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The following day, Yue, Elisa, and Avan ate breakfast together once again at the guild's expense and enjoyed plates full of pancakes with dripping syrup and all kinds of berries.

Afterwards, the two women went back to the previous day's study to pick out a few more copies of various books while he headed into town to work through his errands.

As Avan left the guild building, he took one last look at the neatly paved forecourt and let his gaze wander over the adjacent buildings. On the right, at the corner of a street leading away, was the central building of the city guard, where he and the foxgirl had been questioned by Commander Larin a few days earlier.

The rest of the buildings all had varying numbers of guards standing outside their entrances, guarding the private properties of wealthier people and residents behind them. All these mansions had one thing in common; they were shielded from the front with metal bars or stone walls and only the guarded gate on the front of which the private guards stood could allow entry into the gardens and carriage entrances behind. These houses of lower and middle nobility were all neatly built like half-timbered houses, several stories high, and only the facade and colors of the houses distinguished them from each other. In the gardens, which could be seen through metal fences, one could see neatly trimmed bushes, flowers, meadows, trees, and generally small parks, some even with fountains.

On the left side of the square, there was also a magnificent half-timbered house, but without a fence and without a front garden, which reminded Avan of a medieval town hall building, where many distinguished dressed craftsmen, merchants, and supposed nobles seemed to go in and out.

He turned once after a few steps to take another closer look at the guild building itself. Accompanying Commander Larin the days before, he had not had time to take a closer look at the adventurers' guild building. Even on the day of the monster attack, there was no time for sightseeing afterwards and he had had other thoughts that day.

Standing fifteen paces from the building and craning his neck, he looked at the symbol of a single feather emblazoned in the center of the thirty-meter building. The feather was filigree and carved out of a silver metal by a master's hand and five meters in diameter from top to bottom. Smaller symbols were engraved in the stone facade of the house around the feathery symbol, representing various types of weapons and magic in the form of swords, bows, axes, shields, staffs, scepters, and more.

Avan was amazed when he saw the magnificent building as the sun rose and shone directly on it from the east behind him, its sheer size towering over the other buildings in the square. The Adventurer's Guild was also built like a half-timbered house, with dark wooden beams provided struts that ran through the facade, and whose roof sloped only slightly to the left and right, and not typical as in his home world relatively steep pitched roofs possessed.

While he stood there on the forecourt, with his head bent back and looking up, several groups of adventurers ran in and out of the building and some of them whispered to each other and pointed here and there at him.

Already a bit more satisfied, he let his gaze roam over the square once more, pondering in which direction the marketplace now lay. He had always had a rather good and pleasant sense of direction, and could run in his mind the route from the marketplace to the tavern and from there to this place here, and therefore knew that he had to turn to the street leading off to the east.

As he turned into the eastbound street, Avan noticed that he had forgotten his backpack in his own room, since he had spent the night with Elisa again. Shrugging his shoulders, he ignored the circumstance and decided to buy one or a few smaller pouches that he could strap to his belt, so that he would always have at least a few coins physically on his body.

Satisfied with this decision, he marched off happily, enjoying the warm weather with scattered clouds in the sky, as is so often the case, while he looked unnoticed at the other passers-by who shared or crossed the path with him.

Sometime later, and after encounters with children playing in the street and frolicking dogs and cats, he could very soon make out the bustle of merchants and shoppers in front of him.

The closer he got to the city center, and the trading place, the more and louder the market shouters and the traders calling attention to themselves were, who advertised their goods to various people.

Avan picked his way, right shoulder first, through the already grown crowd and, thanks to his almost two-meter stature, looked around over people's heads, aiming to find a merchant for bags.

After a few minutes or more in the center of the square, he spotted a wooden market stall on the left, which was covered with a brown dyed linen canopy and seemed to sell leather goods such as backpacks, drinking tubes, and pouches of various sizes.

With some effort, he managed to pick his way through the crowd and shortly stood in front of the little-visited stand, which was run by a woman and her daughter, who the latter was perhaps twelve years old. The goods offered here were bought once and lasted very long, so the merchant had fewer daily visitors than, for example, a grocery or everyday store.

With his left hand in his sewn-in pants pocket, he strolled up to the mother and daughter, taking a closer look at the various goods and leather items.

The merchant's young daughter noticed him first." Good day, sir. Can I interest you in one of these coin pouches?" She called out to him as she came around the counter to his right. The young girl, who was up to his belly button, stood in front of him with her hands clasped together, glancing at the small leather pouches presented to her right with a turn of her head.

The girl had blond, shoulder-length hair, which dangled in two braids left and right over her shoulders. Her face was adorned with a small snub nose dotted with freckles, which stood out as she lifted her nostrils and looked at him expectantly.

Glancing at the now proudly watching merchant and briefly looking around at other passersby, Avan knelt down on his right knee to look the girl in the eye.

" What do you have to offer for coin bags?" He asked the girl, who stared at him with big googly eyes.

Seemingly surprised to actually be addressed, she briefly glanced nervously right over her shoulder at her mother, who gave her a barely noticeable nod.

