The four of us found a Grimm's Empire-style steakhouse among the shops at the edge of the free market, and when we looked in from the outside, there weren't many customers inside. c]This was exactly what we wanted to do at the moment, find a quiet place and take our time counting our money.
From the outside, one would never expect the inside to be decorated like this: the four walls of the restaurant are actually covered with a panoramic painting eighty metres long and six metres high. The entire painting is of a beautiful autumn scene outside the city.
When I entered the restaurant, around the screen that blocked the front door, my whole vision was turned upside down. The twenty-metre-long wall opposite the front door was painted with a castle that could not be seen, as if we were standing on a high hill overlooking the whole city. I could feel the grandeur of the city and how small the caravan of thunder rhinoceroses waiting at the gates to cross the hundred metre wide moat into the city was beneath the forty to fifty metre high walls. The architecture of the city was very much in the baroque style, and I could even see every block of the city, with its many pedestrians and shops, and behind the transparent windows there seemed to be fine merchandise, perhaps dresses, I guessed. The left wall is covered by a large, roaring river, which disappears from west to east at the end of the view, the waves roaring on the wide river, the hundred-metre-long boats struggling with the waves, the hundreds of metres of fishing nets catching numerous one-metre-long salmon, the faces of the fishermen in the boats beaming with joy. The wall to the right shows a vast expanse of mountains and fields, the endless fields of golden wheat and fruitful golden apple trees. My God, I wondered why I'd been eating bloody dry, hard black bread all the way.
"Ah! This is ... this seems to be a painting of the Pennine River, so that would be the city of Shrovetown, the northernmost province of the Greene Empire, I never knew it could be so beautiful! Jia, when the caravan passes through the province of Sloat, we must go and have a good stroll!" Kiger exclaimed in amazement, also infected by the huge panoramic view.
I looked back and saw the snow-capped mountains of the Pai Plateau hidden between the clouds painted on the wall at the entrance, the winding White Elephant River meeting the Prancing Horse River flowing around the entire northern foothills of the Pai Plateau beneath the snow-capped mountains, and the entire southern bank of the river covered in vast wheat fields. I was also excited to see what was in front of me, as if I were there. I wondered if this was where I was going to live. This city was really as big as Uncle Fred had said it would be.
"Um, Kiki, I heard that the Sloat Ivory Tower Magic Academy here has the most comprehensive library in the Grimm Empire, we can go and have a look." I continued, unable to take my eyes off the beautiful images on the walls, as if eating had become less important at this moment.
Kurtz was beside me with a confused look, he looked at me somewhat glumly, as if asking me again: you're going to leave eventually, to go back to live in a human city, aren't you?
"Distinguished guests from the human kingdom, if you don't mind please choose a suitable seat and sit back and enjoy, we have the best golden cider and home-brewed barley wine from the province of Sloat in the Green Empire, which should go well with the roasted leg of magic antelope and white bread recommended by the kitchen today." An orc waiter dressed in elaborate leather came out and said to us.
It was then that I noticed that there were about thirty tables set up throughout the restaurant, with some square wooden tables made for four and six people against the walls, and only the round table in the middle of the hall. The four of us chose to sit down at a table for four in the corner, simply ordered a white bread and four roasted leg of lamb, and sent the orc waiter away.
"Do you think that magic potion shop owner will regret it, I always thought our ore wasn't worth that much! Kiki." I voiced my concern, I didn't want to get into trouble in this town, I had been in a bit too much trouble lately.
Kiggy sat across from me and was ogling Kurtz with great interest. Kurtz sat with me on one side and opposite Katrina. He looked very formal at the moment, not even daring to look up at Katrina, and his face was flushed. When I asked her, she replied, "No, he may not think he'll make any money from the ore, but he won't regret it. I'm sure the royal amethyst in these ores will be worth about twenty gold coins if they are refined and ground into royal amethyst powder. Also, my reminder to everyone, we made money on our first investment, I paid for the technology, you paid for the capital, we had agreed on a split before."
"Ah!" Katrina exclaimed in surprise as she had not expected to make an unexpected profit from just one shopping trip.
Kiger placed the money bag down on the table and divided the twenty gold coins into three, Katrina got four, Kurtz and I got eight, she collected the rest for herself and said to us, "This meal is on me, the change will not be divided."
Kurtz and I had mixed feelings when we looked at the eight gold coins in front of us, not expecting that Kiger would help us out in such a way that would solve our immediate predicament, such a large sum of money could almost make an average family of three live comfortably for three or five years. At the current market price, even if you live in a human city, if you don't have to worry about a place to live, fifteen silver coins per month can make a good living for an average family of three, not guaranteeing that you can eat meat every day, but you can guarantee that you will have white bread every day and beef once in a while for a few days. And we were worried about raising fifteen silver coins just a moment before.
