Chapter 39 - Drifting / Chapter 40 - Bazaar / Cultist Access (Patreon)

Here's the chapters! Get them here or read below!

Also, there is an author's note at the end explaining about last week, and.. things. Not really required reading really.

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Chapter 39 - Drifting

Maybe it was because they stuck to a main route through the city, but Elania couldn’t help but notice the overabundance of guards stationed at every intersection, and sometimes even at the entrances to smaller alleys. As expected from such a thick concentration of them, everyone seemed to be on their best behavior. That didn’t even change when they entered the first market square, which was full of raucous and over excited merchants hawking everything from questionable produce to furniture.

Tanyan put his hand on her shoulder and filled her in.

“This is the only open market allowed in the Artisan district, and they are forced to pack up every night. Prices are a lot lower if you head to the Mercenary district and things are about the same, so it is usually best to avoid the bazaar. Shopkeeps if you want quality here though can’t be beat.”

Elania wasn’t sure what prompted the explanation, but she appreciated it nonetheless. She suspected she needed to find an ‘artificer’ shopkeep somewhere around here to deal with the monster-core and a few of her questions she had about her now destroyed mana shard.

She was actually feeling quite excited at the prospect of finally getting away from the monks and Marcus and going off on her own. There was the worry about her ‘eye color status’ but she hoped now that she was in the city and was not just dealing with the annoying prejudiced members of her group it wouldn’t be as big an issue.

Maybe she could even find someone else that could explain half of the million questionable things about her demon abilities and the ‘Management’ thing. The fact that the tax orb had reacted like she was its boss was a bit worrying. She hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but she realized maybe having been classified as a ‘Manager’ was important.

Why that had happened at all was beyond her, and the entire combat with the innkeeper and taking everyone hostage was still a blur. Elania shook her head and hurried her step, as the others had pulled ahead while she was thinking. Leaving the bazaar behind, they picked their way up a street that gently sloped toward a larger building at the top of a hill.

It still boggled her mind that the cavern was as big as it was, hosting the entire city and more inside of it, the massive light crystals dangling down overhead casting an eerie but unbroken ambient glow over everything. The overall color changing from area to area based on whatever color crystal was hanging above.

She found the effect drowned out the colors of everything and muted them a bit, and that was something that continuously reminded her they weren’t simply in a nice-aboveground-type-of-city.

The architecture was stranger than the people. She’d visited Paris once, and some of the older sections of the city were the closest thing she could compare the Neftasu she had seen so far with. The cobbled streets didn’t have traffic on them other than people and the cart pulled by white colored Ralfots.

Those had been a bit of surprise but considering how many of the things she had seen on the adventure to reach the city, she wasn’t surprised to see them domesticated in the city and used as pack animals. It was only the color and texture of their skin that had been off as it seemed people bleached or did away with the moss that grew on the wild ones.

The buildings were less made of individual stones though, and more like they had been carved and smoothed directly out of a single solid stone. That was strange, and although it was sometimes broken up by a wall or building that looked like it had been put in after the fact, the strange ‘texture’ of most buildings was that of smooth melted stone.

Elania wondered how old those buildings were, and maybe if the current occupants hadn’t been the first owners. The massive wall that they had crossed when approaching the city, and the mention of dwerves made her think of Lord of the Rings and the massive cities the dwarves made there. Even the name Dwerves that the monk had used seemed too big a co-incidence. Maybe the stupid [System] had decided to translate like that to emphasize the similarities? Or differences between what she knew from Earth fiction and what was real here?

Did the system really take that much active notice of her and what she thought? Elania swallowed, the dizzying array of questions threatening to sidetrack her once again and distract her from what was important. Money. Shelter. Hide in safe place for a few years.

The incline of the street angled upwards even more, and she felt a slight tightness in her legs that she knew would have been torture if she’d been expected to keep this pace back home. The others didn’t slow down though, and she found herself wondering just what kind of conditioning the monks had been given. They hadn’t slowed down much over the trip, and she realized that she really had not given them credit for that.

Not that it mattered. She was done with monks, and the rest of them. Tanyan was nice, but she suspected he’d be punished by whoever was in charge just for being nice to her. At least that was the impression she got from Taniel and the stupid novices.

The further they climbed the more and more houses were decorated with glowing crystals and other embellishments, and she realized that the pervasive dim light from above was being drowned out by the chaotic rainbow colors of the townhouses. Ahead she realized a massive building was beginning to tower over them, although it was only partially visible from the angle they were at. It reminded her of one of the massive cathedrals she had visited in Paris, which gave her an eerie sense of deja vu.

Except nothing she had seen in France was painted by psychedelic rainbow crystals, and her family was replaced with people she barely trusted.

‘Bad train of thought, Elania. Let’s dwell on what we can deal with.’

