[LitF] 28. Cultural Gap (Patreon)

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Arthur saw the dark gray road before anyone else. His 1,000 points of perception, Enhanced Senses trait, and passive spells let him see things further and in more detail than the others.

The road was painted with parallel yellow and white lines. The yellow line was in the center, separating the road into two sides, and the carriages on each side moved in different directions. Each side also had a dashed white line that created two lanes. The carriages almost always kept to one lane.

The prince liked that system. Carriages seldom collided on the Golden Kingdom's roads but were considerably slower. The ones he was seeing moved even faster than unmanned horses, at speeds that only awakeners had been able to reach in the past.

As Tamara had said, the carriages looked weird. They had four wheels, were fully enclosed by metal and glass, and their internal parts were also marvels of magic. A few were much larger with long containers in the back. Some others were open on the top.

"Wow!" Sophie exclaimed.

There was about one carriage every minute, but traffic increased as time passed. It likely had to do with the early time of the day.

Arthur was shocked not to see even a single awakener as they moved closer and the sun traveled the skies.

He slowed down as they approached so he could better understand what he saw and plan for it and stopped a thousand yards away. There, he waited for his Wise Inspection trait to tell him what he was looking at.

The four-lane road was made of "asphalt." That's how the mix was called three languages: the League dialect, Amyr, and Shär-Laÿon. The latter two were the elven and high-elven languages. In Carnan—the human language—asphalt was called "bound gravel mix." The gravel contained sandstone and common rocks.

The prince wanted to know what the carriages were named, but they moved too fast. He didn't find a way to cheat the Wise Inspection trait by focusing on every carriage in sight. He had to look at the same object, or it wouldn't work.

He saw no awakener even after an hour, in which the traffic increased then decreased. Therefore, he concluded the local danger levels were minimal, to say the least.

In other words, they were back to civilization, and it was time to sheath their weapons.

"I declare our deployment over," he said. When done by the kingdom's official personnel, every dungeon delve was a military deployment. "Sophie and I will maintain the readiness condition expected of dignitaries visiting a potentially hostile but likely peaceful foreign land. Tamara and Graham, change your readiness accordingly. Fashion-wise, from how the unawakened in the carriages are clad, we might want to go for simplicity rather than style."

Awakener diplomacy was rather complex. You might believe yourself safe only to be ambushed when you least expected it. Therefore, there were all levels of readiness for all kinds of things.

On a scale of ten to one, with ten being how ready you should be in the middle of a battle, he had just set Sophie and him at around five. It meant not relaxing too much but also not being paranoid. They would use their senses wisely but not be overly obvious about it to avoid offending their hosts.

Clothing-wise, they would wear garments made to be used in civilian events where they expected to be received as foreign dignitaries. The clothes would be enchanted for protection, but nothing that would be considered an offense if analyzed. Being too protected in some places could be seen as different statements, from saying the host couldn't protect you to you not trusting them. It could quickly develop into war.

Graham would put himself at a readiness level of six or so. While he was playing a defensive role, he was also a minor noble and a grand knight. It would disgrace him to be treated as a foot soldier or random guard while not deployed for combat or to protect the king himself. He would wear weak armor, leather with inlaid metal plates, all enchanted. Depending on the occasion, he might even wear civilian clothes, too.

Tamara would just keep doing her thing. Unlike Graham, she was always "deployed." She lived to serve and would do as she had been trained to guarantee her lord's safety no matter who it might offend. Ultimately, if an offense was too big and her judgment wrong, she knew the cost to avoid war might be her life, as any servant knew.

After a brief discussion, the maid gave him an appropriate new set of clothes. He took the chance to also acquire a spatial storage ring from her. Then each person erected their own privacy screen using their elements and got changed.

Arthur wore light brown pants, black leather boots, a white shirt, and an overcoat. The shirt and overcoat had golden details, including House Boria's lion head insignia. It rested on his left chest in the shirt and his back on the coat.

As soon as he placed the ring on his finger, it was his. He extended his arm sideways while pushing some mana into it and felt the limb go into a strange spatial pocket that felt both cold and warm. His domains also extended inside, but he felt nothing there. There was no life, metal, or death in that place.

He stored his mother's and Charlotte's letters inside. There was no convenient enchantment to let him know where each thing he placed inside was, on their contents. However, there was also no gravity there. The letters would remain floating wherever he left them. With his mind stats, he could easily organize things.

