We fanned out as we walked down Market Street…

  Well, “market” wasn’t what I would’ve called it. This wasn’t the noisy bazaar-style street near Nina’s house, the one clogged with stand-carts, tarps, roasting skewers, steaming tea kettles, charlatans hawking “guaranteed” cures, and five different kinds of bread sellers shouting over each other. There, you could smell street food, spices, animal fat, wood smoke, soap, and lamp oil all layered together. The crowd pressed shoulder to shoulder, and the prices were haggled over like it was a blood sport.

  This wasn’t that.

  This place was… curated. The air smelled like perfume, candle wax, and flower soaps. The stalls weren’t stalls at all but glass-front boutiques with neat displays, clean signs, and attendants who looked like they’d rather swallow glass shards than holler for attention. And there was no haggling here. The prices were written in pretty ink on parchment tags, and you either paid them in full or pretended you didn’t see them. Even the cobblestones had a fresh shine, as if the street cleaners actually cared about this place.

  We were close to the noble district, and the architecture reflected that. The few houses we passed had manicured courtyards peeking through iron-wrought fences, hanging lanterns swung a little too decoratively, and even the city watch seemed taller here; uniforms pressed, boots polished, and eyes mildly bored instead of suspicious.

  Raik walked in the lead with Kan at his side; he looked like he belonged here far more than the rest of us. Vena, Ja’a, and I followed a few steps back, Vena on my right and Ja’a on my left, while Calr and Shingo brought up the rear like polite bodyguards… or suspiciously well-behaved criminals, depending on whether you looked at the freelancer badge or not.

  I paused in front of one display. In the window sat a folding chair, except I wasn’t sure if the word “chair” was right. This was more like a chaise lounger masquerading as camping equipment. The sign claimed you could collapse it for storage and unfold it to sleep on during expeditions. It had a padded headrest, a recline feature, and a pair of little side pockets for personal items. It looked like something Twitch streamers would put in their reading corners to seem “sophisticated.”

  Ja’a leaned close, voice low and enchanting in my left ear. “Look at it. Imagine being out in the Roads, everyone else sleeping on rocks, while you unfold this marvel of comfort. You’ll wake up rested and refreshed while everyone else is miserable.”

  I blinked. “That was… surprisingly compelling.”

  She wasn’t done.

  “And think of the recovery benefits,” she continued, fluttering her fingers like a street magician. “Mana comes back faster when you’re well rested. Injuries heal better when you don’t flatten yourself against cold ground. And morale? Morale is everything. Soldiers have lost wars over restless nights.”

  I had no idea if all of that was true, but she said it with such breezy confidence that I almost believed her.

  Then Vena leaned in, her voice firm and precise in my right ear, the embodiment of clerical responsibility. “No. You have a sleeping roll. It functions. You do not need extra clutter. That thing costs one silver. One silver could buy six months’ worth of vegetables and dried grain. Or salves, bandages, lantern oil, and a perfectly good tent kit.”

  Ja’a countered immediately, “What clutter? You have a storage bag. And a silver is nothing to you, is it not?”

  Vena counter-countered, “Aren’t you planning to invest your money in a new business? You can’t stop and buy everything that catches your eye; you will run out eventually.”

  They weren’t even arguing with me anymore. I was just the battlefield they’d chosen to fight on.

  Ja’a and Vena were polar opposites. The two girls were like a devil and an angel on each of my shoulders. Except my devil wore silk and smelled like expensive perfume, and my angel was a prude nun who abhorred excess.

  I stared at the chair again. Was it obscene luxury? Yes. Was it useful? Possibly. I imagined stargazing in the Sunless Reach in absolute comfort.

  Sorry, Vena, but the devil won.

  Five minutes later, Ja’a and I were the proud owners of some deluxe camping equipment.

  Behind us, Calr muttered just loud enough to be heard, “This is why this place is dangerous.”

  Shingo nodded; his face looked terrified.

  Kan didn’t even turn around. “If you bring those chairs, we are not carrying them for you.”

  Ja’a gasped, offended. “I would never make my friends carry my things. I have a storage bag for that.”

  We stuffed the chairs into our bags, the bags' mouths comically expanding to fit.

  I decided to walk away before the chair purchase turned into a full pavilion.

  This fancy commercial district functioned exactly like a mall, so it was easy for Raik to shift us from casual browsing into procurement mode.

