Chapter 5: Bottle and Flame
It didn’t take long before Arthur settled on his next course of action. Without looking back, he pushed through the crowd as he began to make his way out of the plaza.
The myriad of voices behind him faded gradually, replaced by the steady tap of his sneakers on the gray cobblestone.
...
Up close, Arthur realized that the buildings around him were even taller than they’d appeared from the center of the square.
Smooth, pale walls climbed at least five stories high, broken only by rows of narrow windows and doorways framed in some kind of dark wood.
That’s right. It wasn’t metal but wood.
Unfortunately, there were no signs around in any language he recognized.
There were only strange pictographs etched into plaques above each building’s entrance. Some of them were so obscure, he had no idea what they were even trying to portray.
He kept moving, scanning each doorway as he passed, until eventually, he stopped in front of the third building on his right. The symbols carved over the door looked vaguely like a stylized bottle and a flame, and through the window, he could see rows of shelves lined with multiple glass bottles.
It was as good a place to start as any, he guessed.
He pushed the door open, and a faint chime sounded above his head as he stepped inside.
The air was cooler inside, carrying a strange mix of chemical bitterness and something sweet he couldn’t quite recognize.
Dozens of bottles and jars filled the narrow shelves around him, extending way past the giant glass window. Some glowed softly in colors he’d never seen before, vivid greens, dark violet, and deep crimson that looked almost alive, while others looked like they contained some sort of gas instead. Small labels covered each of their containers, covered in those same indecipherable glyphs as before.
"Can I help you, friend?"
Arthur barely had enough time to take in the interior of the shop when a clear, sonorous voice rang out from the shop’s far end. It seemed to come from that small wooden counter in the back he’d only glanced over.
A figure that was definitely not human slowly rose behind it, coming face to face with its new customer.
Arthur had thought he was already used to the image of the four-armed monsters that invaded Halewick. Sure, the appearance of alien lifeforms wasn’t really something humans could accept so easily, but at this point, it’s not like they had much of a choice. At the same time, he considered himself someone who adapted to new situations relatively quickly.
Still, the appearance of this new shopkeeper was certainly not a sight for sore eyes, even by his new, somewhat ’extreme’ standards.
The creature stood taller than him by a good head, wrapped in a pale tunic that did little to conceal the shape of its body. Its six thin limbs were folded neatly against its segmented thorax, accompanied by a narrow head topped with a pair of twitching antennae. Its glossy black eyes reflected the shelves behind Arthur in perfect detail, unblinking.
Arthur didn’t answer right away. He just stared at the creature for a moment, pushed back the shock in his heart, and mentally compared it to the four-armed monsters from earlier. This one was somewhat less ’humanoid’, but he couldn’t detect any hostility at least.
There was just... curiosity?
Indeed, the creature stared at him as if it was inspecting him back, before it slowly opened its jaw and asked in that perfectly clear voice as before,
"Are you new here, friend?"
Arthur nodded and shook off his lingering shock. He had come here to get information. Even if the shopkeeper looked like a human-sized mantis, things weren’t going to change.
So he looked at the insectoid shopkeeper, and after a brief moment of silence, he said,
"I am. I just came here and don’t really know how things work, so I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me."
The insect’s antennae twitched twice.
For a moment, Arthur thought that the creature was about to shoo him off since he wasn’t a customer, but surprisingly, it simply sat down on a small stool and said while waving one of its limbs,
"I see. Go ahead and ask. I don’t mind humoring you for a bit."
Arthur drew in a slow breath but didn’t stand on ceremony. He looked around the shop, at the dozens, no, probably hundreds of bottles around him, and asked
"These bottles you sell... are they healing potions?"
"Some of them, yeah," the shopkeeper answered.
"Some strengthen your body. Some restore your mind. Some... end your suffering."
Arthur let that last part slide. He wasn’t overly interested in potions, anyway. He was just curious to know what he was looking at.
After all, the more he knew about this world, the better.
He gestured toward one of the bottles, more specifically at the small label with those indecipherable glyphs on it, and asked again,
"What about this language then? Is there a way for me to read it?"
Luckily, the shopkeeper didn’t seem to mind his curiosity. It quickly realized that Arthur was a newbie, so it answered everything in one short breath,
"That’s the language of the universe, but it’s useless to you newbies right now. You can simply ignore it. You’ll find out when the time comes, anyway. As for my potions... well, let’s just say you won’t be able to afford one anytime soon."
The shopkeeper grabbed a bottle from the closest shelf next to him, one that was filled with bright red liquid, and continued,
"This is the cheapest potion in my shop. It’s a [minor healing potion] that’s priced at 12 base elemental stones. Although the price is a bit expensive for a minor potion, I can assure you it’s well worth every stone."
Arthur asked a couple more questions, all of which the shopkeeper answered without batting an eye.
Apparently, elemental stones were the currency everyone inside the game used. Whether one wanted to eat, drink, purchase a potion, buy a weapon or armor, or do anything else imaginable, it all required these elemental stones.
Arthur wasn’t sure why anyone would ever spend money to eat or drink inside a game, but this wasn’t one of his concerns right now.
According to the shopkeeper, there were many forms of elemental stones, but a newbie like him would only ever encounter those ’base-level ones’, so he "didn’t have to worry about the rest".
Arthur learned a few more things about this place too. Apparently, the fastest way to obtain elemental stones was to go out of the city and hunt monsters. Monsters often dropped items that could be exchanged for elemental stones at any shop throughout the city. The shopkeeper even urged him to bring any items he found back to him.
Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ended.
When the shopkeeper asked Arthur for his class and learned that he was a mage, the shopkeeper told him that he’d probably have better luck leveling up in the mines than going out there hunting monsters. The insectoid creature was confident that nobody was going to accept a mage in their party, which made things a bit more complicated.
Arthur didn’t really have to ask why. He just thanked the creature and left the shop with a grimace.
The answer was kinda obvious if he were honest. He was a mage that didn’t have any skills.
His highest stat was his intelligence, a stat he suspected would only be useful once he learned a skill or two.
And if his stats were really determined by his starting class, then basically every other class out there was bound to be more useful than his.
Well, clerics, enchanters, and the like were all bound to be in the same basket as him, but that didn’t make things any better.
"Fu-" Arthur really wanted to curse, but forced himself to calm down.
Things looked bad, but maybe, just maybe, they weren’t completely hopeless.
Sure, he was a mage without any skills or weapons, but this was still a tutorial, right? That voice had said so when it brought him here.
"The monsters here can’t be that strong...surely! Otherwise, wouldn’t it be impossible for mages to survive?"
The more he thought about it, the more he realized he was probably right.
He didn’t know what kind of creatures he’d have to fight, but it was probably doable.
After all, this was only a game, wasn’t it?
