NOVEL NEXT Chapter 39: 39—Never wait in line, just start kicking people
They arrived at their first town after three days on the road, looking for some well-deserved rest. But it was never that easy for Percy.
The humble town on the road was built around a couple of wells and long fields of barley. The golden stalks flickered in the sunlight and swayed in the light breeze like an ocean of gold.
The houses were simple grey stone, scattered over the land in secluded spaces. The more close-knit portion of town was where the businesses and the inns were kept.
He couldn't wait to get a bath in the inns of the town. They had spent the last three days roughing it and fighting monsters. Finally, a real bed and warm water would grace his skin.
Some food would also be nice. Eating Mothballs was nice and all, but he needed beans and a cheesy bread.
Percy turned to Thalos, who was watching the fields go by with a sigh.
"You don't see things like this in the north, Percy. I'll take you there one day. A field of crops like this can only be kept alive in a Baron's estate."
He didn't know how to tell his father that he wasn't looking to suffer like that anytime soon, unless there was something interesting in the north.
Out here in the rich lands of Demetria, you could find fruit trees everywhere: wild grapes and berries, honey, cucumber, cabbages.
You could also find an abundant variety of magical beasts here too. In the days of their travels, Silksong Moths and Ashfangs weren't the only things they fought.
There were naturalistic predators like Blackbelly Toads and Whiteoak Vipers that lived around rivers and in trees. The toads shot streams of acid that would melt skin from bone in seconds.
And the vipers could stretch their bodies to ensnare prey and change their colors to camouflage themselves.
Killing these tricky beasts required patience. He couldn't win in a one-on-one duel, so he had to set traps and snipe them when they couldn't see him.
With the Spellbolt and his enhanced vision, that was mostly easy. He could now ignite his Fighting Spirit on command and was even getting better at using it.
There were monsters he couldn't fight alone though. These weren't very natural and formed from evil spirits that had plagued the region for a long time.
Monsters like the Dustwights that turned a healthy prairie into a desert. No one had been able to remove it for years; they simply built a road through the desert and another around it.
Thalos helped them fight through the tiny desert, showing off an array of techniques that Percy couldn't wait to learn.
He also gained more stat points by completing daily quests, so he upgraded his strength and agility stats a lot, while also gaining customizable material that he could use to experiment with when they got to the town.
The rewards for daily quests weren't as good as optional quests, but he was glad to have finally unlocked them, as they provided him a path to steady growth for doing things he normally did.
✧───────────────✦ [ Status Window ] ✦───────────────✧
༺ Name: Perseus Amphene
༺ Age: 13
༺ Race: Human
━━━━━━━━━ ✦ Attributes ✦ ━━━━━━━━━
༺ Strength : 25
༺ Agility : 20
༺ Constitution : 25
༺ Stamina : 25
༺ Spirit Energy : 30
༺ Intelligence : 30
━━━━━━━━━ ✦ Skills ✦ ━━━━━━━━━
• Spiritmancy : Rank 1 (Spark)
↳ [ Spirit essence drawing ]
↳ [ Fireshot ]
• Arete : Rank 1 (Spark)
↳ [ Igniting ]
━━━━━━━━━ ✦ Quests ✦ ━━━━━━━━━
– Daily Quest : [Ignite your Fighting Spirit for 30 mins (15/30)]
– Optional Quests : [ three available ]
━━━━━━━━━ ✦ Rewards ✦ ━━━━━━━━━
– Rank 1 Customisable reward.
– Rank 1 Customisable reward.
– Rank 1 Customisable reward.
– Rank 1 Customisable reward.
– Rank 2 Customisable reward…(Click to expand)
━━━━━━━━━ ✦ Completed Quests ✦ ━━━━━━━━━
– Absorb Spirit energy (30/30, Completed!)
– Perform 100 horizontal slashes (100/100, Completed!)
– Absorb Spirit energy (30/30, Completed!)
– Kill five Dustwights (5/5, Completed!)
– Practice using Spellbolt (10/10, Completed!)…(Click to expand)
✧──────────────────────────────────────────────✧
Sounds easy enough. He will practice today… after he took a bath.
The town drew near and Percy's belly rumbled in response. The buildings here were a bit taller than the ones they passed in the fields. They were built with red bricks and wood.
People streamed through the streets, loud voices scattered over the wide road filled with carriages. Barty stopped the horse in front of a building with smoke rising from its chimneys.
The old coachman turned back to them.
"I will find somewhere to keep the horses and carriage. You can go in and find a room."
Thalos jumped out of the carriage and stretched his back, yawning as he spoke.
"Make sure to join us, I'll get you a room." He raised a hand when Barty tried to oppose this. "No arguments."
Percy swung his feet as he jumped out of the carriage, landing flamboyantly and drawing the gaze of people walking by. They walked into the inn casually, bodies heavy with days of riding.
They got in line to book a room at the desk. Percy scanned the busy lobby: couples sitting around speaking in whispers, loud families of four, five… six.
There was even an unlucky bastard here with nine children, all red-heads. He almost cried tears of blood seeing this. What demon could force a man into this kind of generational debt?
Well, they looked rich, dressed in clean black coats with white furs, but he wouldn't give up an easy life for nearly ten children. You could have four, then if two died to some random plague, still have enough to continue the family.
Ignoring the list of things he would never do, Percy noticed that there were a lot of people in this lobby. Just going off the eye test, more people than there were rooms.
He tapped Thalos' back.
"Are you sure you don't want to abuse your authority here and get to the front?"
Thalos looked around but frowned uncomfortably.
"I'm sure, it'll be alright."
It wasn't alright in the end.