Free Web NovelChapter 13: Finally Slow Life in Another World?!
The descent had finished us off. We reached the bottom after nightfall, wrung out, and Elsa found us an inn without our having to ask.
I collapsed onto the first real bed I’d touched in weeks, didn’t even take my boots off, and slept straight through.
The next day, my body still wrecked but my head finally clear, I discovered the town in broad daylight. And this time it hit me for real.
Cobbled streets climbing and dropping with no logic to them, stalls spilling out everywhere. On one square, a little earth dragon no taller than a pony, its hide bristling with ochre scales, hauled a cart loaded with barrels at an easy pace. Further on, a buffalo twice too big to be honest shouldered through the crowd without anyone batting an eye, a rune glowing soft on its flank. Signs drifted on their own above the shopfronts.
I drank in every detail like a kid at a shop window.
"You’re making a strange face," said Alice beside me. freewēbnoveℓ.com
I hadn’t even noticed I was grinning like an idiot.
"It’s just—" I gestured at the dragon, the buffalo, the whole magical mess around us. "This is exactly what I used to write. All of it. Except this time it’s real."
Alice’s smile went soft.
"It must do something to you," she said. "Living, for real, what you spent your nights writing."
Elsa, walking ahead, turned her head. "...Writing what he lives?"
Alice and I traded a look, and neither of us explained. That one was between us.
"It’s there," said Elsa.
A big building of wood and stone, the sign carved with a sword crossing a quill. A guild. A real one. I wanted to stop just to look at it.
"Before we go in, two things." She turned to us. "Normally, to sell dungeon crystals, you need a guild card. You don’t have one. But you’re with me, so it’ll go through, and we’ll get you one while we’re at it."
We nodded, and she pushed the door open.
And I stepped into the set I’d written a hundred times.
The smell, first — beer, leather, sweat. A long, low-ceilinged hall, adventurers everywhere drinking and comparing blades while they bragged too loudly. On one wall, a board plastered with bounties and wanted faces.
Loud, filthy, alive — and I wanted to look at all of it at once.
It was while I was sweeping the room that something caught me.
"Elsa. Are there no demi-humans in this world?"
She gave me a look, honestly surprised I’d ask.
"Of course there are. But they keep to themselves, in small communities, off on the margins. You don’t see much of them in human kingdoms — they’re not exactly welcome there."
I nodded and filed it away in a corner of my head, with everything else this world fed me a drop at a time.
Elsa led us to the counter. A receptionist looked up from her registers — slim glasses, and a pair of heavy breasts a too-tight bodice was visibly struggling to contain. She lit up at the sight of Elsa, then her eyes slid over to me.
"So these are the famous newcomers."
She leaned forward over the counter, slow, and her breasts spilled out of the neckline and bounced against each other, right in the middle of my line of sight. Smile aimed straight at me, she let her voice trail.
"Welcome. If you need anything at all, really, anything... you’ve only to a—"
My eyes had landed exactly where she’d wanted them to, and I had to force them back up.
"We need two cards."
Alice had slipped between us without a sound, her hand on my arm — a little too firm. She was smiling at the receptionist, all sweetness. But that smile didn’t reach her eyes.
"I’ll handle the paperwork for the two of us. He’s exhausted, poor thing. Could you give me the forms?"
Dead on her feet, and she still found the energy to mark her territory. It pulled a smile out of me that I hid as best I could.
While Elsa went off to sell our crystals, Alice dealt with the registration. A few minutes later, two engraved metal plates slid across the counter.
"Kuro Shiragi. Alice Kazawa. Rank D." The receptionist pushed her glasses up. "That’s exceptional, for newcomers. Normally you start at rank F. But with Lady Elsa for a sponsor and a whole dungeon cleared on your record, the office looked the other way."
I picked up the plate. My name, engraved in the metal, a rank beside it.
A guild card. With my name on it. I’d written this scene a good hundred times, at three in the morning, never really believing it. And here I was holding it for real. I slipped it into my pocket with almost ridiculous care.
It was while we waited for Elsa that we heard them. Two adventurers, at the next table, low.
"...third one this month. A girl from the tanners’ quarter this time." frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
"And the guards?"
"Nothing. Kids vanishing into the dark without a trace — good luck even knowing where to start."
