The trek from the dense, untamed wilderness of the forest into the heart of human civilization was a jarring transition.
The journey had taken them a couple of solid hours of continuous walking under the warming sun, but they finally made it to the main city of Uranik, the central capital of Eldia.
Unlike the quiet, deadly stillness of the swamp, the city was a chaotic explosion of sound, color, and constant motion.
Stone-paved streets replaced the muddy earth, and towering buildings made of refined brick and wood lined the wide avenues. Everywhere Lucious looked, people could be seen walking around in a hurry, doing their day-to-day activities. Merchants yelled out their prices from wooden stalls, horse-drawn carriages rattled over the cobblestones, and the scent of freshly baked bread mingled with the metallic tang of blacksmith forges.
At a far distance, looming over the entire cityscape like an arrogant titan, the king’s magnificent castle could be seen reaching into the clouds.
Along with the towering architecture, numerous heavily armored guards were actively guarding the long, elevated road leading directly to the royal estate, showing everyone below that not just anyone could easily walk through there.
Dori practically glued herself to Lucious. She stood right behind him, her hands nervously twitching at her sides, with a small, deep frown etched clearly on her pale face.
"There...are a lot of humans here," Dori uttered, her raspy voice barely rising above a whisper as she stared at the passing crowds.
Lucious kept his expression perfectly calm, maintaining a predatory stillness to avoid drawing unwanted attention, but internally, even he was incredibly nervous at the mere sight of such massive numbers.
After all, he had never really gotten the chance to explore or even see the city since he arrived in this strange world. He had been summoned, condemned, and thrown into a dark dungeon all within the span of a single hour.
But the overwhelming crowd wasn’t truly what made his chest tighten with worry.
It was the dark, undeniable fact that the kingdom of Eldia had already officially labeled him a traitor and a dangerous enemy. While it seemed he could currently walk around the lower streets and not get immediately arrested by the guards, since his face wasn’t actively on a wanted poster, that technicality did absolutely nothing to protect him from the blind hate of the common people.
Meaning, if his true identity as a vampire was suddenly exposed, and everyone in the bustling market were to turn on him and stone him to death, there would be absolutely nothing he could do to fight back against a mob of that size.
He was strong, but he was not invincible.
"Stick close to me, and don’t make too much eye contact with anyone," Lucious uttered quietly, his glowing crimson gaze fixed strictly at the path in front of them.
Dori nodded her head quickly, understanding exactly what he meant rather quickly.
Her previous experience with humans out in the wild had not been good so far, entirely filled with violence and hostility. As such, her survival instincts kicked in, and she knew to follow any instruction her master gave her in that tense moment without a single question.
Both of them moved swiftly but carefully through the dense crowd, their eyes scanning the various wooden signboards, trying to find any merchant stall or shop that looked willing to buy the kind of low-level goods they had brought with them.
As they moved deeper into the commercial district, there were certain interesting things they learned simply by listening to the other people who were gossiping loudly around them.
Lucious tuned his enhanced vampire hearing to pick up the overlapping conversations.
One of the most alarming rumors was the fact that the so-called demon lord, a powerful entity who had been terrorizing the people of this world for years, had violently broken through one of the kingdom’s outer walls and built a massive base right there on their territory.
The merchants spoke of the event with hushed, fearful tones, noting that this terrifying invasion had caused a lot of the people living in the nearby cities to pack up all their belongings and move away in pure panic.
Furthermore, Lucious also heard extensive chatter about his former classmates from Earth. The commoners spoke enthusiastically about how the blessed heroes who had been summoned not too long ago had already been placed in different core cities across the realm to rule over certain sectors while they were still in training.
In other words, the desperate people of Eldia all had their absolute trust riding heavily on the blind faith that these new heroes would be strong enough to protect them from the encroaching demonic threat.
Lucious scoffed internally at the thought of those terrified high school students ruling over entire cities, but he kept his head down. He walked through the dense crowd and tried as much as possible not to draw too much attention to himself or his strangely dressed companion, while actively trying to listen to what the locals were talking about to gather more free intel.
Eventually, after walking around the market district for a good while, Lucious finally found exactly what he was looking for.
"Iris’s shop house," he voiced out loud, standing right in front of the rustic wooden building.
