Much later on he walked around the town square. The words kept echoing in his mind. They kept referring to him as a savior. They kept saying something about mother fate and of this world, like he was supposed to be some prophesied hero who would fix everything.
'I didn't ask for this,' he thought bitterly. 'I didn't ask to be anyone's savior. I just want to go home.'
But the book's promise lingered. Follow these instructions and you may return home, by doing horrible deeds and offering yourself up.
Was it worth it? Was any of this worth it?
He held no certainty about what lay ahead. Yet following the events that had unfolded, after witnessing how the princess had conducted herself, the path forward seemed far easier to justify and undertake.
Then someone bumped into him.
"Oh mister, it's you!"
A girl, a merchant, the one who wore that hat. Goodness gracious, what was she doing here after everything he went through? He gave her a quick glance and already wrote her off inside his head as a nuisance. She stood a meter away, her figure framed by the dim light filtering through the alley. Pants with suspenders hugged her frame, the straps climbing up to meet a crisp white button shirt beneath. A singular large cap sat upon her head, its brim deep enough to obscure her eyes entirely, leaving only the faint suggestion of features hidden in shadow.
"Hey, don't ignore me!"
He continued, hands in his pockets, replying while inspecting some bottles of rum. It seemed to be the only stall open.
"That's the second time I've done that today."
She pouted under the cap.
"Oh yeah, and that ring of yours was fucking useless. The god of commerce called it practically useless. Hah, could you believe that?" He mused.
She waved her finger dismissively.
"That's where you get it wrong, my dear patron. As long as it has its inherent value to be bought, it is useful."
"The value of seven copper."
"Now get away before I hand you over to the authorities."
"On what basis!"
"Everything."
The streets of Port Vexis were desolate. There were some people walking but most of the shops were closed. He could see a line somewhere in the distance, further into the town. People, a lot of people with worn clothes and grim expressions. It was weird. This was not the slum area.
He walked toward the stall, bottle still in hand.
"Hey, you haven't paid for that!"
The merchant girl yelled after him.
Lucid stopped and turned. The person behind the stall just waved his hand as if to shoo him away dismissively.
'The hell? Free stuff.'
'That domain has really taken a toll on this town.'
Turning away triumphantly and exactly a silver chip richer, he couldn't help but wear a grin as he walked closer to the crowd. The girl walked beside him, matching his stride until they reached a line. There was a long queue of people, old and young, male and female, elderly, all standing in front of a table where papers were stacked high.
A nobleman sat behind it.
He was hiring people.
As Lucid's eyes adjusted from walking out of the dark alleyway, he saw an elderly woman. Her hands signed weakly at a piece of parchment. As soon as the pen left the paper, her hand got snagged and she was given equipment that seemed to be for some kind of labor.
A nobleman was mass hiring desperate people after what had gone down in that domain, after the days due to the magistrates incompetence and general decline of the economy of the town. He was feasting off their desperation, taking advantage of the situation.
"This is..." Lucid gritted his teeth.
The merchant girl beside him observed it quietly.
"If a choice came to you one day to give up a kingdom for the sake of your town's prosperity, would you have done it?"
Lucid was caught off guard. Before he could respond with anything he looked to his right.
She was gone.
A feminine voice emerged from the depths of an adjacent alleyway. He turned leftward to find her. A woman materialized from the shadows, her appearance striking. A crisp white shirt sat tucked beneath black trousers, while an overcoat draped across her forearm like an afterthought. Her eyes were dark and her hair, equally dark, was bound back with meticulous precision.
Recognition stirred within him. This was the figure from the shoreline, the one who had spoken of prolonged ventures and sustained endeavors rather than fleeting pursuits. He recollected the conversation with startling clarity now. The implications coalesced in his thoughts. Did she maintain some form of alliance with Valen? Or perhaps with the merchant also known as the generous scoundrel?
'What pattern am I following?' he wondered, his internal voice tinged with bewilderment. 'Since arriving in this place, I have encountered nothing but peculiar individuals, each more enigmatic than the last.'
