I smiled as I followed them through the house. One crisis had been averted. Now I only had to deal with all the others.
“Well, it all started when your grandfather thought it was a good idea to invite your grandmother to a scholar’s party.”
An hour later, Ranic and I stood at the entrance waving goodbye to the governor and the city guard. Ranic smiled cheerfully, up until the moment he closed the door.
He turned to me, his expression grim. “Arnold, you are in a lot of trouble.”
Ranic had been cheerful through breakfast with the guard's captain and through the entire conversation we’d had with the governor. The sudden change in attitude surprised me.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve caught the attention of the regent. She’s difficult to deal with at the best of times. But your little exploit is something she will sink her claws into and will likely never release. She will use every manipulation she can to gain this information.”
I frowned. “Why would she care? She can’t use it.”
“Don’t be foolish. You and Jeric earned a monstrous amount of experience in just a few short days. She might not be able to use it herself, but she can trade the information to those who can for half of the experience it will generate. What Jeric gained was literally decades of experience for a noble—and she wants it.”
I shrugged, not bothered by that fact, but seeing an opportunity. “I’ll sell it to her then. It will fix our money issues.”
Ranic sighed. “I’m not sure how things work in your world, but in our world, the rich and powerful do not pay for anything they can take. The regent is both of those things, and a bully. She won’t pay for the exploit unless she absolutely has to. You heard Beldose. When he learned that you had something she wanted, the first words he said were do not give it to her. That alone should tell you something about her. I am certain she will do everything in her power to manipulate you into handing it over willingly.”
I paused, finally sensing the seriousness of the situation. “Is she really that bad?”
“She’s worse. Once she has you in her palace, I honestly don’t expect to see you for at least three months. That’s the soonest I’ve ever heard of her giving in. It’ll more likely to be six months before you are back in Blackwood.”
“I’ll sell the exploit to someone else then. If I can’t sell it to her, then there is no reason for her to come after me.”
Ranic shook his head. “Don’t be an idiot. If you do that, then there is also nothing protecting you from her wrath. She is one of the seven regents. She governs the entire northern lands. She only answers to the king. If you upset her, she will destroy you as effectively as any giant.”
“So, I’m screwed?”
“Not entirely. She wants what you have. And she wants it desperately since she invited you to her palace. You will be in a gilded cage, but remember, a gilded cage is still a cage. If you can stay above her manipulation attempts, she will eventually cave and purchase the exploit from you. 75,000 crowns and other considerations would be reasonable.”
“Wait. What? When I talked to Jeric after discovering the exploit, he said that it was only worth a few hundred.”
“It was only worth that, but I improved the returns, and you are now dealing with the regent, not a few poor mayors of low-level villages. This exploit is worth a fortune to her.”
I felt like I was in over my head. “Will you come with me?”
Ranic paused. “I could, but that would leave the miners and builders without anyone to oversee them.”
“Jeric can handle that.”
“Jeric won’t be there. If she’s called for you, it means she’s already contacted him and attempted to gain the information that way. He’s an honourable man, and I’m sure he will keep his word not to sell your exploit, but he hasn’t taken an oath, and that means she has a chance at manipulating him. I will have someone try to contact him through his village interface before you leave, but I suspect he will already be gone. He will most likely be in Melgrim when you arrive.”
“She can do that? I thought there were laws against these sorts of actions? I thought nobles weren’t all-powerful?”
“There are, however, she is also the regent. If she deems a conversation with you in person is required for the good of the people in her region, you can be summoned and made to stay. As I said, you will be treated well, but the law is murky when it comes to how long she can keep you before these conversations happen. And only a summons from the king can remove you from her presence before she releases you.”
“That’s not likely to happen.”
“No, it is not.”
I scowled. “This is a real pain in the ass. I’ve still got all that business in Igwood to take care of. Melgrim’s not even in that direction.”
“Forget about Igwood. You should be able to find most of what you need in Melgrim. The rest I’ll procure on my way back to Blackwood.”
“Six months is a long time. The giant could show up before then, making everything we’ve done pointless.”
Ranic nodded grimly. “Let’s hope she tires and gives in sooner.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
TRAVELLING
The carriage came to an abrupt halt, jolting me and making me drop my book. We were in the middle of the Northern Melgrim Forest, so there were only a few reasons we would stop. One was a fallen tree. A far more likely reason was monsters.
Radian’s road markers didn’t just advertise distance. They also showed how many guards you needed. Some roads weren’t safe to travel if your caravan contained less than twenty. This one required six.
I picked up the book and put it on the seat. It was on the governing laws of this world. Ranic had given it and others to me to study while I travelled. He was hoping to broaden my understanding of the laws. Travelling offered so much free time that his plan was working. Boredom had me finishing a book a day. No matter how dry the content, any distraction was preferable to spending twelve hours staring at the seat in front of me.
