Chapter 2. Good Time Had By All
Rhys propped the chair up on the garbage at the edge of the pit and clambered up it. It was a short walk from the pit to the town, and dark when he got there. The town had a wall, and the gates were halfway closed, but a woman was arguing with the gate guards.
She gestured at the darkness. “—still out there! He’s just a child. We can’t—”
“Ma’am, we have to close the gates. We can’t leave ‘em open because one of your orphans vanished. He probably just ran off to play camp, or something. There’s monsters out there, we can’t leave the gates open for one kid.”
“There’s monsters outside—do you hear yourself? You’re just going to lock him—”
Rhys cleared his throat.
The woman turned. She was middle-aged, with silver threading her dark brown hair, and dressed in old, modest clothes. At the sight of Rhys, her eyes lit up. “Oh, thank goodness. There you are! Rhys, come here, come on in.”
He jogged over, cancelling the mana circulating through his body as he did so. He’d left it active all the way from the trash pit, pushing his limits, but he didn’t want anyone to notice anything suspicious yet. He needed to understand more about this world before he let anyone know he’d done something like activate his system or acquire mana. It could be no big deal, or it could be the kind of world-shattering talent indication that would lead to him getting kidnapped by some mad cult of mages. He just didn’t know. He suspected it was ‘no big deal’ rather than a world-shattering talent, given how little mana potion it took to top him up, but better safe than sorry.
The second he was within grabbing range, the woman’s arm snaked out and caught his upper arm in a painful grasp. She yanked his closer and hissed in his ear, “You stay out after dark again and I’ll see to it you get a whooping like you’ve never felt before, do you hear me, child?”
Rhys raised his brows. What an about-face. So she wasn’t as kind as she looked, just a woman getting her job done, who was angry to be inconvenienced by a trouble-maker like him. He got it—he also didn’t like kids—but he wasn’t real happy about being treated like shit, either.
Seeing his unperturbed expression, the woman scowled deeper. She shook him, hard. “You hear me, boy?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rhys said. She kept scowling at him disbelievingly. After a moment, he put in the effort to give her a terrified expression.
“Good. And wipe that stupid look off your face,” she snarled, dragging him away.