inanis journey[new]

Inanis looked down at their arms and indeed there were many eyes of various sizes looking back at them and the surroundings, not only on their arms but on their whole body, and they could see through the eyes too, they just didn't notice it earlier, somehow, it just felt natural.

‘must be some Eldritch thing, at least they do not blink out of sync. I just hope it does not happen often'

With some will and a mental command they willed one eye to close, and as they did that the eye at the back of their hand closed and vanished leaving a normal hand’s back, so again tugging at their instincts one eye after another started to close and vanish.

After a long 25 seconds Inanis turned to the hyena woman and thanked her “thank you for pointing that out, I probably would not notice until much later. To your question from earlier, the best translation for my kind’s name is ‘beings from outside’”

The hyena woman nodded and said “I never heard of your kind but this silk is definitely worth quite a bit, a shirt made with it is at least worth 20 iron! and that is the low end price. it is more resistant than essentially all the hides of ordinary animals from around the region if my claws can't damage it”

Inanis brought a hand to their chin and said without a hint of anger “20 iron you say? The guards at the entrance paid 7 iron for a smaller roll”

The hyena woman eyes widened before she looked at the roll on her hands and turning to Inanis she said “well, I kinda see how they mistook it for cheap silk, I don't mean to offend but it indeed looks like ‘cheap’ silk, and feels like a slightly better one but still feel like a ‘cheap’ one to the touch, so they probably didn't even use appraisal on it, nor tested it, but still, it’s strange that they missed it. 

But as I said, it is worth quite a bit, I can't accept it” she tried to give the roll back but Inanis didn't accept it.

Inanis didn't leave room for argument “that is my gift, accept it, i can just make more later so you do not need to worry about it, and you can also think of it as a bribe, for you to tell your friends about the shop when I open it, you said people with claws often tear their clothes right? Tell your clawed friends about it, I bet they will like it”

The hyena woman laughed with a ‘hiehiehie’ a bit before putting the roll on a bag she had on her waist, somehow the roll fit on the bag without even making a bulge on it. 

After it was stored she said “heh, if you say so, by the end of the week ⅔ of the a-a’ny’ma on the city will know your store, this really a life saver, normally i have to buy new clothes every two or three weeks, but this, this will sell like ice cream on a hot day. 

you are going to the guild to get a card and buy the store right? Just sell a few rolls of silk to the guild and buy a small or medium store, but don't forget to pass this message to them before doing it, ‘Yo squeakers! this is a nice fella approved by The Shredder, she is selling you some rolls of silk but make sure to test them, my claws didn't even make a dent on them, and you know what that means, they sold it to some guards who mistook it for cheap silk for 7 iron, please find the guards and give them a good bonk’”

Inanis took another “vanishing bite” from their ice cream “okey, hope to see you on the shop when it is open” hearing this answer the hyena woman wasn’t so sure inanis understood, inanis seemed like a airhead full of silly thoughts to them

Inanis left while humming a tune, this time they were more focused on the the goal of getting to the guild, they didn't even notice the gazes directed towards them, they didn't stop to get a treat no matter how tempting isekai food was, so they contended with the ice cream, biscuit bowl and mushroom spoon(the hyena woman didn't tell Inanis the spoon was edible, they just ate it for no reason)

after walking by a beautiful park full of families and children relaxing or playing games, it didn’t take long for inanis to find the plaza, it was a spacious space, full of people going about their days, there were many vendors on carpets selling stuff, and the most prominent smell to Inanis was that of spices, some smells were familiar to inanis but others not so much, they actually were smelling even the faintest smells because of their heightened senses.

Quickly scanning the plaza they immediately found a huge building with a board written “guild” on it, and they wasted no time getting to it, they walked on the natural paths that went around the merchants on the floor.

…

On the guild, there were many people, be it on the table eating snacks to recuperate energy, standing by a board with papers that had details about mission on it, or on the tables chatting about their exploits or future plans, hunters, wizards, mercenaries(the equivalent of adventurers in some isekais) or the people that worked there, each had a varied level of power, some could shatter a boulder with a punch, cover meters in seconds, cast powerful spells, cut a monster in 10 pieces in a second etc, but despite them being from many different races and levels of powers, most of them were above your average joe in all aspects, which includes the senses.

As they were chatting about stuff they did or were going to do like “you almost got bit there” or “let's go hunt some orcs tomorrow?” And many variations of these, but they noticed something.

