Chapter 172

“Healers are all profiteers and swindlers,” Zea announced as soon as they left the clinic.

“I think we’ll probably be fine,” Luke told her. “It was only twenty gold.”

“‘Only!’ I could have lived in comfort for a year on twenty gold.”

“And now you’ll live with the ability to use both your arms.”

Zea scowled up at him, but Luke just smiled back. They’d managed to reach Heishin just as the sun was setting and had been directed towards a reputable clinic immediately. The healer himself had been a bland man who’d spent thirty seconds examining the injury before announcing the price to heal it. Zea had balked, but the healer refused to haggle. He’d simply told her that the price was the price, and she could pay it or leave.

Luke suspected that attitude more than the actual amount was what had offended Zea, though she certainly didn’t appreciate the price tag. Maybe they could have shopped around and found another healer to do the work cheaper, but now that Luke was on the eastern continent, his appreciation for gold had plummeted. Travel expenses were basically non-existent as long as monsters continued to throw themselves at them, and while he wouldn’t say no to a room at an inn, his stamina was so high that sleeping outdoors, fully exposed to the elements, no longer mattered. Besides, he could go a week without sleeping and be fine anymore.

Well, it didn’t matter to him. Zea disagreed with that stance, most strenuously.

“How are we doing for funds?”

“Twenty-two gold, and another six of the local gold,” Zea said. She’d used that to pay for the healing session. “If we converted it all into local currency, depending on the fees, maybe forty or forty-five.”

“Sounds like we’ve got plenty,” Luke said. “I thought money was tight.”

“It is tight. This isn’t half what I’d need to rebuild my arsenal, let alone resupply for the road. And what about that armor? It’s got so many holes in it that we might as well sell it for scrap.”

“I guess,” Luke said. She wasn’t exactly wrong. Steel wasn’t really strong enough to stand up to the damage people enhanced by the system could bring to bear. There were plenty of stronger metals available, but getting a full suit of armor made out of them would be… problematic. At least, it would unless he did some grinding and picked up some more bloodline skills.

He’d turned off [XP Mask] as planned, and was pleasantly surprised to find that there were plenty of people in the low thirties in the city and someone like him at level 43 wasn’t so conspicuous that he drew attention. It probably helped that his rank 2 [Disguise]skill gave him a fifteen percent reduction to how much XP people could feel. Even if it only reduced his perceived level by 2 or 3, it brought him closer to the average.

Their appearances were so radically different from the locals with their silvery-white hair and shorter stature, not to mention their clothes were far plainer and utilitarian while the local style seemed to consist of what Luke could only describe as an excessive amount of layers and pointless flowing sleeves and robes. That, far more than their perceived levels, was what drew stares as the pair walked down the street. They weren’t the only foreigners, but they were deep into the minority. Every now and then, he’d see someone standing head-and-shoulders over the natives with brown or black hair, but thankfully nobody he recognized.

Luke made sure to use [Analyze] on every foreigner he spotted anyway, just to make sure he didn’t encounter another church inquisitor. The overwhelming majority of them were merchants or sailors, though he did spot the occasional warrior, usually employed as a bodyguard for the more richly dressed merchants.

As they made their way deeper into the heart of Heishin, they encountered more and more people packed tighter and tighter together. At some point, it got so bad that the crowd pushed them apart and Luke spent a long moment parsing through all the overwhelming sights, sounds, and smells to track Zea down. He ignored the annoyed glances he got from a few people as he pushed his way through them to reconnect with her.

“Sure are a lot of people here,” Luke said. “You think that’s normal?”

“I hope not,” she said, chewing her lip. “Maybe they’re refugees from other provinces. It might be harder to get a room than I thought.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time we slept outside,” he said with a shrug.

“I hate sleeping outside,” she muttered.

“Assuming we can find a place to rent out a room long-term, how do you feel about setting up shop in Heishin for a bit?”

“I don’t love it,” she said immediately. “Too crowded, and why would we, anyway?”

“Grinding out levels to get my missing bloodline skills, maybe boost our funds, give you time to enchant some new things.”

“Okay, that’s not a terrible idea, but maybe not in the city,” Zea said.

“I don’t mind camping out,” Luke said. “We could find some place out in the countryside and pitch the tent.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a small village like that one we saved. Some place that doesn’t have an extra ten thousand people in it, maybe.”

It wasn’t a terrible idea. Unless Luke wanted to go on a murdering spree, there wasn’t likely to be much XP to be found in the city. They could go down the coast a little ways, maybe find a nice fishing town to stay in, and Zea could set up her portable workshop while he started culling the local wildlife. His only real concern with the plan was running into another group of demons.

“I think we should spend a night in Heishin and see if we can get a handle on what’s going on. I thought all those demons were supposed to farther south, but that obviously wasn’t true. We should find out if that was a one-off or if the demons are popping up here too. There’s no point in sticking around to grind out XP if the only thing to fight is a horde of demons that don’t give any.”

“True. And we wanted to get one of those books with all the information the military has already collected on them anyway,” Zea said. “Okay, room for the night, errands tomorrow morning, leave in the afternoon.”

