Chapter 16

Chapter 16

As night started to fall, Alice was startled out of her stupor by the loud clang of a bell that shook her out of her thoughts, ringing seven times before falling silent. She realized that she was sitting around and moping at a terrible time – she needed to find a place to sleep, as well as somewhere which hopefully had a hot meal. She hadn’t had anything to eat for several hours, and her stomach was informing her in no uncertain terms that it was very unhappy with her. She was interested in finding out more about the Church of the System, and the priest made it seem likely that she would be welcome back to the church if she visited again. She would go back to investigate more when she was thinking a bit more clearly. For now, she needed to focus on food and shelter again.

She got up and went back to looking through the dock district – if she was paying attention, she could hopefully find an inn or something to stay the night.

It took another half-hour of searching, but eventually she came to a building advertising ‘Room and Board for one silver sun a night. Daily Special (meal) available for two copper artisans and three copper paupers.’ Alice was pretty sure copper artisans were the big copper coins and copper paupers were the small ones, meaning this was a little over half of a silver sun. Since a meat and vegetable skewer costs around one copper artisan, this seems like a decent price? Although it depends on quantity as well. Still, worth checking. She stepped into the building, already thinking.

If I’m careful about this, I could probably learn a lot – I have a good idea what some aspects of this world look like, but I have no clue what the geographical situation looks like at all, or what the ‘recent news’ being passed around among random people looks like. If I just find a place to sit down and listen in as people talk, I could get a great deal of useful information. If this Inn serves alcohol, that would be even better, since people are less likely to mind a random person asking questions if they’re drunk.

After snapping out of her funk, Alice had several questions she wanted to confirm – for one, the rarity of mages. The merchant at the square had claimed there were less than twenty mages in the town, and Alice hadn’t seen anyone use magic besides the woman lifting construction materials at the docks. However, while she was just guesstimating, she had seen hundreds of people in this town during her walk here, and she would be surprised if the town’s population was below 1,000. It might even be significantly higher – maybe 2,000? Maybe even 5,000? Were mages really so rare?

Apart from that, she wanted a better grasp of geography. She wasn’t particularly interested in getting caught up in the crossfire between the Sigmusi Empire and the country she was currently in, so finding somewhere new to live would be ideal. Preferably somewhere she would be able to get access to research about either dimensional travel, the System, or both, and where the nation would be willing to let mages work for their education. If she could find an area where her life was less at-risk, she could devote more time and energy to her research.

She stepped into the inn. She took a look around, and realized that the building was far more populated than she had expected – she hadn’t been sure how many people would be staying at the inn, but it looked almost like the inn doubled up as a restaurant or something, with several workers happily eating and chatting with each other.

A {Barmaid} continuously ferried meals and alcohol between the kitchen and various tables, moving faster than she had any right to but not fast enough to quite keep pace with the incoming orders. Apart from that, a man also whisked coins off of tables and helped the {Barmaid} when he had time, while occasionally firing a joke or a smile at one of the customers. Alice looked around the room, not quite sure where to go to ask for a room and a meal. Was there some custom here she was missing? There didn’t seem to be a counter of any sort that she could simply walk up to. What was she supposed to do?

Hesitantly, she stepped into the room, and the man who was moving around the room gave her a broad smile. “Welcome, come in! Take a seat.”

Alice looked around the room, trying to find an empty table. There were none, but she realized after a second that this might actually work to her advantage – if she could just chat with her tablemates some, it would probably be much easier and less suspicious than it would be to try to awkwardly listen in to random strangers talking halfway across the room. Therefore, she looked for the busiest table which still had an open seat, and sat down with a group of five {Laborers}, four men and one woman. After less than a minute, the man who had been whisking coins around earlier stepped up to her.

“Hey lass, what can I get you? Meal, bed, or both?”

“I’m looking for a room and a meal – I need a place to sleep for the night.”

“That’ll be one silver sun, two artisans, and three paupers – if you want breakfast tomorrow, I can make it a round two silver suns instead?”

Alice thought about it for a moment before she nodded, although she involuntarily winced a little. That was another tenth of her remaining money gone. Perhaps the innkeeper had seen her wince, but he had a thoughtful expression. After a moment, he made her an offer instead.

