The closer we got to the gates separating Old Shinkotsu from New, the denser the foot traffic became, and by the time the wall itself was visible between the buildings ahead, the street had gone from the measured, unhurried flow of old money going about its afternoon to something considerably more chaotic and louder.

The gates were wide enough to accommodate three full-sized carriages side by side, and they were open fully today.

In front of them was a checkpoint that had not been there a couple of days ago. Knights in full gear were running two lines, one for carriages and one for foot traffic, checking papers, checking bags, checking faces against documents, moving people through at a pace that was in no way fast enough for the volume of people currently pressing toward it.

Most of them had the look of people who had packed what they could carry and then walked until they reached the capital.

"That wasn’t there before," I said, looking at the checkpoint.

"The number of people seeking refuge in the capital ahead of the Red Moon has increased significantly in the past few days, hoping to secure prime locations," Peko said, watching the line with her hands folded. "... They are from villages throughout the mainland that lack the means to organize their own defense and have come to the capital to seek refuge. From what I have gathered, the bulk of them are yet to arrive."

"Yeah, we couldn’t even find an inn," Nom-Nom added. "Dove had to help us find one... using her connection and whatnot."

I looked at the line of people with their bundles, their tired faces, and their children sitting on top of their bags, and I thought about what I had said to Dove a few hours ago in the hospital room, the part where I told her that if Fugen fell, we would simply move somewhere else.

I had meant it tactically, putting my people before others; it was the right thing to do or say, but it still landed wrong now that I was looking at the people it applied to. I could only imagine how she must’ve felt.

"Indeed," Peko said, not looking at me, but she had read where my eyes had gone. "Dove really did help us with many things. Small individually, but they have compounded."

I just exhaled through my nose and kept walking.

We joined the foot traffic line, which moved steadily if not quickly, and when we reached the front the knight checking papers looked at my documents, looked at my face, looked at my ice leg leaving a frost print on the cobblestone, looked at Peko, looked at Nom-Nom, and then very carefully looked back at his documents and waved us through without a word, because some things do not require conversation.

The tunnel through the wall was wide and several meters long, and for the few seconds we were inside it, the noise from both sides was muffled, and the air was cool and still.

Then we came out the other side, and the cultural shock was immediate and total.

The Old Shinkotsu we had left behind was quiet, considered, and uniform in its aesthetics. What we walked into was none of those things simultaneously.

The buildings here were everything and nothing in particular, a four-story timber structure built in the human style sitting against an elven building whose balconies had living vines trained along the rails, both of them neighboring a squat dwarven construction of dark stone with iron window frames.

None of it matched, yet all of it worked somehow, giving New Shinkotsu its own unique charm.

The street itself was wider and louder, had stalls running along both sides selling everything from monster parts, next to fresh pastries, from enchanted weaponry to a man who appeared to be selling ceramic frogs of varying sizes.

And what hit right after the visuals was the smell. Charcoal smoke from the cooking stalls, a dozen different things frying in different oils, the collective warmth of several hundred people in a confined space, something sweet from a stall to my left, something aggressively savory from a stall to my right, the faint mineral smell of enchantment work coming from somewhere I could not immediately identify.

Beside me, Peko’s nose immediately scrunched with as much dignity as the situation allowed.

[She really hates strong smells,] I chuckled quietly to myself.

And strong tastes too, and things that were too loud, and large crowds that moved without structure.

New Shinkotsu was, in many respects, the opposite of everything Peko found tolerable about a space.

Nom-Nom, who had senses no less sharp than Peko’s, was doing the complete opposite.

Her eyes were moving left and right with eager attention as though she did not want to miss anything.

There was even a slight extra lift to her step that had not been there in Old Shinkotsu.

After all, this was one place that always had something interesting going on in its every street at any given moment. And she absolutely loved this place for it.

And as though the universe had decided to prove my point, a large Demon-Folk man in no shirt ran out of an inn on our right at full sprint, screaming in a voice shriller than a little girl’s, followed by a woman with a kitchen knife and an expression that explained the situation entirely, followed immediately by a second woman considerably younger than the first who was not running so much as attempting to become invisible while moving at speed.

I cackled loudly enough that the nearest cluster of pedestrians flinched, who then looked at Nom-Nom before redistributing themselves into a wider radius than the one that had been following us since we left the temple.

Nom-Nom watched the man disappear around a corner with the kitchen knife in close pursuit and cackled even louder, which nearly sent the passing by party of adventurers into cardiac arrest.

The inn was not far into New Shinkotsu, which was the only good thing about paying two gold coins a day per room, because at least the walk from it to the gate was short.