"Ja, this is what we got?" Kurtz couldn't believe his eyes a little and rubbed them hard.
I put my arm around his shoulders and said, "Nah, this is what we got for our investment, and hey, is Kiki a mine-selector?"
"Hey, I said all you see is your orc friends, do you never think of me?" I'm not a mine-selector, I'm also a junior magic potion master, and as a magic potion master, if you can't even recognize all the ingredients for making magic potions, that would be the biggest dereliction of duty. In fact, I originally planned to select some rich ore from the secret silver mine and melt some secret silver ingots, which was the fastest way to make money that I could. I am naturally sensitive to the magic elements in ores. I just didn't expect to find these ruby companion ores on the ground, let alone that they actually contain royal amethyst, it's our good luck and it feels really good to make money."
"You're a magical apothecary? So you can make wound medicine?" I asked with some excitement.
Kiger gave me a blank look and said, "You can keep your voice down, I can hear you. It's kind of my secret and I don't want to make it known to the whole caravan and dance troupe. But then again, I can only make the worst grade of secondary life potion, and do you know how many strains of blood-stopping herbs and silver-leaf herbs it takes to make a bottle of this life potion? The cost is definitely as big as you can't imagine."
Kiger turned his head to stare at Kurtz and said with narrowed eyes, "Your little orc friend seems to be very interested in my maid, but your tell him that from now on, we are teammates of one team, and I declare that Katarina and I are officially joining your squad and will follow you into the northern foothills of the Pai plateau for hunting adventures. I don't want to lose my life in the wilderness because my teammate wandered off, wouldn't that be a wrongful death?"
"But ... but we can't even take care of ourselves, it's not like going into the wilderness is completely free of danger, there's no way I can guarantee your safety!" I was sweating on my forehead, thinking what could these two dainty young ladies do? Singing and dancing during their daily breaks in the wilderness. This wasn't a normal camping trip, we were meant to survive in the wilderness, and even if advanced magical beasts rarely appeared in these zones, there were ordinary magical beasts that ate meat, weren't there?
The side of Kurtz was, to be honest, a bit ducky. In fact, the curiosity about Katarina is just the curiosity of the wolf's nature, the beast people can never suppress their own nature, but will often rely on their nature to do things, like or dislike is just a thought. I know Kurtz is always looking for ways to control his nature, because I'm his friend. Kurtz was chanting "We're teammates! We're teammates! We're teammates!" Then gradually he calmed down and looked up at Kiger and Katrina more naturally, but still nervous and unable to speak. I gave Cuz an encouraging look.
Kig snickered at me, "Who needs your protection, when the time comes you can't tell who's protecting who. I just want to go into the wasteland to find some primary magical herbs and magical ores, how could I be in danger? You wouldn't be unaware that magical apothecary is actually a life occupation for magicians, would you? An apprentice 7th level magician joining your squad, don't you feel honoured now, come on! I'll give you a chance to kiss my toes!"
Kiger's jokes about our relationship grew in scale. It was always so reckless that I was embarrassed to pick it up. She was usually quiet and calm in front of outsiders, like a pool of unruffled autumn water, with a faint mist floating on the surface in the late autumn, always close and far away so that people could not see it and could not understand it. But after really getting in touch with her and becoming her friend, I realized that she was a total geek, a rotten girl who liked to dig into other people's privacy. She would often ask me awkward questions, and I would sometimes get annoyed and ignore her, or just shout, "Why don't you ask your brother that question?
She would always ask me with a straight face: Are we still friends?
Kiger's temperament was sometimes directly related to the way she dressed, like when she wore formal dance dresses or court dresses in the caravan, when she would put on formal make-up and dress herself up in a way that would make her charming and desirable, when she was a little siren, a vixen full of infinite charm, when she tended to have a quiet and calm, iceberg-like aristocratic She danced like a strange, sultry flower from hell, beautiful but also a lustful woman. I don't usually go back to watch Kiger dance, even if I have nothing else to do, it's too sadistic.
When she is usually dressed innocently, she deliberately hides her face, when she is much more approachable as a whole. Kiger doesn't like to talk to strangers, she prefers to stand quietly on the side with no presence, but with people she knows well she tends to be like the geeky girl who wants to talk without being surprised, and at this point she doesn't forget to say something to me: "But you're not going into the wilderness without any weapons, are you? "
When Kig said she was a magical potion master, I wondered if she was a magician, but when I heard her say that, I wondered why you didn't go to a magical academy if you were a magician. Now it felt like Kiger might be a good teammate!
I couldn't help but wonder why I was running into so many wizards in this caravan. I even wonder if there are really as few wizards in the Grimm Empire as people say?
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