When they finally crested the top of the hill the street opened up into a large square. After everything else the massive cathedral-esque building that towered stories above them still managed to be impressive. A fifteen foot stone wall was built directly into its sides, and it stretched out across the entire plaza and she realized it didn’t just make a small box, but encircled an entire other district. It was built directly into the cave side, and buildings and structures towered up above them like some type of massive cliffside fortress.

“Always impressive the Conclave. They really know how to do their entrances, don’t they?”

“The Conclave is older than you, Mercenary, and will be there long after you’re gone.” Taniel answered, before waving the novices forward. Elania realized for them, home was in sight and she guessed the ordeal they had all been through would be over soon. Hers wasn’t going to stop.

Tanyan turned to her and smiled. “This is the end of the road. You should head back down to the market and see about finding that Artificer. There are a few Inns here in the square you could stay at after you have some coin.”

He nodded toward one in particular, “That’s the Dancing Lion, I’ve been there a few times, if you want, we could meet there in a few days so I can check on you. We can use returning that outfit as a pretense for the meeting, assuming you have one of your own by then.”

She looked down at herself and realized she was still wearing the borrowed monk outfit. It had never been said that she’d have to return it, but she realized that she had taken a lot of things for granted in the name of basic necessity.

“Ok,” Elania smiled and nodded but it was hardly the same line of thought going through her head.

‘Check on me? What a load of crap. The fact we need a pretense at all says everything. Well, no point in refusing and burning bridges.’

Why had she followed them all the way up to the Conclave square anyway? It would have made more sense to cut off on her own at the bazaar. She realized it had become habit, that she’d followed them because she had been following them for what felt like weeks. She needed to clear that thinking.

“I’m going to end the contract now.”

A sudden bit of fear filled her, that wasn’t going to help her position much, ending the contract.

“Tanyan do you think you could---” a sudden message interupted her request and she felt her heart fall.

[Contractee Initiated Contract termination.]

[Contract Completed]

[No violations have been assessed.]

[All clauses fulfilled. System-termination of Contract completed.]

That message seemed a lot more wordy than a lot of the other system prompts, and Elania wondered if there was a reason some parts of the system felt different to her. Especially the Contract and Management screens compared to the normal status messages and the like.

She still hadn’t managed to ask about that to them, but she felt like she’d be able to find someone else to give her answers. She frowned at Tanyan who looked at her apologetically.

“Ok. Well, I guess we could meet at that Inn in two days, then? If you really want to. Hopefully I will have settled in by then.”

“Let’s do that then. Good luck Elania.”

Marcus waved at her as well, “Yer gonna need the luck, girlie. ‘Specially now. Sure you don’t want to cut a ‘contract with me now?”

Elania stared at him until he finally broke the uncomfortable silence, “Worth a try. I can understand ye dislike for the idea, but I’d not treat you unfairly. Not ‘eeryone will be able to say that.”

She wasn’t sure what his definition of ‘unfair’ was, but she didn’t feel any regret when he turned away.

It was Taniel who was last to say goodbye. “Don’t think you are a bad demon. Hell, you might even be just about normal for a person. Goodluck.”

“Uhh. The same to you?” She shrugged and he nodded, and then the group was going on toward the massive building without her and she was alone.

Or at least as alone in a city as a person could be. The square wasn’t crowded, but there were still people sitting and talking and walking about. Cities it seemed, were about the same everywhere, whether on earth or in some strange fantasy place.

She turned around to look at the path they had just come up, and then began to take stock of herself and her belongings. It also took the others out of her view. It felt strange. She was alone again, and for all the issues of being part of the strange group that had got her here, she had been part of something. Had someone to watch her back at least a little. Even if she had to worry about them stealing her things or worse, now she was alone.

That was a liberating and scary feeling. She’d known the risks and had grown used to watching out for Marcus trying to trick her or the novices getting handsy with her backpack. Taniel taking a swing at her... just...

It was a new beginning now, she told herself. There wouldn’t be any [Darkwalker] or [Manzitore] coming to eat her.

Looking out at the small stream of moving people, why didn’t she feel relieved?

Elania decided that keeping on the move was her best bet and pulled her backpack strap tight and headed back down to the large market bazaar. Maybe she would have some luck looking for that artificer.

Chapter 40 – Bazaar

It turned out finding the shopkeeper she wanted wasn’t as straightforward as she had been led to believe.

She had strolled back down to the Bazaar and no one had paid her any attention. That was to her liking as it gave her time to observe without any pressure. A cart that wasn’t being pulled by any animal or creature had almost run her over. At first, she though it had somehow gotten loose and was flying down the street, but it kept going even as it reached the bottom and rounded a corner.

A car?

It had been totally silent, but somehow steering was obviously built in, and she wondered if it was powered by magic. It hadn’t looked anything like a car though, more like an oversized wagon that would have been better served being pulled by animals.

