Baize Shaman

Kas continued thinking about how to optimize his status panel, hoping to raise his Wisdom by even a little.

But after racking his brains, he finally gave up on continuing to play logic games with Isidore and headed for the door.

"Miss Seneya, keep an eye on him. I'm going to visit the shaman of the Black Ember Tribe."

"Awooo~"

As Isidore watched in terror, the werewolf approached him step by step, twitching her nose as she sniffed him, as if she were about to eat half his body in one bite.

Seneya leaned close and sniffed Isidore, then waved a hand in front of her nose with a look of disgust.

She thought the little man stank. He surely hadn't bathed in a long time.

"Wuu~" She pointed at the wooden basin beside the stove, then at the clean rag hanging on the wall.

"Is this... telling me to take a bath?"

Isidore asked hesitantly, but his eyes drifted toward the nuts and dried meat on the wooden table. He had already been hungry, and after all of Kas's antics, he was even hungrier.

He didn't dare move. From his observations along the way, he had learned that the Rishiman People valued food above all else, and slaves could only eat their masters' leftovers.

But Miss Seneya clearly didn't understand what it meant to have a rein around one's neck. Noticing Isidore's hungry gaze, she pushed the wooden bowl full of food toward him.

"Thank you..." Isidore swallowed, then stuffed the nuts and dried meat into his mouth and chewed wildly. He might die, but he absolutely couldn't die of hunger. That would be unbearable.

Tears ran down his face. He thought of his dead family, of his people being fed into the furnace by the merchants, and the delicious food in his mouth turned bitter as pomegranate peel.

The Black Ember Tribe was lively. That was Kas's second impression of it. Clans from all over the Sorrow Mountains wanted to cobble together some useful goods before their raids south.

Honey, owls, saber-toothed tiger pelts, Mamba Black Tea... all kinds of precious goods could be found on the streets.

In front of the low huts lining both sides of the street, hawkers with merchandise piled on their stands called out to passersby, urging them to take a closer look.

White-feathered chickens rooted around in the dirt inside their pens for hidden food—perhaps an earthworm, someone's bone fragment, or a bloodstained scrap of iron.

Hunting dogs lounged at doorways, half-lidded eyes and ears keeping watch on the people passing by.

Women carrying wicker baskets haggled tirelessly with merchants. Even in the martial Sorrow Mountains, a sharp tongue was a blade, and insults aimed below the belt were especially cutting.

"That's a lot to charge for a loaf of hard bread. Are you saving it for your wife to use tonight?"

But this wasn't the busiest part of the Black Ember Tribe. The real bustle was around the blacksmiths' shops, where swords, knives, and battle-axes filled the stalls.

The "heated" atmosphere came from the clang of hammers striking anvils, the sound of people arguing as they talked, and faint, intermittent groans.

It was the height of a blazing midday sun, and the light glinting off the gold and silver was so bright it made people squint.

As he watched people emerge from the blacksmiths' shops, beaming as they carried away fine equipment, his hand reached for the Woodcutter's Axe tied behind his waist.

After chopping and clearing a path through the forest all the way here, even the rough Woodcutter's Axe had sustained irreparable damage. Naturally, Kas wanted a proper weapon.

Whether a sword or a battle-axe, it would be a great help on the journey ahead.

But there was a practical problem: he didn't have a single coin on him.

If he didn't want to ask Kaike for help, his only option was to seek out the infamous Radno Clan of the Sorrow Mountains and borrow money at their exorbitant interest rates, using his clan's reputation as collateral.

First, he'd go see Baize Shaman and find out whether he could make some money off an unlucky fellow at one of the feasts over the next few days.

If all else failed, he'd beg for alms if he had to, but he still needed to get some usable gear.

Baize Shaman lived in a rather secluded place, in a strange longhouse thirty meters long and twelve meters wide. It was pitch-black all over, like a giant coffin.