It was a three-story building with glass doors in the front, which already told you everything about the price range, and a man in a pressed uniform standing outside who opened the door as we approached and then held it open with bated breath as Nom-Nom passed.

The lobby had warm lighting and dark wood panelling.

And I had to admit, as much as I too loved the classic fantasy-town aesthetic of New Shinkotsu, the smell of whatever they were burning in the small incense holder on the front desk was considerably more pleasant than the street outside.

The lobby even had a marble floor with a staircase that curved up and then to the right. Upholstered chairs ran along one wall that nobody was sitting on because the kind of people who could afford to stay here were also the kind of people who did not have time to sit in lobby chairs.

The people already in the lobby did what everyone in every lobby we had ever entered did, which was to notice Nom-Nom and then stop whatever they were doing and stand slightly straighter and occupy slightly less of their immediate space.

Peko walked to the stairs without looking at any of them, and I followed, and Nom-Nom followed with the wheelchair still under one arm and her eyes already scanning the upper floors with interest.

"How are we doing financially?" I asked, as we went up the first flight.

"Adequately," Peko said. "We have sufficient funds to sustain ourselves for approximately one week, even if Nom-Nom does nothing."

"That is not very comforting," I said.

"No, it isn’t," she agreed.

[Huh... Guess, chucking that gold at Garek really was a stroke of spur-of-the-moment genius... If he shows up with his entire party tomorrow, that’d mean he has a way to pawn off that gold. I can capitalize on that...]

After all, there are only so many ways a one-armed young man with an ice leg and an eye patch walks into a money changer with a sack of gold nuggets before people start asking interesting questions... and making interesting decisions.

Well, the seed was planted, and all that was left was to watch what grows out of it.

Putting it at the back of my mind, I followed Peko to the third floor and down the corridor to rooms six through eight.

My room had a queen bed, a table and chair by the window, a sofa set with a low center table, a wardrobe, a mirror, and lighting that was warm enough that the room, which at two gold coins a day was the least it could offer.

There was even a faint smell of something like cedarwood mixed with something floral that was coming from a small cloth sachet hung near the window.

[Sweet...]

I dropped my cloak on the bed, crossed to the sofa, and straight up plummeted onto it, cutting off the mana supply to Ice Reinforcement, watching the ice leg slowly detach from the stump, and the relief was immediate.

"Alright," I sighed out loud. "Let’s begin... System, show me plant-based potion recipes. But first, cold coffee."

-Ding!

{Item purchased and stored.}

I pulled the cold coffee out in a soft shimmer of blue, popped the cap, took a long pull before settling back and finally relaxing.

"Now... Show me recipes for Grade 9 and Grade 8 Healing Potions. And make sure they’re commonly available in the current market... don’t want anyone raising eyebrows."

-Ding!

{Insufficient data to isolate a specific recipe. Multiple formulations exist for Healing Potions at each grade. Further specification required.}

"Go ask Peko."

The System went quiet, while I sat with my coffee and thought about the mechanics of what I was about to do.

The System’s recipes were not recipes in the conventional sense.

It was more akin to buying a license to create items in the Crafting Menu, with the output coming out of the System the same way purchased items came out, with a shimmer of blue and without me needing to stand over a bench measuring liquids in milliliters.

Which meant I had two options.

I could get the recipe from Peko for free, because Grade 8 and 9 were common enough that she probably has the entire process memorized, and then make the potions manually, which required equipment, measured ingredients, and time, and me doing something I had very little interest in doing.

Or I could buy the recipe through the System, which would cost credits I did not currently have in abundance in my personal account, and then produce potions directly through crafting at whatever rate I could sustain.

One of those options scaled. The other produced twelve potions a day and a backache.

The math in there was frankly, not very complicated.

So I took another pull of coffee and waited.

-Ding!

{

Identification complete.

Healing Potion Grade 9 (Recipe)

Ingredients:

Silverleaf Herb (Crushed) ×40g

Redstem Sprout ×20g

Bitterfern Extract ×5mL

Distilled Water ×200mL

Price: 3,500

------

Healing Potion Grade 8 (Recipe)

Ingredients:

Refined Silverleaf Concentrate ×3 mL

Redstem Root (Mature) ×20 g

Sunblossom Petal Extract ×8 mL

Bitterfern Distillate ×6 mL

Distilled Water ×200 mL

Price: 35,000

}

I stared at the list of ingredients for a moment, already feeling a headache blooming. Tracing that nugget damn near split my head, and that was when I already more or less understood its structure. And now...

"That is a lot of stuff to trace my guy...."

-Ding!

{Would you like to confirm the purchase?}