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Chapter 128: Riches in Friendship
🕑 Added 2023-11-01 23:05:08 +0000 UTCMatt and Derek picked up an enormous amount of food from various street carts as they walked toward the bathhouse. Eventually, it was enough that they had to make a pit stop and spread their loot on a cloth on a bench between them. Then, they absolutely destroyed thousands of calories worth of fried meats, breaded meats, and various foods Matt couldn’t recognize but that Derek assured him were good. Now, thoroughly bloated, they were letting it cool off in a natural hot spring-warmed pool of water, surrounded by a wood fence.
“So did you ever actually do one of these on Earth? In real life, I mean.”
“An Onsen? Just once. Near the end there, I went to a lot of places, and one of them was a bath in Tokyo. I’m not sure, but I think the one I went to was put there specifically for tourists. It didn’t feel very real.”
“How so? It seems like hot water would be hot water.”
“Right, but I’m guessing that I would have seen Japanese people in there if it was a real Onsen. These were all guys like me, who had seen baths like that in anime and were trying to get the experience during a vacation. When anybody who knows better isn’t there…”
“Gotta be fake. Got it.” Derek slid a little lower in the water, trying to get the relaxation from the warm water to climb from the muscles in his back all the way to his chin. “I never did either. But this one is real, by Ra’Zor standards at least. I’ve been to all of the baths in the city, and they’re pretty much all like this. Even the smaller ones closer to the gate.”
“Then why’d we walk all the way over here?” The walk hadn’t been unpleasant, but it hadn’t exactly been short, either. “I assumed you didn’t like those as well as you like this one.”
“Oh, I don’t.” Derek bobbed back up in the water, setting his back against the stone-lined wall of the pool. “But it’s not because of the baths themselves. It’s because of the laundress. Remember when they took our clothes? They know me here. With how dirty our clothes were, they would have taken them right over to the laundress, and she would have washed them.”
“Ah, got it. And that’s… worth it? Seems like we could have done that ourselves with, like, a hose or something. In a well.”
“Not like this. She’s got a whole class built around it. When she washes stuff, she gets it actually clean. Magically clean. Magically dry. She can’t fix major stuff, but it fixes small scratches on leather and minor damage to the fabric.”
“Ah, so maintenance.”
“Not just that. You’ll see. I’m not going to ruin it.”
Lucy was somewhere in the bath house, presumably trying to find a place she had described as “as far away from the dirty man-stink as possible.” Matt didn’t blame her for acting a bit prickly about coming here in the first place. Even if she hadn’t ever really gotten over the time when his clothes were dissolved in his fight with the Scourge, this was a place where people came to experience the warm and the tactile feeling of it. The baths themselves were beautiful, but really mostly because of the experience they hinted at, as opposed to being something you’d paint on a canvas. There wasn’t anything here for her, a girl who couldn’t feel anything or interact with these parts of the world.
But she knew Matt needed something like this, and so didn’t put up an enormous amount of fuss outside of the initial hard time she had given him. And he had needed it. He had gotten used to his magic washroom back on Gaian, taking frequent baths as if he was catching up on years of not taking care of his body. Now, with an enchanted pedicure, a deep cleansing rinse from an honest-to-god magic shower head, and a good, long soak in hot mineral water, he was starting to feel pretty human. Or Ra’Zorian. Whatever.
He slouched a little more into the wall behind him, breathing out a sigh of relief. If Derek vouched for the laundress, he’d just accept it. The kid seemed to have taken full advantage of the manga life that Matt had imagined, discovering the city piece by piece until he had mapped out all the best parts of it. Matt didn’t have time for that, as much as he might have liked to do it. He’d let the kid take him wherever he wanted to go.
Suddenly, behind him, he heard a snip.
“Oh, looks like word of what you did has started to get out. Reports like the ones Brennan and Artemis make are semi-public, and news tends to leak whenever something big happens. Looks like you are going to get the full treatment. Just let them, it won’t take that long,” Derek’s voice came from beside him.
Matt carefully turned his head, only to see what appeared to be a barber already to going to work on his hair. He was a man with what looked like a massage mat and bottles of various oils and lotions. Another spa specialist he didn’t recognize was bringing over a cart of what looked like various kinds of towels. Matt looked back at Derek, questioningly.
“You saved the city, man. Or at least some settlements,” Derek said. “Everyone has family everywhere. They want to say ‘thank you’. Just let them.”
