Chapter 84: The Small Village
Yale was sure that if he could see such mass of water, he was far from anywhere he knew. There wasn’t anything like that near Nacesai City or the Imperial City.
Yale, since he was little, had always felt curiosity towards oceans and seas, they appeared a lot in the novels he read, but he had never seen any. Thus, he was tempted to go observing the coast from near.
“Well, first we need to find where we are. I have read that people make cities near the coast, we can try to find one of those and obtain information about our whereabouts.”
Yale didn’t plan to appear in front of the area natives to ask questions without having investigated by himself first. However, to obtain information Yale needed to find a place with people and spy on them to gather some general knowledge.
After that, he could think about the best method to approach the local people in order to obtain more detailed information.
Wyba nodded her little head. She didn’t mind where they go as long as she was together with Yale.
Yale started walking into the coast direction with Wyba in his arms; he didn’t dare to fly in a place he didn’t know. After all, that wasn’t the special realm with the rank limitations it had. In Yale’s current location, real experts could appear, and Yale had no means to deal with them, so it was better to be careful.
On the way, he decided to check the Quest Menu; he had been too busy examining his stats, talent, skills and trying the new appraisal function, so he forgot to check the new sub-quest that should have appeared after finishing the previous one.
“Reach the expert stage in two different areas. Current Progress 1/2. Reward: Stats and Origin Points increase.”
That sub-quest was normal even if it was hard to accomplish, the special realm effects on the Quest Menu seemed to have ended.
Yale was already at the expert stage with the sword, and his only other area in which he could train to reach such stage at the moment he received the quest was in Smith Mastery.
If he could obtain a similar skill related to archery then he would be able to try reaching the expert stage with such weapon, but Yale didn’t know any methods to obtain it, so he could only focus on Smith Mastery.
Yale had never created a weapon before; he had only read a bit about it. Yale was at the apprentice level, but he had less experience than others who hadn’t reached that stage as he never tried to forge anything before. He had a long way if he wanted to enter into the expert stage.
Yale closed the Quest Menu and stopped thinking about the sub-quest as he wasn’t in a place suitable to forge anything nor was his situation suitable for thinking about such things.
He needed to put in order his priorities and to discover where he was after having left the realm was the most crucial matter for him at that moment.
Yale and Wyba reached a forest where they only found some ordinary beast and 1-star monsters.
Fortunately, they hadn’t appeared in a dangerous area and with their power surviving in the forest wasn’t hard.
The night fell before they had been able to leave the forest. At night they stopped walking and seated on the floor eating some beast meat that Yale had roasted with Fire Ball. Given how many beasts were in the forest, hunting something to eat wasn’t difficult for them.
In the forest, there were also a lot of edible herbs and fruits which Yale recognized.
All the knowledge he acquired from the books he had read in the Poison Class served to avoid any danger when eating something in the wild. Furthermore, with the system’s database, there was no way Yale could make a mistake even if two herbs were extremely similar which was one of the main causes of deaths by intoxication.
Yale didn’t dare to walk in the night as he didn’t know the region, but nothing happened until the dawn. There was nothing to worry in such an area; it was as normal as it seemed at first sight.
The forest wasn’t big, after starting walking again they left it in only three hours.
Outside the forest, there was a huge grassland with a small village composed only of three houses in it.
Yale was happy to find a place where people seemed to live, but at the same time, he was disappointed as he didn’t reach the coast.
Yale decided that he would still visit the coast later even if he lost the reasons to go, he didn’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing it with his own eyes.
Even if the village was small, Yale didn’t lower his guard and cast Body Illusion on himself and Wyba, who had climbed onto Yale’s head because Yale needed to be ready for battle if something unexpected happened. Thus, he needed his arms free and couldn’t hug her.
Yale didn’t take the shape of anyone else; he merely used the illusion to make it seem that no one was there, the illusion reflected the landscape. Unless the other party could see through the illusion, Yale was invisible to anyone who looked at him.
Yale slowly neared the village in silence.
One of the three houses had a window opened and though it, Yale could see a middle-aged woman cooking the breakfast.
Yale waited there without moving or making any sound until a man also showed in the house, by the looks he had just awakened from sleep.
“Daring, is the breakfast ready?”
“Almost.”
Yale understood that they were a married couple after seeing the scene.
Both continued speaking for a while, but they didn’t talk about anything useful to Yale.
Fortunately, Yale was able to use Body Illusion for an unlimited amount of time since he produced more Origin Qi than what the skill required.
When Yale saw that the man was about to leave the house, he was also about to leave because the woman being alone wouldn’t speak anything, so there was no need to keep spying that house.
However, the last conversation between the couple caught Yale’s attention.
“I hope to have a good hunt today; I heard that this afternoon an itinerant merchant would come to buy some fresh meat. If we have luck, maybe we would be able to have a good deal.”
“Is the same one that came two weeks ago?”
“No, I heard that is another one, he already went to the neighbor village yesterday. However, the strange thing would be if the same merchant appeared two times in a row. There are few who I have seen more than one time in my whole life.”
“I hope this one isn’t as stingy as the other. That merchant knew our need of commerce with him and was too greedy.”
The woman didn’t seem used to treat with itinerant merchants while the man seemed an expert dealing with them.
“Relax, the merchants risk their lives traveling to reach remote villages like ours and trade with us; we should be thankful to them.”
“Thankful? The last one was almost robbing us!”
The man sighed, two weeks ago was the first time his wife had seen the deals with itinerant merchants, and since then she thought that the transactions were utterly unfair.
Yale smiled after hearing the couple’s argument because he understood the best identity to appear in front of the local people, an itinerant merchant.
Yale went to the other houses, and in both of them, he heard similar information as in the first one.
There didn’t seem to be any control about itinerant merchants, at least in that village. For the villagers, the more itinerant merchants visited the village, the better.
Yale had decided to appear after the itinerant merchant they had mentioned before showed himself, and Yale could observe how he acted in front of the villagers.
Yale had enough wealth after looting the shameless nobles possessions. Thus, he could be a merchant without any problem. However, he didn’t know how the merchants in the area acted, so he decided to wait.
In the afternoon a youth wearing some clothes that seemed expensive arrived in the village.
That youth appeared to be thirteen or fourteen years old and was at the 6-star mortal rank, but by what Yale could sense, he should have advanced recently and was far away from the next realm.
Yale had no doubts about the youth’s identity; he could only be the itinerant merchant the village was expecting.
Yale had the temptation to use appraisal in him, but he feared that the other party would notice his existence due to that, so he restrained himself.
With the merchant’s level of power, he couldn’t discover Yale in a normal situation, but if Yale did something like using appraisal on him, then there would be a lot of chances that the merchant discovers Yale’s existence.
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