Olan City — as a port city, the economy here was thriving, and the people who lived in it could be said to have been born with a natural advantage over those from anywhere else.
The ship that had carried Lara across the sea had been docked for two days now, and after disembarking she hadn’t been in any rush to leave the wharf.
Instead, she’d gone back to the captain and arranged to do another two days of odd-jobs work.
The paid kind, of course.
When the captain heard the news, the meaningful grin on his face was impossible to hide.
Lara walked along the reasonably clean stone-paved street.
The pedestrians around her were each busy with their own business, and every now and then a vendor or two would call out to her, hoping she’d buy something — she just acted as if she hadn’t heard, walking right past them.
“Sigh~” Life is hard.
The young lady sighed.
A flat coin pouch had left Lara no choice but to live like a pauper.
In the end, the captain had agreed to her request.
Today was the last day of unloading; Lara settled her wages and came out with around thirty silver.
Over those two days of cargo-hauling, Lara had constantly been watched by Haddo with an expression of total bewilderment.
He really couldn’t understand it — why this dirt-poor girl would rather haul cargo and work odd jobs than accept the olive branch he was holding out.
Vedra, on the other hand, did pass along an observation to him: “Most mages have a certain pride about them — it’s the same way with scholars.” Mind you, for mages like them, who worked for the sake of power and money, pride wasn’t worth mentioning.
That was what Vedra had always believed.
In this world, without money, anything you tried to do was going to be difficult.
As, for instance, right now: in front of a shop’s map display, Lara was stuck in a quandary, gritting her teeth as she stared at the price marked underneath.
One gold coin.
It was, at the end of the day, all because of useless 0083.
Why was it that the whole world map was just barely a sketch, without a single city marked on it!?
Even now she had no idea where Oisaster actually was, and when she asked anyone, all she got was a put-upon expression and a thoroughly disinterested: “Too far.
Don’t know.” ?
Hold on — what was up with the warmth-of-human-kindness on the Central Continent?
So the south really was the tropics, and the warmth of the climate had rubbed off on the people, huh.
Even after two days of grueling odd-jobs, Lara only had forty-something silver in hand — for a high-end medieval commodity like this, she couldn’t scrape together even half the price.
‘But Master, there’s a map right in front of you, isn’t there?
It can simply be copied, can’t it?’ …
Damn!
Spend enough time living in the modern world and you forget you can pull a trick like that.
Lara was stunned: her first reaction had actually been to buy the map.
Thank goodness 0083 had reminded her — otherwise she might genuinely have ended up stuck in Olan doing odd jobs.
‘Identify.’ Once 0083 had finished its scan, Lara very lightly slipped out of the luxury-goods shop.
That’s right — maps in this world were luxury goods.
Even when she’d found the world map, that fact hadn’t quite registered.
In an age where travel was this inconvenient, the most a person could reasonably hope to know was what cities lay nearby — never mind faraway places, never mind the world at large.
Walking around the city in plate armor made her too conspicuous a target.
Once she had stocked up on the supplies she’d need, Lara set off once more on her journey to Oisaster.
Forest again.
Ever since she had been transmigrated, every time Lara left a city, all she ever saw was water and trees — and basically nothing else.
The Central Continent was a strange place.
So long as you stayed in one of those special cities, you could basically live out your whole life in peace; but the moment you stepped into the wilds, you might run into monsters, or even demons.
Opening the map on her panel, she found that quite a few new city markers had now appeared.
After locating Olan City on it, Lara ran her finger up along the map and finally came to a stop in front of the northern plateau — the city where the Continental Magic Association was based, Oisaster.
…
Lara found Olan City again and ran her finger down the map, located Ludan, gauged the distance, then traced the line from Olan up to Oisaster… Closing the panel, Lara dropped to her knees on the ground with a thump and pounded the earth with both hands.
“Isn’t this damn route even longer than the one all the way to Olan!?” The light in Lara’s eyes had already died, perished on the road westward to Heaven.
They say the Hero Himmel’s journey to defeat the Demon King took ten years; and I, Lara, in something like four months, have already covered a third of Himmel’s distance — that ought to count as a fine tale in its own right, shouldn’t it?