“Hmm... Lass, if you’re interested, you could work for your meal instead. Tessa is my only {Serving Girl} tonight, so I’m a bit short-handed, and none of the {Laborers} would be interested in extra work after a full day of hard labor. If your effective strength and Dexterity are above 75, you have any sort of memory or learning boosting perk, and you’re willing to work for the rest of dinner and tomorrow morning, I’m willing to waive the fees for the meal and a bed for the night. Are you interested?” The man gave her an easygoing grin. Alice tried to think – she really was short on money, but would this make it harder to gather information?

Actually, this might make it easier – she would have an easy excuse to be moving around the room, chatting with customers, and popping in and out of conversations. As the night moved on and the {Laborers} became more and more drunk, it would probably also be easier to gather information from them. Her previous plans would have involved her trying to eat as slowly as possible to stick around these conversations, but it would seem much more natural this way...

“Sure, that seems good to me. Can I eat dinner first and then get started?”

“Sounds fine! Daily special?”

“What’s the daily special?”

“Potato, Corn, and Spidercrab stew with spring Aelthys.”

It was only after getting a rough summary of the continent that Alice understood how well and truly fucked she was geographically. She wanted to leave the Illvarian South, because of the huge threat to her life present in the region, but her odds of surviving if she ran looked slim. If she ran south, the only end she could see was becoming monster food. Whatever lived that way was much stronger than the vinebears, and those were dangerous enough. To the west was the Sigmusi, where she was likely to get her core harvested if anyone discovered she was a mage. Not to mention, Illvaria and the Sigmusi were more or less semi-openly skirmishing, so going west would be like travelling through a zone filled with two sides of a guerilla war. She had no confidence that she could survive a warzone.

The Shil Confederacy, to the East, may be united against external threats, especially the Sigmusi Empire, but that was far from actually being united – anytime a bigger threat wasn’t present, the 400+ nations in the confederacy reverted back into a giant mess of squabbling, conflicting nations, meaning there was always a war going on inside of the Confederacy. Even if the Corellion Empire to the far East would probably be Alice’s first choice when it came to places to live, trying to get there was probably guaranteed to send her to the grave instead.

Finally, to the North was the heartland of Illvaria, which was considerably safer than the South. However, first she would have to exit Cyra, with stronger and stronger monsters wandering around the area as spring came. As time passed, most of the monsters would be put down by either adventurers or the army, but right now monster season was just picking up, and this area was still very newly settled – monsters were just outside the gates, sometimes literally. Most people came south or returned north with adventurer escorts to deal with monsters and stray outlaws, unless they had Perks to ensure their safe passage – and she had no way of affording this passage, since the cost would be measured in gold coins. Not to mention, if they found out she was a mage, she had no way of guaranteeing they wouldn’t turn on her for a bigger payday, since the Sigmusi bounty on mage cores was far higher than whatever payment she could scrape together. The bounty on live mages was even higher – since the empire was renowned for legal slavery and for their ‘dog soldiers’ formed from war prisoners, Alice was very much not interested in joining the Sigmusi Soldata Magicka, especially not under whatever means they used to control their enslaved soldiers.

In other words, she was stuck in this town for the foreseeable future. That wasn’t to say that it was all bad – Illvaria was renowned throughout the southern continent for its mages and magic academies. Nobody in the Inn had mentioned even the tiniest fragment of ‘heroes from another world’ or even just ‘another world,’ so Alice thought it was likely that people from another dimension were at least rare, if not unheard of. If she wanted to find a way home, she might be best served by staying in Illvaria, at least when it came to accessing studies on esoteric topics. However, that was true of the Illvarian North – not the South, which was a newly settled frontier area.

