The Arcane Archer - Chapter 48 The Underdark And Bad Food Stalls

Hi everyone, bet you didn’t miss me! I’m back and hate online classes. Wrote this chapter in a few hours, tried coping my writing style when I first wrote this story, and posted this. Now I’m going to go to bed cause I wrote all of this within a few hours. Might not be the best chapter, definitely isn’t my worst chapter, and I gotta progress the plot somehow right?

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A couple more days passed without anything happening. I bought my wonderful bag of Housing from the System, decorated it with some simple furniture and kitchen stuff, and enjoyed a rent-free home.

Other then that and working, Ava and I have been planning.

Aetius is now a god. Probably a god of war instead of heritage as he’s in or starting wars most of the time according to Ava. The tricky part is finding out what the other half is.

Without knowing the second domain he has a card up his sleeve that could change the tide of battle. With that in mind, Ava and I decided to leave to work on gathering more forces to boost our war.

Now you might be wondering what all we talked about and what happened between us after the revelation she revealed but who really cares. Lots of arguing, throwing things, crying (from the shop keeper who kept having his stuff thrown), and the other stuff that usually goes with resolving a conflict between people. Just don’t mind the fact that we nearly burnt down the entire town. Twice

Besides that, the basis of what we’re going to do besides gather more forces is to infiltrate some human cities. I tried going big and said that we should go for the main human city of Kingcreed, but Ava immediately denied and said that we should start with different city. Not knowing any, she ranted a bunch that I can’t really remember the names of, but I said “Triston”.

As we packed and prepared to leave, she gave me the brief summary of Triston.

Triston has nearly 150 thousand human with around 37 thousand gnome slaves. The gnomes are all forced to help farm and do the hard-manual labor while a lot of the humans work and start preparing for war. The humans that don’t work for war are scientists who are working on trying to create better weapons and magic for their soldiers.

Because they’re all working towards that, they have much less security then a regular kingdom would. It would take a couple of days to get the but until then, we have enough time to do some stuff.

Hoping on our horses, we then started our travel with a very boring ride.

A few minutes in I got bored and started talking.

“For my disguise to get into Triston, I’m thinking about a fake mustache and speaking with an old man voice. Then if they ask me to state my name, I’ll say I’m Bonzu Pipinpadaloxicopolis The third! You can be my grand-daughter and we can- ”

“That’s a very dumb plan and will never work.

“I think some regular guard would fall fore it. Nobody likes to mess with insane old people after all.”

A couple hours of some light talking and planning later, the sky started to grow dark. Ava started setting up a tent to sleep and tied the reigns of the horses up to a nearby tree. I didn’t need to do any of this though because I was able to just jump into my bag of housing and lay down on a nice comfy bed.

Ava questioned where I got such a wonderful magic item but as usual, I replied with the same answer.

“Magic!”

She sneered at the answer but didn’t ask any more questions as she knew she wouldn’t be getting a better answer from me then that. He night passed quickly as I enjoyed the nice warm covers of my bed while Ava stayed outside and enjoyed the night sky.

Sleep came quickly and I woke up early with Ava throwing me out of my bag of housing. I cooked breakfast, read some of my books, made a pot of tea and got a confused look from Ava, and practiced using my disguise kit. This continued for a few days before we eventually got to our destination of Triston.

The guard standing at the gate looked both of us up and down before asking us some questions.

“Race?”

“Human”

“Reason for coming to Triston?”

“Work”

“Reason you have and Elven bow?”

“Spoils of war.”

“Oh? Are you willing to join the war then and hunt some monsters?”

“I think we’ll stick to some regular work.”

He gave a nod before writing down a few more things and tearing of two pieces of paper and giving them to us before letting us in. After walking out of hearing range, I leaned over to Ava and whispered to her, “That was much easier than expected.”

“What did you expect to happen?” She asked. “Did you expect them to figure out from a single glance that we weren’t here for what we said we were? He’s probably underpaid and working hellish hours to do something and just trying to get the day over with. They almost never care.”

Past the gate was a long road with multiple buildings and alleyways littering the side. Some buildings went many stories up while others seemed to go many stories sideways which was a weird thing to look at.

Moving closer and closer to the center of the city, Ava kept looking around for something and occasionally stopped and investigate. She didn’t exactly say what she was looking for but said I would know once she found it. I gave a slight nod in response as I continued to look around the city.

Eventually, we got to a point where we where in the shopping part of the city as there was food stalls all over the place and many signs advertising one thing or another. I said that we should split ways so that we could cover more ground faster and Ava agreed.

When she left, I rushed over to a stall selling crepes. Ordering one, he asked for a singular silver for a single crepe (which I thought was an outrageous price). Paying a moving a bit away, I took a bite out of the crepe and almost immediately spit it out.

Instead of what I was used to for crepes, they made this one with so much sugar and salt it tasted horribly. I spit out the piece in my mouth into my hand and looked for a place to throw it out. Sadly, I was unable to find one and wished I had the ability to remove it from existence which I sadly couldn’t do.

And with that, I vowed to never try crepes that seemed heavily overpriced and from a stall that had no other customers. Though I did also go over to a different food stall that had more people in line.

A few minutes passed as I started shoving a bunch of food and drinks into my inventory from all the stalls. Some of it where stuff I knew from Earth while others were some weird named abomination that probably only existed on this world because of weird evolutions and what not.

Sitting down on a bench, I enjoyed some of this weird named abomination food that I was talking about. Some of it was very nice while others was horrible. About halfway through my 4th abomination food, Ava jumped me like a mugger and said she found what she was looking for.

Dragging me to one of the Alleyways, she knocked on the wall twice before stopping and then knocking three more times. A few seconds later, a sound like that of stone grinding came from behind us and an entrance to an inn like room was now there.

“Ava, I still have no clue what you were looking for.”

“Isn’t it obvious? We had to go so a dark alley, do a secret code that opened a door, and everything is hidden from view of regular people!”

“So, something illegal?”

She gave me an annoyed stare.

“This is the black-market and the main center for criminals and what not.”

“Ah the black market where they sell black food stalls with burnt food and what not.”

“Leo, now is not the time to be addicted to food and hate burnt food. We’ve got some work to do and you’re joining me.”

Walking into the inn like area, Ava talked to the person behind the counter who looked very rough, tough, and buff. She said some stuff in an unknown language and slid him a bag of coins. When he looked inside it, he gave a weird smile before smiling and giving her a key.

Walking down a nearby hallway, I noticed that we were gradually going downwards underground. After around one or two minutes of walking, we eventually came out into a giant open area with multiple people who all looked similar to the guy behind the counter.

“Welcome to the Underdark Leo. You’re in for one hell of a first time with criminals.”