Chapter 14: XCVI — Welcome To Kalórin

  “Oranges, come get your oranges!” the seller said, just one amongst the many voices in the markets of Kalórin.

  It was a living place, with people shuffling back and forth, haggling, arguing, laughing and more. Kayode expected nothing less from the busiest city in Velúndé.

  The air itself felt heavier here—thick with smoke from cookfires, sweat from bodies pressed too close together, and the iron tang of shells changing hands. Kalórin did not rest. It worked and worked and worked until Velúndé itself died. And Velúndé never died—no matter how much its enemies prayed that it did.

  Every street seemed to promise something different: spices from the southern ports, ironwork hauled in from the hills, cheap Potions and false Relics sold to Natives and Ayédán alike who wanted to believe the System, or the Ancestors, watched them more closely here than anywhere else—the place where the Kingdom Maker himself had first made his home. Kayode had seen cities before—but all still paled in comparison to the one he was born in.

  Even here, from the markets of Kalórin he could still see castle Asoburgh in the distance, a mega structure looming above all who walked under its gaze. Many poets had described its presence as a comforting thing. Nothing could have been further from the truth for Kayode.

  All he saw was the Grand Duke and his power magnified.

  And then above it he saw a Skyship soaring through the air, on its way back to Ezeria, to prepare for a coming civil war. He wondered what the Grand Duke’s reaction to his disappearance must have been. Had the meeting gone any differently? He doubted that one at least, but there was no way he could truly know what was going on in those walls now. And that bothered him to no end.

  It would be too much to hope that the miserable old man had popped a vein in anger and died.

  The road seemed to part for him as he walked, people nodding and greeting him as he made his way through the street. He caught the way the guards looked at him, heads dipping with respect, some even clearing people out of his path.

  Kayode realized instantly that with his Ayédán style and high quality clothes and the pristine nature they were in, they instantly thought him a person of import.

  They were not wrong, he was, but Kayode couldn’t have that, Not if he truly intended to keep a low profile.

  He stopped at a cloth-seller’s stall. “Good morning. I’d like to sell my wears,” Kayode said. The glint in the woman’s eyes told him she’d already started pricing them.

  “I’ll give you nine silver shells for it,” she told him, eyeing the material greedily.

  Her fingers hovered just short of the cloth. This wasn’t her first time trying to fleece someone who looked desperate. And it wouldn’t be her last.

  Around them, other bolts of fabric were stacked with deliberate care—coarser linens for laborers, dyed cottons for the aspiring merchant class, and a few pieces kept half-hidden beneath the counter. The good stuff. Imports. The kind one didn’t put on display unless the buyer already knew what they were looking for.

  Kayode raised an eyebrow. “This is authentic Karivian cotton,” he told the woman. “It’s worth at least ten gold,” Kayode told her.

  “Naturally yes, but you must have a mighty good reason to want to shed those fine clothes, and I reckon it's worth the subsidised price,” she said, grin flashing, a silver tooth on display.

  This was Kalórin in miniature. Kayode was a Great Lord—one with nothing to his name, but a Great Lord all the same, and if she had known that she would not have dared to fleece him, far too terrified that the Ancestors themselves might smite her down for trifling upon one of their own. But here, stripped of banners and name, he was just another man being sized up by someone who thought she’d found an easy mark.

  Kayode felt his frustration boil. And the system responded.

  [Class Skill ? Royal Decree — I — Active: Your word is law. Those deemed beneath you by a gulf of 10 levels or more shall find resistance impossible, their will bent to a single simple command without regard for motive or allegiance.]

  No, I’m not going to do that! he snapped, and the Notification vanished. Discounting the fact that it would be an incredibly invasive thing to do, using Skills like that on a random citizens, mind manipulation Skills were the exact type of thing Guards were trained to look for in markets. And if he was caught, that could very well spell the end of this Loop.

  He inhaled, exhaled, and did not mind control the woman—no matter how much he wanted to. “Very well,” Kayode said. “I would like to buy a pair of clothes as well,” he told her. “Is there any chance I might be able to change in your shop.”

