After many days travel, Aedifex finally arrived at the city of Agrestis. He had spent a fair bit of those days worrying about how he would get past the guardsmen at the gate, but now that he was here... Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, he followed another group of travelers as they calmly walked past the gate and walked through the huge gap in the city’s wall, just 20 meters to the left of the gate. As he couldn’t cry anymore, Aedifex settled on laughing, doing his best to ignore how dry and dusty it sounded. A single guardsman, in old badly maintained armor, just watched on silently. Aedifex didn’t know why he even bothered to show up. From his expression, the guardsman didn’t know either.
On the other side of the wall, Aedifex discovered the gap in the wall was just one end of a 100 meter long gash carved through the city. It looked as though a giant sword had torn through everything... or as though some idiot had loaded an unimaginable amount of mana into a normal sized sword before carelessly unleashing it inside a city.
“I see. So this is the Hero-King’s work.”
In the 20 years between slaying the Demon King and inheriting the throne from the Idiot-King who summoned him, the Hero had frequently roamed the kingdom slaying monsters and criminals, each heroic journey prompting another wave of refugees fleeing the Hero-Cursed kingdom. As Aedifex and his relatives had fled early, before the Hero had become quite this "helpful", he had never really believed the stories told by later waves of refugees. Now he silently apologized for his doubts.
Wandering the mostly intact streets, Aedifex wondered at the scarcity of people. Though there were other wrecked sections, they made up at most 1/5th of the city, while the population seemed like it was perhaps 1/10th of what it once was. If he’d still had the ability to smell, the stench of ruptured sewer pipes might have given him some clue. Also, if he’d still needed to drink he might have been told of the city’s brocken aqueduct.
For now, he decided the first thing to do was find a safe place to stash his odd “backpack” before it drew the wrong kind of attention. An enchanter’s tools were his life after all! Er... lets try not to think about that word “life” for now, this wasn’t the time to sink into another funk. Aedifex ruled out staying at an inn, as the someone who even slept in mask and gloves would be way too weird. The staff was also likely to wonder why he never ate or drank anything.
Instead, he walked through another destroyed section, this one near the center of Agrestis. A particularly large rubble pile caught his eye, er, eye socket. Bits of marble hinted it had once been a noble’s villa. More importantly, some probing with earth magic showed it still had an intact basement. Aedifex couldn’t resist another laugh. Making a lair beneath the ruins of a ruined villa was very Lich like. Of course, it wasn’t normal for said ruined villa to be in the heart of a still inhabited (barely) city, but that was life under the Hero-King for you.
Rather than trying to find and excavate a stairwell, Aedifex found a spot hidden between the ruin and a stretch of partly intact outer wall, aimed down at where he’d felt the basement, and started alternately casting Flow Stone and carefully controlled Crater spells. Liquefying the stone, pushing it outward, letting it harden as a ring of dense solid stone, in this manner he dug a 1 meter across, surprisingly sturdy, circular tunnel down to the basement. As the circular hole was a bit conspicuous, he spent a few more minutes artfully reshaping the edges until the entrance looked like just a natural void in the rubble. He then crawled down into his new home.
Unsurprisingly, it was a dump. At least there weren’t any rats or bugs, likely because there wasn’t anything to eat or drink down here. Not a problem for Aedifex of course. He spent some time picking up loose stones and molding them into cracks and gaps, until the place stopped seeming like it would collapse on him at the first Quake spell. His night vision could get by with the little light seeping in from the tunnel, but as seeing in color would be better for crafting he set up some magic lights. To stop the light from being leaking out at night, he covered the inner end of the tunnel with a leather flap, working straps of leather into magicly softened stone to make a crude hinges.
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More or less satisfied with his new home, Aedifex lay down on as soft a patch of dirt as he could find to rest... or tried to. His body didn’t need rest anymore, of course, but he could still get mentally exhausted. However, it seemed even his mind didn’t need sleep, just letting it wander for a few hours was enough. He’d had plenty of time for that on the way here.
So, should he visit the Adventurers Guild now? After some thought, Aedifex armed himself with a spear and dagger. He didn’t think he could carry a sword without other adventurers noticing he was an armature. In his younger, more pretentious, days he’d often carried a fancy staff, so he could at least carry a spear like he was used to it. Hopefully, no one would be around the first time he actually used it. Besides, a veteran mercenary who had shopped at his store had been fond of saying the sword was a toy for nobles too lazy to carry a real weapon. Fortunately, the name “spellsword” referred to anyone who fought with a mix of weapon and spells, an actual sword was not required.
Aedifex realized there was one thing he was still missing. Money. There was probably some sort of entrance fee, and he was a suspicious enough looking character already without admitting he was broke too. Sighing, he saw decided he would have to sell some of his spare equipment. He moved a sword and shield into his item bag, before hiding his storage box in a dark corner under some debris, just to be on the safe side.
Climbing out of his tunnel (molding a few handholds along the way) he set off to find the most disreputable looking weapon shop in the city. Why you ask? Well, imagine a stranger, covered up from head to toe, came into your shop looking to sell expensive enchanted items. Of course anyone would think they were stolen! His only hope was to find a shop that dealt in stolen goods, even if he would get a terrible price that way.
In the end, he chose the store a little too well. Not only did the owner ask no questions about where he got the items, he turned out to have an equally covered up employee who tried to gouge Aedifex on his items, said gouging being done with a dagger in Aedifex’s back. The dagger pierced through his armor and clothes before striking... nothing. Aedifex then decided to test the paralysis enchantment on his own dagger. It worked perfectly on the too eager shopkeeper, but Mr. Backstabby seemed to have some kind of resistance. Fortunately, he had been seized by a different kind of paralysis, as he tried to figure out what kind of thing he’d just stabbed, and he died after half a dozen inexpert stabs from Aedifex. Ah well, he couldn’t let them live after finding out his secret anyway.
After finishing off the aspiring bandit/shopkeeper (which only bothered him because of how little it bothered him) Aedifex decided that as the other parties were now silent, it fell to him to negotiate a new agreement. 3 gold, 38 silver, and 122 copper in exchange for nothing, and also a 100% discount on the shop’s merchandise. The two even threw in their item bags to help him carry all his new impulse buys.
Returning to his new home to go through his loot, he was highly tempted to melt down all the “enchanted” items. Is this what enchanters had fallen to in the kingdom?! Ok, granted it all came from a pretty disreputable source, but still! Half of it was only enchanted to glow impressively, but the ones meant to be genuine were almost worse. Most actually left the weapons weaker than they’d been before!
Well, it wasn't his business anymore, so he should probably quit stalling. It was finally time to see if a Lich could be an adventurer.