I didn’t even want to continue talking to this snoopy slime anymore so I switched my attention back to Rikurn who noticed my slight move to distance myself from him which made him seem a little disappointed.

“I-its fine if you don’t want to, I just offered because I have the space… now.” His eyes were slightly watery when he said that last part and I kind of understood he was still upset at his buddy getting turned into Swiss cheese by those horns.

“Uhm, I don’t mind staying at your place Rikurn, but I need you to answer my next question very honestly…okay? My tone left no room for negotiations as Phoenix was still too young and naïve if it thought the legendary Paranoia I carry will allow me to blindly follow this kid.

Rikurn nodded as he looked into the 100% seriousness that I usually never have.

“What kind of “friends” were you and Bor?” I specifically emphasized friends as I didn’t want any misunderstandings at all!

“Huh? Uhm, Bor was like a big brother to me and he always took care of me since we became friends and we started living together to save on money because we were still too young and I…” Rikurn had his eyes slowly widen as he realized why I was so apprehensive of him and the kid turned slightly angry surprisingly.

“Jewputer! ME and BOR were NEVER like that! How could you even think that!?” There it was. The embarrassment and shock of being thought of a pervert who was trying to get a bed buddy. This anger was a lot more welcome in my opinion than any other reaction honestly, because I can understand this one. Still needs to work on my name though.

“Okay, okay! Just making sure, you should really learn to explain things better kid. So why you asking me to pay? I thought you owed me for the food and helping you out last time?” I changed the subject right away so I didn’t have to continue down that line of embarrassing questioning.

“Uh” Kid blushed again and held his head down, not a good sign. “ I kind of… don’t have any more money and I know you can hunt so I was hoping you help me out in exchange for letting you stay with me.” No stutters, the words extremely clear. This explained another thing I didn’t know about Rikurn. The kid was as fucking shameless as an old goat trying to steal candy from a baby, a lonely old goat.

“Sigh, fine but if I see you trying to pull anything, be warned Rikurn! Be warned!” I gave in as I didn’t want to go through the hassle of finding a place and I was pretty sure the kid should have some decent place though broke, it should be manageable.

He simply nodded and smiled and seemed to be a lot less nervous which reassured me that he was just looking for a roommate to leech off, it wasn’t the best plan but the most simple from what I could tell.

We had been walking the entire time and we were getting quite close as I could see the village a lot more clearly and I was stunned at what I was seeing. The black walls made of some obsidian type stone was close to 4 meters in height surrounding the village. There were several building that were three stories high that could be seen over the wall and they all seemed to be well designed and constructed out of stone with some balconies with plants potted and vines hanging and a few others with some black smoke rising out of chimney looking holes in the wall. It looked more like a city than a village and I felt really stupid imagining huts. This brought me to be quite excited at the prospect of visiting an actual city as they must look even more extravagant that some rural village like this.

“Rikurn, have you ever been to the city?” I asked hoping to find out.

“Hm, no. I never left the village before and only explored the surroundings a little with Bor. We usually stayed in the village doing chores for our neighbors or the store owners so that we could scrape by.”

I got the feeling that his life in this village wasn’t exactly of the best quality and remembering what Phoenix said, he really did seem like an orphan. ‘Poor kid’ I thought.

We walked further along until we got onto a somewhat more well taken care of dirt road as the village didn’t seem to need stone roads or have horses for all I know. We entered through the south-east gate as the village apparently had three gates being one up north, one towards west and one south-east. I couldn’t really see much yet and having walked up towards the gate, I finally saw two burly looking blue skinned men that were wearing some sort of grey plate armor that covered their chest and shins with the rest of their outfit being black leather like material. They also had spears made of wood and some red gem for the spear head held in one hand pointing towards the sky. The seemed utterly bored though but I guess considering nothing but foxhorns and goblizards lived in this direction, there wasn’t usually much to worry about.

“Stop!” The burly left guard yelled in our direction as we were a few meters from reaching them. They sized us both up and gave a suspicious stare my way which I could understand considering I wasn’t the pretty blue skin they were, though I still felt I had a nice caramel tan going but anyways.

“Rikurn? Who is this?” They seem to know the kid and was thankful at Phoenix for keeping me from ditching the thing.

“Ah, Garis, Melo, greetings” He waved at both guards with the left being called Garis and mr. right being Melo politely before going in a little closer to talk to them. I figured I’d let the kid take care of the annoying stuff while I waited to the side.