Two elite Black Ember warriors stood at the entrance. They wore the horned helmets that were the Larona Clan's trademark, and their eyes, hidden beneath the steel, were cold and merciless.

A halberd pressed against Kas's chest. One of the Black Steel Warriors said in a low voice,

"Stop. State your business, stranger."

"Kas of the Zagwell Clan, from Her Tribe. I request an audience with Baize Shaman."

Kas had expected the guards to go inside and ask the shaman, but instead, they opened the door for him at once.

"Please come in. The shaman has been expecting you."

Assuming Kaike had given them advance notice, Kas didn't think much of it and entered the longhouse.

The moment he stepped inside, he was stunned by what he saw.

The first thing he noticed was a spacious round table in the center.

A clean, dust-free stone mortar, conical glass bottles, a distillation apparatus, flasks... all kinds of instruments that seemed completely out of place were neatly arranged on the table.

The wooden shelves covering both sides of the longhouse were also packed with all kinds of ore. One shelf labeled "copper" alone held more than a dozen varieties of copper ore.

Native copper shaped like branches, bornite streaked with red, purple, and blue, dark brass, indigo-blue azurite, dark gray chalcocite, gradient-colored cuprite...

This longhouse, filled with countless stones, was a veritable museum of natural ores. Hundreds, even thousands, of kinds of ore shimmered in the sunlight, bathing the longhouse in bands of color.

"My God... This is incredible." Kas was genuinely awestruck by the museum that housed hundreds of different ores.

There were many kinds of ore he'd never seen before, and they didn't seem to come from the Sorrow Mountains.

This wasn't something one generation could accomplish. He remembered the legend about the Black Ember Tribe.

Give them a kind of ore they've never seen before, and they'll give you ten times its weight in gold.

"Hahaha! If I can amaze a pupil of the Great Shaman, then it seems the Black Ember Tribe's thousand years of perseverance have finally paid off."

The hearty laugh drew Kas's attention away from the ores and toward the most unremarkable-looking person in the longhouse.

Baize wore a starched linen robe. His black hair and beard looked young compared with this museum that had witnessed the changing of the land, while his arms were as thick as a blacksmith's. He looked more like a strong, well-built warrior.

He came over to Kas and studied his youthful face carefully. His rugged features broke into a look of admiration.

"I can sense the mark of the spirits' blessing. You have many things you want to ask me... but perhaps I won't be able to give you accurate answers to all of them, Kas."

Kas nodded in greeting. As he considered the shaman's words, he hesitated before replying,

"I'm not the pupil of Great Shaman Hadi, Baize Shaman. I don't know why you would call me that."

"You see? That's one of the things I can't give you an accurate answer to." Baize smiled, then asked with some confusion,

"But could I have heard wrong? You aren't from the Zagwell Clan of Her Tribe?"

"Of course I am. I'm Kas of Her Tribe, son of Malik Broken Axe."

"Malik must be glad to have such an outstanding child..." The shaman kept his enigmatic smile and gestured for Kas to follow him farther inside.

"You're puzzled by the spirits. They whisper in your ear, sometimes coldly, sometimes gently. They wound you, yet also offer you selfless help. You'll feel lost along the way, wondering what the spirits really are."

He stopped, then spoke in a mysterious tone.

"That's perfectly normal, Kas. Everyone who sets out on the path of a shaman goes through this process, because our vision is no longer confined to the mortal world. Have you heard the theory about apes coming down from the trees?"

"Please explain what I don't understand."

After what had happened with Little Red Riding Hood, Kas had learned to respect these long-winded shamans. He no longer thought of them as... old drunks who'd eaten too many mushrooms.

If not for that old geezer, who knew all sorts of secrets, revealing that umbilical cords were an important medium for witchcraft, Kas could never have used Angeli's spirit to make Nosa choose to kill herself.

The shaman brought over two chairs and invited Kas to sit down first. He held up a thin sheet of paper and a cube of ore, then spoke in an even more mysterious tone.

"Do you know the difference between two and three dimensions?"