The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-180

Chapter 180: Y’zaks’ Business Model

After half a day of gathering information, Hao Ren and the gang regrouped on the steppe outside Lamberg.

As there was still an hour to go before the supposed rendevous time, and Becky was no where in sight, the group exchanged whatever information they had managed to obtain thus far…

Vivian had gone up to the highest available point in town, and upon perching on the parapet, she found where the church lay. The Disciples of Glory was a prominent religious body across the three continents, especially in the Kingdom of Holletta where it was founded. Their church was visible in any town that was of a decent size. Posing as a visitor, Vivian took the chance to mingle with the clergy there. Her experience as a poor wanderer, and existing oral skills served her well in gleaning some information off the gaudy clergymen.

“Letta runes are no longer in use here.” Vivian’s first string of information had already shocked Hao Ren. “The people here treat is as a lost ancient language or something like hieroglpyhs… I spoke to some of the priests in church about the runes, and they don’t even have a clue on how to use it. The clergy are usually the most educated lot in a medieval society. If they don’t know how, the commoners won’t either.”

“A lost language?” Hao Ren was genuinely surprised. “Then…what were those runes in the town?”

“Prayer for good luck…” Vivian shrugged nonchalantly. “The writings itself are wrong and the structure’s all over the place. That, I managed to discern. The people this age don’t even know what or how to properly write Letta runes anymore. What they did was simply just trace the symbols from whatever source that remained, either from ruins or ancient tomes. They probably thought the characters brought auspicious meanings, and they’ve been using them since. Something like a protective charm not unlike those you can find in the houses of Chinese villages. Letta runes have pretty much degenerated into this form. I suppose the people on Earth were much, much better at preserving their knowledge. At least, the demon hunters have some knowledge of the runes.”

“Wait a minute… Letta runes… Kingdom of Holletta…” Something dawned upon Wuyue as her expression changed. “Oh, right!! When I was in town, I overheard something by the school. They were talking about the Kingdom of Holletta being a direct line of an ancient civilisation. Could it be that the Letta runes were one of the remnants of that civilisation? It’s even in the kingdom’s name.”

“Possible.” Vivian nodded. “I didn’t have the time to probe for more boring information but, from my meeting with the priests, I can tell that they hold the Kingdom of Holletta’s ‘doctrine’ and ‘ancientness’ with the utmost importance. This kingdom is probably the most ancient of kingdoms in this world. If you think back to the apocalypse a few milleniums back, it’s not beyond reason that the Kingdom of Holletta is a remnant of an ancient civilsation.

“They may have simply inherited something from the lost civilisation, rather than having remnants,” Y’zaks quipped.

“What have you heard?” Hao Ren raised at eyebrow.

“The Kingdom of Holletta has a history of about 3,000 years. That means it was established much more recently than when the apocalypse happened.” Y’zaks laughed. “The founders of the kingdom probably stumbled across something in the ruins and used it as a basis of their rule. Anyway, I’m not going to proclaim if they are indeed a remnant of the past civilisation… Those are just details. I have good news, we don’t have to worry about money for a while now.”

As the great demon grinned, he pulled out a bulky sack and presented it to Hao Ren and the group. In it, a whole load of various, shiny currencies could be seen. Some of it, Hao Ren recognised as the local Denars, some were thin, copper coins, and there was a piece of clearly valuable, gold currency. The sudden appearance of so much shiny metal almost blinded all who were present. Y’zaks laughed again. “I don’t know if I got scammed but, these look like they should last us for a while. That fat merchant was even grimacing when he took out his coin purse…”

Cold sweat appeared almost instantenously across Hao Ren’s forehead as he eyed the giant hulk of a demon suspiciousy. “You didn’t resort to highway robbery, did you?”

With Y’zaks’ “good guy” nature, this was obviously out of the question but, the shock from the giant coin was palpable. Aside from robbery, Hao Ren really could not figure out how a person, who had no idea about the basic functions of this society could possibly make such a huge sum of money in such a short time. Perhaps, deep down, all demons would not say no to easy money.

