Chapter 180: Y’zaks’ Business Model
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
After half a day of gathering information, Hao Ren and the gang regrouped on the steppe outside Lamberg.
As there was still an hour to go before the supposed rendevous ti, and Becky was no where in sight, the group exchanged whatever information they had managed to obtain thus far…
Vivian had gone up to the highest available point in town, and upon perching on the parapet, she found where the church lay. The Disciples of Glory was a prominent religious body across the three continents, especially in the Kingdom of Holletta where it was founded. Their church was visible in any town that was of a decent size. Posing as a visitor, Vivian took the chance to mingle with the clergy there. Her experience as a poor wanderer, and existing oral skills served her well in gleaning so information off the gaudy clergyn.
“Letta runes are no longer in use here.” Vivian’s first string of information had already shocked Hao Ren. “The people here treat is as a lost ancient language or sothing like hieroglpyhs… I spoke to so of the priests in church about the runes, and they don’t even have a clue on how to use it. The clergy are usually the most educated lot in a dieval society. If they don’t know how, the commoners won’t either.”
“A lost language?” Hao Ren was genuinely surprised. “Then…what were those runes in the town?”
“Prayer for good luck…” Vivian shrugged nonchalantly. “The writings itself are wrong and the structure’s all over the place. That, I managed to discern. The people this age don’t even know what or how to properly write Letta runes anymore. What they did was simply just trace the symbols from whatever source that remained, either from ruins or ancient tos. They probably thought the characters brought auspicious anings, and they’ve been using them since. Sothing like a protective charm not unlike those you can find in the houses of Chinese villages. Letta runes have pretty much degenerated into this form. I suppose the people on Earth were much, much better at preserving their knowledge. At least, the demon hunters have so knowledge of the runes.”
“Wait a minute… Letta runes… Kingdom of Holletta…” Sothing dawned upon Wuyue as her expression changed. “Oh, right!! When I was in town, I overheard sothing by the school. They were talking about the Kingdom of Holletta being a direct line of an ancient civilisation. Could it be that the Letta runes were one of the remnants of that civilisation? It’s even in the kingdom’s na.”
“Possible.” Vivian nodded. “I didn’t have the ti to probe for more boring information but, from my eting with the priests, I can tell that they hold the Kingdom of Holletta’s ‘doctrine’ and ‘ancientness’ with the utmost importance. This kingdom is probably the most ancient of kingdoms in this world. If you think back to the apocalypse a few milleniums back, it’s not beyond reason that the Kingdom of Holletta is a remnant of an ancient civilsation.
“They may have simply inherited sothing from the lost civilisation, rather than having remnants,” Y’zaks quipped.
“What have you heard?” Hao Ren raised at eyebrow.
“The Kingdom of Holletta has a history of about 3,000 years. That ans it was established much more recently than when the apocalypse happened.” Y’zaks laughed. “The founders of the kingdom probably stumbled across sothing in the ruins and used it as a basis of their rule. Anyway, I’m not going to proclaim if they are indeed a remnant of the past civilisation… Those are just details. I have good news, we don’t have to worry about money for a while now.”
As the great demon grinned, he pulled out a bulky sack and presented it to Hao Ren and the group. In it, a whole load of various, shiny currencies could be seen. So of it, Hao Ren recognised as the local Denars, so were thin, copper coins, and there was a piece of clearly valuable, gold currency. The sudden appearance of so much shiny tal almost blinded all who were present. Y’zaks laughed again. “I don’t know if I got scamd but, these look like they should last us for a while. That fat rchant was even grimacing when he took out his coin purse…”
Cold sweat appeared almost instantenously across Hao Ren’s forehead as he eyed the giant hulk of a demon suspiciousy. “You didn’t resort to highway robbery, did you?”
With Y’zaks’ “good guy” nature, this was obviously out of the question but, the shock from the giant coin was palpable. Aside from robbery, Hao Ren really could not figure out how a person, who had no idea about the basic functions of this society could possibly make such a huge sum of money in such a short ti. Perhaps, deep down, all demons would not say no to easy money.
