DMS Chapter 16

  When the priest invited him for dinner, Flinx declined, telling the old priest by signing that he was still full. The old man seemed to understand and left him alone soon after. The next thing that Flinx did was purchase a very unhealthy fast food meal from his shopping site and binge on a burger, fries, and soda, and then spent the rest of the evening studying the details of his system.

  He thought of buying more spells, but he held off doing that since Flinx was in a place where he could not practice spell casting.

  During the next few days, Flinx's life became monotonous. After breakfast, the old priest would continue teaching him the local language. After that, he would be left alone to do whatever he wanted. He also knew that the old priest or possibly some of the people at the church, whom he rarely saw, checked his room and things while he was out walking, but since the only thing he left there was his knapsack with his clothes, he wasn’t worried. They were probably wondering why his clothes and his body remained clean, even though he hadn’t washed his clothes or taken a bath for a few days. Of course, his Prestidigitation spell solved all of that, and to be honest, Flinx wanted to experience bathing or showering again, but he had not done so for more than two years, and a few more weeks wouldn’t hurt him.

  Flinx's monotonous life was interrupted one day when he was woken up by a bell and some chanting. When he peeked outside his room, he saw that there were a lot of people at the church. Based on the behavior of the people, it was probably the local version of the Sunday church. He cleaned himself using his spell and joined the villagers. He wanted to check if something extraordinary or supernatural would happen during the mass or sermon or whatever they call them here, but after a few hours of boring speech from the old priest that, of course, he couldn’t understand, nothing magical happened.

  A lot of the villagers did look at him curiously, and the priest probably obliged the people by telling them about him once the service was over.

  Flinx noticed that after the service was over, during the next few days, while he was walking, some of the villagers’ kids started following him. He knew it was because he was someone new and different, and the children were only doing so out of curiosity. At first, there were a couple of adults nearby while the kids curiously followed him, probably to make sure that he wouldn’t do anything nefarious to them, but after a few more days, the adults started leaving the kids alone while following him.

  Some of the bolder kids started talking with him, and Flinx tried to talk back using the few words that he had learned from his language lessons from the priest, but his attempts only made the kids laugh.

  After another week, Flinx had learned enough of the local language that he could now communicate with the old priest using broken sentences. He had given his name to the priest, and the old man told him that his name was Anuel.

  Anuel, the old priest, admitted that the reason why he taught Flinx diligently and allowed him to stay at the church was because of the 1 kilogram of salt that he had given when he first arrived at the chapel.

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  The priest candidly told him that the 1 kilogram of salt amounted to unimaginable wealth and that he took advantage of Flinx’s lack of knowledge.

  He told Anuel that it was fine for the old man to take the salt. He knew that the salt was extremely valuable, but he arrived in a land surrounded by hostile monsters and wanting sanctuary, so it was a given that he would need to provide compensation to be treated well, and the priest did treat him well.

  Flinx did ask the priest why the children from the village kept following him.

  “Well, not only are you new here, which, to be honest, there is very little of 'new' in this village, you’re also unnaturally clean. Like, all the time! Not only your clothes, but your body as well, and we know that you’re not washing your clothes or taking a bath. To be honest with you, we checked your whole room, and it’s extremely clean as well,” Anuel said with a wondering look on his face.

  Flinx paused for a minute while observing the old priest. What he wanted was to be candid about what he was capable of as a mage. He didn’t want to hide the fact that he could do magic, and he refused to believe that there was no magic in this world. He knew that his next sentence would be a gamble. It would define his relationship with the village moving forward, depending on the villagers’ behavior toward those who could cast spells. He wondered if he should give it a couple more weeks before he admitted to the priest that he was a mage, at least until he was more proficient with the local language, but to be honest, he didn’t want to hold it off for long.

  Flinx wanted to know if he could return to this village if he went outside to do some adventuring.

  “I used a spell to clean my body and my belongings. I would have preferred to take a bath, but I don’t want to impose on you,” Flinx said while observing the old priest’s reaction.

  Anuel smiled at him.

  “I knew that you were a spellcaster. The fact that you ate so little and could keep your body healthy. Not only that, we can smell the food that you might be conjuring in your room during meal times. This was just one of our speculations, aside from the fact that you’re too clean.”

  When Flinx heard about the church’s inhabitants smelling the food that he had been buying from his system shopping site, he blushed.

  Flinx learned a lot from his conversation with the old priest, Anuel. He learned that Anuel was a priest of the goddess of the hearth, Isthia, and that this chapel was too small to have a priest who could cast divine spells. There was a bigger church in the village located on the other side, and the priest there could cast divine spells.

  He also learned that the village that Flinx always thought of as a small one was actually a medium-sized town in this country. The town was called Beldor, named after a hero who came from this place hundreds of years ago.

  The town was governed by a mayor and several officials, and the mayor was appointed by the nobles from the city of Tarmon, a couple of weeks' travel to the north. Tarmon was also the name of the kingdom as well as the capital city.

  Beldor town had an Adventurer Guild. Since the town was a small one, the adventurer guild was the only guild that was in here. A huge city would normally have several guilds like the Mage Guild, the Alchemist Guild, the Merchant Guild, the Miner Guild, the Blacksmith Guild, the Healers Guild, and so on. Basically, most profession had their own guild. Anuel told him that powerful adventurers could join more than one guild.

  “When I first arrived here, patrolmen found me. Are there a lot of people patrolling the surroundings? When I was traveling the roads, I was attacked by kobolds,” Flinx told the priest.