Displeasure immediately appeared on Y’zaks already scary looking face. “Who do you take me for? As an upstanding person, I’ll never do such a thing. This was from the sale of weapons.”

“Weapons?” Hao Ren’s eyes widened in surprise.

Y’zaks took off his bagpack (Hao Ren was indeed in charge of the luggage but, the practical demon still lugged his own by habit) and pulled out two odd-looking, short swords. “These.”

The group gathered around to have a look at the swords. The swords were short in name and shape only but, their blades were clearly not metal. The pitch black blades were almost obsidian-like, and looked to be crafted entirely out of stone. There were no scorch or folding marks on the blades. A very thin veil of blade mist swirled on the surface of the blades, and Hao Ren felt that he was being compelled to look at the blades. The plain, lightless blades almost had a magical aura to them. The longer you stared at the blades, the faster the mist swirled.

Wuyue picked up one of the blades out of curiousity and felt a surge of energy race through her body. The scared siren quickly tossed the blade back to the ground.

“Could it be…demonic stone?” Hao Ren only realised what the swords were made of after a while.

“Yes, that stone.” Y’zaks nodded. “Ever since I got back from England, I’ve been wondering what to do with it. It was a massive eyesore and a space hogger however, it was still valuable enough. Since I was unemployed and had time on my hands, I started chipping it off to make some stuff. At first, I made two kitchen knives for Vivian but, she said they were too heavy and cumbersome. So, I made two shovels instead, and found out that they weren’t half as good as the ones you can buy off the shelves. After that, I made a couple of short swords like these, thinking that we might have some use for them someday. While I’m not the best smith around, I still know my way in making demonic weaponry. The blades may look brittle but they are harder than normal steel. They’ve undergone some treatment. I’ve seen the weapons of humans in this world, no normal blacksmith here can come up with anything close to them.”

“F*ck! You sold someone a demonic sword?” Hao Ren gasped in horror.

“Of course not.” Y’zaks simply just waved him off. “I have already removed the demonic energy from the rocks. These are no more than glorified swords with enchantments. I simply went up to one of the weapons shops in town, said I found a blade that I can’t use in the ruins, and wanted to sell it. And well…the rest is history.”

Hao Ren eyed Y’zaks suspiciously. “You seem awfully familiar with this.”

The great demon smirked. “There was a time back then where a group of adventurers would come to my turf to wreak havoc. I had this old castle there and they seemed to love hauling out whatever broken metal and stuff they could find to sell. At times, if there was a whole lot of them, I could even give the groundsmen a couple of days off. Well…that’s how I learnt about human adventurers making a fortune.”

“…”

There was an awkward silence.

Now, Hao Ren was even more curious about what Y’zaks did back then at home. Aside from being the messenger of righteousness to his kind, he was a raid boss, whom people would grind for loot and reputation?

That said, the ingenuity of the great demon had solved their monetary woes for the time being. As for the way the monetary system worked here…they would find out sooner or later. By then, Lily had begun to pull on Hao Ren’s sleeves. “Mr. Landlord… Lets get something to eat.”

With that, Hao Ren realised that he indeed felt a little hungry. Perplexed, he rose the question, “Wait…why do we need to eat over here?”

“What nonsense.” The MDT, who was playing nanny to the little mermaid back home suddenly rang in his ear. “Since when did you not need to eat?”

“I thought we were in the Dream Plane no?” Hao Ren was still confused. “Our bodies are lying in the pods back home. So, why the need to eat at all?”

“Who told you that your entity in The Plane of Dreams is a purely spiritual being? Your body there is as real as the one on Earth. When you enter The Plane of Dreams, an exact copy of you is being made over there and you will need to eat and sleep as usual. And of course, anything that happens to you in the plane will affect you directly. Just that your metabolism rate is much lower, and you’ll only need a meal a day to sustain yourself. Lily was acting up because she was being Lily, hungry as always.”

Hao Ren was stunned. He found the line between The Plane of Dreams and reality was almost blurred.