Chapter 2: Civilization

They departed the following day at dawn, wanting an early start. All four horses were now pulling the wagon, and without the slaves in tow, Noah and Tin were able to travel much faster than before. Despite their speed boost, they had to be careful, as there were dangers all around them. This was a familiar situation for Noah. He had fought in numerous wars and seen countless post-apocalyptic worlds, living through one anarchic hellscape after another. He was used to growing eyes in the back of his head and expecting enemies at all times.

“Master!” Tin exclaimed.

“Yeah, I see them.”

Swarming from the side was a pack of wolves, each almost as large as the horses pulling the wagon. Noah handed the reins to Tin, who whipped the horses into a full gallop. He took out his bow and began launching arrows. Noah had made most of these arrows himself, but he had to rush them, so they weren’t his best work. Regardless, they got the job done for short-range encounters.

The wolves dodged the arrows as they charged, forced to move around to attack from the rear. Noah climbed into the wagon and stared them down through the open back. Changing their attack angle had momentarily slowed them, but they’d catch up in seconds and flank the wagon.

Noah tossed a net out of the back, made of thorny bushes and bristles that dragged behind the wagon. The wolves that stepped on it cried out as sharp spines and seed pods spiked their paws. Those who were injured gave up the chase, while the rest of the pack learned and split up to avoid the net.

Before they could leave his view, Noah opened up the barrel of slimes and began throwing them. Even if the small beasts didn’t make a direct hit, they exploded like water balloons. The acid splashed on the wolves, who instinctively knew to avoid slimes. Finally, the pack realized that this prey wasn’t worth all the trouble and gave up. One threat had been neutralized, giving them time to breathe, but it didn’t end there. Bears and other forest beasts would pop up now and then and need to be dispatched with arrows or cold steel.

The more Noah fought, the more he realized how unprepared his body was for all this. He was healthy and strong and had lifetimes of combat experience, but his hands hadn’t built up a layer of calluses that a native of these lands would have. Every time Noah gripped his sword, he could feel blisters forming on his palm.

With Tin controlling the horses, he would work in the wagon, dismantling his kills. He removed the skin, teeth, organs, and anything that looked valuable or useful. Sometimes, they’d even stop so that he could collect medicinal plants and mushrooms. Then, in the afternoon, the next challenge revealed itself. In the distance, a tree lay across the road. A rider on horseback might be able to jump it, but never a wagon like this. But, whether or not it had fallen naturally, Noah knew who would use this opportunity.

“Tin, stop the wagon.” They came to a halt a hundred yards from the tree. “Turn the horses around. If I die, ride back the way we came. Stay at the waterfall until someone uses this road and then travel with them.”

“Master, are you sure about this?” she asked with her basset hound eyes.

“I’ve handled worse.”

He got off the wagon with his sword in hand. On his arm, he wore a shield made from the carapace of the spider he killed earlier. He was also wearing one of the slave traders’ coats, the closest he could get to leather armor, and he also had his satchel filled with lye packets. Rather than approach the tree, he dove into the woods.

He spotted them as he approached the barrier, hiding behind the trees. Goblins. They were the size of children, with protruding stomachs and green skin. Their faces, barely even humanoid, had beady eyes, pointed ears, and sharp noses. They carried swords, clubs, and bows, likely stolen from slain travelers.

He closed in on the first one, his footsteps giving him away and causing it to screech in alarm. Noah dispatched it with a swing of his sword, overpowering its attempt to block and lopping off the top of its skull. The others, alarmed by the death of their comrade, turned their attention to Noah and attacked. They launched their arrows with poor aim, but Noah was forced to duck for cover.

He pulled out one of his lye packs, focused on a goblin with a bow, and threw it like a baseball. The small pack nailed it between the eyes and exploded. The goblin took an instinctive breath in and then immediately screamed in agony. Not only were its sinuses and lungs filled with lye, but it had gotten into his eyes, leaving it blinded.

The way it shrieked, like a crying baby, was nothing less than unnerving. The goblins, hearing those screams, became frightened. This was a cruel world, and living in the woods, every day was a bloody fight for survival. But none of them had suffered or seen someone suffer a flesh wound and make that kind of noise.

