Chương 15: We Fought Monsters Together

Their paths separated when they reached the edge of Silvercreek. Alex headed for the village center, while Oliver led Evan right past the clusters of huts and houses that made up the core of the settlement. The architecture looked interesting to Evan. Not a style he associated with any Earth cultures. Most houses were built from a mix of stone and light-colored wood. The windows were round, and the roofs had a convex curve, overhanging the walls by quite a bit.

They reminded him a little of hobbit holes, but with an actual roof instead of just a grassy hill on top. They walked past fields of golden grain, and then Evan caught the first sight of Oliver's home. A farmhouse, similar in style to the other houses in the village, but larger and with several adjacent buildings Evan assumed to be stables or barns.

A little girl, maybe seven or eight years old, with the same dark hair as Oliver, came out of one of the side buildings, carrying a wooden bucket that looked way too heavy for her. When she spotted Oliver in the distance, she dropped the bucket and ran into the main house. Oliver slowed down his walking pace as if he didn't really want to take the last few steps.

"That's my sister, Josie. The youngest of us," he said.

"She's going to tell father I'm home." His prediction was right. Just moments after the little girl had entered the house, a man stepped out. He was tall and dark-haired like Oliver, although with strands of gray mixed in, and even more muscular. Even from afar, Evan could tell he was angry.

"Uh… do you want me to stay by your side, or should I wait here until you clear things with your old man?" Oliver took a deep breath.

"Stay by my side, please?"

"Okay." Evan gave Oliver an encouraging slap on the back.

"Come on. Let's get it over with." They walked up to the house, under the stern gaze of Oliver's father, who was waiting for them at the front door, arms crossed. Josie wiggled past her father to greet her big brother with a bear hug.

"Olly! Where have you been?"

"Good question," his father said, voice cold, expression stern.

"Really, Oliver? Sneaking off in the middle of the night?" Oliver squared his shoulders.

"I did not sneak off, father. I'm a grown man. I can leave whenever I like and go wherever I want."

"No, you can't," his father barked.

"Not if you want to sleep under my roof and eat from my table." Oliver mumbled something that sounded a lot like, "Maybe I don't want that anymore," to Evan's ears.

"What was that, boy?" his father asked sharply. To Evan's dismay, Oliver's shoulders slumped.

"Nothing, father," he said, eyes fixed on the ground. Evan tried to stay in the background, not keen on intruding on this family affair, but Oliver's father had already noticed him. After putting Oliver in his place, he turned his attention to Evan.

"Where have you been, Oliver, and why did you drag this vagabond to my doorstep?"

"I'm not a vagabond," Evan protested. The words had left his mouth before he realized he kind of was. He had no home and no job, and his clothes were caked in all kinds of disgusting fluids. He did have some money though, and a set of very cool magical skills. That accounted for something, right?

"You do look like a vagabond," Josie said, although her tone sounded more excited than judgmental.

"Like a real hobo, right, father?" The man glanced at his daughter as if he'd just remembered she was still present.

"Josephine, go back into the house. I need to talk to your brother." Josie pouted a bit but did not dare to disobey her father's instructions. She scuffled back into the house, but just moments later her little face appeared in one of the windows, peeking out. Two slightly older children, a boy and a girl, were fighting for the spot next to her, pushing and shoving. Meanwhile, Oliver had found his voice again.

"Evan is not a vagabond. He saved my life. We fought monsters together." His father scoffed.

"Monsters? Did you now?"

"Yes, that's why I'm covered in all that muck," Evan explained.

"We fought a Mud Golem up in the celestial ruins and then we killed a Scrapmaw queen in the forest."

"The queen caused the mana blight," Oliver said.

"We solved the problem, and we looted a crystal shard too." Mentioning the shard gave his father pause.

"A crystal shard? Show me." Somewhat reluctantly, Oliver accessed his inventory and materialized the shard into his hand. It looked very different from the affinity crystal Evan had bound to his soul. It was smaller, clearly just a shard splintered off a larger crystal, and instead of swirling rainbow colors, the shard had a murky mix of brown and gray. It still looked quite pretty, and magical power radiated off it. Evan could feel it, even while standing a few steps away.