My grin dropped a notch. Alice had heard it too — I saw it in the way her eyes caught mine. Neither of us said a word.
Elsa reappeared, a heavier purse at her belt.
"Done. The crystals fetched a fine sum." She waved us along. "To the shops. You’re equipped like a pair of beggars, and that can’t go on."
Custom gear, paid for with the crystals we’d torn out of the rock until our hands bled. I didn’t need to be told twice.
The tailor took our measurements in a smell of chalk and new cloth. A nervous little man who circled Alice with his tape until she giggled when he tickled her ribs by accident.
"Sorry, sorry." He went red to the ears. "Come back in a week, everything will be ready."
At the cobbler’s, it was over in a flash. Sizes, a nod, a week.
Then a magic shop, where an old man had us each lay a hand on a grey stone, "to tune the bag to your flow." A bottomless bag, he explained, keyed to its owner’s mana like a lock to its key.
The stone turned pale blue under my palm. Under Alice’s, it flared all at once into a deep, electric blue, and the old man nearly dropped his glasses.
"By all the saints. Yours will need to be a good deal larger, young lady. I haven’t seen a reserve like that in years."
"I get that a lot," Alice said with a modest little smile, and shot me a look that plainly meant you see that?. My own bag would be the size of a coat pocket next to hers. I laughed to myself.
And finally, the armory. The one I’d been waiting for.
A blacksmith broad as a door had us raise our arms to be measured. As he wrote, he turned to Elsa. "And for the young man — what are we forging?"
"Two matched blades," said Elsa.
"I’d love a katana," I cut in, heart full of hope. "If you’d—"
"No." She hadn’t even looked at me. "Two blades. With your water magic and the Widow’s Dance up close, you don’t plant your feet to trade blows. You turn, you slip aside, you bite on the way past. Twice as many angles while you spin, and your water can sheathe two as easily as one. That’s what you need."
And she turned back, the matter closed.
I didn’t argue. If Elsa said it was the right call, it was the right call. The fifteen-year-old still curled up somewhere inside me wept a little for his katana dream — but two twin sabers, water streaming off both blades while I spun... yeah. Honestly, that was even cooler. My mourning didn’t last long.
For Alice, Elsa ordered a staff. Light and sturdy, made for her mana. Ready in a week, like the rest.
Evening was falling when Elsa took us to dinner. A fine restaurant, a private room off to the side. White cloths, candles, a menu where I didn’t recognize half the dishes.
My legs were still mush from the training, but I was in far too good a mood to care. I dropped into my chair with a sigh of pure contentment.
We ordered. We ate. And after a while, with the wine loosening things up, Elsa set down her glass.
"We’re not stupid, Kuro."
I looked up.
"Alice and I have eyes. From the start, it’s been obvious you’re climbing in power faster than anyone." She crossed her arms. "So I’ll ask you straight. What’s your trick?"
I wasn’t even surprised. Deep down, I’d been expecting it. I’d gotten my water magic before Alice had even hit level ten, and I was banking levels twice as fast as her off the same monsters. You’d have had to be blind.
And honestly, I didn’t much feel like hiding it anymore.
I turned my glass once, and I laid the cards down.
"I’m level nineteen."
The silence dropped over the little room.
Alice froze, fork mid-air. "...Sorry?" She stared at me like she was seeing me for the first time. "Level nineteen? Already?" Her voice climbed. "I knew you were hiding something, I knew it — but Kuro, I’m barely level thirteen."
"I know."
And I told them the heart of it. That first night, in the throne room, the line no one had taken seriously: Infinite Evolution, marked without any limit. That same evening, I’d pushed on it and evolved my Hero’s Blessing — already maxed — into Divine Blessing. A ceiling collapsing to be reborn higher, ready to be climbed again and again, with no end.
Then I told them about the fusions. And I ended up handing over all the rest, piece by piece, until the drawer was empty.
Alice listened, lips parted, and I watched something grow in her red eyes. Not fear. Pure wonder.
"But that’s..." She searched for the words. "That’s completely unfair, your thing. You have no limit. None." An incredulous laugh escaped her, and she leaned toward me, cheeks pink. "You’re going to become literally untouchable, and nobody has any idea."
Then something flickered behind her smile — for half a second it looked almost like fear — and her voice dropped a notch.