Displeasure imdiately appeared on Y’zaks already scary looking face. “Who do you take for? As an upstanding person, I’ll never do such a thing. This was from the sale of weapons.”
“Weapons?” Hao Ren’s eyes widened in surprise.
Y’zaks took off his bagpack (Hao Ren was indeed in charge of the luggage but, the practical demon still lugged his own by habit) and pulled out two odd-looking, short swords. “These.”
The group gathered around to have a look at the swords. The swords were short in na and shape only but, their blades were clearly not tal. The pitch black blades were almost obsidian-like, and looked to be crafted entirely out of stone. There were no scorch or folding marks on the blades. A very thin veil of blade mist swirled on the surface of the blades, and Hao Ren felt that he was being compelled to look at the blades. The plain, lightless blades almost had a magical aura to them. The longer you stared at the blades, the faster the mist swirled.
Wuyue picked up one of the blades out of curiousity and felt a surge of energy race through her body. The scared siren quickly tossed the blade back to the ground.
“Could it be…demonic stone?” Hao Ren only realised what the swords were made of after a while.
“Yes, that stone.” Y’zaks nodded. “Ever since I got back from England, I’ve been wondering what to do with it. It was a massive eyesore and a space hogger however, it was still valuable enough. Since I was unemployed and had ti on my hands, I started chipping it off to make so stuff. At first, I made two kitchen knives for Vivian but, she said they were too heavy and cumberso. So, I made two shovels instead, and found out that they weren’t half as good as the ones you can buy off the shelves. After that, I made a couple of short swords like these, thinking that we might have so use for them soday. While I’m not the best smith around, I still know my way in making demonic weaponry. The blades may look brittle but they are harder than normal steel. They’ve undergone so treatnt. I’ve seen the weapons of humans in this world, no normal blacksmith here can co up with anything close to them.”
“F*ck! You sold soone a demonic sword?” Hao Ren gasped in horror.
“Of course not.” Y’zaks simply just waved him off. “I have already removed the demonic energy from the rocks. These are no more than glorified swords with enchantnts. I simply went up to one of the weapons shops in town, said I found a blade that I can’t use in the ruins, and wanted to sell it. And well…the rest is history.”
Hao Ren eyed Y’zaks suspiciously. “You seem awfully familiar with this.”
The great demon smirked. “There was a ti back then where a group of adventurers would co to my turf to wreak havoc. I had this old castle there and they seed to love hauling out whatever broken tal and stuff they could find to sell. At tis, if there was a whole lot of them, I could even give the groundsn a couple of days off. Well…that’s how I learnt about human adventurers making a fortune.”
“…”
There was an awkward silence.
Now, Hao Ren was even more curious about what Y’zaks did back then at ho. Aside from being the ssenger of righteousness to his kind, he was a raid boss, whom people would grind for loot and reputation?
That said, the ingenuity of the great demon had solved their monetary woes for the ti being. As for the way the monetary system worked here…they would find out sooner or later. By then, Lily had begun to pull on Hao Ren’s sleeves. “Mr. Landlord… Lets get sothing to eat.”
With that, Hao Ren realised that he indeed felt a little hungry. Perplexed, he rose the question, “Wait…why do we need to eat over here?”
“What nonsense.” The MDT, who was playing nanny to the little rmaid back ho suddenly rang in his ear. “Since when did you not need to eat?”
“I thought we were in the Dream Plane no?” Hao Ren was still confused. “Our bodies are lying in the pods back ho. So, why the need to eat at all?”
“Who told you that your entity in The Plane of Dreams is a purely spiritual being? Your body there is as real as the one on Earth. When you enter The Plane of Dreams, an exact copy of you is being made over there and you will need to eat and sleep as usual. And of course, anything that happens to you in the plane will affect you directly. Just that your tabolism rate is much lower, and you’ll only need a al a day to sustain yourself. Lily was acting up because she was being Lily, hungry as always.”
Hao Ren was stunned. He found the line between The Plane of Dreams and reality was almost blurred.
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