Published at 24th of February 2024 10:33 am

Chapter Book 2, Chapter 4

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

I did most of my walking at night when it was far cooler out in the wastelands. There was the added danger of nocturnal predators, but it was outweighed by the mana savings from not having my stamina drained faster from walking in the heat. For the next few days, I’d start out in the evenings, walk through the night, and sometime in the morning, I’d find a temporary spot to hole up while I slept. Usually, that meant some sort of rocky hill with a sharp incline that I could burrow into and set a few wards to alert me if anything got too close.

Derro came into view five days after I left my crucible. I’d stone shaped a wall over the back of the cave to keep it hidden and erased any trace that I’d used it as a campsite, but with my teleport beacon hidden behind the false wall, I could return there whenever I felt the need. Setting up a new teleport beacon in Derro so that I didn’t have to waste the better part of a week walking back was one of my highest priorities right now.

The city wasn’t really what I’d been expecting to find, but I’d scried it weeks ago and had a good idea of what it looked like well before I reached it. It had a low wall made of the same mud-fired bricks my village had used to build its huts, though in Derro’s case, the bricks were considerably bigger and heavier. Some magic had gone into putting them together, perhaps some sort of alchemical paste to form the mortar. Most of the damage I saw was in individual bricks breaking apart, not in them separating from each other.

The wall did very little to protect the city, but I supposed it was better than nothing. It was wrapped around what had probably been a huge city a few hundred years back, but which was now mostly ruins that had been patched up to cover most of the holes. It was an odd amalgamation of old and new, a mottled tapestry of sand and mud-brown colored buildings flanking dirty streets that were more hard-packed earth than anything else, with only the occasional flagstone poking through like a lone broken tooth in an otherwise empty mouth.

Not wanting to give away my presence, I’d kept my scrying limited to public spaces so that if someone did detect the sensor, they wouldn’t think it was aimed at them specifically. From that, I knew that the outer circle was a shanty town where the poor and desperate lived on the edge of starvation and preyed upon one another as they scrambled to stay alive. Deeper in were the merchants’ rows and trade squares, and I suspected that in the core of the city, mages had done a credible job of converting the ruins into a place worth living in. Whoever was living there, be it some form of aristocracy or the mages themselves, they had their own—much higher—wall.

I hadn’t wanted to risk scrying on the other side of that wall, not until I had a better idea of who lived there and what kind of defenses I could expect to find, but I strongly suspected everything of value would be behind those gates. Libraries were the privilege of the rich, especially those who understood the value of knowledge. I’d never really understood why Noctra had let the villagers access his own personal library back home, though I suspected it was at least in part to keep an eye on likely candidates for new mages.

I approached the gates shortly after the sun came up, weary from a night of walking and wanting nothing so much as a hot meal, a bath, and a reasonably secure room to sleep in. I doubted I’d get more than two in three on that list. There were no guards and no doors; the wall existed merely to keep wild animals and weak monsters out of the city and the only evidence there’d ever been an actual barricade was the rusted hinges mounted on the walls. I passed under the archway right alongside a trickle of traffic coming in from one of the feeder villages that surrounded Derro.

An old man squinted down at me as I walked by his cart. He had one hand on the back of the donkey pulling it and the other on what looked like a piece of scrap metal that resembled a malformed pipe. “Don’t even think about it, you little gutter shit,” he growled at me.

I blinked and glanced over before realizing that he thought I was planning on stealing food off his cart. I didn’t even know what he was hauling beyond that it looked like some sort of fruit I’d never seen. It had a wrinkled, splotchy dark purple skin the color of a fresh bruise, and the man had at least a hundred of them in there. I could practically hear his hand clenching on the piece of metal, ready to swing it at me if he thought I was going to try to grab a piece of his cargo.

One part of me was offended, but it wasn’t like the hostility was toward me personally. There were plenty of thieves, including more than a few children, who would do exactly what the farmer was watching me for. And to be fair, I looked a lot like those children. My clothes were older than I was and they’d been repaired regularly. Worse, I hadn’t properly cleaned them in months—magic could only do so much at this level—and they were looking more threadbare and ragged than ever.

Hopefully I could trade some of the stuff I’d harvested out in the wastes for the local currency so that I could afford some better clothes. If not, I could always make something out of magic, but wasting mana on that was near the bottom of my priority list. I’d have to see what I could get for the monster parts, but I expected the time, labor, and the danger of the job would reward me better than simply using the mana to transmute what I needed.