Noah gave them no time to gather their courage. He dealt with the other goblin archers the same way, leaving them howling in agony. Then, with their long-range attacks neutralized, he closed in. The remaining goblins tried to fight, but Noah slaughtered them with gruesome hacks and stabs. His spider shield fractured whenever he blocked a swing, but it held together long enough to kill them all. These goblins probably ambushed their prey, catching them by surprise to make up for their weak bodies, but once they lost that advantage, they were easy to dispose of.

He was closing in on the last one, slightly larger than the others and armed with a club. It growled and made a wide swing. Noah didn’t try to block and stepped back out of the monster’s reach, then swung down his sword and cleaved the goblin’s head open. To his discomfort, blood splattered across his face and got into his eye. He rubbed it out until he could see, then nearly staggered, hit with sudden fatigue. That fight must have taken more out of him than he thought.

He pushed through the sudden weight and returned to the road. It was exhausting work, but he moved the tree out of the way.

“Tin, come on through!”

The wagon approached and stopped where the tree had lain, but there was confusion on Tin’s face. “Master, where are you?”

“What are you talking about? I’m right here.”

Tin’s confusion was turning into panic. “I can’t see you anywhere!”

He walked over and grabbed her arm. “Tin, I’m standing right beside you.”

Touching her just made her yelp in surprise. “I still can’t see you! What’s going on?”

That’s what he wanted to know. Was something affecting her eyes? Maybe she had been hit with some kind of goblin attack, or it was an illness, either a disease or poison from something in the forest.

“Tin, look around. How is your vision?”

“It’s fine, I can see everything clearly! But I can’t see you!” Was he the problem? He could see himself just fine, but his eye was still itching from the blood. He rubbed it with his palm, and Tin gave another yelp of surprise. “Master, you’re back!”

“I was here all this ti—” He stopped, noticing something. His fatigue was gone, vanishing just as suddenly as it appeared. He felt it last when he first woke up in this world. His eye had been itching as well. He rubbed his left eye again, and Tin freaked out. “Tin, can you see me?”

“No, it’s like you vanished into thin air!”

He was feeling the strange fatigue again. He stepped back and began kicking around leaves and dirt. “Can you see this?”

“See what?”

Well, that answered that question, but for some reason, the fatigue seemed to deepen when Noah acted. He rubbed his eye again, and from the look on Tin’s face, she appeared to be able to see him again. “What happened to the road?” she asked. “It just suddenly changed when you reappeared.”

Noah put his hand over his eye again and repeated the experiment, making a mess of the road. “Can you see any difference in the road?”

“No.” He covered his eye once more to undo the phenomenon, and she nodded her head. “Yes, now I see.”

“So when I disappear, you can’t see what I do to the road, but when I reappear, it suddenly changes, right?”

“Yeah, sort of like flipping a page. Master ... I think you’re using magic!”

“Magic? No, that doesn’t make sense. My parents were normal, I haven’t even studied any kind of magic.”

“That’s the only thing it can be. But I’ve never heard of magic that could make people disappear like that.”

“I’m not disappearing, I think I’m becoming invisible. It’s ... an illusion. I’m creating an illusion that makes me invisible ... and when I alter something around me, it expands the illusion to conceal the change I’ve made until I release it.” He covered his eye and felt the fatigue, then covered it once more, and it stopped. “Covering my eye is the trigger that activates it.”

He then remembered his last moments with Lindsey. He had covered his left eye because the sun was blinding him, and he woke up in this world in that same position. His glitchy reincarnation hadn’t just preserved his body at this age; it had given him magic of some kind. Maybe the magic itself caused the error, the magic present in this new world.

“Tin, do they have any kind of word for the energy used for magic? I feel like something is draining out of me when I use it.”

“They call it mana.”

“You have got to be kidding me. Ok, let’s see what happens when I cover my other eye.”

The moment he attempted it, he fell to his knees, almost blacking out. “Master!” Tin exclaimed. She climbed down and helped him to his feet.

“So, you can see me. That means I didn’t turn invisible. But something happened, or at least tried to happen. I have a different spell in each eye, but not enough mana to use the second one. It must be like a muscle. I have to train it to increase my stamina. Anyway, let’s get out of here before the smell of those goblins attracts wolves.”

