The Afternoon Before Departure

Kraft returned to the inn with a book tucked under his arm.

The inn was relatively quiet in the afternoon. There were no guests in the small dining room on the first floor, and the owner was wiping wooden beer mugs behind the counter. Seeing Kraft return, he took the initiative to greet him: "You're back quite early. Want to eat something? I recommend the grilled fish with beer."

"Why do you say 'also'?"

"Oh, that companion of yours also returned not long ago. You two don't look like you're here for business, otherwise, I could have recommended a few old acquaintances to you." The owner set down his mug. Being busy was certainly not ideal, but an empty afternoon was too boring, and he couldn't just leave the inn to wander around; having someone to chat with was for the best.

Ryan actually returned that early? Kraft had thought he would at least spend the whole day wandering outside. After all, finding things that fit the criteria of "mysterious enough" wasn't easy, and even if he went to those captain friends of his, it wasn't always guaranteed that they would have something on hand. Their main business was running trade routes and earning the price difference, not specifically collecting all sorts of oddities, especially not these kinds of oddities that looked abnormal at first glance.

Often, when captains or sailors were in foreign lands, they would drink a few extra glasses at a bar to alleviate the oppressive torment brought on by long voyages. When they stepped out, there was a high probability they would encounter locals peddling all sorts of things.

Some of these unidentified individuals would spout nonsense, claiming the items would bring good luck or had special functions, and the drunkards would buy these strange things on a whim.

It also didn't exclude places with rugged customs like the Ice Plains, where you might step outside and see a burly man holding an axe, asking if you were interested in taking a look. It was hard for the target to tell if the other party really wanted you to look, or if they were euphemistically indicating, "Brother, I'm a bit short on cash lately."

There were many specific reasons, which need not be elaborated upon; most were similar to Kraft going on a trip and being sold "local specialties" or "purely handmade products" by locals. You buy them on a whim, and after the purchase, you feel a sense of darkness—a pure act of being a sucker.

Afterward, he had more than once discovered traces of torn-off labels, or items that were simply mass-produced goods from a small commodity market without the labels even removed.

When Kraft bought a souvenir, he only lost a few dozen, maybe a hundred at most. When captains and sailors realized they had been fleeced, it wasn't so simple. Losing a few silver coins was considered minor; losing more would make their hearts ache.

At such times, they were very willing to sell these things to recoup some of their losses, and most of the trinkets found at sailors' street stalls had such origins.

"So, you know quite a lot of people in Wenden Port, boss?" Kraft found a seat near the counter. It was rare to come to Wenden Port, and the lunch he'd had earlier left him wanting more. "Grilled fish is fine, but no beer."

In ports like this, taverns and inns often functioned as hubs for information, and the owners, while shooting the breeze with you, sometimes moonlighted as intermediaries, while others kept their own stock.

Regardless of whether they had those functions, most owners were quite chatty, and the coming and going of guests gave them enough content to talk about. It was a bit like the taxi drivers in the memories of the otherworldly soul—people who worked in one spot for a long time and passively developed the skill of being talkative.

The owner called for the kitchen to bring out the grilled fish, poured himself a beer, and leaned over the counter to clear his throat.

"How can there be a man who doesn't like beer?" He gulped down a mouthful of beer, the foam wetting his wild, overgrown beard. "The people I know are all those making a living on the sea. Most of them I don't see more than a few times a year. Sometimes I help them sell their goods, and I also recommend sources for them.

When I was in my twenties, I envied them. I thought about saving up some money, selling the inn, buying a ship, and then, like them, leading a group of sailors to run routes from Dunling to the Ice Plains."

Among the young people in Wenden Port, out of ten, at least nine shared the same dream as the owner. To have a ship of one's own, to challenge the surging sea, and then return with money and stories enough to brag about in the tavern for days.

"Sounds good. So why didn't you go later?" Kraft followed up in time, making it easy for the owner to continue chatting. To be honest, Kraft himself had once had such thoughts; he always had some unrealistic, romantic fantasies about the ocean.

"Sigh, it's because I got to know too many people." The owner let out a sigh, as if thinking of his lost youth.

"What does that have to do with it?"

"The more people you know, the more you realize things aren't as good as you imagined. Don't look at those people running around as if they're carefree; in reality, they live lives of careful calculation. Making money depends on information and connections, and most of their net worth is tied up in the ship. If you take the old routes, you can't make big money, and you still have to watch the market trends on both sides."

The owner was quite familiar with how it worked; he must have truly considered entering the trade.

Kraft also became interested; he hadn't really understood these things before. "What about the new routes? I remember there are always captains who like to run routes that few people take, like going from here to the Ice Plains or something."

What the owner said reminded him of the story of William, the captain who transported grain and wine to trade for furs from the people of the Ice Plains.

The stories from Ryan's cousin had sparked a huge interest in him regarding strange lands overseas. He even wanted to collect and revise such stories for publication, compiling something like Kraft's Fairy Tales to pass down to future generations.