The encounter left her with the realization she needed to keep her mind open about what was possible and what wasn’t when there was magic involved.

The market was still bustling, but as she finally reached it she realized she had made a mistake. She’d forgotten to ask about the stupid stone... thing that told time and provided a map.

‘Oh god, I’m so stupid, how could I forget about something so important?’

She didn’t even remember the name that Marcus had called it, so asking someone random was going to be a challenge... if she even dared to bother someone.

The thought of asking a random stranger was worrying and she looked up and scanned the crowd of moving faces. Everyone seemed to have a place to be or a purpose, and it just exacerbated the feeling of disconnection she had from all of them as well as the feeling of someone watching and examining her every move. She identified that last as anxiety, something she had always struggled with, and did her best to squash it the way she normally did. She made a plan.

Elania took a deep breath and looked at several of the bazaar stalls from afar before taking a determined step forward into the chaotic chatter of the market. She didn’t make it more than a few stalls into the mass of temporary merchant stalls before hawkers were trying to drag her attention to their wares.

Jewelry, fabrics, pottery, furniture, and even polished knives were just a few of the initial offers presented to her by eager sellers, undeterred by her interest and quickly moving to target the next shopper passing by.

It was fabric that finally caught Elania’s attention. Not the lengths of untailored fabric offered to her earlier, but clean looking cloth in the form of new clothes. She could even detect the fresh scent of linen, or something very close to it as she stepped closer.

The stall was manned by a young man who looked almost Arabic in origin to her with a browned complexion and black hair to go with it, although from the huge mix in the market that didn’t seem to mean anything.

He looked bored and unlike many of the others he wasn’t bothering to actively try to pull in customers and didn’t even notice her approach the stall so Elania decided to examine things herself.

She immediately spotted a few things that she really needed, several pairs of small clothes, a non-descript and probably cheap tunic and pair of trousers. She squeezed her toes that were basically glued to the simple cloth wraps she’d used as footwear. Maybe she should have looked for someone selling the sandals that she had noticed the city people seemed to favor.

A sudden shout from inside the stall had her look up in surprise. An old man was glaring at the younger and pointed to her before disappearing behind a divider. Elania wondered if it was a family business as the young man hurried over to assist her. She felt slightly nervous and avoided looking him directly in the eye, instead focusing on the merchandise.

“I need a set of small clothes for sure, and a pair of trousers and shirt. Do you have any sandals, the ones most people are wearing?”

He didn’t answer immediately, instead he gaped at her in shock and Elania felt a worried twist in her gut. If this was how the very first person she talked to reacted to her being demon then how possibly was she going to...

“Of course, Mahlessi. Grandfather has many pair to choose from on the other side of the stall. If you’d like to select what you like, I’ll grab a pair of Sassani for you.”

“Ok,” Elania responded quickly, but as he turned away she realized he hadn’t been surprised by her race. She wasn’t sure how she could tell, but she was sure they had been speaking in an entirely different language. What was a little shocking was she spoke to him in the different language before he even spoke... unless it was whatever the older man – his grandfather --- had yelled that prompted the change?

Sassani were obviously the sandals, and she guessed that Mahlessi was a polite title of some kind. Elania hoped he wouldn’t start calling her something else when he learned she had no money to pay for anything with.

Now she felt bad, he was getting up and getting her something, and she hadn’t actually intended to buy anything just yet. She wasn’t even sure exactly how much she should be paying. She had just wanted to point the things she wanted out, and then ask where she could find an artificer so she could come back and buy them. That plan seemed to make sense in her head as a good way to get a fair answer.

The young man returned and she asked right away, “I don’t actually have the money to buy the things on me right now, I need to find an artificer, can you point me to one so I can come back and buy the clothes?”

The half cheer on his face turned into a frozen polite stare she knew was the normal look of an annoyed service person dealing with some entitled customer. She hated to be that person, but after a moment of silence he started clipping off some directions for her in a hurry. She had to ask him to slow down and for some clarifications because she wasn’t familiar with the area at all, but eventually thought she had a good idea of where to go.

“Once you find one, you’ll find a whole row of them.”

“Thank you, and if you keep those things set aside, I’ll be back to get them!”

He nodded, but she could tell that he did not exactly seem to believe her. Well, she would once she had the money, she really needed a new outfit. Or two. They hadn’t agreed to a price, maybe she’d be able to get a few changes which would be great. That made her wonder about how they did laundry, and she suddenly had a trepidation that she’d have to wash everything by hand.

What were those tubs that wild west women were always shown using to clean things? She didn’t even know the name, much less how to use anything other than a washing machine and dryer.

‘Let’s not get ahead of myself, I don’t have any money or clothes yet.’

She took off and hurried through the market, the bustle was still there and a few times she found herself slowing down just to look at the more stranger looking assortments. There was one booth that was full of pottery that was all shaped like snakes. That was pretty neat. She wasn’t sure how practical it was, but it looked cool, and so did other people apparently, because the seller had all kinds of customers.

