Chapter 9 - Dabo Mainland 2

“Are you okay?” the woman asked him, her eyes wide with mild surprise.

“Sorry,” Mill apologized and tried to get up. “I did not mean to — I’ll just get out.”

“No, no, stay. You could use that,” she pointed at the window, “if you need it again.”

Mill took her offer and slumped himself back to the floor. “Thanks.”

“No worries. You could sit on the chairs.” The woman offered as she pointed to the chairs opposite her table.

Mill made a tired smile and shook his head. The young woman only nodded.

They spent the next minute in silence, Mill slumped on the floor, while the woman busied herself with something. Mill could hear the utensils clinking on the feast chamber, just across their room, but he had no plans to go back.

The woman stood up after finishing what she was doing and looked at Mill. “You’re an altaworlder right?” She asked, looking at the clothes Mill wore.

Mill nodded. “Yes.”

“There’s a feast on there,” she nodded to the feast chamber’s direction, “I’m going there, wanna come?”

Mill shook his head. “You can go first. Is it okay if I stay here for a moment?”

“Was there a problem there?”

“No. I’m… just a little sick.”

“Was it the food?”

Mill took a moment before he shook his head.

The woman nodded with a knowing look. “It should be. Was it the meat? I heard some altaworlders do not like how we prepare our food.”

Mill immediately denied it. “No. I haven’t tasted it yet.”

The woman’s brow furrowed for a second. Mill watched as the woman shook her head with displeasure and went back to her table.

“I, for one, don’t like people who are picky with their food. But as you are our visitor, I could not let you go at the Titling tonight hungry.” The woman took something from it and gave it to Mill. “It’s potato and cotato. It’s root crops. Don’t say you can’t eat this too?”

Mill wanted to ask about this titling but he was distracted by the plate offered to him. It had two small potatoes in it and a black looking root crop beside it. His stomach immediately panged from hunger seeing the food but his manners stopped him from receiving the food blatantly.

“No, you don’t need to.” Mill politely denied the offer.

“Take it. This would be the last time I would offer you something, so take it. I advise you to change your food preference, this is not a world to be picky, but I know hunger would do that to you eventually, so here.” She pushed the wooden plate to his stomach.

Mill had no choice but to hold the plate.

He was about to thank her when a young man entered the room.

“Mishka, let’s go together in—” the young man’s voice halted when he saw Mill and the woman — and stopped on his tracks near the doorway. The young man furrowed his brows looking at the plate that was handed to Mill. “What are you doing?”

Before Mill could step back, the woman named Mishka, grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the doorway, ignoring the young man.

Mill was confused about what was happening and he initially wanted to let go of Mishka’s hold but he found himself unable to. Mishka’s grip was not tight but the force of him pulling him was strong.

He was surprised to find that the thin woman in front of him, who was a head shorter than him, had tremendous strength. He could not even stop his feet from stumbling with her dragging force as they passed the young man by the door.

Before he knew it, they were already in the hallway and heading to the Feast Chamber’s arched doorway, but halfway there, the young man sprinted past them, went in front of them, and blocked their way.

Mishka came to a stop then changed direction to the right to avoid the young man. But the young man held Mishka’s arm that was dragging Mill, stopping them from walking past him.

“What?” Mishka quipped to the young man.

“Why are you doing with this alta?” the young man said with obvious annoyance in his voice.

“What’s that got to do with you?” Mishka replied without any emotion.

The young man’s face turned serious. “Mishka! You’re bethroated to me. You can’t go around offering other men food and holding their arms.” He then grabbed Mill’s hand to force him to let go, but Mishka held the young man’s arm instead and pulled it from Mill’s arm.

Mill felt the strong grip of the young man in his arms, but it was easily whisked off by Mishka’s. The young man was even forced a few steps back from the force.

“That’s not yet finalized.” Misha then pulled Mill inside the Feast Hall.

Mill was still caught up to the drama he had just witnessed, that the meat dishes on the table with the altaworlders eating them, had not affected him.

He was led past the rows of tables where the altaworlders were eating, towards the other half of the room where eight tables facing the stage where only Dabomens were seen sitting. The tables were capable of seating almost twenty people each and only a quarter of them were empty.

There were four tables on the right and Mishka led him to the third table that only had a few people in it.

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Mishka pulled him to sit on the second to the last chair of the table, right to the edges near the wall, while she picked the one beside the wall.

He immediately knew why when the angry young man followed them but stopped upon seeing that the only available seat near Mishka was occupied by Mill.

Mill saw the young man hesitated before he turned back and headed with heavy steps towards the fourth table on the left side of the room.

“Sorry for that,” Mishka murmured to Mill when the young man was now gone. “Just take it as you repaying me a favor.”

“Wha—” Mill started to ask but he stopped himself. It was not his business. He guessed she needed him to ward off the young man. She said to take it as repaying a favor and Mill took it willingly. He only had to sit there though. He only hoped the young man would not hold a grudge on him.

The whole meal was quiet and Mishka did not speak to him again. She ate whatever was on her plate and Mill concentrated on only looking at his plate of potatoes and cotato, that he happened to bring with him, and tried his best not to look at the other plates beside him.

Fortunately, the seat to his left was occupied by an old man who was too drunk to care for his food or with the altaworlder seating beside him. The old man drank from his pail monotonously till he passed out on his seat, snoring.

Mill ignored the old man as he ate his root crops in silence. He was thankful to Mishka that it was at least boiled. He did not know what custom they have but he knew some people who eat root crops raw, sadly he was not one of them.

In the middle of his meal, a group of young Dabomen entered the Feast Hall causing a stir among the Dabomens already in the hall. They went directly towards the front tables and some Dabomens from the eight tables stood up and met the young Dabomens with glee and joyful faces.

