No Need For A Core?
298: Exploration

Fuyuko spent the first several minutes of her exploration using every trick she'd learned for how to lose a tail, whether at Sanctuary or from her time in Azeria.

Not that she entirely needed them, not with an hour's head start, but it should help prevent anyone from directly tracking her, and it seemed a good habit to use whenever she might not want to be found.

By the time she was satisfied with her work, Fuyuko had also decided she liked this city. It was so very vertical, with almost all of the buildings being several stories tall unless they were already on a cliff, and the cliffs themselves were covered in windows, walkways, and doors.

Plus the awnings everywhere were great; not only did they provide lots of shadows to move through and hide in, they kept the sun from beating down. Given that she was on the southern side of the mountains now, which gave a decent arc of time around noon where sunlight could reach the streets, it was warm enough already. At least, from Fuyuko's perspective.

Mordecai had taught her a little about it, or rather, Fuyuko was still getting the education to form a base of knowledge that would let her learn more about how such things worked. But she had understood the basics; the mountains stopped most cold air from going south and hot air from going north. Some air still went around, over, or even through, which is why the pass was always windy.

That wind was what made the wind chimes and random bits of colored cloth on the ropes across the upper levels so much fun.

But Fuyuko was more distracted by other sights. She'd never seen people with lizard or snake-like features when she was growing up, and Azeria didn't have a lot of delvers who looked like that either, but here they made up a good portion of the populace.

Some of them looked to be all reptile, some were part-reptile part-human or elf, like naga, while others seemed to just have a little bit of reptilian features, such as snake-like eyes.

Not that Fuyuko was one to talk; she had wolf ears and eyes and oni horns.

Which reminded her to tug her hood back down. She'd habitually pulled it up when she had started her exploration, but she didn't need it here. Fuyuko couldn’t help but react so from all those years of hiding who she was, but she didn't need to do that anymore, and especially not here where it seemed like every sort of ancestry thronged through the streets.

Fuyuko had spent close to an hour exploring the city with all of its interesting new sights and smells. She was fascinated by the areas scoured of scent from the wind, intermingling with areas scented with incense heavier than that which Kazue offered as prized in her side of the dungeon, and all the people with their strange, spicy perfumes, when a particular sort of scent reached her.

Food.

Her stomach rumbled despite her having eaten just before they landed. Suddenly, the easy choice of the coin pouches didn't seem as easy. Fuyuko felt a flash of irritation as she realized her papa had predicted this moment as the time she was going to find it difficult to select the smallest coin bag as the one she spent on herself.

She ignored that for the moment and traced down the source of the smell. There had been traces of food scents before of course, but this was a more potent smell and it led her to what she had been half expecting to find: a marketplace complete with stalls of cooking meat and hot, filled pastries. Most of the food was at this end it looked like.

Before she went shopping, Fuyuko needed to know how much money she had to spend, so she found a corner where she could wrap deep shadows around herself before she started counting coins.

It wasn't too hard to make herself retrieve only the lightest pouch, but it was harder than she liked admitting to herself. Shaking off those thoughts, Fuyuko opened up the pouch to count the coins inside. The glint of silvery metal inside was satisfying, as even this much copper would have been a small fortune to her a year ago.

Huh. That was strange. Fuyuko frowned as she counted the coins by touch. They seemed awfully heavy for silver, and silver coins were usually larger. Plus, these weren't simply round. So she pulled one out to look at it better and saw that the heavy, untarnished metal was too matte to be silver.

The coin had a six-lobed shape, and the engravings on it completed a depiction of a type of white daffodil that was favored by the royal family of Kuiccihan. Each of the six petal-like lobes had a hole in it as well, to make it wearable coinage.

It was a good thing she'd hidden herself first because it was several long seconds before Fuyuko could make herself carefully put the coin back into the small pouch while holding back a desire to start laughing.

One of the things that her three parents had made sure she was trained in was how to recognize all the materials used as coinage on this continent and in most other lands.

Fuyuko opened the pouch wider and looked inside. At the bottom was a long cord of white, almost pearlescent spider silk and an ornate length of titanium alloy with a rainbow sheen that contrasted with the spider silk, which Fuyuko suspected Mama K had had a hand in designing, devised to be slid over the cord. There were six clasps that dangled from it, perfectly sized to click one or two coins onto while making them difficult to accidentally remove.

She pondered briefly how her papa had managed to get this made, given that the only way she knew of to craft titanium alloys were through dungeon rewards. Maybe he'd been giving out a lot of them and then bought some back through other people? Gramps was probably involved in some way. Hmm, was there one of these in each pouch, or had Mordecai trusted that she'd pick this one?

Given that the other two pouches held the same sort of coin, Fuyuko was carrying more money on her right now than most nobles did. Of course, she was technically royalty... oh, that was how she could spend the coin! First, she spent the time to put two coins on each clasp, slid it onto the silk cord, and then threaded several more of the coins on each side. After that, she tied a fancy-looking knot that wouldn't come loose and put it on like a necklace.

Fuyuko retrieved the hat that had also been part of the kit she'd received from that strange girl about a year ago. Before she put it on, she recalled one of the outfits her armor had absorbed, leaving her in a practical dress made of expensive fabrics, with small gilded edges and dark blue cloth. This appearance was slightly offset by having her bracers still showing over the sleeves and her sturdy boots.

