Chapter 75

“What’s this place called?” Luke asked. They stood on a hill east of the town, big enough that he couldn’t easily count all the houses, never mind the dozens of farms dotting the landscape. The forest had thinned out considerably after a day of travel and had practically disappeared by the second. That was good for their travel speed, but bad for finding new monsters to kill.

They had found a few monsters, just barely enough to level them since they were both less than 1000 XP to the next level. Luke saved his AP to take rank 4 of [Unarmed Martialist] and [Tactical Foresight]next level as planned. Zea spent 5 AP on [Cadence] as a tie in skill to ritual master, and banked the rest to start saving up the 50 AP needed for [Bloodline Purification Ritual].

“I have no clue,” she said. “It might be best if I go in alone. You draw too much attention.”

“Maybe,” he said, remembering the first small village he’d wandered into. “Oh, that reminds me. One place I went to, everyone kept calling me ‘Guardian’ and treating me like a war vet. What’s that about?”

“Someone made some assumptions based on your level and your age. It’s… not a bad cover, actually. We might be able to make it work if you get some more ranks in [Disguise] and [Deception]. Guardians are people who defend the borders against the endless hordes, such as they are. Basically they repel monsters and it’s not really that unusual for a young person to have a lot of XP from that before they retire from the front lines.”

“What would I need to do?” Luke asked.

“You need a lot more knowledge about just about everything in general so people aren’t suspicious of you, and to get rid of your accent. Then you’d need to pick up at least a few mannerisms that indicate you’re accustomed to a military lifestyle. We don’t have time for any of that right this minute though, so I want you to stay here while I go try to figure out how I’m going to find you some new clothes that don’t have extra holes and a lot of blood stains on them.”

Luke handed over the money he had on him and said, “You should get some new shoes if there’s a cobbler in town. Maybe pick up some road supplies, more than just you need, and say that they’re for the whole group?”

“Could work,” Zea agreed. “I’ll play it by ear. You’ll wait here for me?”

“As long as nothing happens.”

Once Zea left, Luke settled down and made himself comfortable. “System, can you tell me about history?”

“Yes,” System replied. “I may not be able to answer all of your questions, but I can share the general shape of events.”

“Great, let’s start with this Guardian thing. They’re some sort of National Guard, from the sounds of it?”

“That is essentially correct. The area you are currently in, Thalasa, isn’t considered a country so much as a collection of city-states bordering each other. Each city controls the surrounding area to whatever extent they are able, and they have a loose set of agreements for trading purposes and to supply resources to the cities that field military forces in order to patrol the borders between civilized areas and the wilderness.

“In about one hundred miles, you’ll leave Valtira’s sphere of influence. From there, if you continue north for another two hundred miles, you will reach the city of Kazos, where the Guardians have a heavy presence. Kazos is surrounded on west and east sides by unsettled land and the average level of its populace is 16. A period of work serving the Guardians is required of all locals when they become adults, and most are retired from service around level 20.”

“That seems like the worst place to pretend to be a Guardian,” Luke said. “If anyone would know I’m a fake, it would be the actual, real Guardians.”

“I am not able to speculate on that,” System told him. “Would you like to hear more about the history of the Guardians locally?”

“Not really, but I guess I should.”

Luke spent the next three hours trying to focus on System’s lecture and occasionally asking questions. He learned about some of the larger battles the Guardians had engaged in, about the time Kazos had been invaded when an entire army of hobgoblins had marched south out of the mountains, or about the time the city had to field a dozen warriors over level 50 to halt the advance of something called an alabaster doganaut. Apparently, those were scary as shit, and there was a big memorial in the city to honor the sacrifices of the people who’d pushed their levels so high and had to be killed afterwards.

By the time Zea showed back up, his head was so stuffed full of history and geography that he was sure it would explode. Luke hadn’t enjoyed his time in the public education system and had never had any plans to continue that with higher learning. He liked to do things and learn new skills as needed. Learning for the sake of knowing wasn’t something he enjoyed.

He did recognize the need to know all of this, at least as long as he was still a low enough level that other people could conceivably take him out. That was a temporary problem and he could justify skipping the lectures to just go grind enough bloody weeks and months so as to be untouchable, but that would still leave Zea vulnerable. Any heat he brought on himself would also affect her, and that wasn’t something he was willing to do.

So Zea found him massaging his forehead when she marched back up the hill, a large burlap sack held in both hands. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Getting a lesson on local history, geography, monster ecology, culture, and traditions from System so that my disguise will be better.” He eyed the bag she was holding and added, “Is there a change of clothes in there?”

