather place his bag down here than on the dirt. Would make it easier for both of them to handle stuff considering how tall they were.
Opening it, he carefully pulled out the several bags of eyes. Some of them didn’t look as good as when he first got them, but he couldn’t really complain. He did the best with what he had on hand at the time after all.
“Just some materials I managed to loot while on my way here. There would be a lot more if I could carry all of it.”
They had taken on around nine or ten ‘mini mountains’ during their time in the wasteland. So even after splitting the haul with Lynn, he had a decent amount of them to do whatever he wanted with.
“Mind if I take a closer look?” asked William.
“Go ahead.” He gestured to them.
Squatting down, William picked up one of the bags and opened it, squinting. It seemed the fact that Lucien had a bag full of eyes didn’t bother him in the slightest.
“Interesting. I can feel some mana in them.”
“You can?” Lucien asked.
“Only because it’s earth mana. If it was something else I’d be clueless. Where did you get this?”
From a monster in the wastelands. A pain in the ass to kill without leaving behind something I can take.”
“Well It seems to me like you’ve done a pretty good job.” William gestured at the other eyes.
“Definitely squished a few. Do you know where I could sell these?”
“I have an idea, give me a second though.” Still squatting, he focused intently on the eyeball in his hands. Earthen brown mana flowed from his body, carefully enveloping the bag.
The mana ebbed and flowed around and through the bag, carefully tracing the eye so as to obtain as much information as possible without damaging it.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Lucien watched on with a mixture of envy and curiosity. He wanted to know what kind of information William could gleam by doing this. He wished that he could do it himself, but that thought only lasted for a moment.
That ship had long since sailed. Magic just wasn’t meant for him, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Not now, not then.
After about a minute, the mana fizzled out and drifted off with the wind.
“I think I know someone who would be interested in taking these off your hands. Let’s go.”
They packed the bags back into the satchel, then Lucien followed him as they left the training grounds, then the walls of the keep.
A few streets away from the gate stood a two-story building with a pitched roof. A sign hung above the door with a picture of a bubbling cauldron.
Ring.
Stepping inside, Lucien’s nose was assaulted by a heavy herbal scent. It was a mix of so many scents that he couldn’t put his finger on any one in particular. Even though he had spent most of his life in and around a forest.
It took him a little while to get used to, but he was thankful that at least it didn’t make his nose burn like some of the concoctions the village herbalist used to make.
A section of the room was fairly bright, with plenty of natural light seeping through the windows and onto the plants.
Most notable however, was that there was a partial wall in the middle of the shop floor that stopped the light from reaching several places. This is where more photosensitive materials were kept, only visible thanks to the rather dim artificial light.
The sheer variety and amount of stock surprised Lucien. He thought that most of it would be kept in storage, with only a few cheaper or more common ingredients would be kept in the front.
There was so much you had to look out for when preserving materials that Lucien felt like it was better to keep everything elsewhere.
There must be something going on that I can’t see. Otherwise this is just such a waste of materials.
Putting that to the back of his mind, he scanned the shop in search of the owner, and found him slouched over a counter at the far end of the store, mumbling to himself as he wrote something into a book.
The man’s age was difficult to pinpoint. A smattering of zits and the complete lack of facial hair made him look like a teenager, or someone who had just become an adult. But the greying hair and tired eyes made him look older.
Or stressed.
His stick thin body was covered in a dark brown robe that was tied at the waist by a thick bit of rope. The robe was unkempt and wrinkled, with wet patches and splashes of colour that no doubt weren’t there when it was first sold.
“If you’re looking for herbs, go to the left. Most anything else is on the right. Don’t start a fire just because you want to see better. If you damage anything, you buy it,” he said without looking up from the book he was writing in. His voice bordering on emotionless.
“We’re looking to sell. Got something you might like,” William said as they reached the counter, nonplussed by the owner’s uncaring attitude.
His hand paused mid sentence, as he looked up at William, his interest clearly caught.
“William. If it isn’t my favourite supplier! Where have you been?” His voice was markedly more excited than it was before, probably because he would get something new to play with.
Seems like he doesn’t really care about running this shop.
“What can I say. I’ve been too busy lately. Speaking of, I’m leaving soon, and I won’t be back for a while.”
“Well that’s a shame,” he said sincerely.
Lucien couldn’t tell what the man was saddened more by, not being able to see a friend for a while, or losing a supplier.
“Now come on, show me. We haven’t got all day.” He clapped, gesturing at them to show him what they brought.
William turned back to Lucien, shrugging. His whole body practically saying “Don’t mind him.”
Lucien placed the satchel down on the counter and took out the bags. Nine of them in total, as he had given the rest to Lynn to do whatever she wanted.
Upon opening one of the bags and seeing the eye, the first thing the owner did was to grab several jars filled with a preserving liquid and carefully moved the eyes over into them.
“What is this WIlliam? You’re usually better than this. I’ve told you a thousand times already, that if you’re going to bring back delicate materials like this to preserve them properly,” he complained.
“I wasn’t the one to collect it.” William shrugged, pointing at Lucien.
“You’re lucky they’re even in this condition. This is all I had to work with and most of these were taken over a month ago.”
“I guess it will have to do, I suppose,” he paused. “Just know that they’re worth less than if they were preserved better.”
I figured that would be the case.
The owner moved over to the other end of the counter, opened a box, and assembled a strange pair of glasses.
Coming back to the jars, he picked up one with one hand and the strange pair of glasses with the other. The glasses had multiple lenses that could stack in front of each other, giving the glasses the ability to zoom in.
The lenses could also be moved away individually for different magnifications, or could all be taken away to be used as regular glasses.
He held the jar up close to his eye as he fiddled with the magnification lenses on his glasses.
What he could get from this, Lucien had no idea. But he wasn’t going to stop him from doing what he wanted to. He was the professional after all.
“Interesting,” he muttered.
He spent the first few minutes studying the eyeball through different levels of magnification, jotting down notes as he did so.
At this point, all of his notes were about the physical traits and characteristics of the eyes. Colour, what they looked to be made of, size, quality, etc.
“Where did you find these?” he asked curiously.
“In the wastelands down south.”
“Could you tell me more about the creature you took these from?”
“Sure. Most of them were probably about as tall as this room, and would take up half the space with just their body.” He gestured, giving rough estimates about how big the creatures were.
“They looked like tortoises but were made of rock. And they were damn difficult to kill. I had to drop a heavy rock on their neck just to crush it, and even that sometimes took a while to kill the thing.
You’re average sword would barely leave a scratch. And if you managed to have something that could break through it’s rocky armour, it would shoot fire out at you through the wound while the lava underneath would just patch up the damage, making it all a waste of time.”
Listening on, the owner jotted this information down into his notes as well.