Chapter 229:
Uniqueness?
We looked at the stalls along Main Street as we walked to the guild office. We’d been told that the guild in this village stood opposite that street. As we passed by the stalls, I noticed many of them were selling soup. In fact, about half of them were soup stalls.
“They seem to have a lot of soup in this village. Is that something they’re famous for?”
Our dinner at the inn the night before had also included soup.
“No, there wasn’t so much soup the last time I came here.”
“Maybe because it’s winter?”
“That’s probably it.”
I could understand that, since winter did make you crave warm things. It was fascinating how many different-colored soups there were in this village. It was pretty easy to guess the ingredients of the red and green ones. I could also imagine how an orange soup was made. But what went into purple soup? That wasn’t an appetizing color… Ugh! Blue soup… I didn’t think I ever wanted to so much as try that one.
“Look at all the colors.” Druid frowned at the blue soup. Thank goodness. If he’d said it looked good, I wouldn’t be able to agree with him.
“Yes. They all smell good, but I don’t know what to say about how they look.”
“Same. I’d never really thought about this before, but the way a food looks is actually quite important.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
The variety of colors was really astounding. Some of them were far too vibrant for food, and others were colors that didn’t occur naturally in food. Maybe the point was to make each soup unique?
“I think that’s our building.”
Druid was looking at three buildings. They were labeled with the marks of the merchant guild, the adventurer guild, and the village watch.
“I’m a little nervous to see how things go for us.” I lightly tapped the bag of goodies hanging off my shoulder.
When Druid took stock of the eight types of minerals we’d found in that cave, so many of them were unknown to him that we had no idea how much they were all worth. So now, we were going to the guild to sell five of each kind. We chose the smallest ones we could find, just in case. We also brought the three smallest of the blackstones that Druid said were rare. We needed to earn fifteen radal for our rent at the inn as well as twenty-five gidal for our clothes. We probably didn’t have enough, so the extra items we sold that day would determine the rest of our budget. If the forty minerals and three blackstones we were selling met our goal, the inside of our bag would continue to haunt us. Even without the minerals, it still contained the sparkling potions and the transparent magic stones.
“Can we get that thing appraised here at the guild?”
“Yeah, that’s the plan. We can’t use it if we don’t even know what it is.”
That thing was the black orb we got from the serpent. Since we had no idea what sort of power it contained, we were going to get it assessed. It was a hard decision to make, since we might possibly find out it was something terrifying or evil. But we’d reasoned it was better to know what it was than to remain in the dark.
When we entered the merchant guild, we found three people dressed like adventurers talking with a middle-aged man by the entrance. As we walked by them, we caught snippets of a conversation about Hatow’s guardian deity appearing deep in the forest.
Hatow’s guardian deity? Druid also seemed intrigued. We stopped in our tracks a few feet away.
“Has anyone seen it?”
“Nah, only its tracks.”
“Only its tracks?”
“You idiot! Our guardian deity is a giant snake. The biggest serpent in the area. You’ll know its tracks when you see them.”
A giant snake? I remembered the giant serpent we found deep in the forest. Its entire body was covered in a mysterious design, and it had seemed rather majestic.
“Oh, so that must mean it was definitely our guardian deity.”
“Yeah. Some people think it was bringing a herd of wood sprites with it.”
Wood sprites?
“Are you sure? Aren’t wood sprites figments of the imagination?”
“Yeah, well, lots of people think they exist.”
“What are wood sprites?” the middle-aged man asked.
Oh, good, I’m not the only one who doesn’t know what they are. Now I’ll get to hear a little more about them.
“Never heard of them?”
“They’re servants of our guardian deity. I hear they have black bodies.”
Black-bodied creatures? I thought back to the things I’d encountered in the forest. A giant serpent and little black creatures… It couldn’t be, right?
“The texts say the wood sprites can transform themselves into little black orbs, but they’re even shier than the guardian deity. Not many people have seen them, so people eventually started believing they were just figments of their imagination.”
The three adventurers continued to talk, but their words just spun around in my brain. A giant serpent and little black creatures… Creatures who transformed into orbs, too.
I glanced at Druid and found he was already staring at me. Our eyes met, and our faces both crumpled into painful smiles. We carefully scurried away from the adventurers so they wouldn’t notice us…
“If ya ask me, I’d love to see the guardian deity, but those round black gemstones? I’d die to see them just once.”
We stopped in our tracks.
“I heard just one of them will buy you a castle in the royal capital. Think that’s true?”
“I heard it is.”
“Well, those round black gemstones are legendary, after all.”
Icy sweat trickled down my back. We somehow managed to get our legs working again, and we quickly scurried away from the adventurers. Neither of us said a word. Then, after we made sure nobody was near us, we finally exhaled loudly.
“Ivy…do you think it’s possible?”
“Yes, it’s definitely possible…”
We both laughed nervously. Even then, after we’d moved to a more secluded area, we still caught snippets of the conversation about the guardian deity. It seemed to be the talk of the town. People were saying that it had white markings all over its black body and that there might even be more than one wood sprite with it. Each thing they said perfectly matched our own encounter with the giant serpent and its babies in the forest. It was believed that the round black gemstone could bring people back from the dead. When I heard that, my brain immediately imagined corpses crawling out of their graves, and I had to shake my head to get rid of the image. It was the last thing I needed from Past Me’s memories.
“What’s wrong? Your face is green.”
“I’m fine. But it sounds like that black gemstone has some pretty incredible powers.”
“Yeah, bringing back the dead… But I’ve never heard of anything like that, so I think it’s just a rumor.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. If that kind of power really existed, you’d be hearing about those black gemstones all around the world.”
Druid had a point. It was strange that these stories were only circulating in this village.
“Well, shoot…” Druid sighed. “At least we heard the rumors before we took it to get appraised.”
“That’s for sure,” I agreed, echoing his sigh. If we’d unknowingly shown our stone to the appraiser, things might have gotten pretty crazy. There was still the possibility that our round black gemstone wasn’t the round black gemstone, but it was too dangerous to find out. We would have to keep it safely tucked away in our bag.
“There’s no point in staying here. Want to go sell our things?”
“Sure.”
I followed Druid out of our little corner and toward the counter. They had just finished serving the person before us, so we were ready to be seen.
“Hello there. May I help you?” A stern woman with slanted eyes greeted us from behind the counter.
“We collected some minerals from a cave. Can we sell them here?”
“Of course. Please place the items you wish to sell here.” The lady of the guild held out a tiny basket, and we put five of each of the eight types of minerals we’d decided to sell in it. We set the last three small blackstones on top and handed it back to the lady.
“Thank you. Please wait just a moment.” She took our basket and handed us a number. We took it, sat in some chairs, and waited. She took each stone out of the basket one at a time and looked at them. She must have had the appraise skill.
After a little while, we heard the clunking sound of a chair falling over, then we saw the flustered lady run off somewhere.
“Mr. Druid…”
“Yeah…must be rare. Let’s hope it’s not really rare.”
“Yep, let’s hope. Maybe we should have given her only two of each instead of five.”
“I think that’s the least of our problems. But yeah, looking back, five was kind of lot.”
Watching a lady of the merchant guild blush bright red in excitement, and then seeing the man she whispered to clumsily run upstairs, was definitely not how I’d wanted to spend my day.
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