Oliver sat on the ground, tightly clutching a magic stone in his fist. For now, Ashton told him to just try and get familiar with the magic inside of it. He did pour a few pulses of mana into him as well so that he could have some kind of reference-point, but at the end of the day, developing that 'sense' was something that everyone had to do for themselves. It wasn't something that Ashton could do for him.

  Plus, he had a few other things to make anyway. For one, he was going to try and inject another random box with some mana later, and hopefully get another useful item out of it. He also still had the 'Rabbit's Foot' potion that he hadn't actually checked out yet. In all the stress that he felt when heading out to look for the Marked, he had almost completely forgotten about it.

  It was still worrisome that Ashton had only met one Marked, though. Back in Lumia, they were a lot more common. Then again, the era that Ashton lived in over in Lumia was a lot more dangerous and aggressive anyway. While there weren't 'monsters', there were still dangerous beings.

  Aggressive magical beasts, demons beyond comprehension, wild elementals, and even some types of spirits were a threat to the people living in that world. It wasn't a place that was easy to live in for most people. Of course, it wasn't as though Earth was a perfect, peaceful paradise, either. Death, murder, rape, racism; hell, even genocide was something that was still seen in this world. The little bubble that Ashton lived in before was relatively peaceful, all things considered. There were places like that in Lumia as well, just that they were much, much harder to come by than here on earth. And even then, the quality of life in those bubbles wasn't quite comparable to what it was like here.

  Maybe that was why, when the system finally came along, the people of Lumia managed to accept the darker sides of the system much more willingly than here in Drakewood.

  He hoped that it would stay that way, but he also knew that things weren't as easy as that, "... I'm guessing you guys wandered around the city a lot, right?"

  At the sudden question, Jacky looked up at Ashton, nodding her head, "Yes, we did. We tried to follow your suggestions as much as we could, and we did find some small survivor groups here and there, but..." she slowly looked away, "They weren't exactly happy to accept us in. It was mostly small groups of people that knew each other already before all of this, and they were already worried about just looking after themselves. And then there were the bigger places, like shopping centres. You know the one just at the edge of town? It was burning when we finally got there. After that, we tried to stop by the Costco near there, but there were a ton of monsters lurking around there, walking in and out of the place, so it felt a bit risky."

  Ashton listened intensely as Jacky continued explaining what the places they had seen were like. He had been sort of tunnel-visioning on the singular goals in his head at every point, so he didn't feel the need to search around too much. It was great intel, but at the same time... extremely alarming.

  Considering how well Market Street was doing, Ashton had hoped that a place like Costco could have become a great camp as well, but it seemed like the worst-case had happened.

  Ashton already knew that this place was most likely setup to be a ruined zone, a place that was planned to be infested with massive amounts of powerful monsters as a sort of setup for later quests. Basically, the difficulty was probably going to scale at a higher rate in this region than in some others.

  Particularly, not just the appearance of the Hobgoblin, a field boss, as early as the tutorial was shocking, but the Warlord Orc that he killed just today showed that the Council was probably hoping to have this place be a 'Monster City'. And it was likely that there were going to be more of those types of monsters scattered around town.

  "... What kind of monsters did you see at the Costco? And when was it, during the tutorial or once the main quests started?" Ashton asked, and Jacky looked over at the others.

  "It was late yesterday, just before dusk. And I think what we saw were... Lizardmen, right?"

  "That's what they looked like at least. Though there were a few around that didn't look like the sort you see 'round the streets," John explained, warming his hands at the fire. His face had already regained a lot of the colour that it had before, just from the magical herbs that Ashton had fed to the salamander.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "Hm... I see," Ashton knew that many more types of lizardmen belonged to a single tribe than tended to go on regular patrols. Since there were so many here in this part of town, Ashton figured that there would be a smaller tribe hiding out in some building in the city centre, but the fact that there was one so large not so far away wasn't exactly great news.

  It was possible that the tribe inside of the Costco was fairly small and just managed to get a lot of space somehow, but Ashton doubted that, with the way things were going. Though, it was a good opportunity to go level up more.

  While Ashton stood there and grumbled to himself, Jacky looked up at him again, as if she had been waiting to ask a question herself for a while now. And then, it seemed like she had just hit some kind of breaking point, leaning forward slightly.

