Novaris: Adventure in the Shattered Fang Continent

“So, Lili, what’s the plan now?” Tesilim asked, curious about how his near future would unfold.

“Well, first, we are going to Badger’s Inn since it is the cheapest one around. There, I am going to book you a room for a couple of months. Don’t worry; you will be helping me at the shop to pay me back while I also teach you magic. Then, once you are all magicked up, you can register at the Adventurer’s Guild or do whatever else you want to do.”

“Wait! There’s an Adventurer’s Guild!? Like I get paid to kill monsters type of guild!?” Tesilim blurted as his excitement got the better of him.

“Uh, yeah. They didn’t have one back in your world?” Lili replied as if an Adventurer’s Guild was just part of the course.

“Nah, we didn’t really have monsters for most of our recent history, well, at least until the recent invasion.”

“Wow! That is surprising. Most otherworlders I have met have monsters of one type or another in their home worlds.”

While chatting, they eventually reached a rundown square building with yet another thatch roof. The building was made of stone, and vines grew all over its walls. Though it wasn’t big, it was larger than the Rusty Boar, though not by much. Going up the building's stone stairs, Tesilim noticed the sign hanging above the door, which read “Badger’s Inn” and had a painted white and black badger on it.

Walking into the inn through the shabby wooden door, Tesilim was met with a small, rundown office with a counter taking half of the available space. The rest was filled with a couple of chairs and one or two plants as decorations. The office didn’t smell great, but it felt stale and old.

Behind the counter was a badger-looking fellow with primarily grey and white hair, which told Tesilim the badger person was on the older side. The badger was short, matching his counter, and was a bit on the cubby side, though Tesilim wasn’t sure how normal badger people looked.

Apparently, the old badger had been asleep, as when Lili approached the counter, he was rather surprised.

“Hey, Beige, how is it going?”

“Huh! What! Who’s there!” The badger yelled with the energy and tone of an old grandpa.

The response made Lili smile, and she quickly replied.

“Relax you old coot, it’s me.”

“Ah, Lili! How can I help you this fine day?” The older badger guy said, quickly catching up with events.

“I need to rent out one of your cheapest rooms for a few months,” Lili stated.

“Hmm, very well, hold on.” replied the old badger in his grandpa's voice as he reached underneath the counter and pulled out a large dusty tome.

From there, Lili gave the badger three gold coins, one for each month, and they were given the keys to one of the rooms.

After getting the key, they walked into a hallway off the small office. That ease of access didn’t give Tesilim much hope for security, as anyone could sneak in. Sadly, he didn’t have a choice in the matter.

The inn had five rooms, though Tesilim was sure one of them was the badger’s living quarters. Tesilim’s room was old and dusty, with mold and moss growing on the walls. Thankfully, however, it had a window that would stop him from suffocating. He also learned he would be dealing with candles, which prompted a question for Lili.

“What the heck!? I gotta use candles!? Don’t you have some magical runic lights or something!?” Tesilim said with annoyance.

“Yeah, we do have those, but not in this inn. This place is for, well, broke folks like you.”

Hearing that, Tesilim sighed and accepted his fate as he assumed meals would not be included either.

“Alright, so now that you know where you live, let's go to my shop so I can sell you something for the mold,” Lili said while smiling at him.

Lili’s shop was some distance from the inn, and it took them around 10 minutes to get there. The shop was a small two-story stone building facing one of the many green areas in the city. Outside of her store, she had a couple of potted plants, with even more hanging from the building's two-story window. The front of the store had a large window displaying potion bottles, and next to the window and between the shop’s simple wooden door was a sign with a white lily drawn on it.

When he entered the shop, Tesilim was met with a variety of smells as he looked around at the small space, whose walls were covered by bottle-filled shelves. The center of the room was empty, and a simple, deep green rug covered the stone floor.

A counter with a small liftable part divided the room.

Behind the counter were a few more shelves, many of which were filled with dried herbs. The other things on that side of the counter were a bunch of beakers, empty glass bottles, and a faucet. Tesilim wasn’t sure why, but the faucet stood out the most out of everything.

Unrelated to the shelves were also a set of stairs leading to the second floor.

“Hey, so how does this work? Back on Earth, we never really figured out how to turn mana into water. We did figure out how to purify but not make it.” He asked while pointing at the faucet.