Once her hat was in place, Fuyuko darkened the shadow it cast across her face before activating its ability to create an illusionary outfit. The dress she conjured with it was a little larger than the one she was now wearing and was made of pastel-colored silks and delicate-looking embroidery. The illusion made her backpack and cloak invisible, and it also included heels, which would make observant enough people guess that she was shorter than she appeared. They would be wrong, which was the point of the deceit. Naturally, her necklace still showed on top of the illusory dress and her hat was disguised to match the style of her dress.

Perfect. Fuyuko waited for the right ebb of other people walking by before she stepped out of her corner, letting the shadows fade away slowly so that she didn't startle anyone with a sudden appearance. Ignoring the few people who were surprised anyway, she made her way over to a stall serving fresh, meat-stuffed pastries. These were large ones and the stall must be known for having lots of meat in the pastries, given that it was mostly frequented by people in more expensive clothing than the more ordinary folk. Meat was always more expensive.

Doing her best to mimic the examples set by the princesses in her life, Fuyuko tilted her head in acknowledgment of the greeting she received from the owner of the stall. "Good day," she said in her 'princess voice'. "I would like to purchase a large number of pastries, which I will be storing away." Her other option was to ask for a bag, but Fuyuko thought it better to show off even more by the obvious use of an enchanted item.

She continued by saying, "I see that you have boar and venison, so we will start with those and then move on to whatever else you have. You may keep two silver as change. Oh, and I will need a receipt for my bookkeeper."

With that, Fuyuko unclasped and laid down a single small coin of platinum on the stall's counter.

The rare metal was generally forged and minted by dwarves, though other high-temperature specialty forges could also process it. But that wasn't the only problem; it glowed so brightly during forging that looking at it without protection could leave you blind unless you were properly healed.

Between its rarity and how difficult it was to process, it was considered a high-value metal.

"Ah, yes ma'am." the man said. "If I might ask to be clear, do you intend to spend all of the coin except for those two silver?"

"Yes, unless that would be a problem?"

"Um, no, not at all, except that you'll have a bit more change than that. The next set won't be ready for a little while, I normally don't sell out this fast." He looked a little uncertain but not terribly nervous.

Fuyuko decided to lean her persona toward magnanimous and said, "That will be fine then, if I find that more are needed, I shall simply return later." That statement was deliberately designed to be vague about who the pastries were for.

When the deal was complete, Fuyuko had to figure out a solution to a slight problem that she had made for herself. She hadn't considered the process of how to get the pastries into her backpack. But the shade of the awning turned out to be the solution to her problem, combined with the completion of the sale marking the sealing of a bargain that gave her ownership of the pastries.

She just needed to step into the same shadow covering the pastries so that it covered her backpack too, even though others couldn't see it.

Shadow magic and faerie magic blended together, and the pastries simply sank into shadow as Fuyuko deposited them into her backpack.

That was a little trickier and more strenuous than she'd thought it was going to be, but she didn't let that show as she thanked the man and left. Unfortunately, she needed to use the shadows once more before she could find someplace to rest.

With a confident stride, she walked toward the rest of the marketplace, which was teaming with people, and she made a brief show of examining various offered goods while truly examining the area around and above the market.

Eventually, she found what she wanted and angled her wandering toward a particularly dark patch of shadow that she simply faded into.

Her destination was a small balcony a few stories above with a faded awning and dust on the low wall, suggesting it was little used. She whipped off her hat and dispelled the illusion as she stepped out of that shadow, and then immediately sat down to breath heavily.

Grabbing items like that and putting them into her backpack was not as easy a trick as she had thought it was going to be. Fuyuko rather imagined that it would be even harder to steal that way, though she suspected Mordecai could do it. He just wouldn't do it unless he had a really good reason to.

After breathing and resting for a little while, Fuyuko tucked her necklace under her real dress and pulled her backpack off so that she could get at the pastries without having to use that same shadow trick again.

Oh, these were good and so worth the effort she'd gone through to get them. Technically it had been an unnecessary effort, but she had been showing off more than a little bit of wealth and felt better foisting off that show of wealth to a discardable false identity.

Once she'd eaten her first three, Fuyuko had enough energy to darken the shadow on the balcony a bit more so that people wouldn't notice her. Then she got up on her knees and watched the crowds go by while she started eating some more of the tasty pastries.

She could pick out some of the spices that had been used, but even with all the time she spent helping in the kitchen (which was the best way to get more food), she still had a lot to learn. Bellona had been helping her learn how to cook too, and Fuyuko always made sure there were no unwanted leftovers.

It was fun to watch all the people walking around as they shopped, and she gave Amrydor a happy nod when he wandered by and glanced up at her before she resumed scanning the crowds.

Eh?

Fuyuko blinked in surprise before turning to look back at where Amrydor was, though he wasn't looking up at her now. Still, she was pretty certain he had been deliberately looking at her. The dirty cheater could probably sense her life energy. That was so not fair, she needed to find a way to hide deep enough into the shadows that he couldn't sense her.

Though it was really weird that she had not felt at all surprised to see him there. She hadn't been expecting him to be there, it was just that it seemed normal that he somehow would be.