  "So, about the Arthurian legends..."

  "Hm? Oh, right. Yeah, so do you have any thoughts? It sounds like you're really into all that stuff."

  A bright smile appeared on Jacky's face, "Yes! Okay, so, I'm sure you must know at least a little bit, right? I mean, growing up in Drakewood and all..."

  "... I know that some people keep claiming this city is where Arthur was born, and that Drakewood was basically Camelot."

  Jacky quickly nodded her head, "Yes! So, for king Arthur, there were always really only two branches of thought, at least from my understanding. First, Arthur existed, but was most likely a relatively high-ranking soldier, commander and maybe even a king, that fought against the Anglo-Saxons somewhere around the late 5th to early 6th century."

  "Okay. I guess that seems possible? And if he was such a big deal, I guess it would be possible for a town to claim to be his birthplace," Ashton said, injecting some mana into the potion he was brewing, "And what's the other thought?"

  "Well, that he wasn't 'real', or at least not technically. Only 'real' in the sense that all mythological beings from folklore could be considered to be 'real' because people considered them so," Jacky explained happily, "But the point is, the other branch of thought is that Arthur was some kind folklore hero. Maybe some kind of forgotten welsh god or something. Either way, people thought up this heroic, powerful figure that could slay the most terrible of monstrosities, and then when real battles happened, and people exaggerated the stories of those battles afterward, they would claim that Arthur was the one that led them to victory. Or if someone didn't quite know how the battle ended, they would claim that Arthur was the one who dealt the decisive blow, or something like that. Basically, he'd be some kind of catch-all figure that got intertwined with tons of rumours, local folklore and mythology, and so on. In that case, Drakewood would have basically just been pulling the whole 'birthplace of Arthur' thing out of their arse."

  Ashton chuckled at that last statement. But he also couldn't help but be a bit uncertain. It was a fun story, obviously. King Arthur was a cool, legendary figure, and because so many people in this town were so passionate about him, it was hard not to get a bit excited whenever Arthur came up as well. But at the end of the day, once Ashton got into secondary school, he was already mostly over it. Now, he wished he had paid more attention to what all the adults told him.

  "Mhm, but that's not what you think anymore, now is it?" Oliver scoffed, not looking up from the magic stone that he was holding in his hand.

  Ashton raised a brow, "Really, now?"

  Jacky awkwardly nodded, "Well, you said it yourself, right? With literal magic being a thing, it just kind of makes you think."

  "Tell me, what do you believe right now?"

  "... Well, maybe... Urgh, this sounds so stupid, but what if Arthur was actually real, and not in that first way I mentioned? What if he was actually some kind of mythological, monster-slaying heroic figure? What if he actually got the sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake? If Arthur is real, could Avalon have been real as well? Avalon is highly connected to myths of fairies, and well, we know those are real now," Jacky pointed out, staring at Poppy, who was relaxing in one of the pockets in Ashton's jacket.

  "Yeah... What if? What would that mean? That there were once vicious monsters roaming the world. That magic was real in the past, and then, at some point, disappeared. It would also mean that other mythology would have some weight to it as well. And in that case, where do we stop? Are gods real? Or were they real in the past, and then just disappeared alongside magic?" Ashton said, using a spoon to give the potion he had just brewed a taste. It seemed good to go, so he would just let it cool down a little before bottling it. Of course, he knew that gods were real in Lumia to some degree. Not the sort of all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present beings up in the sky, but beings with Divinity that walked the world. But on Earth, that was a whole other matter.

  Sitting down on one of the nearby benches, he threw one leg over the other, slowly bringing Poppy out of his jacket pocket.

  The faces of everyone in the party went tense. That was an idea far beyond what they had spent time thinking about yet. They were so focused on what was right in front of them, that these thoughts barely crossed their minds.

  Ashton slowly continued, looking at the small fairy. "At the very least, Poppy said that she wasn't born just the other day, when magic came to this world. But from what I gather, she was just asleep for a long time. And if such a small, weak being like a pixie can survive..." He smiled and licked his thumb, rubbing away a piece of green candy that was stuck to Poppy's cheek, "... Then don't you think other beings of mythology might have somehow made it through until now as well?"