This marketplace had more townspeople than travelers due the children and their supervision who played about in the large central fountain. Somehow, though, every business seemed to have plenty of patrons. The economy was not quite booming here but it was probably quite steady seasonally.
I had no reason to really buy anything but I did have my insecticide alloys appraised before buying a couple hundred pounds of iron scrap. At the leather working facility I had my cave rat hides appraised and then traded for some of their higher quality reptilian stock. After that, I just bought something to eat at the tavern and hang out for an hour or two listening to local and merchant gossip.
Now was apparently nearing the end of their tourist trade season as autumn started setting in with its cold. There were few complaints about things that mattered like wildlife or weather and most people were discussing taxes and politics in a more or less friendly manner. There were not any reasons that I could find for me to be here other than simply passing through, but it was honestly a wonderful place to stop.
I spent some time hanging out by the fountain just watching people live their lives. After a while, the children who could tell from my disproportionate head and face that I was not like everyone else started walking up and talking to me. Once they finally got around to asking me questions- in a surprisingly large group- they eventually realized I was in their general age range.
Yours truly was almost instantly made the center of attention for all of the town's children not at the front most market. When I started throwing out words like ancestry and giants, the kids started looking up to me as if I was everyone's big brother. It was kind of cute.
The spend time with people my age I put on a magic show of sorts containing by summoning grass golems in various shapes and sizes for the kids to play around on. I even made a few blunt and rounded grass swords for the older kids to play with. Which, of course, turned into everybody wanting these toys and then to fight against the golems.
Kids in this world had a thousand times more freedom than kids back on Earth. When a powerful mage asked the local parents here if their children could have a mock war with little grass people, they said yes. I was not even questioned, they simply gave the okay after having been watching us for the past half-hour.
For safety's sake I gave the kids swords and shields or spears for reach and protection as well as my own 'spell' for three-hour grass armor. I also turned the golems into slow moving humanoids that were skinny and weak like stick figures. Their main attacks were to simply reach out and grab or push the kids but they could also sweep kick low at random and jump ten feet straight up in the air.
I ended up spending my time small-talking the moms and older sisters of the kids while they fought their battle until my own mana finally ran out. After that, I bid my farewells and continued on my stroll.
Should the opportunity ever present itself, this was the kind of place that I would want to take Silt and Silk for a week as a simple vacation. Even Gryn and his team and my parents would enjoy a leisure visit to such a location. The prime market for herbs was merely a side benefit.
People here were polite and kind, if you made eye contact you simply nodded a greeting to one another and if you bumped into one another you took turns apologizing until you break down in small talk. This was what I imagined somewhere that was actually peaceful would be like. Even people who probably were not from here carried an infectious smile contracted from the children running about.
After wandering around the riverside near the back of town for a while I decided it was time to be one my way and prayed my way from the river to the road. After wondering if my pious behavior actually amounted to anything, I opened my status to view my Piety only to find that it was just under two thousand. Whether or not my prayers actually did anything, the altar and my few works in blessings had raised my Piety stat exponentially.
Piety was now my highest stat, but I knew very little about it. The only thing trying to find information did was bring up something like an appraisal window that said 'The Piety stat determines the likelihood a god will answer your prayers'.
With this little information I could safely assume that a Piety of one thousand roughly equaled a chance of one percent.
Laughing in spite of myself as I reach the road and get back on my wisps, I ride off down the road at my usual twenty miles per hours. The scenery of thick trees and shrubbery did not blur by at all, providing my Agility and I plenty of time to see anything of interest as we passed. Sadly, there was not much of interest to actually find besides a few small game.
Those were of pretty much zero value to me. I would be interested in something like a metafly for breeding purposes but otherwise I already had a large quantity of quality goods on me. Otherwise, mundane animals would only be used as resources in an emergency. I had more than enough experience points for somebody my age.
I road through the night while meditating, maintaining a certain level of awareness in the hoverboard itself to use my wisps' magic and life detection abilities. This time, I would not be carelessly thrown at an enemy without any warning. Although, I did not even need to bother because no dangerous forms of life ever came up.
It was not until late in the morning after skirting around another small village that raised large numbers of cattle. Most of it was mundane stuff like cows and horses and pigs but there were a few variations as well as a few magic beasts. None of them were above D rank quality in material, though.
Now after half an hour of speeding down the highway passed the village I found myself coming across an odd scene. There were twelve poorly equipped outlaws having a stand-off with eight decently armed and armored guards in front of two large covered wagons. The pair of young and old men driving each wagon made up for the different in numbers, though.
Everybody but one outlaw and one guard were wielding crossbows and aiming them at each other from about thirty yards away from one another. The bandit not holding a crossbow had two large balls of bright orange flame in his hands while the unarmed guard was holding crackling balls of charged plasma to intercept the fireballs. The situation was fairly obvious.
The bandits bit off more than they could chew attacking equal numbers with better equipment overall and their most magic capable was threatening to burn the wagons while a magic capable guard was once again forcing the situation into a stalemate.
The guards were dressed in a splinted leather jerkin and simple matching chaps while wielding imbued crossbows. The bandits were wielding not only normal but even old and shoddy crossbows while wearing layers of furs for armor. They looked more like savages than bandits after the larger and more organized numbers that I had previously seen.
Sadder than anything was that you could tell the guards were holding their main mages in check and the bandit was also an amateur. Neither of them used more than two fireballs to try and gain a numbers advantage on the other. In the time it took me to snap my fingers I could produce thirty 'base' fireballs- the double quintupled flames.
Against ten people, I was too unknown to face opponents who would consider themselves stalemated by my presence alone and would blindly attack. I had no idea what such a high-tension situation was like, but the wisps still had no problem ignoring my commands to stop from three football fields away and blindly rushing forward.
When I tried to resist manually by leaning and pulling backward, the wisps simply took off into the air to fly around the bend in the road over the large wagons filling much of the road and their guards to open their mouths on the board and release me from twenty feet overhead behind enemy lines.
Now, imagine being the bandits and guards looking up from their stalemate to see me flying by overhead and then falling.
*