Lith spent the evening looking for food stalls and restaurants just to discover that there were none. Tista, instead, had no idea what to do after giving up on her assignment as a teacher.
She went to the neighboring Garden of Knowledge and studied Jiera's version of the Battle Mage specialization.
"This place sucks." Lith said after setting up the table with mostly food from Garlen that he had stored inside his pocket dimension.
"They have no bread, no sweets, no processed food at all. The only things you can acquire are the basic ingredients. Everything else is up to you."
"Well, making bread is easy. We just need a bit of flour." Tista shrugged.
"Great. I'll leave it to you, then." Lith gave her a handful of fresh wheat.
"Are you saying they don't even grind it?" Tista was flabbergasted.
"Worse. Aside from meat, fish, and fruit, we don't even get spices or salt unless we get them ourselves." He replied.
"How much food have you brought?" Phloria started munching her spicy fried chicken slower. She feared it might be her last decent meal and she wanted to enjoy it at its fullest.
"Enough to last for a month. I don't think we'll stay in Reghia that long, but it still sucks. Eating local food is the same as taking a camping trip in the wilds back home unless we go to a human city. Yet I doubt they fare much better." Lith said.
"This sure explains why everyone in the human district is in a bad mood." Phloria said. "They have lost their homes, their family members, and even the small things that they took for granted."
"It still doesn't justify their attitude." Tista shook her head. "When I was little and still ill, even meat was a luxury. We would mostly eat broths and stews. I didn't have bread regularly until Lith went to the academy."
Phloria stopped eating and looked at them as if it was the first time. They were both so tall and good-looking that it was hard to imagine them having such a hard past.
"Tomorrow I'm going to the barracks and look for some work in the field. I'm sure there must be something that needs to be killed. What about you?" Lith asked.
"I'll try to beat some sense in those guys. Literally, if I have to." It wasn't the first tough nut that Phloria had to crack.
Most of the recruits in the army were commoners who didn't like nobles in general, let alone those who managed to start their career as officers.
"I'm not big on killing, but I'm sure that if I look around, I'll find something to do." Tista said.
"I'm going with Lith." Solus said. "With a bit of luck, we could find a mana geyser and check if it can allow us to go back home. On top of that, I'm curious to see how a Mogar without humans looks like. As for the bread…"
Solus let the wheat that Lith had brought home fall toward the ground, where a small hole opened. It allowing the others to see that they were right above the Alchemy lab, where a grind turned the wheat into a fine dust that was thoroughly filtered.
"I've done my part. I like my bread with a pinch of salt, otherwise it tastes too sweet with the jam." Solus handed Tista a flask filled with the whitest and purest flour she had ever seen.
"Did you really use an alchemy lab just to grind wheat? That's both overkill and cheating! The tower did the job, not you." Tista already regretted her offer.
"The tower is part of her body and so is the lab. You can't argue with the results, dear Tista. I like my bread without salt." Phloria said.
After taking their orders and cursing her own big mouth, Tista had to spend the rest of the evening trying to remember Elina's recipe to make bread dough. The others, instead chatted and played cards, enjoying the first true free time they had in months.
The following morning Lith returned to the city gates. They were the closest thing to a local branch of the army so he expected to find Aren the Jǫrmungrandr there or at least whoever was in charge of Reghia's defenses.
"Aren Dolm isn't the mayor of Reghia, son. I am." A huge Nue said with a tired voice.
Nues were chimeras specialized in the light and air elements. His height at the withers reached 2 meters (6'7") so his office was bigger than Lith's house in Lutia. There was no desk nor chairs, just bookshelves lined against the walls and round mana crystals embedded in the floor, each with a different purpose.
They allowed the mayor of Reghia of taking care of communications, real time external and internal surveillance, and inventory with but a touch of his giant paws.
The Nue had the head of a monkey, the body of a tiger, the wings of an eagle, and the front half of a snake for a tail.
"Being the Council representatives, Lord Aren and his Fae counterpart, Annis, are the sovereigns of the entire Jiera continent. You must be someone important if Lord Aren welcomed you in person. I'm Xoth, nice to meet you." The Nue said.
Those words made Lith ponder why both the Guardians and the Councils of two continents had gone such lengths just for the sake of his apprenticeship, making his paranoia sense tingle.
'Less thinking, more talking.' Solus snapped him out of his reverie after Xoth cleared his throat twice.
"Thanks, sir. I'm looking for something to do that could benefit the city and grant me access to its basic resources." Lith avoided mentioning Adamant and mana crystals right off the bat to avoid sounding too human.
"Judging from your smell, you can use Origin Flames. Are you interested in purifying a few batches of Orichalcum? There's only so much our Forgemasters can do with silver and most mining operations have stopped due to monster outbreaks."
The Nue could recognize the smell of sulfur and world energy that came out of Lith's mouth with every breath.
"I could give it a try, but I must warn you that I'm not that skilled. I'm still learning how to control Origin Flames and I still burn too much silver along with the impurities. Did you say monster outbreaks?" Those two words reminded Lith of Tezka, the Warg-Abomination hybrid, making him wonder if the Master's clutches reached even Jiera.
"That's too bad." The Nue sighed. "Usually, I would assign you a master, but our stockpiles are limited and I can't afford to waste precious metal. As for the monster outbreaks, they are a big issue that could use your help.
"Ever since the plague wiped out the humans, monsters are free to breed unchecked simply because there are not enough beasts and plant folk to patrol the entire continent.
"Monsters had plenty to eat thanks to all the human corpses lying around and to all the cattle that suddenly had no owner nor defense. We have gathered in places like Reghia because staying in the open is not safe even for Emperor Beasts.
"Waves of monsters wiped out entire forests and even though we always managed to kill them all, we suffered too many losses among our ranks."