The internal space of the ring Tamara gave him was shaped like a seventy-yard sphere. That was way beyond his arm's reach, and awakeners worked around it with their magic.

The prince also meant to sheath his weapons, so he stored most of his flying weapons and his defensive equipment. He turned a few spheres into metal dust, which he used to move things inside. His intent string easily went through the spatial opening, but any other would be stopped.

Outside, he only left two long swords, four short swords, and a dozen spheres. Spatial storage was great, but it might take him too long to recover defensive equipment from the inside.

The two long swords—the enchanted orange one and a normal one—were kept on the left of his waist. Two short words hung from the right, and two were hidden, crossed, on his back. He placed half the spheres in a small leather bag by his waist, on his back, and kept the other half hidden throughout his body.

He might need to disarm entirely in the future, but only when this place's governor or king was nearby. The Golden Kingdom might've fallen, but he was still its crown prince. His status would be enough to carry weapons without offending any noble, except if he was invited into their homes. Even then, he would keep one weapon with him, and demanding otherwise would offend him.

Arthur might be a foreigner in these lands, but he wouldn't let himself be humiliated just to appease the locals.

Sophie wore a dark blue dress filled with drawings of red, pink, and yellow flowers. She also put on simple red low heels that perfectly matched her eyes. The dark blue color made the summer dress quite austere, a clear message of her not being open to suitors. Arthur hadn't done anything similar but planned to introduce her as his suitress, which was a more powerful message.

Speaking of powerful messages, she carried no weapon but the mythril dagger he had given her, sheathed horizontally on her waist. With him by his side, even without his introduction, it was an obvious sign that she believed he could protect her. Thus, she didn't need more than a dagger to deal with whatever went through him. The dagger being on the front side of her body made it clear that she would protect herself.

Wearing such clothes meant foregoing the protective cloak, but he assured her that he was alright. He returned to healing her skin while healing the damage everyone was taking from the toxins released by mana starvation.

Graham's leather clothing and cloak were black and golden, fitting for a grand knight. He bore House Boria's lion head on the back of his cloak, but his left chest displayed House Graham's tribal flower instead. He kept his longsword and hidden daggers.

Tamara didn't change. She was still in her maid's uniform, which also had House Boria's insignia on the chest. She always had multiple hidden blades on her.

Arthur nodded to everyone. They looked presentable and almost harmless. He took Sophie's hand on his again—to her surprise and pleasure, as it was another powerful message—and strode towards the road.

It was part-time for their first contact with this brand-new world.

* - * - *

Arthur expected many things to happen as they just stood by the side of the road, but "nothing" was very low on his list.

There stood four people on foot wearing enchanted clothing, three bearing House insignias, yet no unawakened had come to see if they wanted something! They didn't need to come to serve Arthur, but there was always a bright future ahead of those who made the right connections to the right noble. Could all these people's lives be so good under whoever lorded over them that they didn't consider ingratiating themselves to another? Or were they simply scared of the consequences?

To the prince's marvel, he believed the former was more likely. There were just so many of these carriages, which were as enchanted as the automated turret in the dungeon. They moved fast, but his perception and wisdom let him thoroughly analyze each vehicle easily, and the things he saw were mind-blowing.

Such complexity! He had believed the turret to be a rare weapon, but it clearly wasn't the case. The world had evolved a lot if even unawakened had access to such wonders!

"Should I make someone stop, master?" Tamara asked with a hint of danger in her voice.

Being ignored was highly offensive to an elf like Tamara because they had a more rigid social hierarchy. Although the prince was also slightly offended, he shook his head. House Boria followed a different standard. A Golden Kingdom's noble or royal member didn't force anyone to serve them; it was the unawakened's loss to fail to grasp the opportunity. On the other end of the spectrum, begging for help was unbecoming, so no one dared to suggest it.

The prince shook his head. "There are more carriages going to the right than the left. I want to find out why. We'll follow the road that way until we get there or someone stops to talk to us."

They started walking by the side of the road at a comfortable pace, even for an unawakened. They hadn't registered in that nation and might be seen as invaders with untoward intentions if they moved too fast. Not that they needed to have worried; there was no awakener in sight.

The more time passed without an awakener appearing, the less comfortable Arthur became. The mana levels were also not increasing.

Something was terribly wrong.

