18: Reconstruction

Back at The Shelf, Rin and Eliza were observing from afar the battle between the drake and the demons.

“They’re… winning.” Rin said, looking at the fight. “Overwhelmingly so.”

They were on the roof of the adventurer’s guild. Right now, most people who were still in the city were in the port, preparing to go on boats and ‘trade’ for a few days while things cool off.

“The drake… It can’t even fight back?” Eliza pointed out.

From afar, it was all the clearer. The demons were using some kind of technique to instantly transport themselves to a location, striking, and then dodging any attacks that would come their way.

“The drake is somehow launching its scales off of its body to try to attack them… but it’s not working. It looks like the demons can instantly move to any position they can see. If they see anywhere, they can teleport to that place in a mere moment…”

Eliza felt chills upon realizing something.

“Doesn’t that mean that the only reason we’re alive right now is because they decided not to kill us?”

At that, Rin realized it too. 

The demons had spotted them earlier. Yet they didn’t strike.

“Are they… not as we had expected, then?” Rin wondered aloud.

Eliza nodded.

“I hope so… If we had known they were as strong as they're showing us right now, Grant never would have accepted this plan.”

Within mere minutes of their conversation, the drake began lashing out with greater strength… but the demons ignored it and were able to successfully continue striking the beast.

And, eventually… Grant himself appeared, now on the roof with them.

“I’ve evacuated most of the citizens near the gate. But… from the looks of it, there might not have been a need for me to do so.”

The three continued silently watching the demons overwhelm the drake.

But eventually, with no large celebration occurring… The drake simply died from its countless wounds.

Grant sighed.

“We… just have to deal with the aftermath. Make sure the damage doesn’t spread to the port. And if the demons come knocking… We need to answer.”

Grant’s words brought down the mood of the situation quite a bit.

As expected of one of the leaders of the adventurer’s guild, he was rather pragmatical.

Enough to ensure that the city was protected, at least.

They continued watch for quite some time, and after making sure that the demons weren’t approaching the city, Rin and Eliza made their way back to the Honeyed Bee. 

Eliza breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that Lily wasn’t in the inn. It seemed a bit damaged from the trembling, and if Lily had evacuated with Olivia and Lucas, then she was almost certainly safe.

Rin nearly collapsed on the couch Eliza had in her room, chuckling, then laughing like a madwoman.

“We’re safe. Alive… Haha!” she said, cackling constantly.

Eliza, despite being a bit concerned for her… completely understood. In a way, Eliza wanted to laugh like a madwoman too.

And for the next few days, The Shelf was emptier than ever. 

Eliza quickly learned that Olivia, Lucas, Theodore, Mary, and Lily, were on a boat by the dock, hanging out in the ocean to protect themselves.

Thankfully, they knew how to keep Lily safe, and the group returned safe and sound to the inn. Lucas’s skills with woodworking came in handy to make quick repairs, and a large number of people visited the inn at once, thanks to their houses being destroyed by the tremors.

And then… once Eliza brought Lily back to the inn, she saw a message she hadn’t seen in quite some time coming through the system.

[Congratulations upon surviving the second major hurdle in your new life! If you would like to see what may have happened upon your failure, you may spend 10 silver flints to do so.]

Eliza thought for a moment, then nodded. 10 silver flints was nothing for her by this point.

She felt the world shift and change, but this time, she felt as if she was riding along a wave… She instinctively tried to reach out and grab at the sensation, but it was like grabbing into air.

She saw it, once again. This time, she was a spectator, floating about.

But instead of in a prison, like last time, she could see herself on a boat… She was still alive.

She felt nowhere near as disoriented as when this happened to her the first time… In some ways, she felt like she was in control of the situation around her.

Theodore was there. Olivia, Lucas, Mary, and Lily were there, too.

“Damnit, Rin! Why'd you have to...” dream Eliza shouted.

Olivia clenched her teeth, then patted Eliza on the shoulder.

The real Eliza looked around, confused. She didn’t have the context of the situation, so she didn’t know what was happening, yet. It wasn’t as plainly clear as it was with Baron Slake’s situation.

