Chapter 241

Sitting on his knees, feeling the hot sun on his back, with his arms sore from being held straight up for hours, Nick decided he might have been punished enough.Sure, starting a fight with his brother inside his new room hadn’t been very smart. He could admit that. But they only scuffed the floors a little before they were stopped. A little property damage never hurt anyone, right?

Eyeing Devon, who was accepting his punishment as if it were completely natural, he decided that keeping his mouth shut would be the smart move just this once.

Eventually, after another half-hour of enduring this ridiculous physical punishment, the living sword walked by and grunted. “Alright, get out of here. And don’t try anything that stupid again.”

Nick was on his feet and sprinting toward the bathroom he sensed had been prepared for him in a flash, eager to escape that embarrassing memory.

Quickly undressing, he slipped into the still warm water and looked at it curiously. There was some mana here, although not aspected mana.

It took him a few moments to realize what it was. Someone—most likely Sonya—had cast a temperature stabilization spell, probably linked to the comfort of whoever was in contact with the water.

It was a subtle piece of work, so unobtrusive that if he didn’t possess such fine senses, he would have missed it and believed himself simply lucky to have arrived before the water cooled too much.

“So she really is a maid,” he murmured. He’d observed during his ‘diplomatic’ trip through Oakenhallow and Honeyton how valuable people with support and quality-of-life magic were, especially if their class was tied to service, but he hadn’t realized just how far that could go.

All of a sudden, he reevaluated Sonya. He’d known she couldn’t have been just a simple maid, of course. Not if his brother was so obviously smitten with her. But he hadn’t even considered what a prodigy in household magic might be capable of.

At a high enough level, he suspected that a maid class would be quite formidable. The protection of a household should come under its scope, after all. And with the System, anyone could become powerful enough if they were committed.

The soaps he’d been given felt almost sinfully luxurious, and he delighted in scrubbing every nook and cranny of sweat and dust away. The Blessed Hunt had already cleansed him, so there wasn’t much left to remove, but his modern sensibilities insisted that just because he’d been washed in magical rain, it didn’t mean he was as clean as he could be with proper soap.

Once finished, Nick relaxed further, closing his eyes and extending his mind beyond its physical limits. had technically stayed the same since he acquired it, but his connection to spiritual magic had not, and the level of detail he could now perceive became almost uncomfortable.

He really didn’t want to know exactly the level of lust his brother felt toward the pretty maid, nor the delighted affection and willful ignorance she had flowing through her, but there wasn’t much he could do to avoid them.

That wasn’t something he’d ever be bothered by, but Devon was now the Heir of a Barony. There were certain expectations about who he’d choose as his future bride. Hell, their parents were probably about to receive the first few letters testing the waters regarding engagements.

Not that they would force anything like that on him, no. The two of them had married for love, and they wouldn’t impose a wife on Devon just because some old fogeys thought that was the done thing.

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But to Sonya, that had to seem like an insurmountable barrier. She didn’t know Eugene and Elena, and Devon probably hadn’t even begun to understand where her reticence came from. If he even suspected she knew about his feelings and wasn’t opposed to being with him.

“Man, teenage drama almost makes me miss religious strife. That was less complicated.”

Chuckling at that absurdity, Nick finally got out of the water, drying himself with a snap of his fingers. Water gathered into a single globe from each droplet on his skin and hair, then splashed back into the tub, leaving him to put on the clothes that had been prepared for him without needing to use towels.

Eyeing them curiously, Nick realized these probably belonged to Devon from when he first arrived in Alluria. His brother had grown a lot in the past few months, which meant almost everything he’d left Floria with was now too small, but it fit Nick just fine.

By the time he was done, the sky was starting to darken, and he could hear Sonya bustling below him in the kitchen, preparing their dinner.

Nick had planned to sign up for the exam today, but since he had been forced to volunteer for a shopping trip that would likely take him near the tower tomorrow, he would do it then.

“The first thing you have to know is that everyone is trying to scam you,” Devon told him in a deathly serious tone, tilting his face so shadows hit him just right to give him the right gravitas.

The atmosphere was spoiled as Sonya slapped his shoulder, rolling her eyes. “That is not true. Your brother has just been taken in by smooth-talking merchants too many times before I brought him to a decent blacksmith.”