If the governor had been willing to let me take Weldon’s teleportation circle to Melgrim, then travel would have been instantaneous, and I wouldn’t be bored or concerned about our sudden stop, but the next scheduled connection was still a month away, and the governor couldn’t accept the delay.
I leaned over and stuck my head out the carriage window.
Even though the governor couldn’t accept the delay, he wasn’t a bad guy. He had been more than happy to give me the extra day once he realised the level of business Ranic and I were doing in his city. He’d even apologised and loaned me his carriage and driver, upgrading my escort from the bare minimum that might see me arrive at the regent’s palace to something that would definitely get me there.
The eight mounted guards led by sergeant Silber moved their horses in and around the carriage, drawing weapons. Their eyes gazed outwards to the surrounding forest. Something had them on edge.
There were few bandits in this world. People and monsters could go feral and insane if they killed their own kind, literally changing species into a form of monstrosity, which really cut down on the violence people did to each other. I mean, who wanted to kill their neighbour if they might go nuts afterwards? Not many.
The only person in the kingdom immune to this effect was the king. So wars were fought against other species or monsters, but not against your own kind. That fact had taken me a while to get used to.
People were also more racist than I was used to. Dwarves, elves, humans, and orcs might all share the same world, but none of them lived in the same lands. The only ones that travelled freely or regularly were adventurers and even they weren’t that common. Border traders existed, and there were certain exceptions, but for the most part, species kept to themselves, only coming together when they absolutely needed to.
That had annoyed me when I learned it. I mean, I really wanted to meet an elf or get drunk with a dwarf. Not that I could get drunk anymore. Bu
t still, the fact that I couldn’t just sit down with one of them and say hello grated on me.
I turned to the front of the carriage. “Something the matter?” I asked the driver quietly.
“We’re being stalked,” the driver replied, just as quietly. He began setting up a crossbow. “This forest is home to several dungeons. With all the adventurers busy, there might have been a breakout.”
“Could you hand me my war pitchfork?” I asked.
I wasn’t afraid, but that had nothing to do with bravery. I’d been drinking steadily to keep my thoughts off the giant and I had some experience hunting monsters. Though at the time, I was the hunter and had Salem to help, who basically told me if something was coming or what direction I had to go to find something, so it wasn’t like I had any actual skill in this department. I was far from being a great warrior. But I wasn’t some poor defenceless fool either.
I could tell something made the animals go silent. There were no birdsongs or movement, only the wind moving through the trees. That meant something was nearby and I knew what I had to do to survive such an encounter.
The driver stood up and reached behind him to where my less valuable baggage was stored on the roof. He undid a couple of ropes and pulled the war pitchfork free, passing it down.
I gave it a curious once-over to make sure nothing was damaged. I’d lost it in a field while running from the giant and hadn’t treated it overly well throughout its short life. Redcliff had found it for me when I managed to get up the courage to go back and check on the property damage and see if he could do anything to keep the ghost around. Sadly, he couldn’t. But thankfully my war pitchfork looked fine.
Once I had my weapon sorted, I stepped out of the carriage. I knew enough from fighting trolls that the last place I wanted to be was inside something I couldn’t escape from. I closed the door behind me.
Small sparks suddenly cracked across the hairs on the end of my arms, causing uncomfortable but not painful shocks. The horses snorted, skin twitching, not liking the uncomfortable sensation.
“Shit, static electricity.” My voice was barely above a whisper, but I wasn’t the only one to swear.
The driver doubled his speed, quickly loading a bolt into his crossbow.
This was my first time seeing the phenomenon, but Salem had explained it in detail. Apparently, this turbulent environment occurred whenever certain monster magics were harnessed.
Back when I was trying to figure out what I could bring to this world as an incarnate I’d had all sorts of terrible ideas. One of those ideas caused me to argue with myself for a month over whether or not I wanted to be the person responsible for bringing gunpowder and firearms to this world. In the end, my dithering had been pointless. They already had it. They also had petroleum and the designs for early 1900’s cars.
The reason they didn’t use those revolutionary ideas were monsters like the one hunting us. Their magic didn’t respect boundaries like a bottle wall or bullet casing. I could see small sparks on the tips of leaves hundreds of feet away. They were everywhere, waiting to ignite anything highly combustible.
The level of protection required to safely use a firearm or petroleum-powered vehicle in this environment didn’t exist. Hell, even high percentage alcohol would go up in this environment, which was why there was very little trading of spirits between cities, and why I’d had several nightmare about using it in my barn.
So no guns, no cars, no combustible spirits trade.
One minute turned into five and then ten. We all waited for whatever was out there to make its move. Then the static field began to dissipate. No one took that as a sign we were safe. We all stayed ready.
Finally, after half an hour, Sergeant Silber gave the call to move on.
Silber brought his horse over as the driver began to put away his crossbow. “It’s either withdrawn to attack when we are less prepared or decided to leave us be.”