As an interesting side note, she had discovered that the people of this world had an excellent understanding of the human body, and could directly and accurately reference all the purposes of the internal organs as if they were obvious, common knowledge. Alice found this a little curious, both because it seemed to confirm that humans on this planet were, internally, exactly the same as her, as well as the fact that they had good understanding of medicine even if several other areas that seemed like they would have well-developed weren’t. People had an understanding of microbes, diseases, the heart and lungs pumping blood and oxygen throughout the body, but even though they had electromagnetic mages they had no electricity? Did mana somehow make electricity not work? Alice found herself both intrigued and confused by this thought – how did mana interact with electricity and the laws of physics she was familiar with, anyway? In theory, temperature was just the movement of atoms, but kinetic mages didn’t seem to be able to interact with temperature at all, and there was even a separate category of magic called ‘thermal magic’ that, as far as she knew, did temperature related things. Furthermore, one could apparently stop ageing if they levelled up enough, while other people seemed to age normally or age at a slightly slower pace. For all of these questions, she had a single, burning question: why?

For now, she had no answers. Before trying to experiment on her own, it would be best to look at what the natives of this planet had discovered – something she would need books for. And in the south, unfortunately, there were few books available, and those that were actually available were expensive, costing at least several silver crowns, and books on magic usually cost at least a golden sun and some silver crowns in exchange. Her ability to piggyback off of other’s research and really figure out what the hell was going on was very limited right now.

She sighed, staring at the ceiling while laying on her bed. Even though she was still determined to find a way home, it really didn’t seem like it was going to be easy. Her parents and friends would have to wait – she was stuck here for the time being.

She eventually fell asleep, but only after several hours of fitful and uneasy staring and thinking. She did not sleep well.

* * *

The next morning, Alice had a breakfast of a few eggs and some sort of chewy spidercrab and vegetable dish. She had expected meat to be expensive if this world was like medieval Europe, but she saw meat products for sale pretty frequently – maybe it was surprisingly cheap due to monster activity? Something interesting to explore.

She helped the innkeeper take orders and shuffle meals around during the breakfast rush – as far as she could tell, the inn was a fair bit more popular as a restaurant rather than as an actual inn, which was amusing to think about. The conversations in the morning were much quieter, probably because the patrons were a fair bit less drunk. As a result, Alice didn’t manage to extract all that much information that she didn’t already know. However, she still felt less directionless than before – at the very least, she had a rough idea what the surrounding countries and geography looked like. With free room and board and two free meals, she felt like she had gotten a good deal.

“You do good work, lass. On nights when my {Serving Girl}s aren’t around, you’re welcome to come back if you want somewhere to work.”

Alice simply shrugged – she wanted to find something to do with magic as her profession, preferably where she would be able to look at books and do some research in peace without getting hunted down and murdered by the Sigmusi or the people looking for a quick payout from them. Right now, she was thinking about trying to find a job at the {Enchanter} she had found earlier, or the Bookseller that she had previously seen.

Her tentative plan was immediately interrupted when a loud knocking sound came from the door, and then two {Guards} stepped into the room.

They looked towards her, and a moment later, {Sense Hostility} began picking up hostility in both of their gazes. Not a lot, and certainly not to the point where the Perk was screaming at her, but it was more than enough to make her want to run.

“Miss Alice? I am going to have to ask you to come with me.” One of the guards looked at her with a menacing expression. Alice briefly debated trying to run away, her thoughts turning into chaos in seconds. The {Guards}? Why? What did she do?

If she ran, there was no way in hell she would escape – she had no doubts that the average person in this world was way stronger than her if they looked like they were older than twenty, and the {Guards} were both at least in their thirties, if not older. One of them held up an badge which bore the insignia of a pile of coins sitting underneath a silver sword and a silver eye, and the {Innkeeper} immediately got out of the way as if he had just discovered she had a contagious plague.

“May I ask why?” Alice managed to squeeze out of her throat, panic rapidly overtaking her as the {Guards} stared at her like pythons looking at their prey.

The {Guard} said nothing in reply, simply speeding up. In the span of seconds, he appeared before her, and then seemed to accelerate again before he grabbed her wrist and then jerked her body forward. Suddenly, the strength drained out of her body, and she could feel her body’s movement become sluggish, her physical stats suddenly draining.

“I have her. Let’s go.” The other guard quickly grabbed her other wrist, and she could feel even more of her physical stats drain away. Then, she was walked out of the inn, her body struggling even to stay upright between her captors as her strength plummeted, her limbs like heavy lead and her stomach churning with anxiety.