My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World
Chapter 123: Capital of Aridonia

Chapter 123: Capital of Aridonia

After we left Cactustown and walked far enough for no one to see us, we took flight and headed for the capital.

It was supposed to be a two-day ride, so it only took us a few hours for the oasis capital to become visible in the distance.

We descended to walk the rest of the way, and it was impressive how the arid desert had changed into a more tropical environment.

Water ponds with palm trees scattered around the wavy dirt road leading to the entrance.

The walls of the city were tall, with gates of different sizes at the bottom for the people to use.

There was a line to enter the city, which was quite annoying since we could just fly inside, but I didn’t want to get into any sort of trouble by doing whatever I wanted, so we waited.

Minutes later, we reached the gates, and I turned in my adventurer’s card to get a quick passage inside.

The city was immense and had the same type of buildings as Cactustown, made with white sandstone and flat roofs. However, the vegetation was much more abundant here.

Different flowers and vines grew all around the city. There was a river where children were bathing and playing, and the streets were filled with vendors and hagglers.

The first thing we did was go to the inn and get two rooms — one for me and my companions and one for Gina.

Once we had our rooms, I told Vespera and Gina to split so that we could explore more of the city, and we went on different ways.

I remembered the message that I received from Jen, telling me that the person who was trying to buy the slaves said something about moving his business to Aridonia. However, different from the Droman capital, this place didn’t have the same poor districts that were clearly targeted by the gang.

Not only that, but I doubted that they had an underground base, considering that it wouldn’t be possible with their infrastructure unless they used magic.

As I kept walking around the sea of people, I spotted a little kid crouching next to a house, drawing something on the ground with a stick.

The kid seemed to be around eight years old, and his body looked weak and malnourished.

I felt bad for him, so I hid from the sight of the people around between a few houses and brought out a few fruits to give to the child.

When I approached him with the food, he looked at me with a defeated expression and bowed as he silently grabbed the fruits and began eating slowly.

"What’s your name?" I asked.

The boy munched on an apple and replied with a mouthful. "Abel..." he said.

"Are your parents around somewhere?" I kept asking, but the boy shrugged as he didn’t know.

When I asked him where he lived, he pointed at the house right behind him, but when I used my "search" spell, I couldn’t feel anyone inside the home.

Apparently, the boy had been locked outside for a few days and was waiting for his parents to return and open the door for him, but they hadn’t come back in days.

I used gravity magic to move the lock and opened the door for him, making him run inside with the little energy he had left as he began to search his house for his parents.

The place was organized, and it didn’t look like there were signs of any confrontation, so I thought that Abel’s parents were most likely kidnapped while they were outside.

There was no way for me to tell if they had been taken or if an accident had happened, so when the boy returned to the living room with tears in his eyes, I asked where his parents said they were going the last time he saw them.

Abel told me that they had just gone to work like any other day. His father worked as an assistant to a doctor, and his mother was a tailor for a clothing shop.

While his parents were gone, Abel would grab a few bags of coffee beans that the family was growing in their backyard and sell them at the city’s plaza, where lots of people liked to barter.

However, one day, his parents didn’t come home from work, and he stayed outside waiting a week for them to return until I arrived.

It sounded like a case of targeted kidnapping since they had taken the couple at the same time, but I couldn’t understand how they didn’t take Abel, too, if his family had been targeted.

I was a bit afraid of leaving the kid alone in his house, so I asked him to show me to the place where his parents worked so that I could ask the people there personally.

The mom’s clothing shop was the nearest, taking us a few minutes of walking to get there.

Abel told me that he had already asked the shop’s owner, but the man told the kid that he hadn’t seen her after she left work.

While I believed that Abel was telling me the truth, I needed to hear it from the owner personally since it would have been easy for an adult to lie to a child.

When we got to the shop, the walls were covered with silk dresses and cotton shirts. Behind the counter, a man sat with an angry expression while three women worked on weaving fabric behind him.

As soon as he saw me, his face changed to a fake smile and welcomed me to his shop, but when Abel entered right behind me, the man went back to his disgruntled expression.

"Hello, sir..." I greeted the man, approaching the counter.

"Look, I already told the kid. I don’t know where Livia went..." the man said without even gazing at me.

"So, it’s safe to say she is your employee, correct?" I asked.

"Ex-employee!" the man exclaimed with anger.

"She hasn’t shown up for a week. Do you think I’ll give her another chance!?" he continued.

"So, you believe she left on her own and left her child behind?" I asked with a serious tone since the man was getting on my nerves.

I could understand that some people were stressed sometimes, and that made them sound rude, but this guy wasn’t even doing anything besides complaining behind the counter while his workers were sweating in the back.

"Well, how would I know!? Maybe she did!" said the man as he gruntled.

The women who were diligently working behind him glared at the man with discontent.

"Is that right? Do you think she was the type of person to do something like that?" I asked, wanting to see the reactions from the workers and not the man.

"Yes, that’s right. That woman was selfish and only cared about herself. Maybe she ran away with some rich man!" the shop’s owner continued.

However, I wasn’t paying that much attention to him, as the women in the back were visibly angry at his words, which made me believe that the man was lying.

I sighed in disappointment, turned my head to the shop’s entrance, and shut it close while locking it with gravity magic.

"Hey, what the hell are you- RAARGHG!" the man tried to exclaim, but as soon as he stood up, I used gravity magic to slam his body against the counter and kept him anchored to it.

"What’s... this!?" the man struggled to mutter as his own body weight kept him from moving away from the counter.

The women in the back got startled and stopped their work as they recoiled with fear, so I tried telling them that I wasn’t going to hurt anyone, but that didn’t seem to alleviate the tension.

Nonetheless, I focused back on the shop’s owner and crouched slightly to look into his eyes.

"Now, I’ll ask again. Do you know where this woman, Livia, is?" I asked with a cold tone to intimidate the man, who was still struggling to move with my gravity magic holding him in place.

"I told you... She left..." he muttered in his struggles.

"Ladies, is it true that Livia was the type of person to leave their children behind?" I said as I turned to look at the frightened tailors on the corner.

Nevertheless, it didn’t matter how afraid they were of me because they all shook their heads, denying the shop owner’s statements.

"See, we got three against one..." I said, tapping my bo against the ground gently and increasing the weight that held the man down, slightly cracking the counter from the force of his body pushing against it.

"For every question you don’t answer truthfully, I’ll increase the weight. You don’t wanna see how it ends, trust me..." I muttered as I got my face closer to the man.

I wasn’t planning on killing anyone, but intimidation was the best tool to gather information most of the time, and I had no problem acting like a bad guy if it would allow me to help someone.