The establishment wasn’t big or flashy like the rest of the high-end shops that were scattered around the plaza, and as such, it barely caught his attention from the start.
He would have walked right past it, not until he saw a rugged-looking man walking out of that very shop, looking incredibly excited to have just sold some useless junks for a decent coin.
Without thinking too much about it, seeing it as the perfect low-profile opportunity, he entered the quiet shop.
The bell above the door chimed softly. He calmly stood before the long, scratched wooden counter, where he could then see a girl just standing idly at the other side.
Upon fully entering the shop, Lucious’s eyes darted around, and he immediately noticed all the weird and fascinating items that were stacked around him.
From heavy, rusted weapons to glowing magical artifacts and so many other strange, unidentifiable things just casually hung on the wooden wall for display.
But even more distracting than the magical inventory was the woman who immediately stood up straight the exact moment he walked in.
She had long, vibrant wine-colored hair, tightly packed into a high ponytail that swayed when she moved. She wore a simple, tight-fitting jumper cloth that did absolutely nothing to hide her enormous chest, a feature that bounced heavily every single time she shifted her weight behind the counter.
"Welcome to Ely’s shop," she said, flashing a bright, customer-service smile, actively trying to be as hospitable as she possibly could to the new arrivals.
Lucious stood tall right before her at the counter, maintaining his calm demeanor, while Dori made absolutely sure to stay a few steps at the back. The wild girl was still looking intensely at everything she could find in the room, her feral eyes wide with curiosity.
Although, for some reason, the enclosed space and the presence of the human shopkeeper made her anxious, and she quickly found herself needing to physically rest her weight on her master’s back while he was doing the talking for them.
"I would like to sell something, and was hoping if you were willing to buy," Lucious said calmly, getting straight to the point without any unnecessary pleasantries.
"Oh? You’re a trader," the shop owner mused.
She leaned forward slightly, her eyes scanning the both of them from head to toe, as if actively trying to find something about their ragged clothes or posture that would make that stated fact true. She didn’t look entirely convinced.
"Okay... what are you looking to buy?" she asked, stumbling over her words slightly before gesturing to the empty counter.
Lucious immediately reached into his makeshift bag, pulled out the clear, gelatinous slimes he had painstakingly gathered in the forest river, and placed them right on the wooden counter for her to see.
But completely unknown to him, as soon as he placed the dead monsters there, the warm air of the shop reacted with the decaying magical cores. The pile of slime instantly began to give out a rather strong, putrid scent that hit the air like a physical punch.
The smell was so violently foul that it forced both Lucious and Ely to immediately raise their hands and tightly cover their noses in disgust.
"What the hell? Why didn’t you use a disinfect spell on it?" Ely shouted, her voice muffled behind her hand as her eyes watered from the intense stench.
"I have no idea what that is, and it wasn’t smelling this bad when I gathered them," Lucious responded defensively, choosing to take a single, large step back away from his own foul-smelling merchandise.
The girl acted rather quickly to save her shop’s breathable air. Reaching frantically for something behind the counter, she pulled out a heavy wooden bucket that she then slammed down, placing it entirely over the pile of slimes to trap the odor.
She took a massive gulp of fresh air, leaning heavily against the back wall. "That nearly killed me," she gasped.
"I am sorry about that," Lucious apologized, genuinely surprised by how fast the dead water dwellers had degraded.
"Seesh, you act like you are a total newbie or something," Ely complained, waving her hand to clear the lingering smell. "Every adventurer is known to add a disinfect spell on lower ranked monsters once they are dead, or they start to really stink after a short while."
Lucious scratched the back of his head awkwardly, dropping his cold, predatory facade for a brief second as he couldn’t help but feel like he was getting scolded by a disappointed teacher.
Even Dori wanted to speak up from the back to defend her master’s honor against the human, but instead, she simply held on to Lucious’s cloth a moment more as she looked down at the wooden ground in silence.
Ely let out a long, dramatic sigh.
"Argh, its fine. Well, I can help you buy these, since the people at the shop asked for them. But its quite rare and low risk. How can you go hunting for monsters and you come back with just slimes? Whats your rank?"
Lucious looked at her blankly, realizing yet again how little he knew about how this society functioned.
"I don’t have a rank," he answered truthfully.
The girl paused her movements completely, her hand hovering over the bucket as she slowly looked up at him in pure disbelief.