Chapter 165: The Gate Opens For One
Lake had been able to find a place to sleep pretty easily, all he had to do was hang out for a while and wait for a bedroll to open up. It seemed these people had been sleeping in shifts so all he had to do was pretend it was his turn and with how fast he slept he had been up before anyone could realize he wasn't with them.
Then came the wait, hours had passed but thankfully guards had shown up as soon as the sun had come up. It seemed the group he had chosen last night was second in line at the moment so he didn't wait for them and directly pushed his way to the front and passed the scroll Master Dean had given him to one of the guards.
The guard took it from him and after opening it and reading what it said they said. "Thanks for waiting for us to open the border. A lot of people like you try to climb over. Open the gate!" Right after the guard said this the gate cracked open and the guard said. "Alright have a nice time in the Metal Domain."
Lake guessed he didn't get his scroll back and walked inside to find himself in the smallest town he had ever seen. It reminded him of an old west train stop he had seen in movies. There were three small buildings and then a long road he guessed he would be walking down to reach an actual place he could find a Fighters guild.
That being said his map ended here so he didn't know where he should go in detail and felt he might be able to get a new map of this domain if he was to enter one of these buildings. Picking the most welcoming of the three, Lake found quite a few people inside and quickly realized he was inside a bar.
Not wanting to spend too much time here Lake walked over to the counter and asked the man behind it. "Hello, I've never been here before and was wondering if you had a map I could see."
"Since you've never been here I'll tell you you should show some metal to someone running a business before bothering them." Lake could tell the man was asking for money in a way where it sounded like it was a custom here and decided to just play along even if it wasn't true. He had an extremely small amount of money on him at the bottom of his bag and while he couldn't reach it he could just stick his hand into his bag and summon it to his hand.
Pulling out the gold and putting it on the counter, Lake got his answer. "You don't need a map for the Metal Domain, there's only one road through the mountains and if you don't stick to it you'll be able to see it from whatever mountain you decided it was a good idea to climb."
Lake guessed this was worth the small amount of money he had paid so he turned to leave when the man added. "You shouldn't head out by yourself, the metal domain has been having some issues with security recently. You should stay a while and find people to travel with." Lake could tell the man wasn't telling him to be nice but was using the fact it was dangerous to travel the road as a way to keep customers here for as long as possible and by looking around at all the people with drinks it was working.
That being said he wasn't willing to move at other peoples pace because they wouldn't be any help to him in a fight. Stepping outside Lake started towards the road when he heard the gate start to open again. Looking back he saw it was like when he passed through and only one person came through before it closed again.
Lake watched the person do exactly what he had done and head towards the bar and wondered if their interaction with the owner would be exactly the same. It didn't really matter to him though so he just turned around and started running.
...
Donny couldn't help but be surprised when he saw the only other person outside suddenly disappear in a cloud of smoke but he guessed you were surrounded by people much stronger than you all the time and you would only know if they used it. He had never really focused on Perception anyway with none of his jobs giving more than a few points with ever level up so it wasn't anything new for him to not be able to see someone going really fast.
Donny quickly put what he had just seen in the back of his mind and went back to why he had come through the gate ahead of the people he was traveling with. He had been hearing the voice for the last few hours and with the knowledge he was only a few feet from a bar he figured there was no harm with him being on this side of the gate as the rest of them got their entrance sorted.
Donny wasted no time in getting the biggest of whatever these people were drinking and sat down. He slowly took his first sip of alcohol in years and savored the flavor. When he was younger this had been how he passed most of his time but he had pretty much stopped when he had gotten the shield and he had stopped for good around the time he found out who the voice belonged to.
He couldn't afford to make any stupid deals just because he was drunk even if all he wanted to do was drink every time it happened. That being said, the vice he had turned to instead hadn't been much better and he could tell it was going to take a while for him to get used to not needing to do it anymore.
Now that he was in the Metal domain he doubted the Demon Lord would spend as much time on him because there were probably others like him much closer to the actual fighting. He would probably only have to worry about it now whenever he killed some Demon Worshipers or if he saw his brother with the shield.
Downing the rest of his drink Donny could tell it wasn't affecting him as much as it used to when he was younger and wondered how much he would actually have to spend to get drunk if all he was buying was this weak ale. "Are you looking for people to cross with?" Donny looked to see who had asked him the question and after he saw what they looked like said. "I'm just waiting for the people I'm with to get through."
"Is it a group we can join?" Donny had no control of who had been joining on the way here and didn't plan to change that now but he still said. "You can but we don't have any supplies so you can probably find better people to travel with." After he said this they walked away and Donny nodded to himself that he had been right about them.
They were some of the few people inside the tavern not drinking and they were really skinny and it made him think they weren't the best people to trust because he was pretty sure they were just looking for a meal and he was afraid they would eat a lot of the small amount of food they had left if no one kept an eye on them.
It wasn't the biggest problem now that they were here but he was sure the food they could buy here was going to be very overpriced so they wouldn't get as much as they actually needed so they couldn't afford three extra people eating it. Hearing the gate open again Donny thought about going to look but there was no way it would be who he was waiting for yet so there wasn't really a point.
The line was moving faster than he had expected but it would still probably take another day for them to come through. Feeling the gold in his pocket Donny sighed, he hadn't been thinking earlier when he had decided to come through before them because now he was going to have to spend some gold to get place to sleep tonight because they weren't going to waste their time opening the gate just so he could go back out after all he did was drink at the bar.
They were very busy at the moment so his best bet would be to stand by the gate and slip through the next time it opened. He didn't really want to go back into the Holy Domain but he hadn't been paid yet for his current job so he really couldn't spare the money for a room.
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