Light shone from the Blacksmith’s house. There should have been someone inside. Therefore, if there was no reply, that should have meant they wished not to be disturbed.

“Why are we going around knocking on their doors? Weren’t we out to do errands?” Johnathan questioned.

“Well, we came this far. Might as well say hello.”

“I may leave tomorrow. Do I need to get to know everyone?”

“If you were, you would have started getting prepared and probably refused to go out with me, no?”

“…fair point,” he acknowledged his err, “but I still do not see why I must meet everyone in a village I may or may not visit ever again.” Johnathan counter-argued.

“And you don’t know when you will depart, either,” Kristine debunked as she pantomimed the motions of detaching a bow hanging on one’s torso, “Now help me out so I can show you around the workshop.”

Johnathan looked back and forth between the several locks moving in an invisible but observably predetermined orbital and Kristine preparing to brute force into it.

“Kristine, wait… maybe we should reconsider this.”

“Come on!” she smiled. She moved her hands with a calm, ceremonious gesticulation. She drew her bow elegantly and the bright blue arrow appeared midair. The sharp end indicated where the bow aimed, the lock. “His workshop is so awesome! You gotta see this!”

Johnathan tried to coax Kristine not to commit breaking and entering. His attempts bore no fruit. Kristine released his grip on the pantomime bow, launching the arrow forward. 

Upon impact, the lock transfigured the arrow into dust. The locks went haywire: their orbits were spontaneously randomised. The consciousness of the caster was alerted, thenceforth dismantling the core that forced the locks to spin in orbits in a predetermined path akin to that of atoms.

Like a goaded bull running erratically, all order had disappeared. The defence system installed in a spherical area surrounding the workshop revealed its shape for a split second in response.

Kristine pantomimed arrows being pulled from a quiver attached to one’s waist, one after the other. With each arrow fired, the contraption went crazier. At some point, the locks became motion blur altogether.

Johnathan jumped Kristine without warning. He tackled both himself and Kristine to the ground, intercepting Kristine’s magic.

“What is that?” Johnathan asked with both terror and astonishment as he pointed at a pair of hands that just tried to grab Kristine, but because it missed, now they were back to levitating above a man who was standing in this cold weather with just his undergarments.

Frankly speaking, the hands were called Asumelumbrlseldengen. This spell, which could be roughly translated into Commonspeak as Blacksmith’s reign, was a custom spell that the blacksmith had founded. This spell of conjuration was strong because it did not require sustenance: Once the user used Essence and cast the spell, they did not have to constantly feed Essence to their creation. Because of the user’s vast imagination and mastery over spellcasting, the Essence lumped together that constructed the conjured product did not dissipate over time and instead moved closer to one another similar to air particles being forced to move towards each other when compressed inside of a needle.

“Who doth possess such insipid dauntlessness?” the man shouted grumpily. He pointed at Kristine and Johnathan slowly getting back up as the Asumelumbrlseldengen cracked its knuckles. The two hands were tenebrous, ominous things. They were pitch black with soft white undertones. It was as if someone, or something, wanted to shine a light on the darkness and to put it in the spotlight but was afraid of being exposed that it did not wish to banish the uncertainty and comfort of darkness entirely.

“Oh, hello Stanislas!” Kristine greeted the man ordinarily. “What took you so long?”

“…Kristine? KRISTINE CHADELEYA? YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO ROB ME?”

“No, of course not. A guest came and while I was showing him around, he said he was too curious and wanted to tour your workshop. I thought this would be the fastest way to summon you.”

Johnathan looked at Kristine and then the man Kristine called Stanislas. He was unsure whether to play along or run for his life.

“You,” the man pointed at Johnathan with fury he could not yet channel at a target, “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

“N-no,” Johnathan took a step backwards, “I don’t think we’ve met before…”

“See, this is the guest who’s just quite, uh, very, very interested in your work!” Kristine intervened. “So just a quick sneak peek is all—”

“No means no!” the man shouted. His body had started shivering visibly: the man’s teeth clanked and the body hair on his chest, arms and legs had spiked up. “Now get lost. I’m busy!” he shouted. He rubbed the palm of his left hand with his right thumb, then his pinky finger, in this exact order. The Asumelumbrlseldengen promptly disappeared as he knocked on the door of his house.

“Maybe we should go…” Johnathan whispered to Kristine.

“All we wanted was to snoop around. What’s with all the ruckus?” she intentionally raised her voice as she walked past the man.

The door was opened for Stanislas. Johnathan heard an unintelligible conversation between Stanislas and a woman whose voice he did not recognise from inside the house. Stanislas watched them leave from the gap in the door, which made Johnathan run after Kristine because he felt pressured. After they were far away, Stanislas shut the door harshly, taking his rage out on the inanimate object.

“Hey, what’d you do that for?” Johnathan whispered. He still had not felt safe, even though they were walking away from the blacksmith’s house as he spoke.

“Stanislas? Don’t worry about him. He’s a good guy at heart, but he’s very grumpy sometimes. If he got that mad, he probably was actually busy with something.”

