Chapter 6:

 Prishtina

We arrived outside the southern gates of the huge city of Prishtina.

“Hey zemra, we’re here,” I said and padded Albana’s head. 

She squinted and slowly opened her eyes. When she realized she was laying her head on my shoulder, she jumped.

“Eee! S-Sorry about that!”

“Don’t worry. I liked it,” I said and she blushed. 

We headed into the city while eating some of the gjevrek we had bought in Gjilan. And started talking on the way about what to do.

“First thing we need to do is get settled at an inn, and then head to a dungeon. I’ve only been here once, but if I remember correctly, the inns should be in the northeastern part of the city.”

“Oh, what did you do last time you were here?” I said.

“The company were guards for a big shipment from Gjilan to Prishtina and the usual healer the guard group used was sick, so I was reserved instead. Usually I would just be reserved as a healer when groups in the company went dungeon diving.”

“What do you mean reserved?“

“Well since I’m a slave owned by the company, all the other workers at the company can request to reserve my time, and then the slave handler of the company approves or declines those requests.“

I felt bad for her. “Is it hard being a slave?”

“Well actually,” she said, “there’s a lot of healers, but not enough for the amount of people in the big cities, so I am actually in a good position and I get treated decently by the company, and my life is never put at risk because they view me as a valuable long term asset. Though I still have no say in what I do. For example, I absolutely did not want to go on the slave-catching quest, but had no choice. I am sorry for that by the way…”

“Oh don’t worry,” I said. “I could tell from the start that you were a good person.”

“Th-Thanks,” Albana mumbled.

We walked for some time and were now at the northeastern part of the city full of rows of inns for adventurers. 

We went into a decent one and got a room for one night, which cost us 20 euros. We were now down to 13,50 euros so we needed at least 6,5 euros before tomorrow night to not be homeless.

. Before heading to the dungeon, we decided to rest for two hours at the inn first.

As soon as I saw the bed I jumped in for a quick nap. I hadn’t slept at all last night while keeping watch over Albana and our stuff.

I could hear Albana rustling in the background, but I quickly fell into deep slumber.

***

I am falling quickly towards the ground head-first. But there’s no ground. I just keep falling. The wind smashing my face. I create a wind barrier in front of me so the wind spreads out evenly instead of hitting my face and the rest of my body. I am still falling. It seems there is no end and I just keep falling. I realize now that I am not falling, I am flying upwards. My entire body is straight with my feet tightly together, propulsing wind. And my arms are straight down at the sides of my hips with my hands also propulsing wind, but not as strongly as my feet. I try moving my right hand and my body immediately changes direction, so I quickly move it back to my hip. If I even try moving my legs one bit, I lose all control, so I stop moving them. Only moving my hands. I start flying in circles, and do tricks in the air. Now I---

“Arben!”

I wake up. My hot body is covered in sweat.

“A-Arben? Are you fine?” Albana said.

“Huh? Yeah, I was just taking a nap. Why do you ask?”

“Well you were talking a lot, and making a lot of sounds. You also did this two nights ago at the inn with Vlado and Miroslav. We thought you were having a nightmare. What were you dreaming about?”

“Oh, it was really cool. I was flying! I used Wind Magic to turn my body into some kind of bird. Though I wasn’t flapping wings or anything, I was more like, propulsing wind strongly out my feet and hands. Was pretty cool. I also created this wind barrier in front of me that covered half of my body and stopped me from getting hurt from the wind in front of me.”

“O-Okay,” Albana said. “Have you ever done that before, flying?”

“Oh no. Of course not. It’s just that I’ve been getting weird dreams ever since my village was attacked. Actually, when I think about it, I think I had a dream about you the night before I met you? I dreamt about a cute blonde, pointy-eared and flat-chested girl.”

“W-Whaaaat?“ she said and covered up her chest with her hands, which just looked adorable. 

“You can have prophetic dreams?”

“I don’t know about prophetic, more like vivid, but maybe yeah? ”

At this she fell silent and started thinking.

“Anyway,” she said, “It’s been three hours now. Let’s head to a dungeon. We need at least 20 euros to afford another night at the in.”

There were about 7 dungeons spread across the city of Prishtina. 

You could see their locations from afar because their entrances had these huge towers built on top of them. 

To me, it seemed weird to build a city directly around dungeons. But apparently the dungeons themselves took up very little space, since all of them were underground and the entrances themselves were rather small.

Each dungeon was owned by a different company, which in turn was owned by a different noble family. 

It would cost too much to tax the dungeon divers directly, so the kingdom taxed the different dungeon companies instead, who in turn would increase or decrease rates for the dungeon divers. Everyone could enter a dungeon, but once you came out of it you had to pay a percentage of the loot you had gotten. 

Different dungeons had different rates you had to pay, and the dungeon companies would compete with each other to attract dungeon divers, for example lowering rates, or offering assistance by making detailed maps and information boards.

     I let Albana decide on the course of action since I had no experience with the city-life. 