He didn't remember that sensation from when he had handled his affinity crystal, but that had been before he became an mana user. Maybe binding the crystal gave him the ability to feel the shard's power. Oliver's father leaned forward a little to examine the shard closer.

"Hm… it looks real."

"It is real," Oliver said.

"Then we'll sell it. I'll make inquiries in the village tomorrow." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"Hey, wait a second," Evan said.

"Oliver was the one who killed the Scrapmaw queen. Shouldn't he be—" Oliver silenced him with an elbow to the ribs.

"Just let it go," he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. Evan relented, although he still considered it unfair that Oliver's father had just confiscated the spoils of his son's labor.

"So, uh… father, can Evan stay the night?" Oliver's father looked at him again, and Evan did his best to look friendly, trustworthy, and approachable. If he couldn't stay with Oliver's family, he would have to spend the night under a tree somewhere—true vagabond style. The man looked at him for a long time, gaze boring into him. Finally, he shrugged.

"One night," he grumbled, before turning away and walking back into the house, Oliver's crystal shard in hand. Evan followed Oliver inside, but he only got a quick glance at the interior of the farmhouse before Oliver ushered him to his bedroom. From what he could see, the house was very cozy and well taken care of. Oliver's bedroom was small, barely large enough to fit the two beds.

"I'm sharing with my brother, Felix," Oliver explained.

"I'm not sure where he is right now. Probably in the stable, feeding the horses. He loves horses. You'll have to sleep on the floor, sorry about that. But you can have blankets. We have more than enough of those."

"It's fine," Evan said.

"This is a really nice home."

"Mostly my sisters' work. Maya and Mia, I mean. Josie is still a little too young to take over much of the household duties. She'll have to soon, though. Maya wants to… I'm not really supposed to tell, but she's kind of sick of our father too. She told me she wants to leave once she finishes her apprenticeship with Luther." Evan kept his thoughts to himself. Oliver's father was his host after all, but he quietly thought that he could understand the sibling's yearning for freedom very well.

He'd only heard Oliver's stories and met him in person for a few minutes, but that man was a grump with an uncomfortably oppressive streak.

"Thank you for letting me stay," Evan said.

"And for everything else you already did for me. Really. I appreciate it."

"I didn't really do much," Oliver said.

"You helped me navigate this world when I was totally lost. I mean, I'm still lost, but a little bit less than yesterday." Evan almost stumbled over the last word. Yesterday. Had it really only been yesterday that he'd arrived here?

"I think you'll feel less lost after a shower and some fresh clothes. I'll loan you some of mine until you buy some for yourself in the village." Evan's eyebrows shot up.

"Did you just say shower?" Oliver grinned.

"No offense, man, but you really need it."

"I sure do, I just didn't think you had showers."

"How do you think we get clean?"

"Doesn't matter. Show me that shower right now." Oliver led him to a tiny bathroom right next door. To Evan's surprise, it was not only equipped with a walled-in shower stall and a washbasin, but also an almost ordinary-looking toilet.

"They're operated with mana," Oliver explained.

"We need to load them up with mana stones on a regular basis, or they'll stop working." Evan was about to pull out a mana stone from his inventory, eager to try the magical bathroom appliances, but Oliver stopped him.

"Don't worry, everything is loaded with mana right now. You can jump right in. The shower doesn't have temperature control, though. Sorry about that. Father is cutting corners where he can."

"I'm just happy to wash off all this grime." Oliver left a bundle of clean clothes on a small shelf next to the washbasin and closed the door behind him. Evan stripped off his dirty shirt and jeans and stepped behind the wall separating the shower from the rest of the bathroom. On the ceiling was a round, flat stone that almost looked like a normal showerhead, just without any pipes attached to it. He looked around and found another round stone, with a small blue gem set in, at eye level, attached to the wall.

