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We finally got through the entrance, and we reached the big city inside, everywhere it was finely paved with beautiful colorful ceramic, the houses were big, most of them being three floors or up to four floors, and beautifully painted, there were many stairs leading to different streets all around the entire city, and we saw several large towers as well, which seemed to have different flags, are these Guild Towers? This wasn't at all like an independent sect. The enormous walls surrounded the entire city, they were made of strong and magically reinforced bricks, and there were large flags of the Frost Tear Kingdom erected in all four cardinal directions within the enormous and thick walls. I can see that these walls have never been pierced before, and even a war against a giant army of lizardmen might not be that much of a problem if they can hole themselves inside this giant city with such enormous walls.
It is as if the entire city which was bursting with people everywhere was also an enormous strategic fortress, with so many people, soldiers, sect disciples, and resources that they would be able to hold into the enemy's army for a long time. I guess this is why the Orange Forest Duchy, which has such an innocent name has the surname of "The Shield of the Kingdom", because it directly protects the capital from the vast wilderness all around this place, any enemy will always target this place first, even more with those enticing oranges.
"Wow, this entire place is big! It reminds me a lot of the big Cities of the Midgard Continent! And the streets are all beautiful as well, the floor is finely paved with ceramic, the houses are all mostly over three floors tall so they can harbor a lot of people, and the streets even have lights made out of magical artifacts that are illuminated through the infusion of magic! There are no mountains around here big enough that are being currently extracted, so they probably exported all of this… Damn, must be nice to belong to a Kingdom that has a port as their capital…" Said Rakasha. "Look at the market! They got so many things! Been a while since I saw so many different Spirit Stones being sold in such big batches! Wait! Are those magical alloys?!"
The old Blacksmith began walking around the Market with us as we also decided to enter this area to explore more of the place, it was the most obvious place to explore first, as it was filled with the most people and also had the most products than anywhere else, Markets often spoke about a city a lot, if you saw it filled with people and selling a lot of different products, with a lot of people buying them, then it meant the town had a stable economy and probably it was going up too, but if the Markets were badly threatened, nasty, and with barely any people browsing around, with barely any product other than old antiques being sold by despite people selling their stuff for money to eat another day, then they're not exactly in a good economy.
And this one market was… beautiful, it had a lot of merchants selling their products, we were able to see many carriages opened completely and showing many goods being sold, Rakasha moved forward, and he quickly watched a large merchant, an old and bearded mountain giant selling Spirit Stones, which were shiny and colorful stones of various elements, they were all pilled up because they were way too many, this is a precious resource, but this man was selling them by the kilogram! Where could he find so many spirit stones at such cheap prices? I was definitely going to buy a lot, they're very useful to craft equipment and magic technology artifacts to facilitate our daily lives.
The red stones were fire spirit stones, the blue ones were water spirit stones, the green ones were wind spirit stones, the brown ones were earth spirit stones, and there were also a few yellow-colored ones, which were the most sold even more than the fire and water spirit stones, light spirit stones! These can illuminate a place even better than fire spirit stones by infusing mana into them, they work like light bulbs. And if they're combined together, they can form circuits to give energy to even more elaborate artifacts, in this place there are even small factories producing items, so they're already in a state of industrialization using magic.
"Drake, I am buying a few!" Said Rakasha. "I want to craft so many things with these but all of them were so expensive back then… Young man, where did you get so many at this price?" Wondered Rakasha.
"I came from the port with my carriage." Said the bearded Mountain Giant, Rakasha called him "young man" because he seemed to be around a hundred years old while Rakasha was way past 250 years of age… aging for giants is a bit wacky, as they can live up to 300 years, or even more. "There was a big ship that came directly from Nidavellir, the Continent of Elves a few days ago, it was selling spirit stones on large quantities, so I bought a few, the dwarves said that they got these to spare in their continent and even use them as paperweight!"
"W-What? The Realm of Dwarves! I have only gone there once…" He said. "But I barely visited a few port cities, to think they found another big mine of spirit stones! Those bastards got a massive amount of magic technology that far surpasses most other continents!"
"Yeah, I agree, those dwarves are filthy rich." Said the Mountain Giant. "So you're buying or what?"
"I am also buying some!" I said, as I quickly moved near the shop. I couldn't miss the opportunity to get myself some spirit stones of fire, water, wind, earth, and light! I would buy them all, but the merchant would probably be too surprised and so the people around, so I will buy only a few kilograms for now.
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