32 Marketplace Fun

"Halt!" several guards called out when they saw the group approaching the wall. "What household are you affiliated with?" the group approaching could see how tense these guards were. It looked as if they were unable to rest in the slightest!

The Moon executive was the first to step forward while flashing his emblem. Due to him being an executive level, unlike other Moon emblems which were red, his was blue. Seeing such a powerful expert in front of them, the guards started to become extremely respectful towards the group.

"Oh? Sorry for holding your group up. Please enter whenever you are ready. Do not take too long, we do not know when a group of orcs will attack us." Nodding their heads in approval, the guards still held their weapons, but made room to allow the group inside of the city.

These guards knew the level of authority a single executive level expert of a strong household had. If they acted out of line, an expert such as him was able to make their lives more difficult and might even have enough authority to replace them with someone else!

The emblems which each household possessed, were able to let out a specific type of aura depending on the individual's level. The community within the city were able to receive techniques in order to hand these emblems out to each individual power within the city.

If the individual gifted with an emblem died, the emblem's color would fade away. This made it so that it was almost impossible for an enemy to fake their affiliation. This also allowed the guards to have an easier time discovering who would be entering the city as an ally or enemy.

Without wasting any time, the group started to make their way into the city. There were many rows of buildings that had small academies, training grounds, shops, and even guilds! The buildings were all made of very fine wood and had their own set of guards standing inside and outside of them.

Beep Beep Beep!

After walking past a shop that sold swords, Leo's screen popped up with a message. Finally not being startled at his screen randomly popping up, Leo took a look and read the words on the screen to himself.

-When in a city, you can exchange your gold earned by defeating your opponents, completing quests, among other ways. Each item will have a set price amount dependent on the current value set within the city. Please open the marketplace screen to see your available balance and a list of purchasable items-

"No way! This system also lets me do this? But I only remember gaining cards from my looting?" Leo thought as the group was approached by a large group of heavily armored individuals. Quickly closing the screen to avoid unnecessary attention, this group of individuals allowed their leader who was on a horse by.

"Ah, you have all made it back safely. Allow us to escort you into the alliance's area so that we can move this all forward." The leader of this large group said while getting off his horse. He had dark red hair with a full suit of shiny iron armor on with a cape that had a symbol that Leo did not recognize.

"Oh, hello again Noah, it is great to see you." The witch was the first to respond as she shook the leader's hand. This Noah was not part of her household but was one of the trainers for the alliance. Seeing the witch treat this Noah individual with so much respect, Leo knew that he must have been a big deal.

Every executive level knew who Noah was because he was not only a trainer, but he was responsible for training commoners that were accepted into the alliance who had not chosen a household. The commoners who were accepted into the alliance were put into a training ground type independent section within the city. From there, they would work hard to have a household within the alliance accept them officially.

Using this type of recruiting method helped each faction of the city. If an individual that showed promise was unable to meet their requirements, they were still able to continue building their foundation.

This allowed strong commoners the ability to have an affiliation with a power, while knowing that even if they underperformed, they would not be immediately casted out. However, if they openly did not train hard, that would be an exception and the commoner would only have themselves to blame.

After warmly greeting the group, Noah got back onto his horse as his men escorted the group back to their area. As the group finally reached the alliance's base of operations, several representatives of each household were already there to greet them.

"By the order of the alliance, Jack of the Mist household and Natalia of the Sacred Flames household are to be under house arrest until their trial. As for their new leader who goes by "Leo", he is to be placed directly into the commoner's area under the watch of the Crimson household."

"Once the trial date has been set, we will let all three of you know. Until then, none of you will be allowed to speak to one another!" The group of representatives told the group as they took custody of Leo's squad from the executive level experts.

Understanding the situation, Jack and Natalia said their goodbyes as their household representatives escorted them back to have an audience with their household's elders. As for Leo, he was escorted by both the representatives of the Moon and Crimson households to the commoner's area into a small secluded building where there were already over one dozen guards stationed outside.

This did not bother Leo, because the experts of the Crimson household who were standing guard gave him enough privacy by only remaining outside of the small building. It was clear that they wanted to treat Leo with enough respect due to his current strength, but still needed to remain completely neutral.

This building was indeed small and only had a bed, a wash room, and some chairs in the center with four chairs. Leo used this opportunity to finally take a nice warm bath, since it was clear that this civilization did not run on electricity in which case a shower head was unheard of.

Within the bath, Leo pulled up the marketplace screen and surprisingly in the top left corner of the screen he saw that he had over seven hundred gold pieces. Leo did not know how valuable each piece of gold was, but to see that he had over seven hundred surprised him and gave him hope that maybe he was now extremely wealthy!

Scanning the different categories, it seemed as if this city was just so much better off than the village he started in. They had multiple types of weapon stores within the system, an abilities store, a techniques store, and consumables among many others!

What caught Leo's eye was the techniques store tab on the screen. Eager to see how many cool and useful techniques he could buy with his gold, Leo clicked on the store as his eyes widened in excitement!