“You’re in luck. I did manage to get new pants and a shirt. There’s also a river a mile north of town you can bathe in first before you put them on. I even got a bar of soap.”

“Yeah, I see it,” Luke said, pointing towards a line of trees. “And I actually know how to make soap. One of my skills included it.”

“How the hell do you see it from here?” Zea asked, frowning as she peered north. “There’s no way. It doesn’t matter how high your perception is, there’s too much between us and the river.”

“There are plenty of small gaps you just can’t see,” he explained. “You can trace the path of the river from a whole bunch of little slices. There are also a lot of people gathered at one spot where it bends. I’m guessing that’s the laundering bank, so maybe we’ll avoid that.”

They left together, Zea muttering under her breath about his bullshit perception stat and him pretending he couldn’t hear her. When they got to the river and found a relatively slow spot, he stripped down and jumped in while she sat at the edge and cleaned herself more carefully. “Try not to get anything bitten off while you’re in there,” she called out to him when he resurfaced.

“Is that a real possibility?” he asked, swimming against the current to remain in place. It was a lot faster than he’d expected, but it wasn’t really all that hard to hold his position with his enhanced strength. He didn’t really get tired anymore either, at least not from this little amount of exertion.

“I don’t know what kind of fish live in this river. Why do you think I’m over here out of the water?”

“Because you’d have to get naked otherwise and then we’d end up losing another half an hour of daylight once we start making out?”

“No! I mean, maybe a little, but it’s mostly because of the fish, and also because this water is fucking cold.”

Those were both good reasons, though Luke found he wasn’t much bothered by the cold anymore. He still felt it, but it was more like he was aware of it than that he felt any sort of biting pain from it. Between that and his experiences in the bathhouse, he could only assume that increasing his stamina gave him some built-in resistance to temperature changes.

On the off chance that something with fins and teeth did come along and go after his sensitive bits, Luke scrubbed himself off as quickly as he could with the soap and climbed back out. He then took some time to launder his old clothes while he air-dried and pretended not to notice Zea checking out his butt.

It was hard to keep that up when she leaned over and slapped it, and if he hadn’t caught her going in for the slap with [Peripheral Awareness], he probably would have tumbled face first into the river. “It’s like you’re trying to delay me with these antics,” he said. “Maybe you’re working for the church after all.”

“Is that the kind of girl who catches your eye? You’re just lucky I’m not the jealous type or I’d be wondering what went on during those lunch dates.”

“The second one was a lot more exciting than the first. I got poisoned and had to run for my life. The first one was just a bit of meat and bread and casual conversation.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Everything I’m willing to admit to,” Luke said with a smirk.

Once he was dry enough, Luke got dressed while Zea made exaggerated noises of disappointment. He wrung out his old clothes as best he could, which was pretty damn good, all things considered. He spread out the clothes on a rock for twenty minutes while he helped Zea finish up her chores, then they collected their things and left.

“Oh hey, you got new shoes after all,” Luke said. “How are they?”

“Expensive is how they were. Bastard knew I was in a hurry and wouldn’t give me even a copper for the old ones.”

“The old ones were basically scrap leather,” Luke pointed out.

“Don’t you take his side!”

Luke laughed. “How much do we have left?”

“Nine gold, six silver, five copper.”

“I guess we’ll have to find work again soon. Maybe the next city. Hell, maybe I could do Guardian work for real. What do you think that pays?”

“No idea,” Zea said. She didn’t sound happy. “A month ago I would have thought this was an amazing amount of money. I could have lived stress free for months off this.”

“The bills always catch up eventually. Speaking of which, what do our expenses look like?”

“Well, about that… I’ve got about a month before I need to renew the blocking enchantment on my slave mark. So I need to find an enchanting lab I can borrow equipment from and get a vial of bellwine ink. If I can get some syrocho leaves and a bit of eucanthrum, that would be even better. More expensive up front, but the enchantment would last for a year instead of a few months.”

“I don’t know what any of those things are,” Luke said. “Do you think we can get them in the next city we pass through?”

“Probably. That’s going to be Kazos, less than a week from here if we take the roads. Luke, you know this stuff is going to take almost all your money, right? We’ll be starting over from nothing.”

“Our money,” he corrected her. “And that’s fine. We’ll figure something out.”

“I hope so.”

They walked in silence, but Luke could see her mind working to figure out what to do. He didn’t know what she was going to come up with, but he trusted it would be good. She was smart that way. He was lucky to have her with him, but he wished it had come about under better circumstances.