On the bright side, feeling the metallic carriages helped him better understand concepts like aerodynamics, heating and cooling, acceleration, and torque regarding metal. The way the novel alloys interacted with all of that gave him a few pushes on his path to mastering metal.

| Metal: +1% → 49%

| +100 free stat points → 100 total

| Metal: +1% → 50%

| +100 free stat points → 200 total

「Achievement: Continued Ascension

Tier: EX

Reward: +384 stat points

You reached 50% comprehension of your first element!

After ascending, you find yourself with unmatched power and unlimited potential. It opens previously closed doors and lets you glimpse through once-tainted windows. You became the master of your own fate and need no incentive to continue, for your self-improvement is its own reward. Nevertheless, some get inebriated in this limited power and lose sight of the final goal. Let this be a reminder that an even grander fate awaits you at the end of the road.」

The achievement greatly surprised Arthur.

He recognized the tact of whip and apple. The whip was in having almost no new achievement after his ascension, while the apple was this sudden EX-tier one and the promise of more. Fate didn't even try to hide its tactic, which showed how much it believed in the reward.

He pushed the 584 free stat points into wisdom, which reached whooping 9,150 points. Wise Inspection improved to 2-9, and now he would need only six minutes of continuous stare to learn something's name. It would also take only one month to unveil an object's secrets, like its composition and how it was created. Quick Mind, his first wisdom trait, also reached 2-9, further increasing his thinking speed. And close to 600 points to wisdom itself made him a better critical thinker and logical analyst.

It was good that he had such considerations to distract him from his walk.

No less than three unawakened passed by them at high speeds in the carriages and yelled something at them. None of the four people from the past could speak the local language, but the mocking in one's voice and the ensuing laughter hinted at Arthur likely being ridiculed. Such a disgrace wasn't exactly against the law even in the Golden Kingdom, but people behaving so brazenly and disrespectfully was unsightly, to say the least.

They were lucky he couldn't tell whether they were offending Sophie—or else.

Even so, it soured his mood further. He might have done something he would regret later if not for what he found on the side of the road about twenty minutes later: a cat.

He would've missed it if not for his domain. By now, a forest was visible far away, and so were three wooden buildings a little before. The imminent geographic change made the grassland less plane, and the kitty had fallen into a two-foot hole, completely hiding him from Arthur's side.

Fortunately, the prince felt it with his domain. He prehended it and pulled it his way, making sure no carriage would hit it and that it wouldn't be uncomfortable.

His life understanding let him tell the little one was a one-year-old male. The cat's eyes were green, and his pelt was half-black, half-white as if a line had been traced in the middle. He had two spots by his snout, a black one on the white side and a white one on the black side that vaguely resembled a mustache.

The creature wasn't faring well. He had been hit by a carriage wheel no more than five minutes ago, but even before that, he had been malnourished. He was breathing haggardly, and the injury on his belly and shattered back legs were more unsettling than Arthur expected.

The prince was used to feeling living beings' innards and seeing monsters in much worse states, but that wasn't a monster. It was an innocent animal—as far as he knew. It was in pain but struggling to live, and he felt immediately connected to it.

Arthur removed all pain from the cat and made it mildly sleepy. He meant to heal it immediately, but Sophie stepped ahead as soon as she saw the little one.

"Oh, no!" she said. Already, she was using her bloodsinging to remove bacteria and infections from the animal's bloodstream. She was also increasing the kitty's blood regenerative properties.

Arthur touched her shoulder delicately. "Let me. I have more mana."

He was astonished to feel and see Sophie's wet eyes. She was a blink away from crying. Seeing that animal suffer impacted her even more than him.

"Can you save him?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes."

"Master," Tamara interjected. "This will take a lot of your life mana. You're already healing our mana madness. Let me do it instead."

Arthur shook his head. "It won't that as much as you expect. And I saw you heal the girl's disease; you would waste much more mana than I to deal with this. Trust me on this one."

He didn't wait for an answer to move on with his plans. He could heal it with his authority, but it would take too long. Instead, prehension magic didn't even take him one percent of his mana pool, and all injuries were healed in a few seconds. The bones set, the flesh mended, and the skin closed. He also strengthened the kitty's body but could do nothing about its undernourishment, not directly. One of the limits of magic that not even his domain could bypass was that it couldn't create matter.