  “First is food,” he announced, and the whole formation followed him like obedient ducklings. Ja’a grumbled at the sudden change of vibe, but she followed anyway.

  The first shop smelled like dried fruit and roasted nuts: sweet, tart, and a little smoky. Shelves were stacked with neat little packets of apples, berries, citrus slices, and plump figs that had been magically dehydrated instead of sun-dried. Raik held a paper bag to his nose, nodded once, and tossed five more onto the counter without hesitation.

  Then came the trail nuts: almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and something local that looked like a mix between a macadamia and a chestnut. Kan eyeballed them as if she were a nutritionist guessing the protein content. They added a few kilos to the pile.

  The next shop had dried meat. The butcher behind the counter looked like he had been carved out of jerky himself. Raik asked about the farm provider, feeding habits, salt content, smoking time, and oil retention like a guard interrogating a prisoner. Ja’a tried to sample everything within arm’s reach, but Vena pulled her hand away.

  We left with nearly twenty kilos of meat: salty jerky, dry-cured sausages, smoked ham, and something that looked like pancetta, a flavorful, spiced slab that Calr swore was the secret ingredient in Yon’s hearty stew.

  From there, we went wild.

  Spices,

  tents,

  maintenance kits,

  firestarters,

  a little box of tinder pellets that ignited even in rain,

  a compact cookware set,

  water skins,

  extra rags,

  and, amusingly, several bundles of dry wood.

  “Just in case,” Raik answered when I stared at it. “Sometimes the wood can be too green, too wet, or too fire resistant.”

  I remembered the lightning-resistant wood from the Sunless Reach and nodded.

  Then came the moment Ja’a had clearly been waiting for: the food enchantment shop. The sign read Preservative & Preservation Goods, which sounded like a law firm specializing in pickles.

  Inside was an entire taxonomy of food enchantments. Some were single-use items, like stasis bags made of paper stamped with talismans in magical ink that kept food fresh, according to the very enthusiastic clerk.

  Others needed periodic refills of monster cores, like the cold box that needed a weekly recharge of a water-affinity core.

  Then there were permanent items that absorbed ambient mana, like a water purification keg capable of turning swamp water, or worse, into drinkable liquid. Yes, technically even pee. No, I am not trying that. Who advertises that as a feature?!

  Ja’a’s eyes went wide. “Leader Raik,” she breathed. “Oh, Supreme Duke Agame, most noble of nobles: imagine. Fresh pastries. Still warm. On day fifteen of a mission.”

  Raik folded his arms like a man preparing for battle.

  “They cost gold,” he said, pointing at the price card next to the stasis bags.

  “One gold buys ten bags,” the clerk chimed in helpfully.

  “Which is ridiculous,” Raik added.

  Ja’a clasped her hands dramatically to her chest. “Think of morale! Think of flavor! Think of the joy of eating a strawberry tart in a damp cave! Do you want us to go mad? Because that is how your crew mutinies.”

  “We are freelancers, not pirates,” Raik said flatly.

  “But…”

  “No to pastries, no to cakes, no to luxury foods that require refrigeration or stasis. We are buying rations, not food for one of your sisters’ weddings.”

  Ja’a’s face went through all five stages of grief while Vena quietly pretended not to be delighted by the rejection of decadence.

  We still ended up with the water purification keg since the item had a permanent enchantment, and Raik deemed it a good investment.

  Divvying came last. Raik loaded the bulk of the food and supplies into the three bags of holding: his, Ja’a’s, and mine.

  The rest of the group received single-day packets of assorted foods wrapped in oilcloth.

  “In case we get separated,” Raik explained while handing Shingo his share. “Priority should be water, not food. You can stretch nuts and fruit for a long time.”

  Vena nodded approvingly. Ja’a sulked mournfully about pastries. Calr immediately tried to eat part of his packet before Vena slapped his hand.

  The water purification keg went into Raik’s bag of holding since he paid for it.

  When the final bundle vanished into the last bag, Ja’a sighed.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “That was extremely practical and had no fun at all.”

  “Correct,” Raik replied, unbothered. “But now that’s done, it's time for the fun part.”

  We stopped at a specialist shop that bought and sold mechanical parts. Half the shop was filled with antique artifacts that looked one step away from being junk, while the other half featured mechanical items like pulley systems, a somewhat complex-looking loom, other mechanisms I didn’t understand, and crossbows. The ancient artifacts looked interesting; most of it was junk, yes, but it was the kind of junk that would make an archaeologist weep tears of joy.