“But what is it?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know, sir, could be a giant centipede or a lightning serpent. I can’t remember all the monsters you find in the dungeons here and my ability only tells me if there is something within a few fields’ length that wants to kill me. But whatever it is, it’s not after us now…having said that, sir, I’d keep hold of your weapon. If one monster has broken out, then there will be more. It’s not safe travelling through this forest with the adventurers’ guild stretched so thin.”
“Why are we travelling through it then?”
He turned to the side and spat. “It’s an extra week to go around and we were ordered to get you there as soon as possible.”
“I’ll bring it up with the regent when I see her,” I said grumpily. I didn’t like other people messing around with my safety. Only I was allowed to do that.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A NEW PROBLEM
As the carriage rolled up to Melgrim, I gawked, head out the window, excited as a tourist in Tokyo. It was an actual city. Half a million people lived in and around it. I had spent the last several hours travelling past miles of farmland and small village centres, bigger than Blackwood, slowly getting closer and closer to the massive stone walls that ran for miles in each direction. There was a constant flow of traffic leading to and from it. And the farms, near the road, had been well cared for without the gaps of empty land that I was used to seeing.
Every square foot of space was occupied by either a building or crop. None of it was haphazardly put together. We’d passed tens of thousands of fields of wheat and then several thousand fields of corn before passing orchards just as large. It was farming but on a modern industrial scale. There was no medieval peasantry mishmash.
Even the farms outside of Weldon hadn’t impressed me enough to note the differences between it and Blackwood, but Melgrim’s did. This truly was an old city. Every field we’d passed was level 100 and people worked at insane speeds. Most of the farmers jogged everywhere.
Despite the impressiveness of the farmland, it was nothing compared to the city. Melgrim was a city out of a fairytale—or perhaps anime. It was a massive construction that defied the wilderness around it. Towers dotted the walls with trebuchets and ballistae on top.
The people here looked prosperous. Even the farmers’ clothes were new and everyone I’d seen appeared cheerful. It wasn’t like Blackwood was destitute or the villagers were starving, but there was a lack of anything more than the necessities. Here, I didn’t see that.
What I saw instead was a lack of guards. As we rolled up, only six men held a gate that was wide enough to let through four wagons at a time. Everything about their actions was hurried. They asked the minimum of questions and didn’t check to see if the answers they received were true before waving people through.
Passing through the tunnel under the wall was weirdly familiar. The walls were eighty feet thick. The space underneath should have been dark and shadowy, but sconces set with glowing crystals dotted the tunnel walls, providing light. It was like going through a tunnel back home.
When we came out the other side, we entered streets as crowded as Manhattan. Brick and stone buildings climbed five stories high. The lowest levels seemed to be devoted entirely to storefronts, with the levels above kept for living. I could almost mistake Melgrim for a modern city.
Salem had complained about the lack of culture and services in Blackwood. Going to Weldon was like stepping out of the 1100s and into the early 1800s, but Melgrim was like stepping into 1905. I spotted bicycles and horse-drawn trolleys. There were newsstands on the corner and vendors selling street food. Signs advertised branded goods and franchised stores.
There were cafes and restaurants. I even spotted litter. Like actual litter. Not just dirt. Someone had thrown a wadded up piece of paper on the ground. As I watched, a street cleaner picked it up.
The longer I looked, the more I had to wonder what I was doing in Blackwood.
The carriage moved on, oblivious to my growing surprise, travelling in a straight line to th
e second inner wall. We passed through the second wall, just as big as the first, heading into the upper city. The buildings grew farther apart and became more manor-like the closer we went to the centre. We eventually passed through the third wall and into a garden dozens of times larger than Blackwood's main village.
My first thought was how wasteful this display of wealth was, but I bit down on that thought as quickly as it came. I was in a different world than my own, with different rules. The garden was probably part of the palace and the size couldn’t be changed without interfering with the magic that made everything function. The laws governed everything, even gardens.
The carriage continued down the paved road through the garden to a palace the size of a megamall. A servant at a fork in the road pointed to the right, directing us around the palace's side to a small entrance where a chamberlain and a dozen servants waited to greet us, having somehow been warned in advance.
The carriage rolled to a stop.
Chamberlain Fredrick
He stepped forward.
The chamberlain was dressed in an elaborate red and gold suit like you would expect to see on an 1800’s aristocrat. He was a tall thin-looking man in his later forties. His hair was cut short with a few grey streaks and he had a well-trimmed beard.
Fredrick bowed, head dropping lower than his waist. “My apologies for bringing you around the side, sir, but the main entrance is currently being waxed in preparation for the ball this evening. Regent Katella sends her apologies that she could not meet you in person. She is otherwise engaged with organising this unexpected event.”
“Unexpected event?” I said as I climbed out of the carriage.
Jeric stepped through the door behind the servants, a fake smile plastered on his face. “I’ll explain it to him, Fredrick.” He looked at me, dark-ringed eyes speaking volumes. “It’s good to see you, Arnold. We have a lot to catch up on.”
Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer Page 28
