Dimensional Descent

 Permanent Residency

Leonel walked out of the forest with slow steps. I is back was still straight, but his body was covered in blood.

The Regulator had truly not wanted to let him off.

The good news was that at least half of this blood wasn't his own.

The bad news was that that meant the other half was.

There was no escaping it. He was too weak right now, and this world insisted on not allowing him to use his Bow and Spear Force properly.

He had begun his journey of reforging the Weapon Forces. But that would take time. And it also didn't help if he had dozens of enemies being thrown at his face again and again.

By the end there, he almost got stuck in a valley where four different packs of wolves had insisted on attacking him at the same time.

Between carrying and protecting his wife, and dealing with so many enemies at once, it was a miracle that he was still alive.

But he had managed to leap over the first hurdle and had cleared the forest. Now, it was just a matter of making it to civilization.

It shouldn't be too far away. In fact, after concentrating his Internal Sight into a line, something that he hadn't had to do since his Dimensional Verse days, he spotted a small city about 40 or so miles ahead.

Before, his Internal Sight was so overwhelming that he never bothered to concentrate it. Though he could still increase the distance by concentrating it into a line, whatever he spotted would be so far away that it would be a waste of time.

He rarely needed to look at things so far away.

Yet look at him now.

Leonel's eyes flashed with a confident and murderous glint. Regardless of the challenge, he would trudge forward.

There was no weight that he was afraid to bear now.

Hours later, the city was well within his line of sight.

Honestly speaking, at a decent pace, even with his current body, Leonel could have covered the distance in one or two hours. However, he had taken a full six.

For one, he didn't know what dangers the Regulator might try to throw at him again. And second, he needed to recover in case the Regulator didn't throw anything at him.

Luckily, it was the latter this time.

A distance away, he set the wooden box on his back down and helped Aina get out. He discarded his spear bodies and just held onto his bow and quiver of arrows. Then, taking Aina's hand, they made their way through the last kilometer or so.

The landscape was relatively flat. There were still some trees and shrubbery around, but as one got closer to the city, it was replaced by what looked like mostly farmland.

Wheat, corn, and another variety of crops surrounded the south-facing direction.

Leonel chose to walk around this to the western side just in case. He didn't want to trigger trouble by being accused of stealing.

Soon, they had made it to the entrance of the small city.

It was surrounded by tall wooden logs and looked quite rudimentary. However, all things considered, it was probably the largest plot of civilization around.

They had two large gates, a radius of 500 meters or so, and tough-looking guards wielding real steel weapons at both entrances.

There was even a short line of people looking to get in.

Leonel listened to the conversations these people had with the guards silently until it was their turn.

"Trade, tourism, asylum, or permanent residency?" the guard asked in a practiced motion, hardly scanning them.

"Permanent residency" Leonel replied.

"For how many?"

Leonel looked at. Aina's bulging belly. "Two!"

The guard seemed to notice his hesitancy and looked up as well. A bit of his hard exterior faded when he saw that Aina was pregnant, and he understood Leonel's pause.

However, he still had a job to do.

"What is your use?" he asked directly.

Leonel was actually moved up the priority list of permanent residency because he already had a wife and soon-to-be child. This made him an ideal candidate.

What the city didn't want was a bunch of bachelors with nothing to lose moving in.

However, Leonel still needed to have some worth. Otherwise, he'd become dead weight to the city one way or another, and that was unacceptable.

"Blacksmith and hunter, Leonel said calmly.

"Blacksmith?"

The man didn't seem to hear Leonel's second word at all as his eyes lit up. But then he looked at Leonel skeptically.

What kind of blacksmith didn't have any iron weapons? Leonel didn't even seem to have a hammer either.

Though... because the arrows were hidden in the quiver, the guard couldn't see that they were tipless as well; otherwise, he would have been even more skeptical.

After a while, the guard looked at Aina again, who was just silently standing by Leonel's side, and decided to put the hard-ass attitude on the back burner for the moment.

"You will need to pass a test to confirm your skill. If you truly are a blacksmith, you and your wife will be accepted with open arms. But I will warn you, if you are lying, there will be consequences! The guard gave Leonel a look as though to tell him to turn back now if he truly was lying. After all, if he failed, he would implicate his wife as well.

However, Leonel just nodded, and the guard hoped that that meant he was confident.

What the guard didn't know was that Leonel didn't know the first thing about being a blacksmith. He had never even swung a hammer before. This time, he was completely flying blind.

Soon, a member of the militia was assigned to Leonel, and he was brought to the blacksmithing quarters of the city.

"Sir blacksmith, it gets quite hot in there and the air... it's not the best to breathe, the militiaman gave a subtle hint toward Aina.