Dawn arrived late in Arcanretia, nestled as it was in a mountain valley. For the girl rustling in her blankets, it was much like home.
At last, Yunyun emerged from her cocoon, red eyes blinking and scratchy after a long and restless night, her very first outside her village. True, her father had taken her on the odd day trip to the capital, but with their people's mastery of Teleport it was usually cheaper and more convenient to just go home than bother with an inn anywhere they had a point registered.
The room was comfortable enough, the sort that a decently well-off merchant would stay at if they had business in town. A proper bed rather than a hammock or pallet, with a magic lamp on the solidly built wood nightstand beside the bed and a set of drawers and cubbies at its foot.
Wiz couldn't possibly receive her dad's letter until tomorrow afternoon, and a response would take just as long, so the next three or four days were her own. Knowing this, he had sent along some pocket money to sample the restaurants and other springs, and generally made the stay a kind of graduation present until her mentor could send word or collect her.
Yunyun wasn't sure she wanted to be collected.
Leaving the Village and seeing the world she had only read about in books had been her dream even before she met Wiz and added another goal to the list. But it was supposed to be on her terms, the start of a grand tour of adventure.
Instead, she felt shuffled off, if not in the dead of night than at least in the dim of evening, to wait for someone else to take responsibility for her. Had she been more in tune with her clan's peculiarities, sudden exile would have been a thrilling development. But in her case it just made her holiday feel hollow.
"I wonder if Megumin is waiting for me right now?" the young wizard wondered, yawning. She had left without saying goodbye after all. "Or if she's out practicing Explosion already and forgot about me," she continued bitterly.
On that sour note, she swung out of bed and made her way to the attached hot springs.
After a nice soak, she felt readier to greet the day properly. Aware that most of its guests were on vacation, her inn didn't really start its meals until well into mid-morning, preferring to serve a sort of combination of breakfast and a proper lunch for the guests to pick from as the mood took them, that they ordered at the kitchen window.
Nothing in the samples laid out on the table beside the kitchen looked like anything she had eaten, or even heard of, before. The Crimson Demon diet tended towards wild game stews or roasts in different combinations, since hunting monsters and particularly aggressive veggies in their forests provided the highest XP meals. Farming was more of an afterthought, though they did sow some fields with crops that yielded well like potatoes or beans.
"Ah…um…." she shuffled here and there in front of the table, scooting back to let other guests pass, then hurrying back to look over the selections again.
This cycle repeated a few times.
"Can I help you?" one of the servers, a harried looking man of perhaps twenty asked gruffly after passing her several times with other orders.
"I…I..don't know what to get…" she mumbled, looking at the floor between her sandals.
"In that case I recommend the hot spring eggs and boar bacon plate. Would you like it with tea?"
Yunyun jumped on the idea like a thrown lifeline. "YES! Yes, I'll have that!"
"Excellent, then if you'll wait over there, I'll have it out in a minute," he pointed sternly at the cluster of tables nearby.
Face burning from embarrassment in addition to heat from her bath, she meekly did just that. Some adventure this was turning out to be.
While she waited, she indulged one of her habits and people watched. The common room had a view to the street, so between the two she had plenty of targets.
The guide she'd hastily skimmed to refresh herself before leaving said that Arcanretia was a crossroads of the kingdom second only to the capital itself. Though much smaller in population, its hot springs combined with a fairly central position on a major waterway made it a natural destination for both well off travelers on a holiday and hardscrabble traders looking either to sell to them or just make their next deal.
She saw plenty of both sorts, along with the city's other claim to fame.
"Blessings be upon you! Lady Aqua's love embraces all who seek her, no matter if you be fair of so-called virtue! All pleasures are just in the eyes of the Lady, so long as they be legal!" A large, tanned man with the poofiest white hair she'd ever seen proselytized on the street corner, standing on a box that he stooped to pull a bar of soap from. Maybe as some sort of prop?