  However, what intrigued me more was the seller himself. I am an anthropologist, after all, so the people are always more fascinating than the objects. Especially when the man in question looked like a dwarf, or at least the stereotype of a fantasy dwarf: short, broad, thick beard, and the kind of shoulders that suggested he could bench-press a horse.

  When I first arrived here, I’d made peace with the fact that the local “races” weren’t standard fantasy clichés. There were no elves, no dwarves, no orcs, nor halflings. Instead, classification was by realm of origin: Dreamer, Mythic, Soulit, Kindred, and Bloodline, with Telepaths being extinct. They all looked human at the base form, even the ones with dramatically altered bodies; the human template was still the starting point.

  A Valkyrian woman with angel wings and a Naga man with a snake-tail lower half were both Dreamers who only diverged because of the Sleepless Father’s blessing. If they had a child together, the kid might look like mom, might look like dad, but most likely look totally human. Very rarely would they appear mixed. A biological dice roll weighted heavily toward “generic human” appearances.

  Even the terms “Valkyrian” and “Naga” were just phono-semantic approximations and had nothing to do with Norse or Indian mythologies.

  So if this man looked like a dwarf, it didn’t imply the existence of an actual dwarf race. More likely, it was a Dreamer lineage, a Kindred clan, or some cult descendant of mythic worshipers. Or, even weirder, the result of a single ascension or evolution event.

  “Why are we here?” Katar asked, frowning at piles of chains, gears, broken lenses, and sad wooden contraptions that died before anyone could figure out what they were supposed to do.

  “Calr needs a crossbow,” Raik answered.

  Calr blinked. “I do?”

  “We discussed it when we tested your knife-throwing skill,” Raik said, which was a diplomatic way of saying, “Your knife throw is shit; you don’t have enough strength to do real damage.”

  Calr immediately protested about the price, about how we’d already spent enough, and about how he is in debt now, and something-something financial responsibility.

  I ignored the background noise and approached the seller. He was tinkering with a mechanical object: half-rotted wooden gears, what I think might have been wheels, and two metal rods that could have been axles but had long since given up the will to rotate. He oiled it carefully, trying to coax it back into motion, and muttered something I didn’t catch.

  “Is that a toy car? I mean… carriage?” I asked conversationally, in lieu of a greeting.

  “Could be. I’m not sure yet,” said the not-dwarf dwarf. His voice was surprisingly thin, and, unfortunately, he spoke perfect Common. I had been hoping for this world’s equivalent of a Scottish accent.

  “Why is it in such disrepair? Did you dig it up from some archaeological site?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Like most of the ancient stuff here. They were all collected from the Ancient Telepath. My people like collecting and trying to understand them.”

  “Your people?” I blinked. “Sorry, you’re the first person of your kind I’ve met. What do you call yourself?”

  “We are dwarves. Have you never heard of us? Our people control all the Northeastern continent. We are the true people of the Contested Realm, the last legacy of the Ancient Telepath.”

  When he finally raised his head, I noticed a single strand of blood-red hair braided into his beard.

  Ja’a chuckled. “He is full Kindred.” She tapped her eye with a finger. “I can tell.”

  “You Soulit whore,” spat the dwarf, “go back to Treegate and stop slandering our people with your lies.”

  “Hey! I’ll have you know I was born and raised in the Bloodline Realm, and just because your people are at war with Treegate doesn’t give you the right to call me that!”

  “Ja’a,” Raik sighed, “this is why I tell you not to talk about people’s souls in the open. That was rude.” He turned to the dwarf. “My apologies for my friend’s conduct.”

  “I am sorry too,” muttered the dwarf. “I shouldn’t have called her that; it was uncalled for.”

  Ja’a was still miffed, but she didn’t escalate it. Vena nudged her from behind, and the two quietly exited the shop, leaving the rest of the team to resume our crossbow mission.

  My eyes drifted to Calr, his blood-red hair catching the light, then back to the dwarf’s beard and that same red streak. Ja’a couldn’t tell that Calr wasn’t full Mythic either. Maybe she can’t distinguish someone descended from a Telepath because she’s never seen one. Or perhaps Telepath soul signatures blend well with other patterns.