“We will avoid all the dungeons in the northeast, since those are the ones closest to the adventurer inns, which means a lot of traffic and less monsters and materials at the upper levels. It would be unprofitable for us to go to those dungeons unless we were headed for the lower levels, which we aren’t.

The dungeons farther away from the inns have better rates to attract more traffic. But in our case, since we are only dungeon diving in the upper levels, we need to find a dungeon with high rates that is also far away from the northeast adventurer inns. So we can find the dungeons with the least traffic. So there’s more materials and monsters at the upper levels, but also so we attract less attention.”

And that was why we chose “Burgu i Mire i Bekimit,” the dungeon farthest away in the southwest of Prishtina, owned by some cheapskate who always charged rates higher than his competition. This dungeon didn’t even have a basic mapping system of the different levels because the owner was so cheap.

Another good thing about this dungeon was that they didn’t ask for names and identification, which some of the competing dungeons did.

And so, I entered my first dungeon.

The first thing I was surprised by was how huge the dungeon was. I had gone cave-exploring in Dukagjina so I thought it’d be similar to that, but I was wrong. 

The staircase we used to enter the first floor was  big, but the entrance to the first floor itself was huge. 

And as soon as we entered, we were met with a huge hallway that seemed endless and had a lot of different paths. 

On the walls as we walked there were a lot of arrows painted, all pointing back to the entrance. I guess this was how people kept from getting lost.

The dungeon had light coming from crystals on the walls. 

Albana was walking a little behind me, ready with her staff.

“Are you scared?” I said.

“We should be fine. If we just follow the plan then we should---”

“How are you feeling, I mean,” I said and interrupted her rambling.

“Well,” she said, “to be honest, a lot of things have happened these past few days that I have still not processed. Ever since meeting you, everything has just been so… chaotic? I don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that.”

“No! It’s good, I… For the first time in my life I feel… free. I don’t want to be a slave anymore, so I’m very grateful you rescued me,” she said. I had no idea she thought of me as her ‘rescuer’.

“Well, I’m really glad I met you. I’d be all alone right now if it weren’t for you. Actually, I just realized, you are the only person in my life right now.” 

Suddenly I felt weird. I hadn’t processed what had happened to me yet as well. Albana grabbed my hand awkwardly.  

“A-Are you fine?” she said. 

I noticed that tears were running down my face but my expression was the same. 

Everyone was dead and my home destroyed. 

My previous, comfortable life no longer. 

I could now see the great uncertainty in my future. How random and, as Albana said, chaotic everything was.

“Po po, I’m fine. Sorry about that,” I said and wiped the tears from my face.

We continued walking farther and farther into the dungeon. 

We were now on the third floor. 

We encountered a group of 5 goblins, like those I had defeated in the forest. For some reason they liked to stay in groups of five. 

I pulled out one of the longswords from my back with my left hand and the machete from my hip with my right hand, and got ready in the lance style.

“Wait, let’s each fire one explosive spell from a distance before you attack.” 

I nodded my head. 

I put my right machete back in its sheath and stretched out my hand and loaded up a big Fireball. Albana imitated me, and started chanting and also loaded up a Fireball with her staff, though it wasn’t as big as mine.

We fired.

“Huh?” I said.

All of the goblins were in burning pieces.

“How much mana did you put into that!” Albana said.

“Just a normal amount, why?”

“Wh-wh-Whaaat? Are you feeling tired of anything?”

“Not really. This was the kind of Fireball I used to fire off into the lake when I trained.”

“Well, if you can make such powerful magic, why do you even bother with the swords? Wait, I just noticed! Were you even using incantations? Just now, and at the inn, you didn’t say anything when creating fire…”

“Of course, why would I waste time with incantations? I much prefer Imagination Magic.”

“Imagination Magic? You mean Chantless Magic? Is that a normal thing where you’re from? Here, or anywhere else really, it is very rare.”

“Well no one from my village liked magic that much, and only used it when necessary. They thought it un-warrior-like, so I just trained alone since I was a kid.”

“Oh, I see…” she said, with a face still in shock. 

“Also, I was meaning to ask you later when you trusted me more, but who taught you Regeneration Magic? That’s a Grandmaster level spell that only, at most, a few dozen people can do.”

“Well I had this weird dream where I was a lizard and had my tail cut off, and then I felt the sensation of regrowing that limb. And if I know the sensation of something, it’s very easy to recreate it with magic. For example, I learned Fire Magic by studying campfires closely, and Wind Magic by feeling the breeze blowing on my skin.”

Albana nodded but it looked like she was still utterly confused. We went over to the goblins to collect the loot they dropped.

We kept going around the same floor for a few hours killing goblins, slimes, and sometimes wolf monsters. 

Then Albana said she was running low on stamina and mana. 

I thought this was probably good enough for today, and decided we should head back to the inn. 

Before we exited the dungeon, we had to give away 50% of the loot we got from the dungeon. Then we went to a local exchange with the rest of the loot and only got 15 euros. 

“This is so little,” I said.

Albana said that it was expected since we had just gotten started.

We went back to the inn and paid 20 euros for another night, ate dinner, then decided to sleep.

Tomorrow I would lose my virginity.