"Axis," the helper from before snorted, placing the platter with her partially shelled eggs, bacon, and bread in front of her before pouring tea. "If they didn't own half the springs in town outright…" shaking his head, he bustled off to another patron and left her to her meal with a nod.
As he'd said, the Axis Cult made its headquarters here, as well as gained most of its income from the various springs and other activities according to the travelog. The author had seemed more than a bit critical of them but hadn't gone into details. The things the man outside was advertising made Yunyun suspect he had a point.
After scooping up her first bite of egg, fresh from slow cooking in the hot spring and just as much like a creamy custard as promised, the girl forgot all about crazy preachers.
After withdrawing some of her coin stored at the front desk, Yunyun decided to make the most of her temporary freedom and tour the city.
Not all the money the Axis cult made went to paying crazy people to recruit more and possibly crazier people. It seemed like every intersection had a beautifully carved fountain at its center in a variety of styles, the larger ones might have one on each street corner, arranged to spit water from one side to the other in crossing arcs.
The most impressive of all was the water garden in the main square, opposite the Axis cathedral. That itself was a grand structure of stained glass and soaring spires she'd have been happy to visit, if it belonged to anyone else. Dedicated to the greater glory of Aqua and with water jets fed from the springs in the mountains spitting streams one or even two stories into the air at intervals, the water garden used elaborate clockwork controls that made them, and the shifting statues look like they were dancing with each other as the pattern changed through the day.
Naturally, where there were crowds there were those eager to cater to them. So, after getting a fruit pastry from a food cart, Yunyun was circling the water garden peering here and there trying to decide if there was magic involved or if it was all just cunning mechanisms when a cheerful voice interrupted.
"Hi! You look a lot more interested than most visitors, is there anything you want to know?"
Jumping like a startled cat, the archwizard whipped around to find a bronzed man perhaps a bit younger than her father and dressed in the loose white pants and vest of most people in the city.
"W...well I did wonder if it used magic," she replied softly.
"Wizards always ask!" he laughed. "But no, not a bit of it! They installed it when I was a boy, I remember well. There's clockwork imported all the way from Elroad in there, which is probably close to magic on its own, but nothing you need mana for. Here, if you step over this way and look just to the side of that statue of Lady Aqua, do you see the block of stone moving up and down? That's the top of a pump cylinder under the street." He turned back from pointing it out and smiled again. "If you promise to come by my wife and I's jewelry shop over there afterward then I'll be more than happy to point out all the other little bits that are easy to miss!"
After saying goodbye to her maybe too friendly self-appointed guide and his store, the newly bought copper and silver stacked bangle jingling on her wrist as she walked, Yunyun decided that was enough exploring for the day. Despite being bought from an obviously Axis shopkeeper the jewelry didn't seem to be cursed, but it was pretty and if any of her clanmates asked she could always pretend.
Little did she know that Arcanretia was well acquainted with casting the curse known as Tourist Tax.
By the time she got back to her inn the streets were beginning to clear out as the locals went home and tourists started doing the same.
Dinner was fish from the lake, fried in butter with potatoes. Like the bacon from earlier, the XP content was a lot lower than the game from the Village she was used to, especially the fish. Good, but none of the bite in its taste she expected at all.
'Something else to watch for,' Yunyun noted to herself on the way to another bath before bed. 'Axel's food could be even lower XP, maybe barely any at all.' That would slow her leveling down by a lot, taking a year to make level ten there was starting to make more sense than when she'd first read about it in disbelief.
The next morning was much like the last, though this time she put on her most confident face and ordered the hot spring eggs with only a little stuttering.
This morning's adventure was a boat trip out on the lake making a lap of the shoreline to the various, and variously beautiful, shrines that fed water either downriver or into the city proper and its canals. All of them vital in keeping the lake clean and 'adding grace, beauty, and charm to the holiest of cities, praise be to Aqua,' according to the guide.