The accumulation felt deliberate somehow, orchestrated by forces he did not comprehend. No mere coincidence could account for this convergence of strange acquaintances.
"Hello," he managed to say.
She only looked ahead and spoke.
"Did you meet him?"
He didn't reply.
She took his absence of words as confirmation and nodded.
She crossed her arms and spoke, her voice sharp and elegant.
"Take away structure, take away currency, and what remains is the strong preying on the weak."
"Would you say the town prior to its collapse would be the same as this noble hiring desperate people for hard dangerous labor?"
"No of course not, that's..."
"It is. That is the essence of it. You strip away the veneer of civilization and see its pure form."
"Exploitation."
"He is not only buying their time but their faith that in the future they will be employed once again for future earnings."
"Yet can you blame these people? Can you blame the nobleman for taking advantage of the situation?"
"Yeah! You don't hire someone who is almost retirement age!"
She looked at him with brief mild intrigue and smiled, uncharacteristically for her sharp features.
"You sound just like him."
She turned to depart.
"If you see him, tell him to abandon the mission and tell him to go back. It's worthless."
He observed as she receded into the shadows between structures, her silhouette dissolving until nothing remained but the impression of her passage.
Lucid remained motionless, surveying the assembled queue of desperate individuals. The elderly woman struggled with equipment that resembled a pickaxe, her frail arms trembling beneath its weight. A young boy, scarcely more than seven years of age, inscribed his name with hands that quivered from either fear or hunger. A women with two children grasping at her garments stepped forward, her visage one of absolute desperation.
The nobleman behind the table cultivated a smile. It was pleasant, the variety that failed to reach his eyes. He collected each signature with the indifference of someone cataloging inventory, treating these bound lives as mere entries in a ledger rather than human existence surrendered.
'This is what transpires when everything collapses,' Lucid reflected inwardly. 'When the foundations maintaining societal cohesion disintegrate. When individuals grow so famished they will forfeit their body merely to persist another cycle of days.'
He examined the bottle gripped in his hand, then redirected his gaze toward the assembled masses.
He resolved to intervene.
He proceeded toward the line with deliberate intention, his stride carrying weight and purpose.
"Hey, you," he called toward the nobleman, his voice cutting through the ambient despair.
The nobleman glanced upward, his expression shifting into something patronizing. "And whom might you be, commoner? Someone seeking employment, perhaps? I'm afraid the positions are reserved for those willing to labor without complaint."
"What exactly transpires here?" Lucid inquired, his tone deliberately casual despite the tension coiling within him.
"What transpires?" The nobleman's laugh was thin, brittle. "What transpires is commerce, my peculiar friend. I provide employment and fruit for your most honest labour."
As the nobleman spoke, something flickered across Lucid's perception. The Chain of Heart trait activated without conscious effort, and he perceived something beneath the surface. Threads of fate, yes, but something else. Probability woven into the contracts themselves. Mortality rates inscribed in microscopic text at the very bottom, hidden clauses that ensured a percentage of workers would not survive the labor.
Seventeen percent for the elderly. Twenty-three for children under twelve. Cave work. The kind of work that is the most brutal even to capable adults.
The nobleman had calculated it all. Factored the deaths as acceptable losses. Profited from them, even.
'The young boy,' Lucid thought, his understanding solidifying into horror. 'The grandmother. They're not workers. They're liquidatable assets. Once their bodies fail in the mines' depths, they're simply replaced.'
Rage ignited within Lucid's chest, sharp and immediate.
'He knew,' Lucid thought, his hands clenching. 'He calculated how many would perish and deemed it acceptable overhead.'
"You're aware they'll die, aren't you?" Lucid stated flatly. "The contracts include that calculation."
The nobleman's pleasant veneer fractured for a moment before reasserting itself. "Death is inevitable, my strange friend. I simply provide the framework in which survival becomes possible. If some prove inadequate to the task, well, that is the nature of selection."
"So you knowingly sign people to labor that will kill them."
"I knowingly provide employment to those without alternatives. The morality of their choices belongs to them, not me."
Lucid pulled forth a ring.
"I'll buy their contracts."