But…

Where was Sorin? Where was Rin?

She looked around the boat… But they were nowhere to be found.

Theodore, for once, had tears in his eyes.

And then… Eliza felt her stomach sink.

If she had failed… Sorin would have gone out to delay the drake in any way possible.

And he would die.

Eliza watched as Mary began asking questions.

“Why can’t I see grampa anymore?” she asked. Lily looked up at dream Eliza and seemed to want to ask the same question.

Mary and Lily… had been quite sheltered from death, for their entire lives. Olivia, Lucas and Eliza had made sure of that.

But even so… they knew what death was. Once they told them that he was dead…

The real Eliza couldn’t handle it anymore.

“Stop! Stop… Stop!” She shouted, asking for the system to stop showing this to her.

And then… It stopped. The system listened to her instructions, even if she knew she was being unreasonable. She knew she needed to watch, to at least learn what was going on... But she just couldn't bear it.

[Returning…]

The system made an announcement, and then she was right back at the Honeyed Bee. Everything was normal. It was okay.

But Eliza knew it really wasn’t. Let alone Lily and Mary, she hadn’t even been prepared for when Sorin would die herself.

The man quickly had grown on her… Like a parasite, but still, he had grown on her nonetheless.

But… he was an old man. Likely before Lily became an adult… He would pass away eventually.

Thinking on that gave Eliza trouble… since she herself wasn’t yet comfortable with the idea of death.

Even if she was willing to kill others, seeing those around her die...

She may have been a hypocrite, but her family was alive, and that’s what she cared about.

Soon, reconstruction of the damages quickly began.

Surprisingly, having the equivalent of hundreds of earthquakes strike a city all at once left quite a lot of damage. Moreover, many of the scales that shot off the body of the drake had fallen on houses and infrastructure, leading to several parts of the street and residential homes needing to be rebuilt.

However, the city now had something they could use to pay for it.

The corpse of the drake.

The demons did not care for the corpse whatsoever. They left it remaining to rot in the forest, and eventually the demon outpost returned to their city deeper in the forest. Thankfully, war was avoided with the demons, despite the union’s audacious actions.

And with the union suddenly opening up more of its trade to countries outside of the continent, reconstruction took very little time at all.

In fact, with the money made from the drake, and the materials it left, they were able to build up a new layer to the outer wall, creating a new layer to the town. The inner wall remained standing, and is unlikely to be removed any time soon, but now the city has expanded to nearly double its former size. The outer region, jokingly called ‘The Drawer’ by a random drunk adventurer, quickly became filled with tents and refugees from the kingdom and empire.

Thankfully, with the much stronger wall, they had time to plan. They didn’t need to develop infrastructure instantly, thanks to the wall existing, so they let the refugees stay in camps while they planned the city's expanded structure.

Moreover, the materials that weren’t used for creating the stronger wall, or for trading, were easily used to armor their soldiers and make them much stronger. Thanks to that, they were able to guard their trading caravans much more efficiently than before.

As expected, a massive behemoth required a lot of cleanup, though, and for the next half year, the entire city was focused on using the materials from the drake to enhance, repair, and grow stronger than they once were.

And… Even better was now that the soldiers were better armed with materials from a drake, a ‘certain alchemist’ was forced to create enhanced weaponry using those materials nonstop. With his experience in handling drake scales, he was the only one capable of doing it.

And thus, the union had an entirely new type of weapon it was known for. The flaming zweihander.

Large, two handed magic swords that were able to light on fire when covered in alchemical solution.

And the alchemical solution? The alchemist was easily able to pass that task off to others, creating a large demand for new alchemy students in The Shelf. Even that alone meant more money was flowing through The Shelf.

Even Eliza was stunned by the power of the new weapons.

‘Those swords…’ she thought to herself, one day. ‘They almost give an ordinary swordsman the power of a flame aligned sword expert.’

It was somehow a reversal of fortune for the union.

As if all the stars aligned, they had come out of a dangerous situation on top, and had even managed to reverse the situation with the war. Yes, the union may not be the leading power, but by now, they couldn’t simply be attacked by the empire or kingdom. They controlled the main water trading route with other countries, and it was well defended due to their new army and wall.