Fortunately, while he couldn't affect an awakener's calorie intake, he could do so for an unawakened. He made the kitty's body much more effective at absorbing nutrients and growing fatter and stronger. One day, he would be able to change the grass on the ground into generic biomass that he could turn into flesh, but he wasn't there yet.

One day he would also be able to affect awakener biology when it came to calories, which wasn't far off. Something between two to ten points of life comprehension, he guessed.

"Tamara, feed him," he commanded as he set the kitty on the ground.

He decreased how sleepy he was making it, and the animal became alert. Contrary to his expectations, however, it didn't try to escape. It wasn't even scared now that the pain was gone. It was used to humans and trusted them.

It even walked their way with trembling legs and released a welcoming meow.

Arthur was the one with the most wisdom of them all, but Sophie also had more than 1,000 points. She wasn't dumb and had been trained by Tamara to read the body language of any living being a battle maid might have to interact with, which was basically any creature in existence. She immediately understood that the kitty had probably been abandoned by its human owners and hit by a carriage, and contrary to popular wisdom about cats, it still trusted humans.

That broke Sophie's heart, and she immediately knelt to hug the kitty. She was already crying. The little one purred and rubbed his face at Sophie's, who then started sobbing.

Tamara took a silver plate and a dead dove from her spatial storage. It wasn't in an enchanted container not to spoil, so it had been killed recently, likely during her scouting adventure. She swiftly removed its feathers and placed the carcass on the plate.

That cat might be more affectionate than expected, but it was still a cat. It saw something it wanted more than the hug and immediately struggled to free itself. Its claws were sharp but couldn't pierce through Sophie's dress's enchantments or her skin.

She gently placed the little one on the ground, and the kitty swiftly devoured the dove after smelling it for a few seconds.

Arthur improved its body to grow stronger faster, and they all watched it eat.

"Can we keep him?" Sophie asked.

He smiled. "You don't need to ask, do you? You're your own woman. You're allowed anything you want."

His words had a sad undertone, but the meaning was positive overall. She smiled. It was slightly dejected but bright enough.

"He needs a name," Arthur pointed out.

"Mr. Mustache," she declared unhesitatingly. "That's his name."

The prince chuckled. "It certainly fits."

Mr. Mustache ignored it. He only cared about the food. Tamara also gave him a bowl of water.

The tired cat was sleeping in Sophie's arms when they resumed their journey. The scene pushed many buttons on Arthur. She would be a good mother.

To make matters even better, no one else yelled at them until they reached the wooden buildings.

* - * - *

A fifth lane appeared a little before the building area and continued until a little after. The buildings were dozens of yards retreated from the road, with a wide asphalted area in between, where over fifty unmanned carriages were parked. Most were of the large variety, tall and with a long cargo box.

Each of the three wooden buildings had a different symbol on top of their entrances. A new carriage pulled in as Arthur and the others approached, and purposefully parked close to one building. Then, three people alighted and went inside.

They entered a building with only one floor, but it was very wide. The front had expansive glass windows that let one see the restaurant inside. It had over fifty wooden tables with four chairs each, about half occupied. The metal counter on the back was wide, and almost a dozen uniformed waitresses served the tables.

Another building had five floors and was a little further from the road. The first floor also had wide windows but dimmed ones. The double glass doors were also shaded. Arthur's Mana Sight let him see through them anyway, revealing it was an inn.

The final building was a big closed shed. Its walls and ceiling looked like wood from afar but were made of textured metal, not unlike his storage safe. Inside, he felt and saw—using Mana Sight—multiple tools of all sizes, both regular and enchanted, manual and with magic processors. There were also three partially disassembled carriages and hundreds of carriage parts. It was obviously a place to fix broken carriages.

Sophie was still looking at the first building and said hesitantly, "This isn't... too different from our restaurants, I guess?"

Arthur strongly disagreed with her; it was "too different."

The design of just about everything was nothing like he was used to. There were similarities, of course. The buildings were rectangular and had walls, floors, and ceilings, while chairs looked like chairs, and so on. However, even the steel composition he felt differed from the one in his weapons.

The food was alien, too. Arthur could identify all ingredients with his life domain and understanding but did not recall them being known or used in the palace. He also didn't recognize many of the servings he saw and smelled. His Enhanced Senses trait let him smell them from thousands of yards away, and he had been wondering about it for a while.