Those with better hearing such as beastkins were the first to notice, with their ears twitching and following the sound they were hearing, then the next ones were those with a somewhat worse hearing such as humans.

The sound was a… song? It is not the perfect word but it is something close. The song was as if someone was singing in a foreign language but you could still understand and feel what they meant. If you were to describe it in one word it would be “beautifully empowering” that's two words but you get the idea, the song simply empowered the listener's emotions.

All eyes were at the door where it was coming from and it was getting closer.

And it didn't take long to a person to enter through the open door, the person still was singing with a low voice about stars shining a bloody red or something like that but it was clear it was them as space around their head seemed to vibrate and oscillate to the rhythm of the song, the usually chatty guild became almost silent; this new person was quite interesting to the people at the guild, mainly because of their voice and singing but also because of their appearance; obsidian like skin, snow like hair, spiral horns and fog that covered parts of their body… you guessed right, it was indeed Inanis.

From the pov of the people at the guild, Inanis suddenly manifested dozens of eyes all over their bodies that started looking at everyone on the guild rapidly and stopped before fixating on a particular mercenary before closing and vanishing one by one, making the mercenaries whisper about it, inanis didn't notice the effect they had on others nor their reaction.

Inanis calmly walked up to a woman with floppy dog ears that was working as a receptionist, stopped singing and said “hello, I would like to sell some rolls of silk and get my guild card”

The receptionist didn't let Inanis strangeness get in the way of her job so she spoke as she gave Inanis a formulary to fill along a pencil “greetings, you just have to fill this formulary and pay 4 iron, it works as a identification document, as a mercenary and merchant licence, permit to enter most cities and a few other things.

in regards to the silk, we need to appraise it first, and we can only accept it after you have a guild card”  

Inanis took the formulary and gave the woman 4, 1 iron notes before starting filling it; it had simple stuff such as name, sex(it surprisingly had the options: male, female, both, none, the previous ones don't apply, which makes sense for a isekai world), race/species, age&if you are a adult, and skills, but Inanis paused a bit before starting writing as they were searching for the correct translation of their information.

Quickly filling it and handing it over to the receptionist, the receptionist read it and said “ just to confirm, Scarlet Inanis, 31, a adult, is both sexes, race ‘ beings from outside’, abilities, shape shifting, ‘threads’, ‘hidden fog', avatar creation, ‘extra senses’ and allspeak, is that all?”

Inanis “yes, but my name and race there are the closest translation to it in your language”

The receptionist looked at a glass ball on the counter close to her that was glowing green and said “thank you for being truthful, I will make your card now, just a moment” followed by putting the formulary on metal thing that suspiciously looked like a small printer, after the machine scanned the paper it made a *ding* and spat out a palm sized card with a hole for a string and some things written on it.

The receptionist gave the card to Inanis “Just inject some mana on it and it will show the full details and information on you.” Inanis injected some energy into it and a holographic screen appeared above the card with all the information from the formulary and some more.

The receptionist continued “now the selling silk part, please show me some of it, a roll for example, and we will buy from you, it kind of is on demand as silk make good bandages, so rest assured, we will buy for a fair price”

As Inanis was taking the rolls from their backpack they said “before you buy it i need to pass a message, on the way here I met a hyena woman, bought some ice cream and gave her a roll of silk as a gift but she insisted i say this message to the guild before selling the silk”

The receptionist raised an eyebrow “the what woman?”

Inanis immediately jumped to conclusions “‘hyena’ is some kind of bad word here?” ‘Did I just offend the entire city? on my first day?’

The receptionist “ it's not that, it's that you just said ‘a’ followed by something unrecognizable and then ‘woman’, and I have no idea what it means”

inanis scratched their cheek “hyena is a… half canine half feline that likes to laugh, probably. she gave me a card to a ice cream shop called hie hie, and i think her name is Shredder, similar to the cheese”

the receptionist looked at the orb glowing green and assumed a thoughtful expression before she said “what is the message?” ignoring the cheese part.