Sheepishly grinning, Devon patted the sword by his side. Nick had noticed it earlier, as little escaped his senses, but he was intrigued to discover that there was a connection between his brother and his blade. One that went beyond what he was used to seeing among soldiers and that had gained some spiritual solidity.

“Well, I’m pretty good at handling scammers,” he said after a moment, eyeing the nearly empty streets. It was quite early in the morning—in fact, the sun had risen less than half an hour ago—and according to Sonya, it was the best time to find some hidden gems before the daily rush snatched up everything of value.

But Nick wasn’t just interested in buying new clothes, though he could admit that he would need some once he began attending the Tower’s courses.

He was also looking for buyers for the hundreds of thunderhoof corpses he had stacked in his ring.

As things stood, Nick only had fifteen gold coins, if he included the value of his silvers and coppers. It was a significant sum for a teenager, enough to elevate him well above the average citizen, but still far from what he needed.

He hadn’t forgotten about the orichalcum, and while he wouldn’t be certain until he saw it himself, he was quite sure its properties were exactly what he needed to fuse the divine relics into a single artifact.

“Oh, let’s go there. Miss Perry always has some good-quality underthings. She makes them herself, you know?” Sonya said as she started walking toward a stall that had just finished setting up its wares.

A motherly old woman greeted them with a warm smile, crinkling her eyes in delight when Sonya approached to hug her. “Oh, you little honeybun. So sweet.”

“Miss Perry,” Sonya said as she pulled back, “I’m here with a mission of great importance.” Her tone was full of mock seriousness, and the old woman picked up on it without missing a beat.

“Why, you’ve come to the right place. When you need them most, Perry’s underthings are always there to support you.” She replied, and Nick had to hide a snort at the pun.

Sonya nodded with the appropriate seriousness. “You see, my friend here only has three outfits, and he’s a shoo-in for the magic tower’s exam. This sad state of affairs cannot stand!”

A dangerous glint appeared in the old woman’s eyes, and Nick knew she’d smelled a big deal. Although Sonya hadn’t directly said he was a noble, anyone who could take the tower’s exam was either one or considered important enough that it didn’t make much difference to common folk. Additionally, the young maid was known to be part of Grandmaster Wolfram’s household, which gave her words much more weight than they would normally have.

Basically, Nick had been outed as a rich cut of meat and was thrown to a pack of hungry wolves.

What followed were hours of bargaining across various stalls and shops, during which he had to use every trick in the book to avoid getting steamrolled.

Nick was man enough to admit that it was only thanks to his unnaturally high CHA that he managed to keep something in his wallet. He was able to completely ignore most brute-force attacks where the merchants tried to bury him in compliments and sleazy-seller babble, and got to the core of the issue every time, comparing quality, quantity, and craftsmanship like a pro.

By the time they exited the cobbler’s shop, having commissioned three new pairs of enchanted boots, even Nick was beginning to feel tired. Meanwhile, his companions looked at him with a mix of awe and shock.

“That was fantastic!” Sonya gasped, holding her hands clasped in front of her as if she’d seen a street performer pull off a particularly tricky stunt.

“Man, I didn’t know you had it in you,” Devon said, wiping away a tear of manly pride with his finger while looking at him like a father watching his son win a sports competition.

Nick rolled his eyes so hard he almost feared they would fall out. It had been a fairly busy morning, but not as hectic as they were making it out to be.

To his satisfaction, he managed to find a few interested buyers for his thunderhoof collection, although everyone told him to come back in the evening or go straight to a slaughterhouse in the north where most edible monsters were processed and sold wholesale, which was near the Adventurer’s Guild.

A few were doubtful he really had the goods, but once again, Sonya’s presence as a known part of Wolfram’s household gave him credibility, which was why he hadn’t complained at all while she dressed him up like a doll.

It was a bit annoying, but she was making life much easier for him, so he put up with it.

From the looks of it, Devon had noticed too, because he was giving the girl sappy looks and seemed seconds away from sighing in lovesickness.

Fortunately, he was spared the sight because they turned a corner, and Nick’s breath left him in a gasp.

He’d seen the Magic Tower from a distance before, but it was truly a magnificent sight. It seemed to stretch for a thousand feet into the sky, with its spire reaching so high that one might be forgiven if they believed it touched the heavens.

More importantly, magic thrummed all around it, thick and heavy. And most of all, alive.