He touched it, and water started pouring over his head. Evan let out a joyful laugh when he realized it was warm. When Oliver had warned him about the temperature control, he'd expected a cold shower, and he would've been fine with that, but the pleasantly warm stream of water running over his skin was much better. A dirty puddle pooled around his feet, and sweat, blood, and monster fluids washed off. He looked for a drain in the floor but only found another round stone.

It sucked the dirty water in like a tiny vacuum cleaner. He enjoyed the warm water for longer than was strictly necessary to get clean, but after what he'd been through during the last two days—fighting monsters, wandering ancient ruins, and above all, surviving his own death—he allowed himself the moment of rest. He used the time under the shower to distribute the four attribute points he'd earned. He put two of them into Speed, to increase his [Teleport] range, and then one into Strength and one into Stamina.

But attributes seemed to factor into the amount of health points, and he wanted lots of those. He'd already died once, and he wasn't keen on repeating the experience. After he was done, he put on the clothes Oliver had left out for him. A dark green tunic, similar in style to the one Oliver was currently wearing, and light blue, loose-fitting linen pants. They were slightly too big for Evan, but very comfortable.

Putting them on felt a little weird, like he was fully immersing himself into this new world, completing some his transformation from ordinary Evan to fantasy Evan. Fully dressed, but his hair still wet, he returned to Oliver's bedroom. He found another of the Detreyo kids sitting on the second bed. A boy in his teens, same black hair and brown eyes as Oliver, looking at him with curiosity. Evan crossed the room, holding out his hand.

"Hi, you must be Felix. I'm Evan." Before Oliver's brother could shake his hand, the door squeaked open, and a girl snuck through the gap, quickly closing the door behind her again. She had the same dark hair as the rest of the family, tied back in a ponytail, and intelligent brown eyes. Evan noticed she was very pretty before he quickly shoved the thought aside. Not the time, not the place.

"Maya," Oliver protested.

"You can't just come in here without knocking. One of us could've been naked." Maya quickly glanced across the room, as if to make sure none of them really was naked, then shrugged.

"I needed to be quiet, or father might've noticed I'm sneaking you food." She handed both Oliver and Evan a plate filled with bread, slices of cheese, and a fruit the size and consistency of an apple, but blue. When she gave Evan his plate, she looked at him intently, as if he were an especially interesting specimen under her microscope.

"Is it true? You're a world traveler?" Evan gave her a friendly smile.

"Apparently, but totally by accident." Maya scoffed and plopped down on the bed next to Felix.

"That's one lucky accident. You're traveling worlds while I'm stuck here in this village. Can you believe it? I'm twenty-four and I've never traveled farther than Stormhaven. And even that was years ago."

"What's your world like?" Felix asked, "Is it very different from ours?"

"Yes, tell us everything," Maya urged him.

"Because my brother couldn't give us any details. Apparently he's been with a world traveler for two entire days but didn't even bother to ask the most basic questions."

"We were pretty busy killing monsters, okay Maya?" Oliver said defensively.

"That's true," Evan confirmed.

"We didn't have much opportunity for small talk. Besides, my world is really boring compared to yours. We don't even have magic."

"You don't have magic?" Felix asked.

"But how do you run… everything?"

"Uh… electricity? Yeah, mostly electricity nowadays."

"What's that?" Maya wanted to know. Oliver shushed both of his siblings.

"Stop pestering him. We need to sleep now. We had a long day, and we need to get up early tomorrow because we're going to the village to buy Evan some new clothes and a few other things." Maya rolled her eyes.

"Do you honestly think Father is going to let you spend a lazy day out in the village tomorrow? He put together a chore list for you that's a mile long. You'll have blisters on every body part by tomorrow night." Oliver groaned.

"Oh man…"

"It's fine, Oliver. I can go alone," Evan said.

"You take care of that chore list and try to smooth things over with your father." If Evan really wanted to take Oliver with him to Stormhaven, they would have to do some serious smoothing over with that man.

"I'll take you to Silvercreek, Evan," Maya offered.

"I work there, so I'm going anyway. I can't hang out with you though. You'll be on your own."