She was debating whether she'd had enough of boats for one day, or if the additional tour of the city canals was worth a look as she stopped by the inn that afternoon. On the one hand that guide had been about as blatantly Axis as you could get and still be tolerable in public, on the other she'd always been interested in purification magic, in a 'know your enemy' way if nothing else…
Mulling it over as she asked for a cup of tea in the common room, a soft, familiar voice interrupted her.
"Well, I can tell you're doing well! You got some sun already I see!" her mentor waved from another table, where she had a cup with a scone of some sort keeping her company.
"Wiz! How…" she shouted, then hurriedly getting up and bustling over to take a seat with her. "I didn't think you'd be here for days!" she continued softly, now much pinker than the sun out on the water had made her.
"Oh, I come out here all the time dear," the lich assured her with a pat on her hand. "I even have a Teleport point registered. Once your father's letter arrived, I came right over."
"Oh, well…I..I'm sorry to put you to the trouble," her apprentice said even more softly, unable to meet her eyes.
Wiz shook her head. "Not at all, it was a slow day at the shop in any case. Now, you're paid here through the end of today, yes? Let's finish out the day then, I think it would be a shame to waste that. But first, you can tell me what happened. You know your father, a dear man but he can't write a normal letter to save his soul."
Yunyun's tea arrived, and so after that brief interruption she did just that. From the initial attack, to Komekko going missing, to having to rescue her, to Megumin finally mastering Explosion and deploying it in glorious overkill against the double handful of gargoyles. Then the adults arriving and dragging the three of them off to explain themselves.
"And that's when I realized that she had picked between her magic and me. And I lost. Even Komekko lost. And…and I just don't know what to do, not after everything," she whispered, eyes reddened from the trickle of tears and glowing in agitation as she stared at the table, stutter long gone as memories she'd been doing her best not to think about came back in full. "So here I am. Because no good deed goes unpunished, no matter what dad says about sending me here."
"Oh sweetheart," Wiz sighed. She'd hoped for some terrible misunderstanding of Hiropon's letter, but no. The one time he was able to write a message you didn't need an education at the Red Prison to decode…
"Look at me," she said instead. "I won't guess what your friend was thinking, or likely wasn't. But Hiropon and I have been talking about having you come to Axel as an apprentice for some time. If he didn't tell you that then he's… well, he should have."
Yunyun's eyes widened, her gaze jerking up from miserable contemplation of the wood grain. "He…he was, you were? But we d…don't do apprenticeships in…" Had dad said that before she left? She didn't think so but there had been a lot going on, and she wouldn't put it beyond him to save it for a dramatic reveal…
"The Clan doesn't, but the outside surely does. And if the average villager doesn't have much contact with outsiders besides the odd high level adventuring party that trains in your forests, that's certainly not true of the Chief. Reading about our ways will only get you so far, after all. You must live outside the village to understand that world. How did you think he and Joanna met?" she chuckled.
She hadn't thought of that. She always assumed her mother was just one of those adventurers who stayed in the village sometimes.
"So, it's a bit earlier than we planned but nothing unexpected. You were going to graduate within the year, after all. I have a room above the shop that's yours for as long as you need once we clean it out."
"O..oh…" she stammered, at a loss now that she clearly wasn't being shipped off in disgrace. "I…thank you!"
"No trouble! I could use a hand around the shop anyway. Someone to watch the counters when I'm out taking quests now and again. Have to make ends meet after all."
That worrying statement went right past her student, meanwhile Wiz finished her tea and stood. "Now then, I've stayed here before, let's see if they remember me."
As it happened, the clerk certainly did. Though judging by his gaze slipping south a few times, perhaps not for the reasons Wiz would prefer had she realized them.
That done and the one-time fee paid, at a small discount since Yunyun was already a guest, the pair went in for a soak.
The baths had massage and other services, but for now they just rinsed off and settled into the medium temperature pool.
"Ah…" the younger wizard began, after sinking into the water and seeing her mentor about to do the same. "I..is it a problem? For you I mean? I, I guessed. That you might be sensitive." her protege whispered nervously, looking around quickly.
