About a day later, I finally got close to a city.
It wasn’t that big from my point of view, but it could accommodate around half a million mortals.
It was sectioned off into many parts with relatively tall stone walls and there were tiny little houses and long roads made of some sort of stone everywhere. I couldn’t see it clearly from where I stood, so it was but an initial impression.
I overlooked the whole thing from a tall hill as I was about to finish my bag of rimmet fruits. The city was protected by a large wall and had a moat surrounding in. The city was quite big for mortals of this level of civilization, so the wall must’ve been very hard to make. It stretched very far and the moat ran along it. There were many gates along the wall, many bridges and a lot of people coming and going both on their feet and using transportation of all sorts.
Spotting the nearest bridge, I went towards it. There was a huge line of people waiting to get into the city who came without transportation and another line composed of those on horses and other animals, as well as those who drove carriages and things like that.
I, naturally, joined the line of people on foot. I didn’t mind waiting.
I spotted a few people here and there who carried swords, sabres and spears and other weapons. I was pretty sure there had to be at least one martial artist among them.
I didn’t know how to tell the difference between a martial artist and an ordinary mortal. They didn’t have any dismissive differences, like, say, a body made out of non-biological material that is impossible to create with mortal technology, so how could I tell the difference?
Well, it didn’t matter to me whether there were any martial artists, I just hoped that if there were, they wouldn’t spot me and raise a fuss.
None did, thankfully, so I reached the security checkpoint soon. From what I could tell, they wouldn’t ask me for documents or demand my identity. They probably checked for wanted persons or if the person coming through carried anything forbidden on them. Apart from that, the guards’ attention was mostly on merchants in every other case.
And they indeed waved me through without a problem.
They did look curiously at Ret that was slung behind my back in its sheath. I am sure it’s not every day they got to see a child carry a weapon but there were so many people with weapons that they probably never bothered beyond simple curiosity.
It was bright outside and I decided to walk this city and get a general idea of it.
It was surprisingly clean and the road that I thought was made out of rocks was made with something more sophisticated. It was smooth and hard and flat.
The roads were going all over the place and the buildings weren’t very organized but it was easily navigable. There were walkways on the sides of the road along the short buildings.
Every building beside w=the walkway was at least three stories tall and every building had some kind of shop in it. The smithy, a tailor shop, a tavern… it was all very noisy and very busy.
I decided to walk further into the city and search for a good inn there. Maybe there were houses for rent, which would be even better. A quiet place would be the best for an old man like me and somewhere with good scenery…
It seemed I walked into a bad place unknowingly. I became aware of several presences that were creeping up on me, probably they were up to no good. I just wanted to daydream a bit, why throw such kinds of situations at me, Fate?
Before they even had the time to notice that they were noticed, I jumped and crawled up the wall. The buildings were made of stone in this city. It was close to a desert and there maybe was a stone canyon nearby. I’m sure getting wood was more expensive than stone. Well, it didn’t matter much. I just said it in order to convey that the buildings were quite sturdy.
The criminals didn’t see it coming but I didn’t stay to watch their reactions. I wasn’t interested in getting involved in annoying things and fighting mortals that likely didn’t even practice martial arts was beneath me.
It was tedious too. I had a rule to avoid killing my opponents. Most problems could be solved if you just destroyed the cause once you reached a certain level of power but such an approach made you lazy and self-indulgent. I could kill sure, but after killing once, I would do it again and then a few times and then again until it became a habit to solve problems with brute force and without thinking.
This made life so unbelievably dull. You would think that somebody who had lived for 1000 years wouldn’t be bothered by boredom… But life had to have at least some semblance of meaning in order to live that long and not go crazy.
Anyway, I sped away on the roofs and got down in another alleyway. Nobody noticed me do all of this as the buildings were comparably tall.
I went out of the valley and found that I couldn’t remember where I was. I couldn’t remember the landscape of the city as I have erased it from my memory. It was a habit of mine to erase small things like this as if I kept all the insignificant details in my mind I would get easily distracted. More easily than I am now at least.
I kept only the general picture of things in my mind in order not to get lost too easily, but the map of the city wasn’t in the “general picture” category.
The place I had fewer roads for horses to pass though and it had fewer people.
The streets were narrower than in the area nearby the gate but there were a few taverns and pubs here and there and people still walked around.
A pair of men and a woman, all in, comparably to the other mortal's attire, clean and high-quality clothes walked too. They were about 50 meters away and didn’t notice me. They carried swords at their waists, so I figured they were martial artists.
Since ordinary people had poorer senses than martial artists, talking to martials was comparably easier. Mostly because the latter were afraid of me.
“Excuse me~!”, I ran towards them and the young people got into fighting stances immediately on reflex.
“Gulp, senior, how may we be of help?”, unsurprisingly, they were less refined than Alec I met the other day.
Well, these people were clearly young, maybe 16 years old of age while Alec was in his forties. I think. Maybe humans on this planet age in strange ways, so who knows. They were clearly young though.
Young and inexperienced, they clearly showed their fear and their grip on the swords never relaxed. Their faces also seemed surprised when looking at me, probably because I looked like a child.
“Big brothers and big sister”, I couldn’t help but want to tease them, “Oalus here can’t find a good place to sleep. Can you show Oalus here a good place to rest? Oalus’ Master said that I should ask big brothers and sisters to show me a… a… ming!”
I talked with a lisp deliberately because it was fun.
“You mean an inn?”
“Un!”, I bobbed my head up and down to the words of the female martial.
“Can you tell us your name, boy?”
“Oalus!”, I pointed my thumb at my chest and showed, to the extend my face allowed, a proud expression, as if my name was a thing to be proud of.
Now, the martials weren’t as vigilant of me. They still felt cautious but they weren’t about to escape for their lives.
“Okay, Oalus. Can you... follow us? We were going to rent a room at an inn that was recommended to us”, one of the men began speaking, but hesitated mid-sentence but then quickly decided to guide me anyway.
I may not know humans all that well but my psychic abilities let me read their intents easily.
This man was easy to read like an open book. Fear, hesitation, desire to help and all kinds of emotions were all over him. Well, the three were similar in this regard.
“Okay!”, I chose to follow them because there wasn’t any malice I could read in them. Hell, they haven’t killed anybody in their lives yet, I could tell by no death aura. These guys were hatchlings, cute little chicks that had yet to see the world. I had to be careful not to trick or scam them accidentally instead of the other way around.
“My name is Helq”, the tall young man in a blue robe and long black hair who offered me to follow his group began pointing at others, “this is Miv”, Miv had short green hair and a red robe, “And this is Tessa”, it was the short-ish young woman with brown hair in a green robe.
“We belong to the Blossom Mountain sect. It’s our first time the world outside the sect. I presume it is yours too?”
“Un!”
“What sect are you from?”
“The Iron Rapier sect!”, I said Alec’s sect’s name. I think it was called the Iron Rapier...
“I haven’t heard of it”, “Me neither”, “Neither have I”
“Well, it is probably a very strong sect”, Helq, clearly the leader of the group, remarked. Indeed, it was a natural conclusion to come to. They wouldn’t suspect me even if I said “The Shovel Valley” (Invincible Shovel God’s sect)
The other nodded after hearing the statement and we headed towards the inn.
Thanks for the chapter