“This is a world-caster I met when I was being pursued by a couple of foxhorns and he was kind enough to save me from them.” Rikurn told him of everything I had done which I mostly understood and I just started replacing the word Nai with Foxhorn almost involuntarily as I really didn’t see how Nai could “really” represent the essence of what those creatures were like I could. Heh.

A few minutes of talking and a little bit of gloom growing between Rikurn and the guards about his buddy Bor having kicked the can, I was told to follow the laws and not to harm the people with very stern glares from Melo and Garis. I simply nodded while keeping my enjoying the fact that there was no entry fee.

Walking into the village, I grew excited as the village was nowhere near being what Earth would consider a village. This was like a mega-village or something. The buildings were created with some clear artistic flare with flowing patterns or rune like markings engraved into their walls, the stone being a yellow like stone mixed with the obsidian stone giving it a slightly majestic air as whoever built the buildings clearly loved symmetry as the yellow stones were the main part but the edges and the contours were all made with obsidian giving it a nice look overall. Nature present everywhere with small trees growing and different flowers all over the streets. People were walking around with kids in hand or guards patrolling. I was surprised that blue skin wasn’t the only skin color. There were people with slightly red hues and others that seemed closer to light green. The shock didn’t end there as I saw some kids chasing after what I can only call a small floating green ball that shined like an emerald gem as it zoomed through the street followed by three or four kids. The hair color on the other hand was spread out all over the place, orange, black, azure, vermillion, and purple just stood out everywhere.

I was like a tourist as I kept staring with eyes fully open and a big “O” on my mouth following behind Rikurn.

“Rikurn, what is that thing floating over there?” I asked him as I saw a plank of what looked to be wood just floating by as it carried a few small crates.

“That’s a carrier board; our village has a shop that has some really good rune casters that can make some really cool things.”

“Rune casters? What’s that.” I thought it might be related to world casters.

“Rune casters are kind of like a different job world casters can do, I think but you should go to the shop to find out more since it’s not something I was really taught about. They only explained it to me when I ran some errands to them.”

My mental checklist of things to learn about was completely re-hauled as I saw this beautiful village and all its cool crap smacking me in the face.

“Jupiter, I think this may be similar technology to how we did energy engravings like that on my egg.” Phoenix mentioned as it too was surprised that they had similar technology available which seemed to get it all excited. I took note to ask more about this stuff when I had the time later as right now, it was all about being as tourist-y as possible.

“Rikurn, think I can sell these foxhorn horns? “ I asked as I had managed to get a few extra horns from my week long language crash course with Rikurn.

“Yeah, we can head to the general store as they usually stock up on the horns and other stuff. “ He started leading the way past a central plaza looking area near the center of the village which had nice stone floor with an open air market type of feel to it with all the people passing through. I saw hundreds of different people, with different hair color and styles going about their day and it all felt so interesting that I nearly stopped to question everyone passing by me about what they do and who they are as my curiosity was unending.

I noticed I got a few stares which I eventually understood why as I seemed to be the only tan skinned person in the entire village according to Rikurn but it wasn’t completely bad as they were quite diversified themselves so a few stares was the most of my troubles.

We eventually made it to the general store a few minutes after passing through the central plaza which turned out to be a big two story building with that seemed very wide and took up quite a bit of space. The walls were covered in that same yellow color but with planks of dark blue wood lining up the walls vertically. A signboard with some bold lettering that I couldn’t make any sense of was on top of the door way.

“Ding” A bell chimed as we walked in and my eyes glowed as I looked around. The place was glowing with merchandise.

I started browsing through everything and even Phoenix just wanted to spread out a hundred tentacles if it could to just hoard all this stuff. We had to be slick, we had to be unperceivable.

“Ah, Rikurn! Where have you been lately, I had to actually request the delivery service to take care of a few runs I could of given to you!” A tall and lanky looking red skinned man appeared next to Rikurn with a brown-black leather apron on him. He had an aged face, which looked like he was the friendly neighborhood guy that ran the corner store. Although, he looked like a nice middle age man, I could clearly see that glint in his eyes that all folks like his have. Those cunning eyes that only a business man has, as if those eyes were granted by the devil to those who knew how to trade so that they may see the value of your very own soul, goddamn business people, screwing me out of every penny every chance they get.

“Ah! Uncle Namba, sorry, I went out hunting with Bor and things didn’t go so well so I ended up stuck outside for a week.” He said as he looked a little upset having to keep mentioning his departed friend while also staring at me when he mentioned that “week”.

I just snorted quietly at the balls this kid has, I saved your life and you think you can just accuse me of kidnapping you? Huh?