The next day, while Tin looked after their makeshift camp, Noah was busy experimenting with his magic. He had come across a giant spider draining the blood from a captured rabbit. As he approached, Noah covered his eye and cast his illusion. His feet on the underbrush should have given him away, but the spider didn’t seem to notice. He decided to make more noise, picking up a stick and snapping it, but still, the spider didn’t seem to notice.

“Over here.”

Finally, the spider spun around, its black eyes searching for the source of the noise. It seemed that Noah’s illusion also concealed sounds, but not his voice. Maybe because he intended for his voice to be heard? He couldn’t fully stress himself since he needed to save his strength for when he needed it, but after experimenting, he was starting to sense the flow of his mana.

He drew his sword, a new one. After the fight with the goblins, he had taken their weapons, and despite being slightly rusty due to inadequate care, they were of higher quality than the cheap machete that Noah had been using until now. He now carried a Medieval-style longsword, a short sword, and a knife. He devised the arrangement with thoughts of ancient samurai, who carried a katana, a wakizashi, and a tanto dagger.

He reached out with his longsword and used it to rustle a nearby bush, but the spider didn’t react. Noah could feel his mana flowing through his sword towards the bush, enveloping it in the illusion. He focused on the energy running through his arm and tried to slow the current, to keep it from moving beyond his sword.

It was exceedingly difficult, like trying to flex a muscle he had never used. It reminded him of all his years as a newborn when his muscle tissue was practically gelatin. He tempered his breathing and drove out all distractions from his mind. He could feel the flow of his mana like he had grabbed hold of it. He pulled it back, leaving the sword enveloped, but this time, when he rustled the bush, the spider raised his front legs and bared its fangs, believing an animal to be causing the disturbance.

Noah slowly approached and tapped one of the spider’s raised legs with his sword, causing it to hiss in rage and attack blindly. It couldn’t sense the presence of anyone or anything nearby, so it could do nothing to stop Noah from ending its life. He harvested what he needed from the body and then returned to camp.

The illusion could block sounds from reaching his enemy, but it couldn’t erase the sense of touch, so he couldn’t just turn invisible and stab someone without them feeling it. Also, while invisible, he could see mana in the environment and life forms. He couldn’t measure the amount or detect affinity, but certain animals seemed shrouded in mana. He didn’t get the impression that they could use magic, more like it clung to them, like an odor. What made them so special? This was just another question that Noah chalked up to something he’d learn later.

It was a sweet relief to Noah and Tin when they finally left the forest. After days of repeated ambushes by predators and goblins, the sea of trees flanking them gave way, replaced with fields where farmers and slaves were planting crops. In the distance, they saw the town of Clive. It was surrounded by a log fence to keep the monsters out, reminding Noah of the colonial village museum from his fifth-grade field trip. The creek from their waterfall camp joined into the river that flowed beside the town.

Guards in cheap armor manned the gate, and they stopped Noah and Tin as they approached. One looked over the horses and the wagon with a wary eye. “These belong to Garrow and his men. How did you come by them?”

“Were you close with Garrow?”

“No.”

Noah slipped the man a few bronze coins. Hopefully, they were worth something and that he wasn’t trying to bribe him with pocket change. “Then I suppose you’re mistaken, right?”

Seeming satisfied, the guard pocketed the money and waved them in, and Noah and Tin entered the town. For Noah, it was like he had traveled back to Medieval Europe. Peasants walked the muddy road, street vendors tried to sell their wares, and the air stank beyond all description. The buildings were brick and wood, only a few more than two stories high, with foggy glass windows.

“What do we do now?” Tin asked.

“We’re going to sell this wagon, everything in it, and the horses. That guard recognized them, so others may as well. Plus, I can protect a stack of coins better than this load of pelts. We can just buy replacements if we need them.” They rode past a beggar lying in the street, and Noah brought the horses to a stop. “You there, where can I find a weapon dealer?”

The bearded man pointed a trembling finger to the east. Noah didn’t thank him but tossed him a copper coin. They turned down one of the eastern streets, and a sign caught Noah’s eye. It had an anvil with two crossed swords in front of it like a crest. They stopped the wagon outside, and Noah disembarked.