Turning her head to look back at the customer, she unfolded her hands and pointed to the various little bags in turn. "We have ... Various sizes, colors, ... And simpler and safer coin pouches on offer." She explained to him in her squeaky young girl voice.

He felt a little sorry for the slightly overwhelmed young junior trader. "I am actually looking for a pouch for my money in which it will be kept safe. What are your best pouches then, young trader?"

Seemingly satisfied with his answer, she put her right hand to her chin thoughtfully with her index finger and thumb extended, much as if she had copied this gesture perfectly from someone else. She considered for a moment and then looked at the collection of leather goods and grabbed three of the many pouches, presenting them to him in her small hands after another nod of approval from her mother.

"This one has been made of multi-tempered wolf leather and protected with simple protective runes on the inside against sharp and cutting weapons." She told him as if rehearsed and very proud. "While these other two were created from black Wyvern leather. One pouch is cheaper and has simple protection runes, while the second has been enchanted by a Grandmaster with protections against fire, water, bladed weapons, and all conceivable damage."

The mother, at a sidelong glance from Avan, also seemed very proud of her daughter's performance.

He grabbed the wolf's leather pouch, stopping just before he touched the leather item, and looked at the blonde girl asking for permission. She nodded to him eagerly, and he took the item in his hand. The wolfskin felt soft and supple, reminding him a bit of the wolfhound skin he had sold the furrier.

"How much do the different pouches cost?" He asked the girl in a business-like tone, looking her in the eye.

Glancing again at her mother, who in the meantime had stepped a little closer and was standing to the right behind the stall with her arms crossed, she gathered the prices of the items from her.

The mother took a step closer to the two and smiled at her daughter. "The wolf leather ones cost fifty silver coins, while the normal enchanted wyvern pouch costs one gold and the strong enchanted one costs three gold coins." She explained to Avan instead of her daughter and playfully ran her hand over the little one's head with a smile on her face. The daughter then turned her head and craned her neck slightly to give her mother a pout.

He just grinned as he watched the scene before him of mother and daughter, feeling a small pang of pain at the thought of his own parents.

"Then I will take the one from Wolf's leather. Thank you so much, little trader." He said, first addressing the girl, then casting a final glance at the merchant standing behind her.

Satisfied with his purchase and leaving a happy merchant couple behind, he next went to check on Luria the alchemist and Barth the leather worker.

On his way to the two merchants, he stocked up on all sorts of dried fruits, dried must, and sometimes steaming meat skewers, all of which he surreptitiously disappeared into his Celestial Storage whenever he was sure no one was looking.

Luria Squidchaser had actually already sold all the high quality healing potions, which even the mayor of Cyntha had bought up to a small extent. She told him that after the monster attack, the demand for healing items had risen sharply, and the vials had been snatched out of her hands.

After another visit to Barth, Avan had two new sets of leather armor, one for Yue and one for himself. The armors had cost one gold per set, as he had forgotten to bring the other armor sets back.

When he asked Barth how it could be that he had finished the leather within three days, the furrier only laughed. "That's a family secret! All I can tell you is that magic plays a big part in speed." He explained to him, laughing once more.

Somewhat satisfied with the answer, and there was nothing he could do about it anyway, Avan set off to pick up the two women, equip his new nearly black leather armor, and get his backpack from his room.

Yue and Elisa had, in the meantime, added two more novels to the pile of books, and all the books, along with a bottle of ale, rested in a specially packed backpack, which Elisa carried on her back.

Armed with this and after saying goodbye to the guild master, the three of them left Cyntha together through the east gate, where they found, as they had several times before, no great rush of people wanting to get out or in. To the east of the city was only wilderness, the Elven Forest, and further to the northeast were the Dragon Mountains with the secretive Dwarves. Merchants and travelers tended to leave the city to the west, to travel further by boat on the river of Talamar or to cross it, or through the south gate to travel towards the territory of the Beast Men.

After half an hour's walk, the trio reached the cave entrance, in the depths of which he had freed Yue, exterminated the goblins with her, and found the Dungeon of Akkalon.

As Avan and Yue led the archivist through the open dungeon entrance and down the long hallway with murals of monks in various fighting postures, they had to stop repeatedly because Elisa wanted to write notes in a small notebook.

After another half hour and some explanations he could give her on the subject of the monks, they stood in front of the closed door of the small library of the healing order.

Here, too, the young researcher hastily scribbled notes in her little book while he let mana flow into the door with a simple hand movement to make it swing open with soft sounds.

 

Celestial Storage

[Bronze Coin]: 10

[Silver Coin]: 67

[Gold Coin]: 35

10 [Golden Meaples]

1 [well-used Spear]

3 [Water Flask]

1 [short sword]

3 [blanket]

1 [Tent]

1 [short ax]

1 [Bow]

3 [wooden iron-tipped arrow]

79 stacks of [Berries]

11 dry [Roots]

2 [Lymia Herbs]

113 [Hound Fangs]

9 [small Stones]

3 [Wooden Logs]

11 [Wooden sticks]

 

Debts

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