TDH Vol. 2 pt. 9

Going east out of Rich Kids’ Street took us into the Merchant Quarter. Of course, both the wealthy and the merchants benefitted from being right next to each other. The wealthy got easier access to all sorts of fine crafts and food while the ones who made all of that got money from their money. The most valuable locations were the ones closest to where Rich Kids’ Street ended. Looking at them while we walked by, they were all about what one would expect and beyond the reach of Magnurr’s average citizens. Price-wise, that was. None of the average folk who lived in and around the city were going to afford fancy suits and dresses, nor were they going to afford some of the fanciest, strangest looking food around.

I never understood “fine dining.” It felt like the more expensive food was, the stranger it looked and the less somebody would get out of it. Why pay ten times the total price for one tenth the amount of food? And that one tenth of food would also probably have something weird done to it?

I didn’t get it. I only knew what it was like because my dad brought some home one time that he got from a friend during a trip to the city. Homemade stew made with stale leftovers was preferable any day of the week over that fancy stuff.

As for all the dresses on display on the other side of the windows in one of the other shops, I… again, didn’t get it. They looked like clothes that no normal person would wear. Why were the pants so puffy and wide? Why were the hats five times the size of normal hats? Why were there feathers everywhere? What was the point in any of it? Cutting a hole into a sack used for potatoes would make more efficient clothes than anything in there. Yet, there were women and children standing in front of the windows looking inside with eyes full of awe and desire for what they saw.

Thankfully, I wasn’t alone in my beliefs.

“I don’t get it,” Elanah said. “What’s the point in clothes like that?”

“It is simple,” Zurie said. “Look around you.”

Both me and Elanah looked around, not sure what we were supposed to be looking for or at.

“Do you see anybody wearing clothes like those on display?” Zurie asked.

“No,” Elanah answered.

“Why do you think that is?”

“They’re too expensive?”

“Wrong. It is because they look ridiculous.”

“So… what’s the point of them then?”

“They are not designed to be worn. They are designed to be displayed. Do you understand? They are art. The point of designing such ridiculous outfits is not to tempt people into wearing them. The point is to prove your ability. Only the best at their craft are capable of designing such unique outfits with that level of quality. If you were to go in there to buy clothes, you would most likely not be sold anything on display. You would instead have something custom tailored for your body that is designed with every single one of your features in mind, and it would look much more normal. The dress I am wearing now is from one such tailor, and you would say it looks normal, would you not?”

Me and Elanah both nodded.

“Then there you have it. Do you understand now? What you are looking at beyond those windows are not wearable outfits, but art pieces to express their creator’s skill. Well, it also shows off the quality of materials and the types of fabric they have access to as well as the different techniques they have mastered. In the end, they serve both as art pieces and advertisements.”

“Huh… I guess that makes sense,” Elanah said. “But what about food? All that rich, fancy food always looks weird. And you barely get anything for what you pay.”

We really are perfect together, Elanah.

“Well,” Zurie began, “it is once again a performance of art. They are often designed to be small parts of an overall larger course. Each individual serving may be small compared to what you are used to, but you may get anywhere from five to fifteen, or even more, and that food adds up. Each serving must be small or else you would have no room for the next, and so each serving is also designed to be memorable. The chefs who produce such meals intend for every bite to be unique. They want to take you on a journey through all of the different flavors they can show you. That being said, I am not a fan of the practice myself, so I have no intent to defend it more than that. I would much rather enjoy a large, cheap steak than a meal with a dozen, tiny servings.”

“Yeah, same.” Elanah nodded. “Oh! How do you like your steak?”

“Borderline raw. I know that it is not really blood, but I like my steaks bloody.”

“That’s… a bit too raw for me.”

“So long as you do not like them cooked beyond medium. Truthfully, even medium is on the border of being unacceptable.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry. I like medium rare. I would never ruin a steak by getting it cooked more than that.”

“Smart girl.”

I have never been more attracted to any women than I am right now.

