Chương 108: Chapter 106: Marketplace

It takes us three more days of travel, a dozen bargheasts, and a few more meandering conversations about the god slayer, but we do make it to Marketplace. It's a city on a hill, which is not all that surprising. I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting to find a particularly well defended city. But there are walls at the base of the hill and walls near the top of the hill, giving them two lines of defense to protect themselves from attack. The walls are tall and thick, and there are only two gates in each wall.

The gates are on opposites sides of one another, with a North and South gate in the primary wall and an East and West gate in the secondary wall. That makes some sense from a defensive point of view too. It does kind of slow down any attempt to enter the city, but that's the price you have to pay for security, I guess. It looks like a normal medieval city, really. There are two and three story buildings near the walls, there are towers in the wall about every fifty feet, and there are ballistas in every tower.

Most of them pointed up, which is a bit strange until you think about it. Designing the defense of a city in a world with magic requires that you think more in three dimensions. It's no different from trying to defend against a world that has helicopters and fighter jets, if you think about it. You need to be ready to defend against an air assault just the same as you're ready to defend against a ground assault.

There's also the fear of magical attacks, but those defenses might be in the form of invisible shields or just other casters waiting to dispel attacks as they get close. Is that a thing? Can casters take apart a spell in mid air, before it hits and goes off? I should ask Vincent about that when he gets back. He and Gigi are on their way back through the forest, but are taking their time a bit as Gigi levels up some more. I don't blame her.

Twenty one isn't terrible, but it's still pretty low compared to the rest of us. She doesn't want to be half our levels and have the lower stats. No word yet on whether or not Vincent also went through a death cycle. I have my doubts, but it is possible. There is a line waiting to get into Marketplace. Most of the line is wagons and people on horseback. Being on foot puts us in the minority, kind of ignored by the guards. Which I like.

They aren't paying a whole lot of attention to us, which means they don't recognize us, which also means that they our reputations haven't proceeded us. We're nobody special here. We don't stand out. I like that. Looking up and down the line, I see a lot of humans, orcs, and demon blooded folk waiting to get into the city. Or get back into the city, I suppose. They have the look of being a bit road weary, and I wonder where they all went to trade.

There isn't all that much trade in Elmspire, at least not that I've seen. There are merchants who come in from time to time, but not a steady stream like here in Marketplace. I imagine that has to mean that there are other cities much closer to Marketplace than Elmspire is. Cities that are more like a day or two travel rather than the multi week journey that it would take a wagon to get to Elmspire from here.

We can make it in about a week, but we're moving fast and probably for more of the day than we realistically should be. A wagon is only going to move about ten or twenty miles a day. It's at least two hundred miles from here to Elmspire. That's potentially three whole weeks of travel. Makes sense why we don't get more merchants back in Elmspire. But there are probably other cities, or at least towns, within twenty miles of here. In just about any direction, I imagine. There are roads leading out of Marketplace.

I bet if we take one of those roads, we'll find another bastion of civilization sooner rather than later. Looking closely at the demon blooded among them, I see that there is a wide variety of appearances among them. Some of them are Veka blooded like Ash; skin the color of pitch, sharp teeth, red eyes, various shapes of horns. Basically what I would imagine a demon would look like. Then there are the Xanar blood like Vincent, who look almost human except for the eyes and the little nubs of horns in their hair.

Those seem to be the two extremes, but there are at least three other types. One type has much bigger horns and red skin, looking like the demons from Christian mythology. They don't have goat legs or anything, but the crimson skin is enough to make it clear that they are very much not human. Another type doesn't have horns at all, but are about half again the size of humans and have only one eye, though it looks like the eyes have two pupils in it, still giving them binocular vision.

They're about eight or nine feet tall, built like football players, and have skin that is as white as Ash's skin is black. No mistaking them for human either. And then, last but not least, there are the demon bloods who are tall, thin, and svelte. They look like super models, with features that are just a little bit too chiseled, a little bit too perfect.

Their hair is stark white, their skin a deep tan that makes them look like they are from South America, and their eyes are an ethereal blue, more like the color of the sky than the color of the ocean. And the eyes are a solid blue, with neither iris nor pupil, at least not that I can see at this distance. It's drastically different from what I'm used to. In Elmspire, everyone is either an elf with green skin or one of the beast blooded, like El and Gigi and I.

The beast blooded look human, with just little hints to tell you that they aren't human. Mostly its a kind of feral vibe that we give off, in our posture or in the way we move. But if we're holding still, usually people would think that we must be human. There is no doubting that these demon kin are what they are. No one will mistake any of them for human, except maybe in quick passing and without looking at the details. What's strange about all this, to me, is that no one seems bothered by it at all.

The half giant looking one eyed creatures are leaning down to be able to hear their shorter companions, the ones with teeth that look built to rend flesh are smiling just as amiably as anyone else, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of separation. The demon blooded all seem to get along, despite having the most drastic differences in appearance. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. It makes me weirdly happy and a bit proud.

I would think that if there was going to be prejudice based on appearance, it would be somewhere like here, where there are such drastic differences between appearances. But no one seems to mind.

"Do you think many players have become merchants?" El asks as we wait in line.