“Look after the wagon. This place is probably crawling with thieves, so be wary.”

Tin was armed with a dagger, and he believed in her competence. He stepped into the store, with a bell ringing above his head from the door opening and closing. This building was made of brick to lessen the fire danger from the forge in the back. Numerous weapons hung on display, from swords to halberds. In his previous lives, Noah could have bought a Damascus sword online for $60, which would have put these to shame.

He studied the prices to figure out the rate of conversion for money. The numbers were written slightly different from past worlds, but they appeared to have the same values. From what he could tell, ten copper coins equaled a bronze, ten bronze equaled a silver, and ten silver for a gold. The metric scaling made it easy to compare them to US dollars, but from what era?

There was a suit of armor selling for two gold coins, about two thousand dollars. But was that two thousand dollars back in the Old West, or the 21st century? He couldn’t even tell whether the prices were reasonable or not. This could be great equipment at a high price, mediocre tools sold to beginners and cheapskates, or even junk the owner was asking the moon for to try and rip Noah off.

A man appeared from a back room and stood behind a counter. He was a great bear of a man, buff and dirty from a life spent standing over an anvil. Seeing Noah’s modern clothes, unease crossed his face. “Can I help you?”

“Do you buy weapons as well as sell them?”

“Only as long as they incorporate metal. I don’t buy bows or staffs.”

“Perfect.” Noah returned to the wagon outside and retrieved an armful of weapons looted from dead goblins. He stepped back inside and laid them out on the store counter. “What can I get for all of these?”

There were four short swords, two longswords, six daggers, three spears, and an axe. The blacksmith raised his eyebrows in mild surprise at the size of the haul but maintained a poker face for the sake of business. He examined each weapon, making exaggerated grunts and sighs over every chip and sign of rust.

“This is mostly garbage. I can buy them for one silver.”

“That’s a bad joke. That’s less than a bronze coin per weapon. You’re selling daggers for three bronze each. Seven silver.” Judging by the prices of the display pieces, that was more than the blacksmith could sell them for, and while he would have liked to go higher, the blacksmith was low-balling him.

“That’s ridiculous. My merchandise hasn’t been dragged through the woods. Yours has. I’ll have to spend all night polishing and sharpening these to make them worthy of being put on display. Two silver.”

“Leave them as is and then chalk down the price. You can sell them to some newbie warriors as training gear. Six silver.”

“I can’t come anywhere near that. The best I can do is two silver and five bronze.”

“You can always just forge them into something new and sell at a higher price. Four silver.”

“You think you’re the only one selling weapons by the arm-load? Plenty of adventurers come in here to dump what they found in some goblin tunnel. Scavenged swords are hardly rare on the market. Two silver and seven bronze. That’s my final offer.”

“How about this: my axe, plus two daggers, in exchange for that nicer axe up on the wall? Everything else, you buy at half for what you’re selling their counterparts for. That’s ten bronze for the short swords, another ten for the long swords, four and half bronze for the daggers, and another four and half for the spears. That’s right around three silver.”

The blacksmith gave a huff. Three silver was such a round, whole number. It was five bronzes above what he could get if he sold the weapons for half price, but his inner perfectionist didn’t want to complicate it with a smaller payment. Had Noah planned that from the beginning? Either way, he felt stuck on those three silver coins like a ship hitting a reef.

“Fine, three silver.”

“Deal.” He and Noah shook hands, and Noah received the three coins and the axe. “I also have another thing outside that you might be interested in. Follow me.” He led the blacksmith out into the street and showed him the tripwire roll in the back of the wagon.

“What is it?”

“A tripwire system, offering a hundred yards of protection. Any monster that touches it makes the metal alarms jingle. It’s so loud that even the dead can hear it. I’ll trade it for three bronze and the small shield you had in the corner. It’s got to be worth that in materials alone.”

“Fine, but only to get rid of you. You’re exhausting.”

The deal was struck, and Noah and Tin set off on a much lighter wagon. The axe Noah had gotten was perfect for camping, and would make a suitable backup weapon in a pinch. The shield he now wore on his arm was only around the size of a dinner plate, but that worked for him. It was strong enough to block a sword slash and wouldn’t hamper his movements.