Evren had spent the last week repairing the gates and looting the warehouse district. The northern gate didn't need to be repaired, but it wouldn't open either. Evren instead made the eastern gate the one he would use. He couldn't lock the gate from the outside, but he could bar it from the inside. He had used the buildings near the gates as supplies for the repairs.
The warehouse district consisted of a lot of rotten food surplus, a large supply of decayed wood, and textiles that crumbled at a touch. He did, however, find a large supply of metals and coal, along with some large bones, claws and fangs or tusks. It wasn't from monsters that died on site, they were properly stored and were probably usable in some way.
He was now repairing the things that needed to be repaired in the shop. The brick door to the furnace was still good, but the iron fittings and hinges were rusted shut. The bellows for the forge and furnace both needed to be repaired. The grinding wheel had a broken axel and foot pedal with rusted hinges as well.
Evren applied oil to all the rusted joints and hinges while he went through the stock pile of weapons and armor that was kept in storage. There were six swords, varying in size from a gladius to a long sword, two war hammers, two maces, one of which was a spiked ball on the end of a rod which Evren got a little excited about. There were four hatchet sized axes and seven daggers of varying lengths. In addition, there was one halberd and one solid metal rod about 180 cm long.
Among the armor pieces were two breast plates, two sets of matching chain armor sets and one leather armor set that appeared to have been made for a woman. All of the items seemed to be made out of iron or steel as there were none made from the blue or green metal. The suits were also functionally crafted, without a lot of embellishments.
Evren tried going around the shop looking for false floors or hidden cabinets to see if he could find any special pieces, like he had previously. He wasn't as lucky this time. Still, he got a chance to organize and clean the shop. He took all the rusted pieces and added them to the scraps barrel and disposed of the rotten leather by depositing it in a nearby empty house.
He grabbed one of the swords from the pile of usable ones, approximately the same length as the one he had made and drew it from its scabbard to get a feel for it. "Oh yeah, this feels much better than the one I made. It's lighter, the center of balance is closer to the handle. Oh! There's even one of those grooves down the side. I knew I forgot something!" Putting the sword away and attaching the scabbard to his waist, Evren decided to go looking for books.
The first place Evren headed towards was the Lord's Manor in the southern portion of the town. He passed through two broken down gates along the way, the first one apparently put in place to separate the classes, and the second one outside the Lord's Manor itself. It was obvious from the skeletons that a fight had taken place here. The door had been left open and a series of seven nooses hung along the wall, with bones littering the grounds beneath them.
Evren peered inside and said, "Uh huh. Looted." Everything was in disarray. Tables were overturned, chairs were knocked on their back, painters were torn from the walls, and books had been thrown on the floor, and burned. When Evren saw the books he sighed, "Now that's just in bad taste." As he searched around the rest of the manor, he only found a couple more books, none of them helpful. But he did find two maps that showed areas he didn't have maps for. One a route between Plinth and Aernide. He gathered them up and set them in his basket, the ends poking out of the top.
He left the manor and went around back to the stablers, but that had been burned down, no wagon parts here. He checked around the other upper-class houses and met with similar results. Furniture in disarray, expensive items taken, and books burnt. Evren was really beginning to dislike the Holy State. By the time he had completed his tour of book burning houses, he had only gotten two maps and one book that was worthwhile. The book was simply a history book for the Aernide continent.
Evren headed towards the specialty shops found along the south-west road, many had been broken into and looted, but the items taken versus the items left was small. Still, many of those items were in no condition to be useful. Evren did get a lucky break. Between two shops, he saw a doorway with a chair on its side near it. Figuring it to be a back-alley shop, he went inside and found it to have been untouched by looters. Better yet it contained books, flasks, oddities in jars, weird, pointed hats and rolled up scrolls among other things.
When Evren entered, he noticed that everything had a fine layer of dust on it, but was otherwise in a decent condition, similar to farmhouse he had previously entered. When Evren entered the back room, he giggled as he found more eccentric items stocked up. Evren found a sack that seemed in good condition and began stuffing it with books. Some of the books were in a language he couldn't read, so he left those on the counter near the scrolls, which he couldn't read either. When the sack reached its limit, Evren placed a few more books into his basket, not wanting to push his luck with the weight and tear it.
The remaining books he stacked up on the counter near the ones he couldn't read. He would come back for them later, even the ones he couldn't read because he might be able to find a reference somewhere that would help him to translate them. Happy with his stash of goods, Evren headed back to the shop he would use as his base. He made his way to the apartment above the shop, reminding himself to fix the stairs soon.
He set the bag and basket down near the simple wooden bed and started a fire in the stove to cook a meal. He laid out a pot over the fire, added water, dried vegetables and meat, and added seasonings. It was a simple meal that made the best use of his dried ingredients, but he had eaten similar meals so often, his expression was bland as he ate. The first book he grabbed to read was a continuation of the basic book of spells he had found in the first town.
As he flipped through it, he got excited about one of the spells, and quickly read through it. As he committed everything to memory, he held his left hand in front of himself with the palm facing upward and chanted, "light". A globe of light appeared in his hand, illuminating the darkening room he was in. Excited as he was, he stared right at the light as it came into existence, "Ah dang it!" he said as he brought his hands to his eyes, to which he cried out again as the light globe got right into his eyes, "OWW!" he cried. He tilted his head back with both eyes closed and placed the palm of both of his hands down on his thighs.
Cautiously he opened his eyes and blinked them several times. He raised his left hand up off his thigh and the room was illuminated again, but he couldn't see much past the spots in his eyes. As his eyes cleared up, he looked around the room with his palm facing forward. He tried closing his fist to see if it would put out the light, but the source was not on the palm of his hand, it was above it. If he cupped both of his hands and held them together it would reduce the light in the room, but some would leak out from between the cracks.
"Ok, how do you turn this thing off now?" he said as he turned back to the book. "Hmm… cut off magic to spell. So, just like the flame spell." The light turned off immediately, and Evren said, "Still feels like I'm trying to stop pissing mid-stream though." Evren looked to the ceiling, put his right hand over his right eye, and focusing on a rafter chanted, "light". The globe of light appeared, blinding his left eye a bit because he quickly looked away.
"That certainly is both convenient and inconvenient at the same time." He said as he continued reading the book.