The clothing design wasn't alien but clearly exhaustively simplified to be more easily mass-produced. They were also revealing. Arthur had only seen that much skin after he and Sophie agreed to abuse their Senses Beyond Senses trait to see more than they should before marriage. Even then, at first, he hadn't been bold to look at her body as much as some people were showing. Only a restaurant in a brothel would be like that back in the Golden Kingdom.

And then there was the culture.

People were uncomfortably loud. The place was filled with music from enchanted artifacts on the walls connected by wires to another artifact on the floor, like a tall box. Some unawakened visited and interacted with it. Everyone was yelling to be heard over everyone else and the music.

How could they stand something like that?

Arthur knew the answer: without awakeners around, there was no one with more sensitive ears to complain about it. Any properly trained awakener could force themselves to not listen as well as they could, but speaking lower was simply more polite.

Those people were too touchy, too. Too touchy. Way, way, way, too touchy.

They half-hugged their partners when sitting beside them, placed their hands on their partner's thighs, and frequently kissed cheeks or lips. In fact, a young couple was all but copulating in their seats. Arthur legitimately feared their jaws would dislocate if they kept trying to swallow each other like that. While a few older people set them looks of discomfort, no one seemed to really care about it.

He wasn't surprised to see Sophie's eyes as interested in that couple as he was. It seemed both had the same idea: they would have to try kissing like that in the future. In private, of course.

The people themselves were the last stark difference between the past and the future. There were only humans everywhere and no half-monsters in sight. This might be a purist nation.

Arthur prepared himself to protect Sophie but was also glad that only her red eyes betrayed her half-vampire nature to the unawakened.

Other than those differences, he guessed people were still just people going about their businesses. So Sophie was kind of right in her comment? That was the most leeway he could give her.

Even then, their bodies were somewhat different from his, like the unconscious girl in the dungeon had been, but he was an awakener. He couldn't tell if they were any different from people in the past, but Tamara likely could. He asked her about it.

"Their immune system is both more and less prepared than the unawakened in the past, master." She had felt unawakened in the carriages already. "I guess some diseases went extinct while new ones appeared and that their daily challenges are different from the past."

"That's my guess, too. We'll wait here for a butler, receptionist, or whoever the restaurant will send." They had to send someone. This wasn't the road. No business would even dream of not properly welcoming nobles. That said... "I'll change the plan if no one comes after half an hour. Can you three hear the people talking in the restaurant?"

"Yes, master."

"Yup."

"Yes, sir."

"Try to learn their language while we wait," Arthur commanded.

That was rude and an invasion of privacy, but he decided to do it all the same. This was too important. He would pay the price for his transgression if it ever came to it.

An unawakened wise man might have more than 10 points of wisdom, but 10 was a very high factor. His people had around 1,000 points of wisdom, which meant as many as 100 wise people at once, all focused on the same task. Unfortunately, they couldn't think as fast as that many people added because the Quick Mind trait determined the speed, not the stat itself. Their thinking speed was about six times that of an unawakened fast thinker. Fortunately, and more importantly, their ability to make logical connections and associations, think analytically, and learn was proportionally enhanced for each stat point.

That wouldn't let them master the language in half an hour, but it should let them learn a few words. At the very least, they could watch for the inflections and mannerisms to help them communicate in the future.

Arthur had nine times their wisdom, and the Quick Mind trait at 2-9 let him think over twice as fast as them at 2-1. He might actually grasp the language's basics just by observing hundreds of people talk, including those at the hotel.

He really wanted to succeed at that, too, because he would spend the next half hour staring at everything he could at once, from carriages to tools, food to furniture, kitchen utensils to the many things people kept in their pockets. He got names in the languages he knew, so if he grasped that new one enough for Fate to consider he knew it, he could use the Wise Inspection skill to cheat his way into learning new words in that language with ease.

The five stood by the side—Mr. Mustache was still sleeping—and did their best to learn everything they could.

* - * - *

No one came to welcome them, though they got plenty of looks. Almost everyone who saw them also commented on  their clothes, ranging from "cool" to "weirdos."

It turned out that Arthur had underestimated his wisdom, especially paired with the Wise Inspection trait and the fact that many "modern" objects—that's what they called this era, modern—didn't have a direct translation to Carnan. Instead, he got short descriptions that greatly assisted him in understanding that new strange world.

Sadly, he didn't get any historical knowledge from eavesdropping. He estimated that he could understand that language like a seven-year-old. Some things were still beyond him.

But he got enough to notice the glaring lack of mentions of nobles and awakeners.