inanis proceeded to recite the message “she said ‘Yo squeakers! this is a nice fella approved by The Shredder, she is selling you some rolls of silk but make sure to test them, my claws didn't even make a dent on them, and you know what that means, they sold it to some guards who mistook it for cheap silk for 7 iron, please find the guards and give them a good bonk’”

the receptionist kept glancing at the orb glowing green and when inanis was finished she asked “did you know The shredder prior to today?”  inanis “no, i am new to the region so prior to today i did not know anybody from here” the orb glowed green, the receptionist said with a serious face “is it true that her claws didn’t do any damage to your silk?” inanis shrugged “she did try to pierce, cut and rip it apart but she could  not do it, she also said it was stronger than a pandolian scales, whatever that is” the orb glowed green to the surprise of the people at the guild, it seems like this hyena woman is famous or something like that.

the receptionist “could you please let me take a look at your silk? i will be done in a minute” inanis said “okey” as they gave them the rolls of silk to the receptionist.

the first thing the receptionist did was put a pair of glasses and take a good look at each roll, but suddenly she had a knife on her hand and immediately brought it down on the roll of silk in a attempt to pierce and slash it, but to their surprise it didn’t even leave a dent on the rolls of silk nor the counter, which caused the guild to explode in a wave of whispers like “did you see that?” And “we need to get that”

the receptionist wanted to scream “what the hell is this?! This is basically armor!” as she was breathing heavily from the small exercise but she remained professional and simply said “because of you having the skill ‘threads’ i am assuming you were the one who made this silk, so i have to ask, is every silk you make this strong?”

inanis “no”, the receptionist sighed in relief for some reason while thinking ‘phew i was almost going to miss my day off’, but inanis continued “i can make it more or less sticky or liquid, spongy or hydrophobic, stretchy or rigid, have certain textures, have a multitude of colors and make it as fragile as thin paper or as strong as these you see, but as this skill is technically on its initial stages it did not reach its full potential…oh, and it is edible if i make it fragile enough, but it does not have nutritional values outside of recuperating a bit of energy”

the receptionist eyes snapped to the orb that was glowing green and sighed heavily thinking about her day off she was going to miss before she said to inanis “what do you think of 1 sun silver and 3 silver for each roll? which is 4800 copper” damn, that is quite some money, on their first day?

inanis hummed as if they knew exactly what it meant. “okey” they said not knowing if it was a lot or too little, the receptionist wasn’t sure if inanis understood what it meant but she felt it was a reasonable price “do you wish to have it be in money or credit on the guild card? i advise the credit one but with a bit of physical money” 

inanis “it can be that. On another note, i heard you can also buy buildings here. Do you have any buildings available on the plaza that can work as a store and house? i am thinking of opening a store here, sell some silk stuff like clothes, ‘leather’ armor, accessories and the like”

hearing this the receptionist ears shot up and her tail started to wag from side to side happily with other beastkin having similar reactions, but she spoke calmly to inanis “that is wonderful, we have a few buildings that meet the criteria” she took a ring binder from under the counter and put on top of it, she took a few pages and presented them to Inanis saying “some have underground floors, others are two stories tall, but these can have the first floor as a store and the other as a house, they are furnished with the basics such as stove/oven, fridge, cabinets sinks, toilet and similar appliances”

Inanis took the papers with photos and details about each building and read them carefully.

After some considerations they decided one, it had a few rooms on the first floor such as a storage room, kitchen, and the main room that worked as a store, and some on the second that could work as a house, it actually was a clothes store before the owner decided to sell it, so it have the essentials to live and to operate the clothes store Inanis is going to open.

Inanis gave the papers back with the ones they chose at the top of the pile and said pointing to it “I would like to buy this one”

The receptionist took them, looked them over separated the one inanis chose, picked another ring binder and took some pages from it after some searching and presented them to Inanis along a pen pointing out certain places for them to sign “sign here, here and here, and please put your guild card on the machine so that we can buy your silk and discount the house price”

Inanis did as instructed and the receptionist presented to them machine that suspiciously looked like a credit card machine to do the transaction.

After it made a *beep* the receptionist gave Inanis keys, 20 notes of 1 iron, and the paper with the info on the building, saying “it's all done, you can go to the store now” 

Inanis asked surprised “really? That is all?” 

The receptionist answered quickly and still wagging her tail “yes, you signed the magical contract, a copy of it is immediately sent to the database of the guild and city, and you paid for it, so everything is okay, if you have any question about the building, lost your keys or needs help with it you can come to the guild and we will send someone to help you”

Inanis took the items “if you say so, thank you” with the receptionist thanking them back as they left to the address of their new store/house. 

Little did Inanis know that the poor receptionist would be swarmed by people asking about the store.