Mill watched them as they were led to the empty table behind him. The young Dabomen looked a few years younger than him and they all wear black hoodless robes instead of the white the older ones wore.

“How was the Zero Island?” he heard an adult Dabomen ask the ten or so young Dabomens.

“It was cool!” a short girl with thick hair exclaimed.

“Yeah, I think we got good marks. Here look,” a teenage boy with blonde hair said while showing off something in his chest.

A composed guy pulled a seat and regarded the adults with a proud smile. “Everyone got marks.”

Another guy playfully slapped the composed guy’s arm. “Yeah. We can’t wait to check them,”

The older Dabomens chuckled. “Good. Good. Now, sit. We prepared a feast for all of you.”

Then the tables behind Mill were occupied by them.

“What title bar do you think I get?” a girl said excitedly behind Mill. “I hope it’s Swordwoman, or the rare Water Swordwoman.”

“I just hope it’s Faith Priestess. Or my mother will beat me,” a female voice replied.

Someone sighed. “I just hope it was not a Carpenter or a Fisherman.”

The young Dabomen behind Mill talked for a while about topics Mill did not understand till they ended up focusing on their food, and all Mill heard was their munching noises. He then focused on his meal.

After he finished his meal he excused himself from Mishka. He did not know if he was needed now, and he was not really comfortable sitting on his chair especially if a particular young man was staring at him all the time.

He finally glanced back at the young man’s direction after he finished his meal, and the empty expression on his face decided for him. There was no obvious contortion from anger, or a simple burrowing of brows. It was a face with no expression but his eyes were coldly looking at Mill as if he wanted to check what parts Mill was made. He knew immediately that that was an expression of someone he did not want to mess with. Not that he could afford to. He did not owe Mishka enough for him to pissed someone off, especially someone she was bethroated. Whatever love’s quarrel they had was none of his business.

Mishka just waved him off and he went off his seat and went towards the back part of the Feast Chamber where there were still empty seats.

Fortunately, he passed the long row of tables now empty with food. He even noticed a kid licking his plates off, and heard some quiet complaints of lack of food.

Compared to the tables in the front, the tables in the back spanned almost half of the room. He saw Clarese sitting in the middle of the leftmost table while he was walking to the right aisle. Clarese waved at him when she saw him and he gave her a nod as he passed by.

He reached the back part of the room and sat on one of the random empty seat of the table near the right aisle. It gave him a good vantage point of everyone around as he looked at the chaos of random people in various outfits of daily lives and works, sitting in one place and interacting with each other.

He cocked his head when he realized the amount of altaworlders were more than usual. He was sure this amount of altaworders could not fit the room he woke up in.

Was there a new batch of them? He couldn’t mistake them for Dabomen with their obvious difference in clothes and behavior, so they must be altaworlders like him.

His confusion was cleared when he overheard someone talking about how they were in a separate room and they had a male Dabomen named Korsner who had oriented them compared to Mill’s Senhora. Mill realized that there were a hundred of them as Senhora said, but that room he woke up in could hardly fit fifty people.

He heard someone retold how their room was chaotic as there were a lot of unreasonable people there.

The woman who was telling the story pointed to a group of people sitting at the second table to the left. “You see that guy in a red expensive outfit with bodyguards around him.”

“The one who complained about the food a while ago?”

“Yeah that’s him. He was the loudest one in our room. Too bad I could not understand him. But he was quarelling with Korsner then he pulled out a gun and almost shot him. It was chaotic. The bodyguards were trying to fight with the Dabo dudes but they were immediately pushed like kids. They were very strong. Then Korsner pulled a sword and sliced the gun in half. No one complained after that.”

Mill looked at the Korsner they were talking about and saw a brown haired guy with a big, buffed body sitting beside the young man who was bethroated to Mishka.

He looked away with a cold sweat, he hoped they were not unreasonable people

Mill sat there quietly and listened around the various languages of people talking with each other and he wondered for the tenth time how he could understand them.

He could distinctly hear the foreign words they were saying but somehow a translation of it burst in his mind.

An old woman near him asked him about why he was staying alone from everybody, and he understood her meaning despite how it was in a different language, but when he tried to speak to her, the woman did not understand him.

He realized it was one way, he could understand them but he could not speak their language, and so far, he did not notice anyone like him. Not that he would know. Maybe some of them were just keeping it quiet like him.

Minutes passed and the Dabomens had just finished eating when Mishka went up to the raised dais where a throne sat. She stood a step below the throne and raised her right hand holding a similar box to Senhora’s language translator, he remembered it was called bars.

He could not see clearly what Mishka’s bar looked like but it was quite different from the language translation bar. It had no black letters and objects floating inside but a red object instead.

A blue light flickered at Mishka’s hands and the bar suddenly transformed into a red tube object shaped in a cone. Her magical feat was met with various gasps and exclamations, and even Mill could not help himself be fascinated with the object and anticipate what it could do. His curiosity was answered when an amplified voice of Mishka filled the Feast Hall.

It was a megaphone or a microphone of some sort that amplified one’s voice. And it just came from a small transparent box. He wondered what could be the science behind it. Or was it just pure magic?

“I welcome you everyone in the Dabo Mainland. I am Mishka Gorodabo, Five Bar Islander, and the daughter of the johaman, the leader of this Mainland,” Mishka said in a language everyone understood.

Mill did not notice how odd it was for him to converse with her before when he did not know how to speak her language. She must have a translator bar for her to converse with him.

“He was not available at the moment,” Misha continued, “as he was busy with important things, so I will be the one instructing you on what to do. As you may have heard, this was not a safe world and every time that passed was valuable for anyone. You might not be ready for what you are going to do tonight, but the Scourge is coming tomorrow. So tonight, we’ll proceed with your Titling. We will get your title bars.”