“Like what?”

“Hell if I know. But he’s always like that. He gets so serious whenever he puts his mind to something. I can probably sweet talk him later when he’s not busy.”

“Or we can just… I don’t know, not bother him or something?” he rebuked.

“What a Prince you are!” he muttered under his breath. “If it wasn’t for my dad, I would’ve never believed it.”

“Shush! Someone’s gonna hear!” Johnathan rammed into her with his shoulders lightly.

“We’ve been whispering all this time, though. For a small place like this where everyone knows each other, that’s even more suspicious,” she teased Johnathan.

“I shouldn’t have come with you,” Johnathan facepalmed.

“H-hey, hey!” she grabbed him by the arm, “The supermarket I’m taking you to is owned by a Cryptid, so… You wanted to learn their technology, right? You can go ask him…?” she desperately tried to change his mind.

“The one who chased after little kids with a gun…? Just a hunch, but he does not seem like the most friendly person there is…”

“It’s a start, isn’t it?”

An intermission paused the conversation while they walked through the streets. Kristine intentionally kept going in the wrong direction to extend their trip to the supermarket. She intended to familiarise the villagers with Johnathan, who she suspected would stay for a while. They greeted other extraneous villagers such as a greengrocer setting up shop and cleaning his stall. On the same street, the Mart Street, they met a man looking for his key to open his tiny, humble restaurant where he sold dishes from his homeland further south of the continent of Plebe. They passed by a building made of stone in the northern parts of the village. It was an outpost of the Law and Order Commission. There were knights from the military standing guard at the entrance. The knights on duty were the only ones outside; the rest must have had not woken up. 

The knights’ faces were not clear because of their armour, so neither Johnathan nor Kristine could see their faces. Johnathan was confused that they had not saluted him. He decided not to dwell on it, as it may have been the best not to get recognised, but the thought of his banishment being tantamount to being disowned was enough to cause his heart to thump.

A dog barked incessantly as the duo passed by. The dog’s name was Leo and was owned by an old man. Leo’s owner, this old man, was a stereotypical grandfather, with a long grey beard and grey-whitish hair that could not be pinpointed as a particular colour. 

This man in particular claimed he was old enough to remember times of yore, that he was one of the few ones remaining who had met Lytton himself. Back when he was a grand mage, and back when he was a ‘youngling’. 

It is also interesting how this old man blames his old age for not being able to show proof of his tales from back then, despite being a Demon. At some point, he used to have very little hair to make himself seem more decrepit. This had, however, exposed his horns, which made many question the truth behind his words. How thought-provoking that he eventually stopped cutting his hair in such a way after making excuse after excuse he could not make anyone believe in.

“Hey, about that time in the cave,” she shattered the veil of silence separating them spontaneously, “were you the one that put the barrier up?”

“Yes,” he replied with flummoxation, “why?”

“That barrier was not half bad, so I had assumed it was a combined effort. However, your brother doesn’t seem to know basic spells, so it left me a bit confused. How did you do it?”

“We receive training, you know—all of us. Jim went through that training, too, but sometimes I wonder if he even remembers about its existence. He always uses brute strength. I don’t understand him.”

“Don’t just ignore the last question. I asked about you, too.”

“Well… I don’t know, I always liked it. I would sometimes go watch wizards from many kinds train in the military. That helped out a lot with persevering through the theoretical parts of magic, if that satisfies your curiosity.”

“You did look like a nerd. I suppose he’s right,” she teased. “But a nerd would probably show off. You haven’t done that at all.”

“Now you’re just insulting me. Rude.”

The conversation reached a stalemate after the subtle exchange of insults. A few minutes later, they completed their tour around the village, including the detours. 

They were back where they started at the centre, beside the statue of the Empress. They walked west of the statue until they reached the two-story house that very clearly stood out from the rest. Once they got closer, an iron sign bolted to the ground caught his eye. The sign pointed at the building with an arrow with the text “Supermarket” on it. 

The wooden building shaped like a rectangle had no windows or any other feature reminiscent of the bright showoff billboards and signs in the Federation, even though the owner was a Cryptid.

The trail separating from the street that led to the supermarket was not cleaned; there was snow everywhere. A lack of icy or slippery slopes or surfaces was a bare minimum customer surface he provided so customers could enter, even though the path to the store was buried under snow.

At the end of the dirt trail was a glass door with the sign “Open” in exiguous text and a massive “Welcome” underneath it in red text. A small bell was attached to the same sphere that held the sign in place, which rang as they entered.

“Welcome,” the man behind the cashier counter spoke. He did not even bother lifting his head from the miniature device he was staring at in his hand. 

From his voice, it was painfully obvious he couldn’t care less. Wonderful, disoriented or perhaps abysmal, the man provided some sort of customer service.

Surely a Demon who is more archaic than the great ancestors of all Cryptids would never know what true hospitality and customer service are like, so they must be fond of his market, right?

That is how the man saw it, at least.