3 bar menu

Chapter 102

“Hey, wait up! Why is your leg stride so wide!” The girl cried out as she chased after me. “Are you walking faster? You’re walking faster!”

I was hoping she would give up with just that, but the twin-tailed girl was extremely determined. I was trying to avoid her not just because she was annoying, but because she stood out too. At the moment, not a single person in this town knew who I was. I planned to use that to my fullest advantage. It was one of the reasons I hadn’t insisted on remaining with Mara. If I had been part of the Capala household, my movements would have assuredly been restricted. My greatest strength was that nobody would notice me and I’d be disregarded as some puny mortal, so why did I attract the interest of this silly paragon girl?

She appeared to be part of the Lou family, but I didn’t have any interest in them. The three great families were the Capala, Boran, and Domini. Boran and Domini would have been the ones who orchestrated the fall of the Lyn family, which would have been Tanner’s family. None of them had a branch in this city. I had no interest in these other houses, and the less I interacted with them, the better off I was.

Yet, as more and more eyes looked to see why a young lady was chasing a commoner, I realized I couldn’t just shake her off. I finally stopped walking, letting out a sigh as I turned to the girl scampering the catch-up to me. When she reached me, she was slightly out of breath, making me question if she was an evolved after all.

“What do you want?” I demanded.

“You…. hah… you will address me as Lady Destiny!”

“Lady Destiny, thank you for your former assistance. Goodbye.” I turned to leave.

“W-wait!” This time she was more prepared and dashed in front of me before I could step away. “I saved your life from those vagrants earlier! As I was saying, that deserves more than just appreciation.”

“They were just going to rob me, not kill me. The most I would have lost is a few gold.” I responded irritably.

“You don’t know that!” she responded defiantly. “They could have done anything after they got what they wanted. That’s why, you definitely must repay me.”

“Loo, I have a girlfriend.” I lied.

Her face turned red. “Who’s trying to date you anyway?”

She looked for a second like she was about to take her whip out, but then she closed her eyes and took a breath. When she opened them again, she shot me a look, pointing her finger.

“A life should be repaid with a life! Since I saved you, you now must pledge yourself as my loyal vessel.” After she spoke, I stared at her for a moment, and then then I turned away to leave. “W-wait! There are benefits if you become my vassal!”

She dashed until she was in front of me again, holding her straw cap on.

“I’m not interested,” I spoke flatly, wondering what was wrong with this woman.

I noticed that our display had only attracted curiosity for a few moments, but once the people seemed to notice the girl involved, they quickly made themselves scarce.

“You haven’t heard the benefits. You’re unassociated with a family. The Lou family might be the newest rising family in Stomberg, but that means we have potential! If you’re my vassal, no one would touch you without offending the Lou family!”

“No thanks, I can look after myself.” I tried to sidestep her.

“Wait!” she lifted her hand to my chest, but then pulled it back last second. “Ahem, I will also pay you. I heard that you needed a lot of money. Well, being my vassal means you get a weekly stipend!”

I hesitated for a moment, although I felt I knew what she was going to say. “How much?”

“Half… no a full kilojoule a week!” She declared.

“Not enough…” I shook my head.

“Not enough?” Her eyes widened, and then she looked a bit tearful. “How can that be? I-I only get an allowance of five kilojoules a month…”

Her words were a bit surprising to me. She seemed to be very determined to get a vassal. She was even offering almost all of her family joules… ahem, so to speak. Seeing her tearing up and not wanting the situation to escalate, I took a deep breath and softened my expression.

“Why do you want a vassal so bad anyway? Why me?” I decided to try to get to the root cause of her desperation instead. “Aren’t you part of a major house? You should be able to just point and get a vassal from them.”

Her expression dropped slightly. “Everyone inside the family is my father’s people. They work for him. They would tell Dad everything I do, and wouldn’t let me do anything they think my dad would disapprove of.”

“Yeah, but why me? Just pick one of these common… ahem…” I looked around to see the vast majority of the commoners were deliberately remaining out of sight.

It seemed like perhaps this girl had caused trouble like this before. Perhaps, I wasn’t the first person he approached. She gave me a pitiful look.

“Dad told me I have to watch out for spies. The other families would love to plant someone into my family’s ranks. That’s why I can’t just ask anyone. I overheard them talking about how you’re new to town and not associated with a house. You’re not part of one of the houses or you wouldn’t have been a victim to those vagrants.”

“That’s your reasoning?” I blinked.

“You handled yourself well in front of them. You didn’t try to be a hero.” Her expression grew distant as her eyes welled up. “Your survival is more important. I can’t lose someone again…”

I shook my head. “No, I mean, if I was a spy a family hired made to infiltrate your family, the first thing I’d do is set up some event where it looked like I was innocent and not associated. For all you know, I could have been working with those thugs deliberately to lure you into making this offer.

“Huh?”

I shook my head, “Never mind. Look, I appreciate your offer of… servitude… However, I’m just looking for a way to make money quickly.”

“Hmm? For that, you just need to check out the job board.”

“The job board?”

“Ah, that’s right, you know, you must not have known about it. The various houses often need work done and don’t necessarily have the talent within, so they post ongoing requests with the job board. Anyone who has the prerequisite skill can complete the request. The payment is already provided in advance and held until the completion of the request, so you don’t need to worry about someone not honoring their side of the agreement.”

She started to lead the way and this time I chose to follow. This job board sounded like exactly what I was looking for.

“Do you have to register or something?” I frowned thoughtfully.

“Yeah, it’s the quickest way to get money, although many missions take on some risk. Ah, and most of them require at least an evolved.” She frowned, looking me up and down. “If you want to take on an evolved request, I can help you through. That’s why I wanted a vassal in the first place.”

“You wanted to take a job from the job board?” I asked as I compared the direction she was heading with the map in my head.

“Most jobs pay in kilowatts, and that’s the only way I can gain ATP to evolve.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I had to stop for a second. “ATP?”

She blinked. “You don’t even know that much? Ah, I guess you are a rather low-level mortal. Well, there are two kinds of energy, potential energy and active energy.”

“I think I know, but you describe it to me.”

I found a great deal many terms I recognized from science were used in this world, but they often had different meanings. Potential energy was energy at rest. So, if you put a ball on a hill, it has the potential energy to roll down that hill. When it was rolling, that was active energy, but until you pushed it down the hill, it only had potential energy. So, as it rolls, potential energy turns into active energy. As for ATP, it stands for Adenosine Triphosphate. It was potential chemical energy, one of the means our cells stored energy to use in biological processes. Ultimately, it was the energy product of breaking down sugar and fat for energy, or vice versa, it could be used to create fat and sugar for long-term storage.

“ATP stands for Absorptive Transforming Power. ATP is measured in joules, and it’s the potential energy we use to trigger an evolution.”

“So, Active energy would be mana?” I guessed.

“Mm.” She nodded. “Mana is one name for it. Of course, its official name is reactive energy. When someone wishes to cast a spell, they must provide the proper activation energy based on their reserved energy to catalyze the reaction. We call reserved energy enthalpy. Ah, don’t worry if you don’t understand it. You don’t need to worry about that stuff until you evolve.”

“I think I understand just fine.”

In science, chemical reactions require energy to occur. Whether they release energy or absorb energy, they need a bit of energy first to get them moving. That would be called activation energy. Enthalpy was merely a measurement of the energy within a system.

She looked at me a bit surprised but then smirked. “As expected of my future vassal.”

I couldn’t help but sigh. It seemed like she was still caught on that.