Wiz chuckled, though her gaze sharpened. "It's just hot water." None of the other bathers were anywhere close, but you never knew who might have lip reading. The skill or, the old fashioned kind. "Well, we can discuss it later then. For now, why don't I tell you a little about Axel?"
At Yunyun's eager nod, Wiz did so. From the location of some of the important places, to where to find a nice pancake, they spent the rest of the afternoon catching up and giving Axel's newest resident the lay of the land before toweling off and taking advantage of the massages before regretfully leaving the bathhouse.
After an early dinner and some quick packing, the pair made their way out of the city.
"This should do, there's a little bit of privacy. It doesn't matter as much Teleporting out, but it can startle people if you arrive out of nowhere," Wiz noted once they found a quiet side street.
Yunyun nodded, committing the advice to memory. No one cared where you teleported back home, unless you were bringing new people and ruined everyone's chance to do their inscrutable wizard routines.
Seeing she understood, Wiz announced "Teleport! Axel!"
In a moment too brief to measure, the pair arrived in the back lot of a small shopping street.
"And home again! Come on, let's get you settled in," Wiz said, leading them around to the main street and unlocking the door of one shop. Somehow, Yunyun wasn't surprised it was the most run down one on the street. It had been nice once, with glass in the windows and door and a sharply peaked roof above with two gable windows under the eaves. But while clean, the paint was fading and even peeling in a few places, revealing the wood underneath. Likewise, the carved wood sign advertising Wiz's Shop and Sundries had seen better days and too many winters.
Wiz ushered her student inside with a squeak from the door's hinges, leaving Yunyun in a cluttered storefront. The interior was more of the same, dusted and clean, but lacking repairs and upkeep.
"Come right through here, your trunk should fit just fine. You'll be upstairs to the right, I'm already on the left," Wiz advised her. Everywhere the younger wizard looked were magic items and potions of all descriptions, a few were startlingly expensive unless a town of new adventurers was wealthier than she thought. Some she even recognized as Megumin's parents' products, which was never a good sign. On the spot, Yunyun decided that rather than helping at the counter, she could probably do more good by taking over the store's books as soon as possible. Besides, she'd much rather deal with numbers.
While neither were large women, Crimson Demons had great stats even at low levels, and of course liches were famously powerful in every sense. Yunyun's wheeled trunk was quickly wrestled up the stairs to her new room.
It proved to be a space perhaps three meters by two, with the window at the far end. It's use as a kind of overflow storage left it with clutter, boxes, and a pair of cabinets occupying much of the floor space
"Here," Wiz handed her a burlap bag once they'd set her trunk on the landing outside the door. "Your first lesson, watch closely." With that, she rolled up her robe's sleeves and raised one hand. 'Hand of Providence!' she chanted, and wind rose around her, fluttering her robes and hair as it began to circle.
She gathered the winds together with a gesture, then using both pointer fingers like a conductor's baton, swept them around the room. First, blowing off the floor and clutter before pushing and carrying it all out the door and downstairs in a line of bobbing bric a brac. Then the winds collected the airborne dust tighter and tighter as they circled, until the dust was all gathered in a ball about the size of a grapefruit hovering in the center of the room. At Wiz's nod Yunyun pounced, sweeping the ball into the bag and pulling it shut. Once done, the spell released with a poof of air, and a weight settled in the bottom.
"There! You have no idea how much time that spell has saved me over the years. Now, I don't exactly have a spare bed, yet, but I know I have a spare pillow and blankets here you can borrow for now. I'll just give them a quick wash…" Wiz muttered, her voice fading as she stepped outside the room.
Her room, now.
Yunyun set the dust bag by the door and crossed to the little window, unlatched it, and looked out. It wasn't much of a view, really. Just a bit of the street and a couple of shops across from them. But it was hers. Or would be once she started paying rent with her own money instead of dad's.
A good start for the next step of her life, she decided as she dragged her trunk inside and began unpacking.
She couldn't wait.