  There’s a chance these “dwarves” really do have telepathic ancestry. Dwarves were also just another phono-semantic matching, an effect of my translation Soulbook that puts new words in existing linguistic patterns.

  I’ll have to read about them later. Or ask another dwarf; I’m afraid Ja’a has just poisoned the well with this one.

  “We’re looking for a crossbow,” said Raik. “What would you suggest?”

  The dwarf finally set the toy-carriage thing aside and gestured toward a rack of crossbows.

  “You’re in luck,” he said. “I’ve got the best crossbows in all of Hano.”

  Raik motioned for Calr to step forward like a parent forcing a child to try on new shoes. Calr obeyed without much enthusiasm.

  The dwarf lifted the first crossbow off the hooks. It looked modern by Earth standards: sleek, metal, and built with a precision that didn’t match the workshop clutter at all. He handed it to me since I was closest. I instinctively braced for weight, but it was surprisingly light.

  Aluminum? Aluminum-steel alloy? Fantasy duralumin?

  I tested the balance. “This is lighter than my spear.”

  “Scavenged and repaired Ancient Telepath artifact,” the dwarf said, taking back the bow and passing it to Raik. “No one can make metal like that anymore. Almost as light as wood but stronger. Worth its weight in gold.”

  The crossbow had a handlebar pulley mechanism for notching, and judging by the resistance, it had a monstrous draw strength.

  Raik tested the pulley and frowned. “It takes too long to recharge. It could be good for a sniper, maybe. It would be terrible in the field.”

  Calr stared at the price tag and nearly choked. “Three gold?! That’s… that’s… I could buy a house!”

  “A shed. Or a slum shack,” Ja’a called faintly from outside the shop. The girl was too nosy to be excluded, even if she had to contribute snark from a different room.

  “Girl, you do not know how far three gold goes in some of Hano’s neighborhoods,” Calr shot back.

  Raik ignored both of them and handed the relic back.

  The dwarf brought out the second crossbow, wooden with metal joints and a small square recess mid-body. This time, he immediately gave it to Raik.

  “This one’s more practical. Half the range, half the punch,” he explained, tapping the slot. “But you can socket a kinetic monster core here. It helps with reloading; just press the lever, and the bow will string itself. Even someone as weak as a kitten could use it.”

  Calr frowned. “I am not as weak as a kitten.”

  “Close enough!” shouted Ja’a.

  “Shut up, you!”

  Raik nodded at the crossbow after testing its draw strength. “This is more like it, medium range for sure.”

  The third crossbow was plain wood, tension, and reload. It had no core slot or any weird gimmicks.

  “That’s the best standard crossbow I have,” the dwarf said. “Even weaker range, but at least it won’t eat up cores for the reload.”

  Calr held it, tested the draw, and admitted, “This one feels… nice.”

  “Yeah, you could probably make it work if you stick to a few meters,” Raik said. “More than that, and it’s utterly useless.”

  I frowned. On Earth, a crossbow like that would still do damage at way more than just a few meters, but I guess monsters here were extra resilient.

  They debated for a while: Calr advocated for cheap and unremarkable, Raik advocated for battlefield practicality, and the dwarf was still trying to pitch the three-gold artifact as a viable option. In the end, the core-socket crossbow won.

  “Six silver,” the dwarf said.

  Calr deflated. “That’s still a lot.”

  “Better than three gold,” Raik countered.

  Ja’a shouted from outside, “That’s rent-a-house money, not buy-a-house money!”

  Calr glared toward the doorway, then finally nodded at Raik, who paid the dwarf using his bank badge.

  After buying a few bolt quivers from a fletcher for cheap, we went to our next, and last, stop.

  We followed Kan as she led us to the place where she had gotten her armor; it was closer to the guild district than the fancy boutiques we’d just raided.

  Inside were three women who looked astonishingly alike; two could have been twins, while the third was slightly older. The shop itself was nearly empty: bare wooden mannequins, a few racks, and a cloudy glass terrarium in the back.

  We entered during a bizarre scene: the older sister piling food onto plates while the twins looked like they were being force-fed.

  “Sorry, we can’t take orders right now,” the older sister said. “We ran out of spider silk.”

  “Really?” asked Kan. “I was hoping to get something similar to mine made for my friend.”

  “No chance,” one of the twins mumbled, reluctantly chewing another bite. “Something happened in Weavershall. All silk shipments have dropped to a trickle. And we’re being outbid by the Soulit weavers on what little gets through.”