Some people discussed politics, and they were just that: politics. The corrupt kind that he would expect to find in a republic.

A republic!

Arthur was more astonished by it than by all the technology he saw everywhere. Then again, something as chaotic as a republic certainly explained the decline of morals he could witness. The kissing couple had eaten and returned to kissing and more—his right hand was not in a place it should be in public.

Could no unawakened smell their excitement?!

He sighed. "It seems Charlotte's dreams came true," he said and shared his findings with his people.

After his report, Sophie asked, surprised, "No mention of awakeners?"

"None."

"Where are they?"

Arthur could think of many reasons, but two were more likely. The most credible was that the entire country's mana levels were as low as in this region, so no awakeners were around anymore.

He didn't want to even think about the implications of that before it was confirmed, so he voiced the alternative.

"I guess they are the republic's rulers," he replied. "No need to mention awakeners when they are the politicians that some of these people are already talking about. They should be protected in their palaces, away from the common populace."

Not that such an alternative was that much better. The possibility of awakeners being as corrupted as in the conversations he heard made him sick.

It was one thing to hoard skill crystals in dark dealings. Awakeners weren't saints and sought the advancement of their Houses. They also had obligations to the kingdom and the Fated Races, making such hoarding vital for them. Without enough power, their House would eventually perish when fighting monsters; it was simple as that.

But stealing money meant for unawakened people instead of going on a dungeon delve? That was unnatural, a complete corruption of everything awakeners were and should stand for.

How low did one have to fall to get to that?

Sophie didn't fully grasp those implications, but Tamara and Graham did. They were as upset by the news as him.

"Maybe this is just idle gossip with no substance, sir," the grand knight offered, though it was evident that not even he believed that.

Arthur didn't reply. There was no need to. Although the thought was repulsive, if that republic's awakeners were like that, he would just find a better place to settle down...

...right after he spent as long as needed annoying the League of Fated Races so they would punish the corrupt.

The League allowing awakeners to get away with such things was both good, bad, and terrible. Good because a lower moral bar meant a lower likelihood of them punishing him. Bad because it made them more likely to punish him if he didn't give in to whatever bribe they demanded.

And terrible because it meant the League wasn't doing its main job: ensuring the world's safety.

One thousand years was a long time. Long enough for empires to rise and fall. Arthur had always known that but hoped for the better.

It seemed he had been sorely mistaken.

And if there were no awakeners around at all... He shook his head. No, he wouldn't think about that. Even he might not have enough willpower to go into that rabbit hole, at least not yet, this fresh from receiving shock after shock.

"Tamara, go see if anyone there speaks League dialect." He hadn't heard anyone speak it, but maybe only because everyone spoke the same language, so there was no need to speak anything else. "If they do, ask them to call the League to send someone for us." The telephone on the counter was a marvel of magitech. "If they refuse, ask them how we can get to the nearest League branch."

He would've gone himself, but sending a maid to talk with a business that didn't welcome him was already a bit humiliating. He would be disgracing his image and, by extension, his people's if he went in person.

"Yes, master," she replied and started walking.

"If needed, pay them to talk to you or make the call," Arthur added to her back. "Peacefully."

"Yes, master," she repeated and continued.

He had already told the three—and they had probably also noticed during their observations—that these people's economic exchanges were made with paper money or plastic cards—a new substance, that plastic. However, some people wore silver or gold jewelry, meaning it should have some value at least. She could bargain using Golden Kingdom coins.

Arthur had never asked how much money she kept on her to pay for his expenses. He only knew the king had to ensure that the crown prince's primary attendant would never carry less than a few hundred gold coins. Even when he had been a child, before his awakening, the entire House and kingdom would be humiliated if the crown prince saw something he wanted but couldn't afford even that much. It was even worse than him wasting money.

Whether he would be punished for spending his money on nonsense once he returned home was another matter altogether.

Mr. Mustache woke moments after Tamara left and immediately started meowing from hunger. Luckily, Sophie also carried some water and food in her spatial storage, a special one meant for battle maids, a thumb-sized plate injected under her skin. The food was also leftover from when she trained as a maid.

She took venison from an enchanted box to preserve it for decades and placed tiny slices in a bowl.

Arthur watched the cat and Tamara while still listening to conversations and improving his grasp of the local language.

All the while, he hoped he would see any awakener as soon as possible.

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