‘Moreover…’ Eliza thought to herself. ‘With the union shutting down the adventurer’s halls in the kingdom and the empire, it forced the two bastardized excuses of countries to start protecting their own towns and cities for a change. Thanks to that, their armies are weakened, and adventurers who sought money are now coming to the union instead of the kingdom or the empire. Their soldiers are tied up and they were left with a lack of supplies… Either the kingdom and the empire need to start trying to play nice… Or even if they win the war, they’ll probably be nothing more than husks of their former selves.’

And then, she wanted to whine.

‘It’s nice that the war was brought back to a stalemate from the clutches of defeat… But why does that lead to me having to do paperwork?!’ she almost screamed out.

Eliza, more than half a year after the attack of the drake, had settled down and returned to her job as a teacher.

Unfortunately, the drake caused the town to be quite peaceful afterwards. Too peaceful. With the influx of adventurers moving in, the town had less jobs that could be done by Eliza as an adventurer.

More adventurers meant less monsters, which meant less money going her way.

She felt like she just wanted to burn all the paperwork away and pretend it didn’t exist. As she did, a flicker of red shined in her eyes, but she calmed down.

“I could, though…” She said, reaching her palm out. Inside, a small flame was lit, and she carefully played with it, excitedly.

She wasn’t quite sure whether this was magic or aura, but she, through inspiration from the flaming zweihanders, was finally able to use an element other than ice in her attacks.

While she may not know whether it was magic or aura, she knew that when she studied one, the other seemed to get stronger too.

'What was it, again? That one quote...? All rivers come from the same source?' she wondered to herself. She felt like thinking on this topic was pointless for her, so she went back to what she was doing.

Eliza snuffed the flame out, and returned back to looking at paperwork. Every time she wanted to approve or deny a new student’s admission into the adventurer’s school, she was forced to fill out a form. Unfortunately for her, an influx of people who have been around the world all traveling to The Shelf at once meant a lot of people who would desire their children to have an education suddenly appeared.

And thus… Eliza was left to fill out hundreds of sheets of papers.

She couldn’t simply just refuse to take on more students. No, she had to have an actual reason why.

And moreover, a simple ‘We only have space for 20 kids total, why are you letting hundreds apply?’

wouldn’t work.

She almost felt like crying, but settled for sighing longingly instead.

“I wish Lily was here… Maybe I should just teach someone to do my job for me…”

Her mind was almost brought to the thought of Lily, who seemed excited about trying to celebrate her mom’s upcoming birthday…

But then, she heard rustling behind her.

“Huh… Rin?” Eliza asked, turning around.

As expected, the short woman was right beside her. Eliza didn’t know how she got in without alarming her, but Rin has never stopped growing as an assassin, even if she wasn’t using her skills the same way anymore.

“Why don’t you? Teach someone, that is?” Rin asked.

Eliza laughed.

“I mean… this is my job. It’s how I get paid. Even if I basically have enough money from what we got paid for killing the drake to live forever with, I just… I need something to do, you know?”

Eliza thought about her current funds… 2000 gold arrows. At what point would she be satisfied? It was more than enough money, even on Earth, to buy a house. So why continue to accumulate wealth?

She didn’t even know why. At this point, she was working just to be a good role model for Lily. She didn’t want to be a parent who their child couldn’t take example of, at least.

Rin silently inserted a small, folded up paper into Eliza’s hand, and backed away slightly.

“This is something from Grant. It’s something that already has approval by the union government. After all, with an influx of people, something like this was inevitable.”

Eliza didn’t know what Rin was talking about at all. And then… she saw the paper that Rin had stuffed in her hand.

It was a paper, detailing the adventurer’s school project… But no, it was different.

“Adventurer’s… Academy?” Eliza asked.

Rin, who rarely showed emotion towards people, smiled. She trusted Eliza enough to open up to her, but to everyone else, this would be an impossibly rare sight.

“Eliza… How would you like to be a headmistress?”