  The seller nodded eagerly. “Of course,” she said. “I exist to please,” and she was gesturing to him into her tent.

  ###

  Kayode felt immediately more at peace walking in peasant clothes, but certainly not as at peace as he would have liked.

  The sight of city guards walking about was a reason as good as any other not to feel safe.

  He didn’t know what the Grand Duke would have made of his disappearance, whether he would send someone after him or not. And each second he spent in this city felt like a noose tightening around his neck.

  He wanted to head for the gates. To leave and never turn around. But Kayode knew he would not make it very far with what few shells he had in his pockets.

  And as he was, there was only one solution he had towards that.

  Signing up with an Adventuring Guild.

  They were not hard to find—a city like Kalórin was littered with them, with only one other city likely boasting more Guild Hubs: Lilika, capital of the Zorande Duchy, home of the Church of Divination: the greatest sponsor of the Adventuring Guilds.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Kayode deliberately avoided the larger Guild Hubs near the inner districts. Those places catered to veterans—high-tier Quests, and names that carried weight.

  This one sat closer to the trade roads instead: smaller, noisier, and far less selective. The kind of Guild Hub that lived and died on lesser jobs.

  On its door was the symbol of a sword, because adventurers, above all else, were tools of violence, no matter how carefully they dressed it up. Above it was the mark of the Church of Divination: two triangles, one facing left, the other facing right, with a single dot at their center—representing the eyes of the Ancestors.

  Kayode entered and stepped into a busy world. Men and women lined the room, all clad in one form of gear or another. The entire hall formed a spectrum of Adventurers—but skewed heavily toward the lower end. Worn mail, chipped blades, patched leathers. No legends were here, only people trying to become one.

  There was an unspoken order to it all. Veterans claimed walls and corners, backs protected, eyes always half-alert. Newer adventurers clustered near the Quest Board, reading and rereading notices as if hoping that might make the danger described on them less real.

  The room smelled faintly of oil, leather, and old blood. Scars were as common as birthmarks. Somewhere near the back, a man laughed too loudly—high and sharp, the sound of someone trying very hard not to think about the next time they might die. It reminded him of the Red Falcons.

  So Kayode hated being here.

  No eyes fell on Kayode, which filled him with some relief; an Adventuring Guild Hub had seen stranger things than a scribe. Kayode had even heard that once in a blue moon Dwarves came down from their mountains and took up Questing.

  He made his way to the counter where a bored looking clerk sat, flipping from one page to the other of a book he looked miserable reading.

  “Hello,” Kayode greeted, taking a seat.

  The man looked vaguely annoyed at being disturbed. “What can I do for you?” he sighed.

  “I’d like to register to be an Adventurer,” Kayode told him.

  “Papers?” he asked.

  And Kayode handed him Nathan Bal’s documents. It was not luck that he had them, but the simple fact that a year of travel made carrying his identification simply a habit of his. On the road, one never knew when they needed to tell the world who they were—or who they weren’t.

  “Alright, checks out,” the man said, sliding his papers back to him. He gestured to the two rocks on the desk—one a Level-Identifier Stone, and the other a Class-Type Stone.

  Kayode smothered the memory it stirred and steadied himself with the fact that, in this Loop at least, Harlan was alive.

  Was he?

  Clarke was. Which meant he’d likely sent them into the battle with the Sunweavers by now. And though Kayode was certain the Red Falcons could have emerged victorious without him, he wasn’t sure Harlan would have survived it.

  And even if he had—

  There was still the Dungeon.

  Without Kayode’s intervention, the man seemed destined to die.

  “Hello?” the clerk snapped him back to reality.

  “Apologies, I was thinking,” Kayode expressed.

  He seemed mildly annoyed but carried on. “Place your hand on the stones.”

  And Kayode did, waiting for the Notifications to flash and accepting them when they appeared.

  The man scribbled down his Level and his Class-Type. “The registration fee is one silver shell,” the man told him.

  Kayode placed that down on the table and found himself with one less Silver to spare. An awful position to be in when one was effectively homeless and on the run from a Grand Duke.