I took two deliberate steps away from the cart, heard the farmer grunt, and ignored him after that. I couldn’t blame him for keeping a close eye on his produce, but I didn’t need the suspicion directed at me. I wasn’t after whatever he was selling anyway, though I was hungry enough that I would have at least given it a try if I’d been offered one. That was a lesson I’d learned early on in my first life, that hunger had a way of making even the most unappetizing food look appealing.

I was not there yet, but if I didn’t get a good meal today, I wouldn’t be far off. Already I was using more mana than I wanted to keep my body functioning without food, and I was well aware of the long-term effects of this kind of magic. Energy was one thing; nourishment was another. My magic was only taking care of half of my needs.

“HEY!” the farmer bellowed, “GET BACK HERE!”

I turned in surprise to see a child about my age running toward the closest alley, one of those wrinkled purple fruits in his hand. The farmer leaped at him, his makeshift cudgel raised to bring it down on the thief’s head, only to stumble backward as the kid smoothly pivoted, reached into his pocket, and drew out a handful of sand to hurl in the farmer’s face.

“Argh!” the farmer cried. “Clief! Get ‘em!”

A teenager who’d been walking behind the cart rushed after the thief while the farmer tried to get the sand out of his eyes. As soon as the teen was no longer close enough to do anything about it, four other children emerged from their hiding places and descended on the cart. They didn’t have it all their own way as other travelers leaped to the farmer’s defense. It only made sense since next time, it could be their cart that was being robbed.

“Come on,” one of the kids said as he rushed at me. He tried to grab my wrist, then looked down in surprise when my shield ward pushed his hand away. “What the…”

Another kid ran into him and spun sideways. She took two staggered steps before regaining her balance, then ran off with an armful of fruits. The boy who’d tried to grab me shook his head and said, “Sorry you got caught up in this, but they’ll blame you if you stay. You’d better run.”

Then he was off, leaving me in the awkward position of running or trying to stay and explain myself. It wasn’t a hard choice, but I was more than a little annoyed at having to deal with this when I was barely three hundred feet past the wall.

“There’s one!” someone shouted. I glanced behind me and saw two adults advancing in my direction, one of them armed with a wooden club and the other carrying a hoe. The thieving children had hit at least three different carts at once and there were over a dozen people actively chasing after them. Unlike me, they’d barely slowed down to grab a few pieces of food before picking up their speed, which meant I was the only person in sight who wasn’t at least a teenager.

It had been my experience in both of my lives that adults rarely listened to children unless I gave them a reason to listen. I was trying to remain unnoticed, but there was no way I was getting out of this situation without a bit of magic. I could let them grab hold of me and protest my innocence, but I suspected the fact that I personally didn’t have any of their food wasn’t going to convince any of them that I hadn’t been involved.

I’d already taken enough beatings, deserved or otherwise, my first time as a kid. I didn’t need to relive those memories. With all of the confusion and chaos the smash and grab had caused, I was probably safe to use a bit of magic as long as it was nothing too flashy, so I cast a quick wind burst spell to scour the streets and fling dirt and dust at the adults. Both of them were knocked back and blinded.

By the time they got their bearings, I was already fleeing into the closest alley, the same one the boy who’d tried to grab me had taken. The back end was blocked off with a makeshift wall, something rickety that looked more like garbage bound together than a proper wall. It had plenty of gaps someone my size could slip through, but which would slow down any adults that were in pursuit.

I dipped through a hole near ground level and jogged off deeper into the city. Behind me, the commotion faded away to nothing and after a bit I slowed down to a walk. The mana core I was following had stopped moving up ahead, which I assumed meant that the thieves were gathering back together to pile up the spoils of their work and divide the food back out.

I stopped at an intersection and looked around, trying to determine exactly which street would take me closer to whatever building the thieves were holed up in. Unless I completely missed my guess, it was the single-story square building missing half its roof. The gathering of about twenty mana cores in there, most of them almost completely empty, was probably a good sign too.

I turned down the street and approached the building. The front entrance had collapsed, but I knew from experience that there was always another way in. Sure enough, a single lap around the building revealed a pile of rocks around the back side built up just high enough to reach a hole in the wall. I hoisted myself up, peered into the gloom to make sure it was safe, and dropped down inside the building.

Share