Luke looked over the sea of silver-white hair surrounding them and shook his head. If all the crowding really was from refugees, he had a suspicion that finding an available room to rent might not be so easy.

“Okay, room for the night, but you have to find it,” he said.

* * *

“Innkeepers are all profiteers and swindlers,” Zea announced as she flounced angrily onto the bed.

“We could have slept outdoors,” Luke pointed out.

Zea groaned and flopped over. “Even the beds here suck. And no food! It’s highway robbery!”

“We’ve got supplies left in our bag.”

“They won’t last forever, and when we have to restock, it’ll be three times more expensive than it should be.”

“I don’t mind cooking whatever I manage to hunt down for you,” Luke told her.

Zea made a face. “Gods save me from your cooking. Did you take the first rank in the actual skill yet?”

“I’m not spending AP on that!”

“Just give it up, Luke. If you were going to develop it naturally, you would have now. You are an absolutely terrible cook.”

“Hey, my food is edible,” Luke defended himself. Zea gave him a flat stare, causing him to sigh and amend his statement. “By a loose definition of the word.”

“In all seriousness, everything is way more expensive than I thought it would be. It wasn’t like this in Naldrin, and I’m worried the farther south we go, the worse it’s going to get. At this rate, even if I don’t replace any of the things I enchanted, we’ll be out of money in under a month. It’s ridiculous; what we’ve got should last for close to a year of modest living.”

“And that’s just for supplies, right?” Luke asked.

“Yep. Just food, mostly. This’ll probably be the last bed we enjoy for a while unless we come up with a lot of money in a hurry.”

“I could take [Matter Generation] first,” Luke said. “It would solve all our supply issues, but…”

“But [Inflict Status] and [XP Reset] take priority for short-term survival, and [XP Cycle] for long-term,” Zea finished for him.

“Really, [XP Cycle] might be even more important if I’m going to grind out more levels. I keep putting off picking it up because it’s a solution for a problem that’s still a ways down the road, but there’s always something else to spend the AP on that’s useful now. Sooner or later, I’m going to run out of time,” Luke said.

“What’s your AP bank look like?”

“33 right now,” Luke said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have picked up [Burst Step] when I leveled, but it’s been pretty useful so far.”

“So you need to get to level 46 to get the 125 AP you need for [XP Cycle],” Zea said. “Maybe you should get that first, then skip [Inflict Status] and go straight to [Matter Generation]. If we’re going to be running into a lot of demons, you won’t be able to use that on them anyway, and if you’re grinding levels, hitting monsters with [XP Reset] doesn’t really work. They’d just be level 1 and you wouldn’t get anything for killing them.”

“[Inflict Status] would still be useful for killing monsters, but I don’t really need a 200 AP skill to do that. If I ignored it, I’d have enough for [XP Cycle] and [Matter Generation] at level 50 if I don’t spend AP on anything else. Well, I’d have 37 AP left over, so I could afford a small thing here or there, or just save it to get [XP Reset]for you.”

“What about if…”

They discussed possible build orders for another hour, but in the end, it didn’t matter unless Luke managed to push his level up high enough to get the AP. There had been remarkably few monsters so far on their journey, demon and necromancer attacks notwithstanding. They didn’t know if that was because they’d stuck to a well-traveled road, or if the fact that so many people were willing to level up much higher meant that there were just more people out there keeping the wildlife in check.

“System, I know that you can’t point out specific monsters or anything, but can you tell us where areas of heavy monster concentrations exist?” Luke asked.

“Certainly. Would you like me to direct you to the closest one?”

“Just a general direction and distance would be fine.”

“In that case, the heaviest concentration of monsters is about two miles away, southwest of your current location.”

“So close?” Zea asked. “Isn’t that inside the city?”

“It is,” System confirmed.

“Wait, is the city under attack right now?” Luke asked. “I don’t hear any screaming or fighting.”

“Oh gods damnit,” Zea swore. “It’s a monster arena, isn’t it?”

“I cannot offer any information about that.”

“What’s a monster arena?” Luke asked.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like. People fight monsters, other people pay to watch the show and bet on the fights.”

Luke thought about that for a moment. “Wouldn’t that be perfect for us? I can go kill monsters to get XP, you can bet on the fights to get money.”

“Sure, except you’re level 43. The odds will be shit for you and they’re not going to just let you kill their entire stock of monsters. We’d make more money working as trappers than gladiators, but you don’t get XP for capturing a monster.”

“Lots of gambling, huh?” Luke said. “I wonder…”

“What are you thinking?” Zea asked.

“That Jigon-Sai guy thought it was a big deal that I could completely hide my XP. If whoever’s running this place is also running the gambling, that could be a sweet hustle, right? You think they’d go for it if we pitched the idea to them?”

“The XP will still be shit,” Zea said.

“I’ll pick up more later. You were worried about money. How much you think we could get if the owners are in on the scam?”

“They might try to double-cross us.”

“They might. So, you in or not?”

Zea groaned and nodded her head.