Reborn as an Adventurer: I Gain a Skill From Every Monster I Eat

Chapter 74: Chapter 74 — What the City Offers

The following days settled into a rhythm Arlen found himself genuinely savoring — mornings spent exploring different quarters of the city, afternoons cataloguing whatever new food or custom he’d encountered, evenings spent in quiet reflection at the modest inn Voss had arranged.

He found the city’s temple district on his third day, a cluster of shrines representing faiths considerably more varied than the handful he’d grown accustomed to in Greyhaven’s own modest temple quarter — river deities prominent among them, unsurprising given the city’s dependence on its waterway, alongside faiths he didn’t recognize at all.

It was near this district that he met Sarai, a woman perhaps a decade older than himself, tending a modest stall selling pressed flowers and dried herbs outside one of the smaller shrines.

”You’ve got the look of someone counting everything twice,” she observed, amused, watching him study her wares with careful attention. ”Scholar, or just naturally curious?”

”Adventurer, from the Ashen Frontier,” Arlen said. ”Curious, mostly. Never seen half these herbs before.”

”Frontier folk don’t get much river trade, I’d imagine.” She held up a small bundle of pale, silvery leaves. ”Moonwrack. Grows only along tidal stretches further south, carried up here through the spice routes. Good for fevers, though it’s mostly bought for scent these days — burns sweet.”

Arlen purchased a small bundle, more out of genuine curiosity than any practical need, and found Sarai willing to talk at length once she’d sized him up as a sincere questioner rather than idle chatter.

”You said further south,” he said. ”How far does the trade route actually run?”

”Further than most people bother imagining. Southern kingdoms, the desert territories past them, even a few goods that supposedly cross the sea from places I couldn’t properly name.” Sarai shrugged, the gesture carrying the easy confidence of someone who’d simply grown up surrounded by the evidence of a world larger than any single life could fully explore. ”Ashford’s Crossing sits at a crossroads, quite literally. Everything eventually passes through here, one way or another.”

”Is there trouble, along those routes? We ran into bandits ourselves, coming from Greyhaven.”

Sarai’s expression sobered slightly. ”More than there used to be, from what the traders say. Something’s stirring the southern kingdoms — succession dispute in one of them, from what I’ve heard secondhand, nothing that’s reached this far north properly, but enough that trade’s grown a bit more cautious than it was even a few years back.”

Arlen absorbed the detail carefully. He’d learned, these past months, to pay attention to exactly this kind of loose thread — a rumor offered without explanation, the kind of thing that might mean nothing at all, or might matter enormously somewhere down the road. There was no way to know yet which this would turn out to be. He simply filed it away, the way he’d learned to file away everything else the world offered him in careful, incomplete pieces.

”Thank you,” he said. ”For talking with me. Most people don’t have patience for this many questions from a stranger.”

”Most people don’t ask them with any real interest behind it,” Sarai said. ”You’re welcome back, if you’re ever through this way again.”

He spent his fourth day at the city’s riverside docks, watching the trade vessels unload cargo from ports he’d never heard named, and found himself, cataloguing the scene in his journal, struck by the sheer scale of commerce moving through a single city — goods and people from a dozen different regions, all converging here as though Ashford’s Crossing existed specifically to remind him how small the Ashen Frontier truly was against the world’s actual expanse.

He tried a proper river-fish stew on his fifth evening, prepared by a dockside vendor using a preparation method entirely foreign to anything in Greyhaven’s own culinary tradition — slow-simmered with a dark, tangy sauce that the vendor explained came from fermented river plants unique to the region.

River-Fish Stew, dockside preparation, he wrote that night, working through the entry with genuine enthusiasm. Fermented plant-based sauce, tangy rather than sweet, completely different base than anything I’ve encountered before. Worth learning the fermentation process properly, if I ever find the opportunity — this could translate well to Ashen Frontier ingredients with the right substitution.

His sixth day, his last full day before the caravan’s scheduled departure, he spent simply walking the city without any particular destination in mind, absorbing details he suspected he’d want to remember long after this single visit had faded into ordinary memory — the particular quality of light off the river in late afternoon, the layered sound of a dozen languages overlapping in the market square, the tall, unfamiliar silhouette of the guild hall against an evening sky considerably different from Greyhaven’s own.

He wrote a longer entry that final evening, the accumulated week’s experiences settling into something he wanted to properly capture before the return journey began pulling his attention back toward familiar ground.

Six days in Ashford’s Crossing, and I understand now, more clearly than any single lesson before it, exactly what Eldrin and Bram both meant about the world holding infinitely more than any one region could ever show me. A whole trade network stretching south into kingdoms I’ve never heard properly named. A guild branch handling threats I didn’t even know existed. Food, customs, faiths, entire ways of living that never once crossed my mind as possibilities before I actually stood here and saw them myself.

Sarai mentioned trouble stirring in the southern kingdoms — a succession dispute, apparently, distant enough that it hasn’t reached this far north in any serious way yet. I don’t know if that thread matters. I suspect I won’t know for a very long time, if ever. But I intend to remember it regardless, the same way I’ve learned to remember every small, unresolved rumor since Bram first taught me that the world reveals itself one careful thread at a time.

Tomorrow, we begin the journey home. I find myself already looking forward to it, strangely — not because I’m eager to leave this remarkable city behind, but because I understand now, with a clarity I didn’t quite have three weeks ago, exactly how much more of the world is still waiting for me, once I’m finally ready to leave the Ashen Frontier behind for good.

He closed the journal, the city’s unfamiliar evening sounds settling around him one final time, and found himself, despite the accumulated exhaustion of a full week’s constant exploration, genuinely grateful for every single moment of it — a whole new horizon glimpsed, however briefly, before the long road home carried him back toward everything still familiar, still waiting, still patiently teaching him exactly how much further he still had left to grow.