My mother used to tell me to never marry a woman who liked to overcook her steak. She’d say that any woman who liked a steak cooked past medium was a woman who wouldn’t be able to handle having children. I never understood that, but I always took her word for it. But other than that, there was just something beautiful about women liking their meat almost still breathing. That was how I liked mine, too. Fresh from the farm and put on a plate before the heart could stop beating. Though, I did like it cooked at least a little bit first. Cooked enough to get some more flavor and to blacken the sides. Once the top and bottom were black, though, I didn’t care about the interior. The inside could still be raw for all I cared as long as the top and bottom were black.

“What about high heels?” Elanah asked.

The way Zurie smiled at Elanah reminded me of how my mother would smile at me whenever I kept on asking her questions. It was a kind, gentle smile… hiding behind it the annoyance from being asked a bunch of questions. Except Zurie was even better at hiding it than my mom was, assuming that was the sort of smile it was.

Well, whatever kind of smile it was, Zurie went into an explanation about the history of high heels and why upper-class women wore them while I continued hanging in Elanah’s arms, pointing her in the direction that I wanted her to walk.

Since I wasn’t interested in them talking about high heels, I instead thought about something that was far more stupid in my mind.

The district we entered was referred to as the Merchants’ Quarter.

From what I knew, “quarter” was supposed to refer to a fourth of something. Four quarters made one whole whatever.

The city had five quarters.

There was the Merchants’ Quarter, the Public Quarter… which also sounded strange considering that all of the quarters were open to the public, the Workshop Quarter, the Council’s Quarter, and then the Dungeon Quarter.

I could only assume that whenever they decided to give the latest quarter its name, they added “quarter” onto it because they were used to every other major district being named that. The word “quarter” lost its original meaning and basically came to only mean “district.”

There was no respect for language, apparently.

Not that I cared too much. I couldn’t even read nor write. If somebody told me to spell either of those words, I would have no idea how to. I only knew how they sounded and what they meant, not anything else about them.

Then I noticed something.

We were… being left alone. I was worried that there would be people trying to run up to us to talk to us if they recognized us, but they didn’t. There were definitely people who recognized us, but all they did was keep their distance and stare.

I guess we were still criminals, after all. Even if people were voting for us to continue on in the dungeon, that was different from them liking us and wanting to see us out on the same streets as them.

Elanah was a cultist in their eyes and I was a murderer.

Even so, there were a few women who looked at me and smiled. That was nice. Too bad they probably just thought I was cute instead of wanting to do something with me like Elanah and Zurie.

But what really grabbed my attention in a way I didn’t like were the kids.

A couple of kids tugged on the shirt of the man who I assumed was their father while pointing at me with bright smiles on their faces.

It was kind of nice to know I was able to make them smile that much, but only for a second. I couldn’t help but to think of why they were smiling and looking at me.

“It’s the beast!” the boy shouted.

“Papa! Papa! I wanna pet him before he has to go back!” the girl shouted.

They weren’t smiling just because I was small and cute.

They were smiling because they recognized me from the dungeon.

Two kids who looked like they weren’t any older than eight recognized me from the dungeon. That meant they watched me. They watched me fight my way through the dungeon, killing beasts and getting killed over and over again.

I doubted I was the only one they ever saw compete in the dungeon, too. They likely saw horrible things happen to all sorts of men and women thrown in there.

Kids their age—no, kids of any age shouldn’t have been allowed to watch something like that.

But they did. It was a normalized part of the city’s culture. Nobody thought it was strange for children to watch criminals fight for their lives and die over, and over, and over again. No matter how bloody and gory it got, none of them cared.

I wanted to question how many generations it took for it to become so normal, but I doubted it took long. All it took was one generation of adults to watch it without issue, letting their kids see how they had no problem with it. If the kids were raised to never think there was anything wrong with it, of course they were going to grow up with the same belief and have more children to pass that onto.

Magnurr was a beautiful city. It was clean, it was safe, it was full of trade that brought in technology from all corners of the world, and—most importantly—its people were happy. Visitors were always trying to permanently move to Magnurr due to the quality of life it offered over their homes.

Between being raised generation by generation to believe there was nothing wrong with the dungeon and people being satisfied with their lives the first place… of course none of them cared.

If I was raised by anybody but my parents, I probably would have felt the same way as those kids.

I wouldn’t care.