“Well, there are two methods for it. One way you can do it is with a transmutation rune that uses the ambient mana and turns it into water. The other way is with a rune that opens a small portal to the Water Realm and draws water from there. Either way, you need a purifying rune as well.” Lili answered while tinkering with a potion bottle in her hand.

“Holy crap! Thats awesome! What about trash? Is there a special trash realm for that?”

“It really depends on where you live and who you are. For the most part, most cities have trapped demons or fire elementals that eat or burn anything and everything. Rich folk sometimes use trash cans that lead directly to the Fire Realm and accomplish the same thing. Others also use magic to disintegrate trash.”

“Okay, okay, sounds very fantasy,” Tesilim answered before pointing at the faucet again and asking another crucial question. “So does that mean you have a mini-portal in there!?”

“No, that rune is a bit too expensive for me. I just have a regular transmutation rune. That reminds me, I will let you use my shower since your inn doesn’t have one.”

“Okay, thank you, by the way. You have been incredibly nice to me. I hope I am not impeding on you too much.”

“No, you’re fine. I try to help as many folks as I can. This world is filled with danger and evil people, so I try to make a difference where I can. Speaking of helping folks, how about we go get you some new clothes.”

Lili took him to a small clothing shop called Silk’s Trousers. The store was staffed by a human woman who went by Jen. Jen wore a simple light green and brown dress that complimented her brown hair. The woman seemed to be in her thirties, though with magic being a thing, it was hard to tell. All in all, she was a rather plain and simple woman who operated a small and simple yet crucial shop.

After a quick chat with Jen and a few alterations, Tesilim left the shop with three pairs of tan pants, white shirts, and some new socks, which they apparently did have. After their small shopping journey, he and Lili returned to the Badger’s Inn, where she helped him clean his room. Surprisingly, she didn’t use any moss cleaner, as she had said, but instead cleaned the entire thing with a wave of her hand.

With his room cleaned and the sun close to setting, they headed back to her shop, where he took a nice, long, warm shower. Afterward, they went to the Rusty Boar to get something to eat.

The food was delicious and a bit odd as he ate a steak that tasted like chicken.

After their meal and some relaxation with some cool beers, Lili walked him back to the inn before heading back to her shop. The act felt a bit weird for Tesilim, as it was usually the guy walking the girl to their homes, but considering Lili could probably kill him before he could blink, it just made sense.

Entering his now clean room and securing the door and window, Tesilim fell onto his bed, where sleep claimed him for the first time in his new world.

Lili felt good about being the nice person she currently was, especially considering everything she had done during her long life. Many people often made fun of her because of her kindness or even attempted to exploit her. Needless to say, she shrugged off any insults, and the exploiters were often never seen again.

However, even with all the people she had helped so far, there had yet to be any outworlders. However, to be fair, if the outworlders she met were any less powerful, they would not survive traveling out in the Astral. Even then, out of all the people she had met, outworlders included, none had the same energy that this Tesilim had.

She had been trying to figure out what it was throughout the whole day, but all she could tell about it was that it behaved like mana but was more powerful and unpredictable. This was problematic because Tesilim wasn’t pulling it from another source but was instead creating it from his own soul, which didn’t make sense. How was such powerful mana being created by such a weakling? She had observed Tesilim all day, and the mana was slowly being created in his soul. If the mana was at least coming from a god, it would make sense, or even some sort of Realm Patron, but no, she would have noticed such a connection. Luckily, the difference in power made it so the elf didn't notice her soul snooping, but she knew that would change sooner rather than later.

The most infuriating part was that she was so tempted to consume the energy but was worried that Tesilim would notice, so she had been holding herself back all day.

Either way, she really needed to top off her soul, and eating the air wasn’t going to cut it, so she made her way to the shadier part of the city, and sure enough, some idiot tried to mug her.

So, with a predatory smile on her face and with a flick and slash of her dagger, her white dress was splashed with crimson red. Then, touching the body for a few seconds, it disappeared as it turned to mana and refilled a quarter of her mana storage. Grimacing as she cleaned her dress by consuming the blood, she remembered why bodies sucked. They just weren’t dense enough, so she headed back to the forest to thin it out a bit.