"I mean, with a spatial bag, you don't need a whole wagon to fill with goods. It might be worthwhile to be a merchant. You could still move really fast and bring a ton of goods with you."

"I was never offered a merchant class," I say.

"But that doesn't mean they wouldn't be out there. Like you said, it would be easier to transport goods. Hell, you could transport goods really fast if you just let yourself be killed and respawned back in your home city."

"So someone might go through the death cycle just to save on transportation costs?" Ash asks.

"That would be a strange way to figure out the life hack." It's strange that she calls it a life hack. But I suppose it makes sense.

"Do you think they'd bother leveling up all that much between deaths?" I ask.

"I mean, they'd probably gain a few levels getting to wherever they were trading before getting killed and respawning. But would they figure out how to take advantage of the death penalty to its best effect?"

"I guess we'll find out," Ash says.

"If we come across any merchants with low levels and ridiculously high hit points." I'm kind of surprised at how quickly the line moves. I suppose it makes sense; if there is a steady stream of merchants coming into your city, you'll want to get them in as quickly as possible, so that they can trade their wares and bring money to the city. I bet Marketplace has much deeper pockets than Elmspire does. Elmspire is a pretty self sufficient city.

They don't really need to trade for much other than big order essentials like iron. And there might even be a mine nearby that provides that sort of thing. I don't know, I never really got into the economy of Elmspire. But they don't rely on trade, I know that much. We weren't really worried about a protracted siege during the skirmish that some will call a war. We knew that we grew our own food and provided just about everything that we needed within the bounds of our city.

Our biggest worry with a protracted siege would have been that it would've been harder for people to level up. Something that really only effected the players. One of the benefits of being self sufficient is that you don't have to rely on trade all that much. But that also comes with a downside. There's not as much capital moving through your city. Money doesn't go as far because it's all being used internally. You need money from outside to get to real wealth. And it looks like Marketplace has real wealth.

I first see it when we get to the gate and see the guards. They're just gate guards, but they have really nice armor and weapons. Full plate mail, halberds, swords at their sides, and it looks like shields strapped on their backs. It's a casual display of wealth. The city guard in Elmspire isn't that well decked out. The armor I'm currently wearing is the same armor that the Elmspire guard wears.

It's high enough quality to be worth wearing, and it does provide me with a fair amount of protection, but at the end of the day, it's still essentially leather armor. There is metal worked into it, but it just isn't as expensive as the armor these guards are wearing. It isn't as labor intensive to make, because my armor doesn't have a chain mail shirt underneath it, while these guards do. Their armor also doesn't look all that beaten up.

It looks like it's well worn, like these guys have been walking around and doing their jobs in it for a fair amount of time. There's dirt and dust on it, but there aren't any real dents that I can see. There are the remnants of dents that look like they've been hammered back into place. Probably the result of some training battles, but then repaired. And keeping the armor in that level of repair also says a lot about the amount of money that the city has. The streets are the next sign. They're paved.

There are no paved roads in Elmspire. Most of the roads, such as they are, are just wood carved or grown out of the great tree, but there are very few roads that have much of anything other than the occasional cobblestone. These roads are more like brick, laid carefully and systematically through the city. It's a quiet display of wealth, but it's hard to miss. So are the windows in the buildings that line the roads. The windows have glass in them. Glass isn't all that easy to make, and it isn't cheap.

In the kind of climate that we've experienced so far in this world, it also isn't all that necessary. I don't know if the winters get cold enough for glass in the windows to matter, but these buildings all have glass in them anyway. I feel poor walking through the city. I remind myself that I have 107 gold, 29 silver, and 253 copper pieces in my bag. That feels like it would be a lot in Elmspire, but not all that much here. I wonder if they have bandit issues.

Ash takes us through the city to the guild halls, which are all pretty close to the wall. In fact, the scout guild, hunters guild, adventurers guild, mage guild, and even the crafting guild are all built into the towers that intersperse the wall. It's like each guild has the responsibility to maintain one of the defensive towers. And maybe they do. Thankfully, the guilds are not city specific. My steel tag for the adventurer guild is still good, and I can spent my renown here if I want to.

Same with the scout renown and the hunter renown. I turn in some bargheast pelts and wyrm scales for the hunter quests, netting me an additional twenty thousand experience and thirty points of renown. That puts me just under a hundred thousand more experience from the next level, though I'm not in a particular rush. I want to get to know the city a bit, spend some time here. We're going to wait in Marketplace for Gigi and Vincent to catch up.

What I can do is get some more quests from the adventurer and scout guilds. It turns out that our battle with the giants filled out that adventurer quest, getting me another twenty thousand experience and thirty renown. That's all well and good, but what I really want are some quests that will either lead us towards where we might find a dragon or quests that involve dungeons. Maybe there will be something we can find in the next couple of days.

Once we've refilled some of our quest logs, Ash takes us to a restaurant to eat. She claims it's her favorite restaurant in the city, and I have no reason to doubt her. The food is delicious, just on this side of under cooked, enough that it almost feels like we're eating the meat raw. I understand why Ash likes it. There's just something to be said about the feeling of meat ripping between your teeth, about having to rend the flesh to be able to chew it and swallow it. I get it. It makes my wolf side very content.