The owner forced a belch from his stomach and gave a disdainful snort. "That's what I thought when I was young. Like many people, I always thought I was the only smart one. There are plenty of smart people in this world. New routes must have been thought of long ago, but they are either difficult to sail or there's a problem with the destination, which is why they've only been developed now.

Take that Ice Plains place. Getting there isn't hard, but there are only a few tribes you can actually communicate with, and those were hard-won by old captains. Now, trading with a few familiar captains is enough. If others want to go, they have to follow the coastline further to find other new tribes.

As for those new tribes that haven't had much contact with us, it's hard to say if you can even communicate with them."

The owner took another gulp and wore the expression of someone who had been through it all. "So, it's better to do stable business. Every year, some of the people I know don't come back, and that's not even counting those who take the old routes. The only good stories are the ones you hear while drinking in a tavern; no one really wants to be the protagonist of an adventure story themselves."

"Indeed, only the living can come back to tell stories. How many people care about those who feed the fish?" Kraft agreed with the owner's assessment. At sea, even a Titanic could meet with disaster, let alone the wooden sailing ships of today. Sea travel wasn't as stable as it was in the world of the otherworldly soul. If a ship capsized, there was no rescue; it was basically waiting for death.

"Boss, do you know if there's any shop in Wenden Port that sells strange trinkets?" Kraft asked in passing, not holding much hope.

"Probably not. You can only see such things at street stalls. A shop here without a stable source of customers would have starved to death long ago." The owner shook his head and set down his mug. "It's a pity you won't see any street stalls these two days. Wait until the snow melts completely. Don't pay high prices to those people; I've never found anything worth more than two silver coins."

It was truly heartfelt advice. Buying things at high prices from street stalls was the act of a total sucker, and Kraft had a very clear understanding of that.

After finishing the grilled fish, the owner's desire to chat had been satisfied, and Kraft went upstairs to knock on Ryan's door.

"Are you in, Ryan?"

"Come in, I've already bought the item." Ryan pulled the door open and invited Kraft to admire his results. He had good luck; a stonemason happened to have a severed hand taken from a damaged stone sculpture, which allowed him to exercise his creativity.

As soon as Kraft entered the room, he saw an eye-catching ornament placed on the table. It was a stone-carved palm, severed at the wrist, which allowed it to stand upright on the table with the cross-section facing down.

A crooked rune was carved into the palm, looking a bit like an octopus tentacle. There was no flashy polishing or anything of the sort; it looked like it had been dug out of some old ruin. Of course, Kraft had no ability to appraise artifacts, but his intuition told him he had seen this style somewhere before.

As he thought about it a bit more seriously, a vast amount of memory flashed by. The inhuman consciousness told him that this was very similar to one of the runes on the runic eyeball Ryan had bought. It seemed to be slightly upgraded, more fluid than the original on the eyeball, with no stuttering or broken edges at the stroke connections.

"Where did you buy it? The same place as last time?" Kraft pressed his temples.

He didn't have symptoms of dizziness or a headache, but he just wasn't used to this feeling, as if he had been split into two parts: one part was his ordinary self, and the other was infinitely expanding, effortlessly fishing out the piece he wanted from a vast sea of information.

This gave him a subtle illusion that there was a living thing surging within his skull, that his brain had developed its own independent ability and was dissatisfied with this cramped living space.

"How did you know it was the same... I bought it from the captain." Ryan almost thought his secret of buying from the same stonemason had been exposed, but fortunately, he reacted in time to realize Kraft didn't mean that and quickly changed his words, turning the stonemason into a captain.

Ryan wiped the sweat from his brow and added to his statement: "He said it was bought from the same place as last time. It really does have a connection to that pair of stone eyeballs from before, right? He knew I would buy these things, so he saved it for me. I think Grandfather will like this." The language here was similar to English and didn't distinguish between maternal and paternal grandfathers, so Ryan used the same term for Old Wood as Kraft did.

People who didn't know the inside story could easily mistake them for biological brothers, though in reality, it was pretty much the same.

"By the way, here is your money back. I have a good relationship with him, and he sold it cheap, so I didn't use your money." Ryan took out the coin purse Kraft had given him that morning and returned it to Kraft, completely untouched.

"Is that so? How much was it exactly? Shouldn't we split the cost?" Kraft took the coin purse, not doubting Ryan's intentions at all.

"It's fine, it only cost one silver coin. I'm someone who will soon have my own fief, so there's no need to worry about this." Speaking of this, Ryan was full of pride.

Considering he was nearly 20 years old, Old Wood also felt that letting him run around everywhere wasn't right, and had long been planning to formally grant him the title of knight, give him a piece of land, and let him branch out the family. By then, he would also be assigned two good horses, a full set of armor and weapons, and would be able to recruit his own retainers.

"I'll be willing to testify to your virtue of generosity when the time comes," Kraft laughed. "I'm going back to sleep for a while. I hope to be refreshed when we set off tomorrow morning."