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The Terrarian's Reincarnation
Chapter 4 - Tempting fate works! Also people!

Chapter 4 - Tempting fate works! Also people!

I was rather disappointed when tempting fate seemed to do nothing, so after half an hour soaking myself in the mana infused water, I got out and shook the water off me, my long silver hair spraying droplets through the air. I didn't have a towel, they hadn't existed in the game, so that was the best I could do.

I reequipped my armour, accessories, and ninja costume, and headed up the tower. As I passed through the second floor, I set up all of the different types of crafting station I had, which was a lot. I put the main ones, a crafting bench, furnace, and anvil closer to the centre of the room, and the more specialised ones round the wall, which I lined with cloud blocks to prevent the sound of forging escaping out. I also lined the central shaft and the stairs with cloud. The cloud blocks were very strange; they were like cool, slightly damp cotton wool that moved out of the way when you touched it. I shrugged and moved on.

On the third floor, I set up a massive library, rings of bookcases with a large cross cut through them from the staircase landing and walls to the central shaft, then had a quick browse through the titles. I was amazed; every book I'd ever read, and some I'd only heard of were present on the shelves, their contents replicated perfectly. There was an entire bookcase dedicated to the knowledge of this world that the God had given me. As the floor was ten meters tall, I added in another two sub-floors of library, connected to the first with staircases leading out from the cross cut through the rings of the first sub-floor.

As I hadn’t yet decided what to do with the other floors, I just continued up to my floor and sat down with a book.

A few hours passed quietly, and I was just putting my finished book away when the whole tower suddenly shook.

“What the heck?!” I shouted as a loud roar sounded from outside and the tower shook again.

I ran to one of my door outside, opened it, and leapt out. A giant half lion, half eagle smashed its side into the tower and roared again. I got angry.

“Stop attacking my tower, you mangy griffin!” I shouted, summoning Daybreak, my spear, out of my hotbar and jabbing it in the direction of the beast. A blazing replica of my spear emerged from its point and shot towards the griffin, striking it in the side. Instantly the beast was engulfed in flames and fell from the sky shrieking. I tucked in my wings and dropped, smashing into it spear first as it fell.

A few more stabs and the fires vanished instantly, indicating it had died; the fires from Daybreak burn away at life itself, not even water will put them out, only death or consuming enough life to satisfy them will extinguish them.

My wings spread, one hand grabbing hold of the dead griffin's wing, the other still clutching the fiery spear. For a moment, I hovered like a victorious, but very ticked off, angel. Then I dumped the corpse into my inventory and flew up to inspect the damage. The mana strengthened obsidian had resisted the abuse well, only a few cracks, and these were closing even as I watched.

“Thank you mana spring!” I said happily, shooting back up to the still open door in the side of the tower, entering, and closing it.

It was getting late, so I removed my ninja costume, placing it on a nearby mannequin along with my accessories, merged my armour fully with my skin, then went to bed. I had become used to sleeping with my wings on, so they didn't really seem to bother me even if I was lying on my back.

In the morning, I woke up and stretched widely. Unfortunately, I also stretched out my wings and knocked over the mannequin with my ninja costume on it.

“Whoops,” I chuckled, heaving it upright. After two days without the barest hint of anyone else, I was getting rather lonely, so I decided to take a look for some other people.

I stepped out onto the ledge, closing the door behind me, and flapped my wings, landing on the top of the tower. I held onto the spire with one hand and braced myself against the smooth obsidian with my feet. It was very steep and rather slippery, so I also anchored myself with my grappling hook, which I seemed to be able to control like four extra, but quite limited, limbs.

I surveyed the area with my binoculars, carefully sweeping from the more densely tree-ed forest behind me to the more open forest in front of the tower and saw, in the far distance, a thin plume of smoke.

“Oho,” I muttered, stowing away the binoculars, “let's go take a look.” Within moments I was hundreds of meters away from the tower. I was going to stay under the sound barrier, but that didn't mean I couldn't fly at two hundred meters per second rather than three.

I was only about five hundred meters away from the smoke when I suddenly halted. How would people of this world react if a winged man dropped in on them from above? I had no idea. I flew a few hundred meters higher, then hovered with my binoculars.

A small town, was spread out before me, ringed with a defensive wooden palisade with rough built guard towers dotted around it. After a few moments observation, I concluded that it would be best to walk in the front gate, and keep my wings folded since most of the people I could see looked just like normal humans, albeit with a wild variety in hair colouring, and a couple of what looked like beastkin, but none with wings.

Decision made, I folded my wings, crossed my arms, and fell with style. I struck the ground with a mildly subdued crash, then walked off in the direction of the main gate, picking bits of branches and leaves out of my clothes. At the treeline I moved my vision to third person, and shuffled my wings a bit, managing to make them look like some kind of slightly unusual feathered cloak, then emerged from the forest onto a rough dirt road, which I followed along to the gate.

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About fifty meters from the gate, I halted again and retracted my aura. According to the knowledge the God of Reincarnation gave me, one’s aura was generated due to one’s mana and health being projected into the environment somehow, though I was a bit hazy on the details. Either way, it was polite to have your aura restrained when in public places, so it was a good thing that the knowledge contained a few ways to restrain it. My powerful aura spilling out was the reason I hadn’t seen a single animal or bird besides the griffin from last night, which was either strong or stupid enough to ignore it. Aura pulled in, I walked through the gate, then stopped, unsure as to which direction to go in.

“You lost traveller?” a deep, strangely accented voice called from one side, and I turned to find a large, solid looking guard leaning on his spear looking at me.