"...One day you won’t even need me to heal you," she said. "You’ll be able to do without me completely."
"Don’t be ridiculous," I said. "As if I’d manage without you."
Her smile warmed at once, almost relieved. In the moment, I just found it endearing.
Across from me, Elsa had said nothing. She was staring at me, and on the face of someone you don’t impress easily, I saw something rare go by — respect, with a thread of unease running under it.
"So that was it," she said at last. "That explains a lot. The speed you learn at, everything you take without ever stalling." She shook her head slowly. "A skill with no limit at all... You don’t even grasp what you’re holding, kid. That’s not a gift. That’s a crack in the rules of this world."
And I think that was the moment I’d been waiting for without knowing it. Not the level, not the power. The fact that someone was looking at me — me, the guy nobody ever noticed — as something exceptional.
"And why didn’t you tell us sooner?" Alice asked, half curious, half stung.
I glanced at Elsa. "Mostly because of her, if I’m honest. I didn’t know how far I could trust her — and to be straight, I still don’t, not entirely."
Elsa raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
"You could have told me, then," Alice pressed. "At the palace. In our room. We were alone, and you didn’t say a thing."
"True. But in the moment, I didn’t see the point. I figured I’d do it when the time came."
"When the time came. Of course."
I laughed, and apologized for form’s sake. Elsa stayed quiet a moment longer, her gaze lost on the tablecloth, like she was turning something over. But she said nothing, and the conversation picked back up.
We talked about everything and nothing after that, enjoying the food and the wine. For the first time since the palace, the air between the three of us was genuinely light.
We came out fairly late, a little unsteady on our feet. The street we took back was quiet, almost deserted, the rune-lanterns spaced far enough apart to leave wide pools of shadow.
It was in one of those pools that I saw him.
A man. Masked, hooded, pressed against a wall. And in his arms, a small shape barely struggling — a little girl, a hand clamped over her mouth to keep her from crying out.
The wine evaporated from my skull all at once.
"Hey—" I took a step, and an iron hand pinned my arm.
"No." Elsa’s voice, low, hard. "Don’t move."
"Elsa, he’s taking a kid, right in front of us—"
"Exactly." She didn’t let go, her eyes locked on the man already moving off. "If we jump him now, out in the open, two things can happen. Either he has accomplices and they come down on us. Or he panics and hurts the girl before we reach her." She spoke fast, low. "But if we follow him, he’ll lead us to his hole. And in his hole, there might be the others."
The missing kids. The rumor at the guild. It all clicked together at once.
"...All right. We follow him."
We followed him from a distance, in the shadows, down streets I couldn’t have found again. The man turned, cut through narrow passages, sure of himself. Until he stopped at a squat building with not a single lit window, and slipped through a low door that closed behind him.
We stayed crouched at the corner of a wall, staring at the door.
"Good," murmured Elsa. "Now we know where it is. Let’s go alert the guards."
"The guards?" I turned to her. "Elsa, we heard them ourselves earlier. Kids have been disappearing for weeks and they’re going in circles. By the time they decide to move — if they move at all — the girl will be dead. Or worse."
Elsa didn’t answer right away. For the first time, I saw her genuinely hesitate.
"My job is to bring you back alive," she said at last. "Not to let you charge into a hideout we know nothing about. That’s a risk I can’t take."
"And what’s the point of getting this strong, then?" Something was rising in me, and it wasn’t the wine anymore. "What’s the point of wanting to save this world, if I look away the second danger shows up under my nose? If I can’t even save one little girl three streets from here?"
Alice came to stand beside me.
"If you’re not coming, we’ll go alone." Her voice was soft, and it brooked no reply. "Kuro’s made his choice, and I’ll follow him. Wherever he goes, whatever happens. Whatever you decide."
She’d said it like it was obvious. And it probably was — she’d follow me in there without a second’s hesitation, not to save the child, but simply because it was me going in.
Elsa looked from one of us to the other. Then she closed her eyes and let out a long breath through her nose.
"Fine..." She drew one of her blades. "Do as you like. But you stay behind me, and you do exactly as I say."
I looked at the low door, the dark building rising over it, and my heart was pounding. I was scared — of course I was. But under the fear sat something steadier, something that didn’t shake. I wasn’t turning back.
Some slow life this was turning out to be.