  The man took it, slid the money into a drawer, reached into another one and handed him a badge—a copper one with three lines etched into its surface.

  And like that, Kayode was an Adventurer again.

  He walked towards the Quest Board—no Dungeon Delves, no bounties with Awakening requirements. Just escort work, road patrols, and missing persons that no one important was paying attention to.

  Still, Kayode found one he reckoned suited him well.

  ###

  Beasts were not in any way the same as Beastlings.

  They were the reason the suffix existed.

  Beasts were, simply put, wilder, larger, meaner, and madder. Where Beastlings could think and reason, Beasts could only hunt.

  It was that insatiable need that had driven one to return night after night to a farm not far from Kalórin, in search of livestock to savage—and it was that same hunger that had driven the farmer to file a Quest with the Guild, in the hope they might send someone to deal with the problem.

  That someone, it seemed, was Kayode. All he needed to do was turn in the foot of the Beast, and he would receive his reward—in this case, one gold and two silver. Not much. Not much at all—but it was somewhere to start, something to use to get away from the Duke’s city and get to a neighbouring town.

  So there he was, sat in a barn filled with chickens, without even a weapon in hand.

  It was a mundane thing, the waiting—the sitting, the stretch of time before the violence. But as with all things, the fight came soon enough.

  Kayode heard it before he saw it. Eyes of the Throne let him sense the approaching Beast long before it reached the barn. Its soft growling, its weight hammering the ground, each bound carrying it closer, and closer, and closer, until—

  The barn door exploded inward, splintered wood and moonlight scattering across the floor. Chickens burst into motion, clucking wildly as they fled in every direction.

  Kayode didn’t look at them.

  Royal Decree.

  “Behind me.”

  He added no urgency to his voice. None was needed. Panic vanished into order and the chickens gathered at his back, huddling against the far wall as if the thought had always been their own.

  The source of their terror stood framed in the broken doorway: a wolf-man hybrid—if the man half were built like a bodybuilder, and the wolf half had rabies.

  It settled onto all fours and bounded for him.

  Kayode let it get close.

  And then he was on his feet. And got to work.

  Sovereign’s Presence.

  The creature would have stopped if its momentum wasn’t already carrying it too fast. It hesitated, something like recognition flickering in its eyes—as if it sensed the danger it had stepped into. It didn’t understand it. It couldn’t. Not yet.

  Winter’s Teeth.

  Ice formed from Kayode’s palm as he snapped his hand forward. The chain shot out at point-blank range, tearing through fur and flesh alike. Blood sprayed—but the jugular was touched, the strike carving deep where shoulder met neck instead.

  The Beast howled, staggering back, rage overtaking surprise as it rounded on him, saliva stringing from its split maw.

  It lunged.

  Kayode didn’t retreat.

  Frost Guard.

  It hit, and the shield exploded into a thousand blades, piercing the Beast and puncturing deep into its form. It stumbled back—eyes weary, wild, panicked.

  Kayode calmly walked after it.

  It swung a wild claw, Kayode raised an arm and sparks flew from where it struck.

  It swung again, missed, fell with its momentum and hit the ground with a heavy groan. It did not rise again. And neither did its chest.

  [You have slain a Beast Wolf of the 2nd Awakening.]

  He looked at his arm—a bruise. These lot weren’t to be taken lightly then.

  He knelt and worked quickly, efficiently. The foot came free with a wet and bloody crack.

  Any man able to remove a creature’s foot would have surely gotten the chance to just kill it anyway. It was his proof. His Currency. His Survival.

  One gold and two silver.

  It wouldn’t be enough to stay in Kalórin long. But it was enough to leave.

  And for now, that was everything.

  [—Skill(s) Acquired—]

  [Class Skill ? Storm Writ — I — Active: A Ruler must punish. For an instant, lightning of judgement coils around your fists and discharges on impact. The strike lands with concussive force, erupting into searing heat and crackling shock. Bone rattles, flesh scorches, and muscles betray their wielder, breaking momentum, scattering focus, and turning resistance into pain.]

  The space between Kayode’s fingers crackled with a hungry golden energy.

  Not bad.

  Not bad at all.

  ###