Chapter 21: A suspicious masked woman

As expected, my appearance right now is calling the attention of every person I come across, the townsfolk are looking at me with suspicion, but they quickly look away when they think I've noticed them. I can't blame them, I would also be suspicious if I saw a tall woman wearing a hood and covering her face with a creepy looking mask.

This really is a problem, I don't like being in the wilderness, but whenever I enter a settlement the way people react to me makes me feel even worse and I start wanting to leave as soon as possible, I wonder if there's any place left in this world where I can feel at home...

Fortunately, my depressing thoughts are interrupted when I see a group of guards placing two barrels in the middle of a plaza, one of them is full of chunks of silver and the other is filled with gold, I wonder what those are for.

Even if I'm curious I don't want to bring more attention to myself by asking, however, I don't seem to be to the only visitor around here as someone asks the guards about it.

"These barrels? They are for the dragon that flew away a moment ago, didn't you see him?"

"Yes, that was quite surprising... isn't everyone around here rather calm despite having a dragon around?"

Now that he mentions it, most of the people I've seen seemed more concerned with me than the dragon...

"That's because he's been staying at the nearby ruins for over two months already, we're used to him by now"

The guard has a tired expression on his face.

"He demands a weekly tribute of silver and gold from us in exchange for 'protecting the town' even though there's nothing we need protection from... but since we have an alchemist living here it's not a big deal"

Silver and gold? I wonder what he wants those for.

Those metals were very valuable in the past, in fact, that's the reason why coins were made of gold silver and copper, the value of money came from the value of the metal it was made of.

However, just over 300 years ago, an alchemist discovered a method to easily manufacture silver and gold, he and the lord he worked for apparently believed that they would we able to get a limitless supply of money thanks to that discovery, but it didn't take long for the precious metals to lose their value, and when other alchemist managed to copy the method they became almost entirely worthless.

These days we still utilize coins made of those same metals, but their value comes from the mana signatures of 20 different kings imprinted on each of them, and unlike before when the value of each coin changed constantly to match the metals, now it's fixed to silver being worth 100 times more than copper and gold being 100 times more than silver, there's also 'big' coins of each metal that are worth 10 times more than a normal one.

That really makes me wonder if the dragons just don't know that silver and gold do not have any value anymore... if they don't it would probably be very easy to scam them.

But if these barrels are for that dragon from earlier that means that he's going to come back soon to this plaza, I should probably leave before I get involved in some nonsense, let's just go to the church and get this done with.

This town's church is slightly smaller than average but the decorations seem rather expensive, the most eye-catching of all is a large tapestry depicting the 5 gods of the elements, it seems like this church also follows the most common religion in the continent.

The goddess of light is sitting on a throne right at the center, to her right, the goddess of wind is floating over a lake in which the goddess of water is swimming, to her left, the god of earth and the god of fire are arguing with each other, there's no god of darkness since darkness is the attribute of the bad guys.

Well, as pretty as this tapestry is, I really don't think any of these gods actually exist... that's probably not something I should say out loud, but if they existed, there would be a god of darkness too, and I don't see why the goddess of light would be the boss, despite what a lot of people think, there's absolutely nothing special about the light and dark elements.

"I need to stop getting distracted..."

Let's get back to the task I'm here for, I think all churches have a room where they store the dead bodies before performing a funeral, that seems like the perfect place to leave the two I have, but I bet that people will get the wrong idea if I ask where it is so I'll have to look for it myself.

Not here, not here... oh! I think I found it.

I don't want anyone to catch me leaving the bodies, they'll think that I'm the one who killed them, I'll use 'mana sense' to make sure that there's nobody around...

Alright, it seems like the coast is clear, I think I need to place the bodies on this table... done, now I just need to leave, stay calm Luna, just keep walking and don't do anything that could bring any attention to you...

...

I did it! I'm outside! And nobody seems to have seen me, I cannot believe I finally managed to do something without getting into any trouble, hehe so this is what victory feels like.

"Hehehe"

Huh? People are whispering to each other and pointing at me, one priest, in particular, seems to be very concerned about me, I guess stopping to laugh like a crazy person in front of the church was not a good idea.

Whatever I just need to leave quickly and they'll never know I was here, after all, the reason nobody saw me earlier is that I was really fast leaving the bodies, I was so fast that I'm not even sure if I placed them on the table properly, I just left without checking, if their legs or their arms are hanging off the table it would seem like I didn't care about placing them properly, will they think that I'm disrespectful or lazy?

Well, it's not like I can go back and check... or I can, but I shouldn't... as long as someone sees the note I left they should take care of the rest, but now that I think about it, I didn't make sure to leave it on a place where it could be easily seen... No! I'm not going back! Even I'm not stupid enough to tempt fate again after getting away the first time, so I won't go back to check even if can do it rather quickly... and if I could do it once it should be easier the second time, so I guess I'll just take a quick look.

...

"Mmm, it seems like everything is in place"

It seems like I didn't need to come back, after all, now I'll just leave again like before and... that priest that was looking at me earlier is standing in front of the door, did he follow me?

"Hello"

"What were you doing in there?"

Am I truly dumb after all? How did I manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

"Me? Nothing, I was only looking around"

"This room is not a place visitors would be interested in... can I take a look inside?"

"No! Don't come in!"

When I scream, the man suddenly goes pale with a frightened expression and then collapses on the floor.

What happened to him? Did he forget to eat breakfast? No wait, just now it felt like I was using a skill, could it be? Let me check my status.

I had forgotten about it, but it seems like I got a new skill after I dealt with the murder guards.

Intimidate

Allows to cause a strong feeling of fear on another person

This is a very common skill, but I had never heard that it could cause someone to faint, normally the fear effect is supposed to be rather small, then again, considering how I make people afraid just by being around, maybe it's not strange that this skill is more effective when I use it.

I'll just drag him into the room and then leave before someone else comes...

But when I go back to the hallway, there's a girl trembling in fear looking right at me.

"Uh... do you need something?"

"Did... did you drag someone into that room?"

"No... I did not..."

"But I just saw..."

"Forget what you saw!"

And now she's passed out as well, I need to figure out how to avoid activating this skill...

Since I cannot leave her in the open I guess I'll place her inside the room as well, let's hope that nobody saw me this time...

Needless to say, my hopes were in vain, now a young boy is pointing a knife at me.

"What did you do to my sister!?"

He's trying to put up a brave face, but I can tell that he's afraid.

"Nothing! Let go of that knife!"

And down he goes...

Since I'm sure that everyone can imagine what happened during the next hour or so, I won't go into much detail.

By the time I finally managed to get out of the church again, there were around 40 unconscious people crammed inside of that small room. I hope that they don't get the wrong idea when they see that I left them inside a room meant for dead bodies, and to make things worse, there are also two actual dead bodies with them, maybe they'll get a scare when they wake up.

My only consolation is that I think that I've already filled my quota of trouble for this town, I guess I'll try to meet back with Arana and ask her how things went on her side.

forli