I didn’t know how to feel. I genuinely believed it was wrong for children to watch criminals kill and get killed in the dungeon for entertainment, but I was in the minority. It was an accepted part of Magnurr’s culture. Was it really as wrong as it felt to me, or was I simply out of touch? Was I too sensitive? A girl from my village cried whenever insectoid beasts were killed. No matter how tiny and insignificant they were, seeing them die made her sad. All of us thought she was just being too sensitive. She was made fun of until she grew out of that and never cried over something like that again.

None of us thought there was anything wrong with stepping on insectoid beasts, but it always upset her.

Nobody else in the city cared about us being used as entertainment, including to kids, but it still upset me.

Thinking about it only upset me even more because I genuinely couldn’t come to any satisfying conclusion. No matter how wrong I believed the practice was, I also believed that the people of the city were, overall, genuinely good people. They were all the products of those who rose them. If they were raised to think it was okay, of course they weren’t going to have problems with it. If they were raised to be against it, I was sure they would hate it.

I couldn’t bring myself to judge them for being raised in an environment that made them who they were. But if I couldn’t blame them, who was I supposed to blame? Their parents? Their grandparents? The best option would probably be to blame whoever came up with the practice in the first place, but they were probably dead. What was the point in blaming a dead man? That wouldn’t do anything.

But what did I even want to do? What did I want to accomplish by thinking about all of that?

Magnurr was a great city, but not a city I could ever feel comfortable living in knowing what entertained the masses.

At least I knew that much.

I pointed to the right, continuing to lead Elanah and Zurie toward my favorite spot in the city.

We… might have gotten a bit lost for a bit, but I eventually found my way and brought Elanah and Zurie to where I wanted.

A river ran through the city toward the cliff and created a waterfall at its edge, and that was an incredibly popular spot for people to visit and hang around. Who wouldn’t want to sit by a waterfall and look out over the ocean?

Not me, personally. Well, I did, but not if it meant being around way too many people all trying to do the same thing. Instead, there was a spot I loved that I found after getting separated from my mom when I was younger.

It was a little spot that nobody really knew about. If they did know about it, they probably didn’t care about it. It was a small path between two buildings just barely large enough for adults to squeeze between. Me and Elanah had no difficulty with it, but Zurie almost struggled due to her chest and rear. It would have been kind of funny if those stopped her from getting to my favorite spot.

The end of the path opened up to a space between all the surrounding building. With buildings on all three sides and only a tight path leading to it, the space was perfect for privacy in the middle of the city. More importantly, the only free side of it faced the raging river and the other side of the river was developed in a way that nobody would really see us from there.

“Is this where you wanted to bring us?” Elanah asked.

I nodded. It was my favorite place in the entire city, so why not show them it if they wanted a tour?

Zurie stood at the edge of the ground and looked into the river below. “It is a beautiful sight,” she said. “And not one that any professional would have shown us. This is a special place to you, is it not?” she asked while looking straight at me.

I nodded again. I felt safe there when I got overwhelmed by everybody in the city after being separated from my mother. The rushing water drowned out the sounds of everybody filling the streets.

“Ehe… you brought us somewhere special to you,” Elanah said. “That makes me happy. Also… it’s private enough back here that we could—”

“I thought that as well,” Zurie said, “but let us not taint his special spot. I am sure he would like to keep at least one thing pure, and I doubt that he has recovered from earlier.”

I nodded a lot after that one.

“Instead, let us sit here for a while to enjoy one another’s company by the river. That sounds like a wonderful time to me.”

Yes, please. I just want to relax, not taint the special place from my childhood.

Elanah sighed but gave in. “Alright. Do you want to hold Woofen for a bit? I won’t be able to resist wanting to do things if I’m touching him. Well, I won’t be able to resist wanting to do things if I can see him at all… but the thoughts won’t be as strong if I’m not touching him.”

“I would be glad to take him from you,” Zurie said.

Elanah then handed me over. Zurie accepted me into her arms and held me against her chest right away, and I couldn’t resist feeling a bit more energized when I felt her breasts against me.

“Woofen… you suddenly look a lot happier,” Elanah said, narrowing her eyes at me.

That sounded like it was the perfect time to turn my head away from them to look at the river.