Then there were the sellers who had little more than small blankets on the ground with an assortment of things laid out. They reminded her of Paris, and the sellers who had all kinds of little Eiffel towers who’d try to trick you into buying an overpriced souvenir.

A few even started to try and stop her to look at their wares, but somehow she managed to stop them without having to say anything with just a look. That was the biggest confirmation to her that she was definitely still a scary ‘bad’ demon.

Elania was feeling as if the monks and Marcus had quite exaggerated some of the stories of her status and prospects in the city. She wouldn’t exactly say they had lied, but she wasn’t exactly being hunted down by soldiers or captured and locked up after Tanyan had dissolved the contract.

She was almost out of the market, having walked the entire length almost, although barely scratching the real depth of the place. Someone wanting to browse randomly could have wasted an entire day or two there exploring everything. Elania just wanted to get through and sell the ‘Monster Core’ and then get a room and maybe an outfit of clothes or two. Thankfully, she didn’t even need to worry about finding food, too. That simplification of logistics would help.

A woman with a child in tow came around the corner at the same time Elania did. The other woman was looking down and yelling at the kid while hurrying and almost ran into her. A curse erupted when the mother did notice her, which turned into a high-pitched scream as she jumped backwards and away, tripping over her own child and falling onto the ground.

Elania’s mouth widened in surprise as the woman pointed at her and shrieked even louder. The small boy added his own hysterical cries to the mix. Elania realized everyone nearby had stopped what they were doing and was staring at them, two soldiers in uniform had clubs out and were hurrying over as well.

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Author Note

Hello everyone!

Sorry if this rambles a bit. I just wanted to leave a note explaining a little and it turned out into a big ramble, so I put it at the end.

I'm sorry for missing the releases last week, things have been really hard lately. After Christmas, the water pipes burst and basically flooded everything so cleaning up and fixing the tile and drying things up was just the start of it. The water started on the second floor, basically filled everything up then overflowed down the staircase (and through every little tiny crack you can imagine, spraying the downstairs in random places and who knows how much through the walls) and flooded the ground floor too... before finding an exit through the HVAC vents in the floor and out through the front door.

Now, we thought it was mostly over, but Friday the furnace stopped working and started making a loud high pitched sound -- blow motor fried. Going to guess the water going down into the basement and increasing the moisture down there did it in or something, but a replacement motor wasn't in attendance and it has been getting down to about 20 degrees every night. So we had to find 'alternative' heating any way we could. House isn't conductive to good insulation either as it is a pretty old place. Was supposed to have it fixed today when the part came in, but that didn't work out as the fitting was only 3 legged and we needed a four-legged one, but hopefully, the repair guy will be over tomorrow with one that fits.

That is just what happened last week. The whole holiday season has been pretty hard on me and my dad this year. My mother, grandfather, and grandmother all passed away last year and this was our first Christmas without them. It doesn't help that we were all pretty close and we were all living together (we knew my grandparents were going to go soon, so we were all living together to cut costs and take care of them) but my mother passed away suddenly and without much warning and was a really hard blow to my dad, causing him to actually have a heart attack on the spot. (Crazy thing that yes can actually happen) Luckily, he was able to pull through, although his long term health has been really damaged by it.

I'm not meaning for any of this to really be an excuse as to missing the release date for the story last week, just an explanation of what has been going on. I didn't post an update when I missed monday's post because I figured I would release Chapter 43 and the interlude wed and a separate post explaining wouldn't be needed. Then I missed that and figured I would post 43 / Interlude / 44 Friday along with a short explanation. Well that got blown out of the water.

We still don't have 44 today, but I really just wanted to post an update no matter what with what I had ready. At this point rather than keep trying to scramble to get to where we are *supposed* to be, I think it will be best to just continue on the regular release schedule. So that is what we are going to do.

I know there was some worry and alarm from a few people, but I don't intend to stop writing the story or go on hiatus at this point. I really just have been swamped from all the stuff going on IRL.

Actually, things for the story, other than my slower than expected writing speed are really looking good. I have a friend who is a professional editor that I've made a deal with to turn the first part of the webnovel into an actual book. I've actually written a lot with this person before, doing a lot of roleplay, etc and they are going to help co-author it. So it won't just be a copy paste of the webnovel into novel format, but have expanded scenes, changed pacing, and above all an expansion of content, clarified things, and really just be way more polished than the webnovel which has basically been a rough draft.

So I have been working with them on that while also continuing the web-novel. If the book does well then we'll likely do the same thing with a second book following the web-novel. I don't actually know when it will be ready, but so far progress on that has been coming along pretty fast. I actually am finding all kinds of things from that process that help me understand the characters better and will carry on through the next chapters of the story.