  “What if we provided our own silk?” Ja’a asked, wearing an evil smile.

  “How would you even…” the twin began, but stopped mid-sentence when Ja’a reached into her bag of holding and extracted an entire bolt of silk.

  The twins immediately stopped eating and shot to their feet, while the older sister intercepted the spool like she feared the twins might swallow it whole. She ran her fingers across the threads, testing density, sheen, and sturdiness.

  “This is legit,” gasped the older sister. “Do you have more?”

  “How much are you willing to pay for it?” Ja’a asked smugly.

  Raik sighed, the resigned sigh of someone who already knew he had lost control of the situation. Ja’a launched into negotiations against all three sisters. They technically outnumbered her three to one, but with Ja’a’s personality, it was closer to six against three in Ja’a’s favor.

  In the end, Ja’a convinced them to make under-armor for all of us, including Raik and Kan, who already have under-armor of their own, in exchange for double the silk required to make them, without any money exchanging hands. Both sides looked satisfied, which is always a sign that a negotiation had been fair.

  The final tally ended up being ten spools of normal silk and three barrels of adhesive silk.

  When the barrels were dropped off, the atmosphere shifted. Each of the sisters’ lower bodies warped and unfolded, and massive spider limbs appeared from under their robes. Their teeth elongated into fang-like cutters. Without hesitation, they dunked their heads into the barrels and began slurping the adhesive silk like it was noodles.

  At the same time, the cloudy terrarium cracked open. A black tide of widow-sized spiders poured out, swarming the silk spools, unthreading them, and reweaving them into cloth with terrifying coordination.

  The three half-spider sisters joined in, producing silk from their own spinnerets and manipulating it with their spider legs. It was mesmerizing and just a little bit horrifying.

  “Excuse me,” I finally asked, forcing my voice to steady because anthropology demanded professionalism. “Is that a Kindred transformation?”

  The older sister nodded, mandibles clacking. “We’re part of the Weaver Clan. That’s why we make the best spider-silk armor in Hano.”

  “If you’re part spider, how come you need to buy spider silk?” Ja’a asked.

  “We need more silk than we can produce with just the three of us,” said the older sister.

  “Why do you think we’re overeating?” added one twin, lifting her plate defensively. “We used up our reserves on the last job.”

  “But eating spider silk lets you recycle it?” Vena asked, curious rather than judgmental.

  The other twin nodded.

  “That I get,” Calr said, “but what’s the deal with the tiny army of spiders?”

  “We can order the little ones around when we’re in our Matriarch form,” the older sister explained.

  I remembered Nada needing to eat a couple of kilos of squid meat weekly to sustain her transformation, so I hesitated before asking the obvious:

  “Does that mean you… eat spiders?”

  All three nodded in unison. “Mostly giant spider meat from Weavershall,” said the older sister. “But also the little ones, once they get too old to work.”

  We watched for a bit longer, fascinated and mildly unsettled, until the older sister remembered to take our measurements. She shooed away the spiders long enough to measure us, scribbled the notes, and waved us toward the exit.

  “They’ll be ready tomorrow,” she promised, her voice still half-hissing from her mandibles.

  Outside, Raik stretched his shoulders and checked the blue sun’s position like he was timing a campaign.

  “Well, it’s getting late. Let’s head home. Tomorrow we meet up for armor and weapons.”

  “What about transport? Aren’t we getting a carriage so we can travel fast?” Ja’a asked.

  “We can rent a cart from the stables,” Raik said. “I’m not buying a carriage.”

  “Eeeh, can’t we get something enchanted with sky-kinetic magic to stop the jostling? You know I get car sick,” Ja’a complained.

  “You can always walk,” Katar said, sounding like he was finally getting tired of Ja’a’s nonsense, but considering those three were childhood friends, he must have been used to it.

  Raik waved us onward. “Let’s go. Sleep.”

  We parted ways near the guild dorms, where I decided to teleport to my camp in the Sunless Reach. The sky shifted from late afternoon to night, freckled with millions of bright stars. I unpacked and sank into my fancy new lounge chair.

  It was so comfortable that it felt like sleeping on a cloud. Thank you, Ja’a.

  I practiced star mana control while trying Stormfather Whisper, my new perception Soulbook, watching a world made of lightning and stars.