Said that, but… Himmel had been helping other people along the way, all the way through his journey, while Lara’s road had been smooth sailing the whole time — there really was no comparison.
In the past few months, Lara had been scheduling her itinerary with the intensity of an Ironman triathlon: fleeing, working, training — and now, on her way to the Continental Magic Association.
She’d done the running, she’d done the swimming — all that was missing was a bicycle so she could ride the rest of the way.
Maybe reality was just like this.
Nothing to be done about it.
Lara found a tree to lean against and sat down, mulling over how she could safely reach the Magic Association on the map.
As she recalled it, in the decades after the Demon King’s defeat, even when Frieren set out on her travels once more, she’d still been running into monsters.
She had no idea what era this was right now — she didn’t even know whether the Demon King was dead yet or not.
All she could do was wait until next time she reached a city to talk to someone and confirm.
Lara took another look at the route still ahead of her.
Right now she was in the southwestern part of the Central Continent, and Oisaster was in the northeastern part of the Central — the distance amounted to virtually the entire span of the Central Continent.
She gritted her teeth, helplessly put the map away, and after a brief rest set off northward again.
This leg of the journey was going to be a bit on the long side.
The forest around Olan wasn’t very large; within less than a day, she had walked clear of it.
Once the trees no longer blocked her view, what was reflected in Lara’s eyes was a vast, sweeping plain.
Time passed.
Walking through the dusk, Lara’s armor clanked softly with every step; even with magical assistance, a small amount of rust had still begun to appear.
As the sun set, the starry sky was gradually lit up, a single morning star… It was a night that needed no lamps — under the moonlight everything was perfectly clear, including the demon wolves arrayed in front of Lara.
The pack leader, out at the front, was pure snow-white from head to tail; in the grass nearby, several black wolves crouched in ambush, gathering momentum.
Their lacking intelligence had made them pick the wrong target.
Fully armed Lara was no longer the sort of figure weak little monsters could push around — all of this would now become fuel for her.
Lara did not pause.
The road ahead was far too long, and she needed to keep moving day and night.
Only by reaching the next town could she pick up more information about this era.
The moment she stepped into the pack leader’s attack range, the leader sprinted; the ambushing wolves sprang out and, in mid-acceleration, leapt up, snapping for Lara’s neck.
Its teeth were exceptionally sharp — over the course of its past hunts, who knew how many suits of armor they had already pierced through…
Wendelan Town, blacksmith’s shop.
The old man had lived in this town for several decades now.
His everyday work consisted mostly of making things like rakes and iron pots.
It had been a long time since he’d had the experience of an iron-clad person waiting at his shop front first thing in the morning.
Before he could even open his mouth, the iron-clad figure passed him a sack.
“Are these…monster materials?” A plain hempen sack — once the old man opened it, he found over a dozen wolf fangs inside, each fang showing clear fracture marks at the root.
Lara nodded, then drew her longsword from its sheath and held it out in front of the old man.
“Master, could you tell me how much these materials would fetch?
I’d like to have my weapon and armor maintained.” “This maintenance isn’t difficult.” The old man looked the weapon and the armor over.
Scratches crisscrossed both, and there were a few small nicks along the edge of the blade; the armor’s wounds, however, weren’t many.
“But I don’t buy materials here.
If you want to convert them into coin, you’ll have to go somewhere that has a guild — this town’s just too small.” The old man did a simple maintenance on Lara’s gear; the price was much lower than what she’d paid in the city.
At the same time, he told her that ordinary shops wouldn’t have the materials needed to repair her armor.
“The materials in your gear here are rather special.
Ordinary maintenance can only extend its life by a little, and the weight is also going to increase with each pass — I hope you’ll bear that in mind from now on.” He then pointed her in a particular direction.
From the map, the place was a city further to the north — and there, both the Mercenary Guild and a branch of the Continental Magic Association could be found.
“Master smith, thank you for the directions.
I traveled up here alone from the south, and didn’t run into many monsters along the way.
Are things more peaceful up north now?” Lara looked off into the distant plain, feigning a casually-tossed question.
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