An hour or so later, Matt emerged from the bath feeling brand-new. He was absolutely clean and had his first real, complete haircut and shave in years. On top of that, he was thoroughly buffed. Not in terms of stats, but instead from the literal meaning of the word. It had turned out the towel guy was some kind of professional exfoliator specializing in skincare for the stat-enhanced, and had rubbed Matt down with progressively finer towels, polishing him like varnish until his skin literally shone.
Derek told him not to worry about the last bit. The shine would start to dull over the next few hours because of what he referred to as “normal skin stuff.” It did feel great though.
The best part had turned out to be the laundry, even though it was a mixed bag. Cleaning the literal demon-residue out of actual low-grade demon armor was apparently possible, but was a step too far for the laundress, who turned out to have personal standards even Derek hadn’t known about. The salvaged armor he had acquired from the demon bar was examined, bagged, and then very literally burned in a stove.
In replacement, she had provided him with a very nice note thanking him for saving the city, which she had apparently heard about as well. The note was tacked to lightweight casual new clothing that had just been cleaned especially for him, stacked on top of his boots and cloak, which she had recognized as system-make and restored to like-new condition.
Derek wasn’t lying about the clothes, it turned out. Putting them on was like communing with the essence of clothes-dryers itself. It was like the spirit of the first dryer sheet that ever was had breathed its blessing on the fabric, granting them subtle powers beyond what mundane textiles would reach on their own. The clothes almost sighed down his skin as he put them on.
In a purely physical sense, he had never felt so good.
In a psychological sense, he was a little worse, mostly out of worry about Lucy. When he emerged from the baths clothed in the laundress’s best, a wry smile he associated with her giving him shit about something had formed on her face. She was probably gearing up to call him overly fancy, or something. But when her gaze went upwards to his freshly shaved face and newly cut hair, all the blood on her face drained away. It looked as if she had seen a horror on par with the Scourge.
“What? What is it?” Matt’s voice turned to concern.
“Nothing. Let’s just go. I’m tired of this place.”
“Lucy, it’s not nothing. What is it?” Matt was genuinely worried he had done something wrong. It even felt like he had, somehow, even though as far as he knew he hadn’t had an opportunity.
“It’s nothing. I promise. We can talk about it later. Let’s just go.”
And she started walking.
Matt trusted Lucy enough to believe that if it were relevant in a serious, immediate way, she’d tough it out and talk about it right then. If she wanted to wait until later, that was her right. For what it was worth, they didn’t have time for a long, draw-out conversation anyway. As soon as Matt and Derek emerged back onto the street, they were accosted by a messenger who zipped up on them with DEX-enhanced speed. Matt had barely squashed his Survivor’s Reflexes-driven instinct that fast guys were usually weak to shovel strikes when the messenger started talking in a loud, official voice.
“Reincarnator Derek, and Visiting Reincarnator Matt. Your presence and reports are requested at a hearing of the officials of the Church. The hearing is ongoing in the court of the square, and you are requested to report as immediately as possible.”
He then zipped off, apparently on his way to other messenger duties.
“The court of the square?” Matt asked Derek, confused. “Is it entirely for nerds, or something?”
“Ha, but also no. It’s just in the town square. They name important things very literally, here, for some reason.” He started walking. “But they aren’t kidding about the immediately part.”
“What would happen if we didn’t show? Bounty hunters?”
“No, just more of those messenger guys. Believe me, you can’t dodge them while in the city. I’ve tried. They come out of nowhere. And they all shout like that. Every single one.”
—
The court of the square was, if anything, ridiculously round. Technically, it was in the square, but unlike the other buildings that lined the square, the court itself was a circular building in the dead center of it. It defined its section with a clearly laid large, circular mosaic, and was positioned where a fountain might normally sit in any other Earth square.
Derek told him the building was directly over the dead center of the city itself, as if everything was built to extend outwards from this landmark. Matt had no reason to doubt him.
“Anything I need to know going in here? Lawyer-talk? Special titles that I get beheaded if I don’t use?”
“Nothing like that. It’s more like… did you ever take a field trip to a city council meeting? I did that once. It’s like that. They are on one side of the counter, you’re on the other, they ask questions, and you answer them. It’s like that.”
“So no messing up and then having to flee with the Royal Army at my back.”
“Oh, no. At least, probably not. If anything, they’re probably trying to pay you out for all the kills. Or looking for a way out of doing that. It really is a lot of money, you know.”
“If only they knew that the real riches is friendship.”
Derek laughed. “You say that now, but wait until I take you to see the old man. It will have you valuing riches real quick. And maybe questioning friendship, too.”
Comments
Wargen
Oh no... he's hot
