Three days past me leaving Zera and one day past me giving that little monologuing session two chapters ago, I have a reached a city – the first city I have set foot on in this world. And as I gaze at this site that I have so longed to see – uh, it"s nothing special. It"s what I"d expect from a cold planet like that. If one goes to a small town in Alaska, you"ll see the same kind of place I am seeing right now. The one difference of course is the appearance of the residents. They are Frosts, and look like baby version of Na"vi people from Avatar. In Alaska, you"ll only see normal humans.Well, that aside, coming to this city is going to be a major step forward in my journey (I hope). This planet seems to be as big as Earth and so Telmakim, which was half the world away from the place I originally entered this planet at would be a little more than 20,000 kilometer away from there. I would say I have covered about 60-70 kilometers by now. So, as once can see, it"s not much.
d.a.m.n you, author-san! I mean, I never expected this would be easy but I just felt like wanting to curse the author. Anyway,
"You need something?" Seeing as how I have been monologuing at the entrance of the village this entire time, an old man comes and asks me so. I just shake my head in denial and start walking towards the place with the inn sign. Thankfully, within these three days, I have been able to memorize a lot of signs and symbols used in this world so I can navigate my way across much better now. I am still trying to let the information that I have come on a mission from Dues stay a secret. By this point however, I am starting to hear chatter among people about rumors related to me and people have been looking at me suspiciously as they come to the right guess.
*****
"It will be 10 silver for one night." Or so the woman at the reception says.
10 silver, huh? Yeah, I have stolen that much by now.
Wait! Did I say "stolen"? No, no, I merely took it from some rich villagers I met across the way. I didn"t steal. I would never do such a thing.
"Are you gonna pay or not?" Despite being slightly cautious because of my appearance, the receptionist of this inn asks me with a frightening tone.
"Here!" I say as I hand her 10 silver coins and take the key to my room. I head upstairs then. Oh boy, that felt like being the protagonist of a VRMMORPG novel. I never realized till now that living in a medieval-cla.s.s inn was such an integral part of those novels.
"Huh!?" –is my reflexive reaction to seeing a guy looking at the door that is supposed to be leading to my room with a glint of anger in his voice.
"Something wrong?" I ask the blue man who casually looks back at me with the same slightly angry expression and asks me,
"Are you the princess of Temur?"
"No."
"Then are you the prince of Kidar?"
"No."
"Then why do you look like that?"
"Huh!?"
Does he mean to say that those two individuals he just mentioned look like me, like humans? Now that"s pretty interesting.
"Never mind." He says and leaves. I don"t ask further because even though I want to know, the guy doesn"t look to be in the mood to talk.
*****
Now that I"m in my room, let"s go over my journey and its possible routes.
I"m in a village called Ur in the Eastern Province of Kidar Nation. I need to get to Telmakim, which seems to be a somewhat popular city in this world and also happens to be roughly half the planet across. It lies in the North-Western Province of Kidar Nation.
In total, there are 6 Provinces in this Nation – North, South, Central, Eastern, North-Western and South-Western.
However, the entire Nation isn"t collected all together. Between the Provinces of Kidar are the provinces of Temur. Therefore, in this journey, I might even need to cross over the border to Temur and then cross over again to Kidar … and maybe even more than once.
And well, there"s no avoiding crossing the border if I go through the land routes only. I might be able to avoid that trouble if I go through the sea routes in between. A journey completely based on seas routes wouldn"t be logical either because the way the whole planet is divided will make it more time-consuming.
So then, how do I proceed? How do I make this journey?
Well, the simplest solution to the problem would be to use both land and seas routes and take the straight path to Telmakim. It will be the least time-consuming of all the routes available. Even if I have to cross the border, I can use the fact that I am on mission from Dues to my advantage and make the people of both Temur and Kidar welcoming to me. The problem with that however is my ultranti-social nature not being able to live up to that kind of things.
I should try to cope up with it to finish this thing in the quickest way possible but I think there"s another way that would be better in this kind of situation.
Moral Dystopia.
If I can only use this ability and the abilities I get from this ability to my advantage, it"ll be beneficial not only here but in every journey that I ever take. If I can only find a good use for it, I may be able to reach Telmakim without having to duel with my social problems.
If only there was a …
BOOM!
This sound rings from the outside and disturbs my peaceful thinking session. I gaze out the window and see a large fire on one of the houses and the residents panicking over it.
d.a.m.n! That sure is a sight to behold!
*****