“Yes, slightly,” I replied. “I'm looking to buy a patch of land, how and who would I have to go to to do that?”

“Why, traveller,” he said in a surprised sounding voice, “don't ye know where ye are? This here be the Beast Woods! Nobody own any of it, not even the kingdoms lay claim to it! Well, none outside of this here Outpost anyways.”

“So I can just take any bit of land I want?” I queried, surprised.

“Sure, just go register with the town hall, tell 'em Steven sent ya.” He pointed at a large wooden building visible over the roofs.

“Thanks,” I said, heading off in that direction.

As I walked through the streets, I noticed the roughness of the buildings, signs that they had been constructed recently. What people there were on the streets all seemed very busy with whatever tasks they had, and the small market stalls seemed to be only just starting up.

“Looks new,” I mused to myself. “That guard called it the Outpost; I wonder if it’s so recently built that it doesn’t have a proper name yet.”

Very soon I reached the town hall. It was taller than most of the other buildings I’d seen, and was sturdily build from roughly hewn logs. It looked somewhat temporary, as though it had been the first thing built here and was only in use until someone could replace it with something better. I found myself idly designing its replacement myself, then shook my head and trotted up the worn plank steps to push open the door, noting that it was quite sturdy itself. There was a small queue of people waiting in front of a desk, where a grey haired but relatively young-looking lady with wolf ears was sitting. I stopped and stared for a short while, thankfully no one noticed so I just shut the door quietly and joined the back of the line.

About half an hour of scuffing my heels against the rough plank floorboards later, I reached the front of the queue. Nobody had joined the line after me, so it was just the two of us in the room. From closer up, I could tell she was wearing what looked like a uniform that emphasised her decent sized bust, and in addition to her ears, she also had a wolf's tail swishing lethargically round her ankles under the table. I thought it was a pretty good bet that she was a wolfkin, a wolf beastgirl, but it would be rude to either make assumptions or ask, so I didn’t.

“What can I do for you?” she asked in a slightly tired voice as I sat in the chair in front of her.

“I'd like to claim a piece of land please,” I replied and her gaze sharpened.

She reached over to a pile of books and pulled out a map of the town and a book. I mentally compared her map with my own auto-generated map which was displayed in the top right of my vision next to the 20 golden hearts representing my health and the blue bar representing my mana: it seemed pretty accurate.

“So, we have these twelve plots within the walls. I would recommend number four-” she began, but I cut her off.

“No, I want a bit of land outside.”

“Where did you have in mind?” she asked, I thought I could hear slight disbelief in her voice.

“Um, your map isn't big enough, can I have a blank piece of paper please?”

The wolf lady looked at me as though I was crazy, but handed one over. I shifted the view of my mental map, expanding it and increasing its transparency, overlaying it with the bank paper, then sketched out the rough details, marking on the location of the town, a stream I’d flown over, and a few hills out to the location of my tower. I circled the 1 kilometre wide area around an icon symbolising my tower that was about 10 kilometres away from the town icon.

“I would like this bit please,” I requested and she stared at me in complete disbelief.

“That's not even on this side of the boundary of the Beast Woods, that’s inside the Beast Forest!” she exclaimed. “If this is a joke, stop now!”

“No, I'm serious, I would like that piece of land please.”

“You won't survive, that area's crawling with vicious beasts!”

“Really?! I didn't see any. The worst I saw was a griffin.”

“A griffin! That's a Class 6 monster!”

“Umm, I’m not from around here; what are these classes?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

The wolf lady sat back in her chair and sighed. “Class 1 can be defeated by a human child, like a green or blue slime. Class 2 can be defeated easily by a human man like a goblin. Class 3 would require some difficulty, like a feral kobold. Class 4 would require a small group of adventurers, like a feral unicorn. Class 5 would require a larger group, like meteorite crash site. And Class 6 would require a group of high rank adventurers to beat! It's on par with an Ice Golem! One being in this area could threaten the safety of the town, thank the Gods it's so far away.”

“Well, I still want that bit,” I said, keeping quiet about the fact that said griffin was now a corpse in my inventory.

She just stared at me for a long second before pulling out a two pieces of paper and writing up two copies of a deed for it. “What's your name?”

My mind went blank. What was my name? I had no idea. I knew what my character was called, but what was mine? Should a reincarnated person be able to remember their own name? Isn’t that how it usually works? Why’s it different for me?

“Um… if you don’t want to tell me, I understand,” the wolf lady said reassuringly.

“Why wouldn’t… no, nevermind, I was just lost in thought for a moment. My name’s Lyte,” I said, deciding to go with my character's name, “spelt L-y-t-e,” and she noted it down.

“Surname?” she questioned, then paused “Ah, I'm Lupia Illupay by the way.”

“Nice to meet you. I don't have a surname though.”

Lupia nodded and made a note on the deed. A few moments passed with the only sound being the scribbling of the quill.

“Sign here,” she said passing the quill and both copies of the deed to me. I could read it in English, though in a slightly strange overlay where I could see a flowing angular script underneath. I presumed that the God of Reincarnation had had something to do with that. It was very useful.

“Do I need to pay for it?” I asked, not seeing any mention of money.

“That land isn't even part of our kingdom yet, making you pay for it would be against the law,” she replied, waving a hand tiredly.

“Thank you,” I said, signing both copies, returning one and tucking the other inside my clothes, and from there into my inventory.

“Just try not to die,” Lupia replied, seeing me out of the door.

“Thank you.”

I smiled behind my mask as I stepped out onto the street. I was now officially the proud owner of my own tower, and I didn't even have to pay for it.