Chapter 159: A Day of Rest: Part IV

The Unnamed Town’s inn was built by Angora to accommodate the refugee Players Marni had brought.

However, now that most of those Players had enough of their own wealth to buy houses in various spots in town (Although most have become penniless once again following the introduction of Item Strengthening), business was waning at the inn.

The Unnamed Town was no famous tourist spot or Holy Land itself after all, and it was not too likely to have tourist coming to visit.

Be that as it may, Mufasa had the children stay there for the time being.

Despite the fact that the children had agreed to join the Church of Games and become believers, it was not that easy to offer praise to an unfamiliar deity they had not been in touch with.

At the very least, no matter how Simba would claim that he believed in that god now, Mufasa could tell at once that he was lying…

***

Nala drifted into deep sleep after drinking the female alchemist’s potion.

Mufasa himself had things to do, and so returned Nala to the inn, but warned the children not to do anything that would lead to misunderstandings before leaving.

Zazu had decided to stay in the inn to care for Nala, while Simba decided to have a tour of the streets despite worrying about her as well, so that he could understand the place.

It was a habit he had developed when he was forced into burglary to survive in Lancaster. Indeed, it was something similar to taking note of every detail of the mark as any thief would put it, checking the surroundings, smoothing out any potential problems and confirming the escape routes.

Moreover, after having ran around for the sick Nala since morning, Zazu and Simba did not have much to eat and were still holding on with the scrumptious dinner they had last night. Continuing on with just that was definitely impossible, so Simba could bring some food back to the inn while checking things out.

Mufasa had left some ‘game coins’ back in their inn, and according to him, that was the currency that the town mostly traded with. Many unique buildings and facilities that the town possessed only accepted the game coins too, whereas the Rions and coppers coins had to be exchanged before it could be used in this town.

While Simba thought that it was not alright to accept Mufasa’s charity, he clearly wasn’t getting anything to eat empty-handed. He therefore steeled himself and accepted the donation, and brought some of the coins with him before he left.

The children had been hungry, tired and very nervous when they arrived in town through the Lifestone, and did not really observe the town.

Now that Simba was calmer, things naturally felt different than yesterday.

Firstly, the cleanliness and elegance here naturally didn’t change much, but unlike yesterday, the people on the streets were flocking in groups of five to six, and passionately discussing things Simba couldn’t quite understand. At the same time, from the pointedly aimed manner in which they picked their path, they were different from the Lancaster noble kids who strolled everywhere with their lapdogs.

Of course, there were many things that Simba found hard to comprehend aside from those normalcies.

For example, he had just seen a scrawny figure dashed past him like a wind, while a burly person with huge chest muscles was holding a massive sword glinting in orange radiance while in pursuit…

Just as Simba was left stunned by the violence in broad daylight and was left confused why no city watch or some other peacekeepers coming forward, he realized that the others on the streets were acting as if they had seen nothing. In fact, some of them chuckling and saying things like ‘looks like Gou Dan is stirring things up again…’, ‘He deserves that for capturing that blinding image’, ‘Calm down, everyone, let’s keep the post at trending so that newcomers could be baptized with that!’.

That said, they were not actually reacting like they were watching people chasing each other around, but simply bearing the nonchalance of watching siblings having a quarrel.

“Excuse me… won’t they get hurt?” Simba carefully asked a passerby.

“They’ll be fine. Joe would calm down after Gou Dan dies,” the passerby answered matter-of-factly.

What nonsense was that? What else would he want after his victim dies? Or was he going to chase his victim down the underworld?

On the other hand, weren’t the townsfolks’ brains wired differently? Why don’t they care about dying? Even the legendary barbarians of the barren highlands who valued honor and battle more than life did not ignore death to such levels!

Simba then associated all that with Mufasa’s outstanding fighting skills and his decisiveness in cutting down his foes, and therefore had a chilling hunch: could it be that Mufasa was so strong because he stayed in such an environment?

‘Dangerous! This religion is too dangerous!’

Nonetheless, Simba shook his head to throw away those excess thoughts. No, he could not be sure of what the Church of Games really was like just from such bits and pieces—he must gather more information.

Meanwhile, the passerby was a little curious why Simba would ask such a question, but after a glance over Simba’s head and a tiny mumble that sounded like ‘friendly unit with no HP bar’, he left in disappointment.

After that, Simba continued strolling through the streets, only to run into more weird things.

For example, there was a long queue in front of the blacksmith shop, waiting to have their weapons hammered by the dwarven craftsman.

Once again, Simba was puzzled: it was true that mountain dwarves were rare (in reality, the blacksmith in town was a gray dwarf who had never showed up much on the surface, but Simba didn’t know that), but aren’t the people being a little too passionate?

“Hehehe. I’ve already did as the fortune post said: wash my face, get naked and dance around a candle at midnight without blowing out the candle. The Strengthening today will work!”

“Your item is gone.”

“No—!”

Simba watched as that believer screamed and stretched his hand at the broken pieces on the anvil while Players behind him dragged him away.

‘The weapon wasn’t even heated on the fire or sprinkled with rare alchemy dust… hammering it straightaway on the anvil? It would be weird if it didn’t break!” The boy could not help muttering inwardly.

Aside from such people, Simba would also encounter weirdos wearing anglerfish heads (with lightbulb antlers) or dolphin heads, weirdos holding weird equipment as they shouted “Yeah I got a drop’ before happily fainting on the ground and weirdos kneeling in front of half-finished houses, praying that it would complete itself…

‘Maybe every believer of the God of Games is crazy!’