——The beginning of every arc is always the hardest to write. This chapter alone took me over four hours. The 2850 bonus update tonight might come a bit late, and the remaining bonus updates will probably have to be made up tomorrow and the day after, but I definitely won't skip them."……
Altor, a room on the lowest level of the monastery.
The room was pitch black, utterly silent save for whatever sounds one made oneself.
Natasha sat cross-legged inside, seemingly having grown accustomed to the darkness. The bulging, searing bloodlines on her hands and face had faded considerably.
With her darkvision, she gazed at the thick stack of letters in her hands, silently humming a melody from time to time — even without sound, her spirits seemed light and lively.
Upon reaching the last page of the final envelope, Natasha suddenly broke into a smile, her right hand tapping out a beat. "Hmph, an early congratulation? Lucian, you're definitely copying me. I'll be waiting for the July 30th issue of the Musical Review."
"Having a friend really is wonderful. Otherwise, I'd have gone stir-crazy in here."
The cool, faintly briny sea breeze swept away the mugginess of October. Waves lapped against the long embankment from time to time, spraying countless flecks of white foam. In the distance, the sea met the sky and birds wheeled in lazy circles. Nearby, slender boats darted through the water and arched bridges rose one after another.
Stewart — the "Pearl of the Sea" — bore a certain resemblance to the Venice Lucian had seen in films in his previous life. Built upon over a hundred small islands clustered together on the water, its countless canals spread out like a spider's web, with only a single long sea embankment connecting it to the mainland.
Seated in one of Stewart's distinctive pointed skiffs, Lucian watched the various buildings lining the canal drift slowly past, giving him the feeling of strolling through a marketplace.
"Hehe, respected guest, every canal in Stewart is essentially the same as a street in any other city," the grizzled boatman explained enthusiastically, having noticed Lucian craning his head left and right nonstop and correctly deducing he was a first-time visitor. "That there is St. Maio's Church. That is the Stewart Holy Spirit Monastery. That is the Tower of Truth, and that is the Prayer Spire…"……
Lucian let the sea breeze ruffle his hair at a leisurely pace, well satisfied with the boatman's introduction. "This area would be Stewart's temple district?"
Although in every city quarter and every town the Church maintained at least one church regardless of size, there was always a particular area where church buildings clustered together — for instance, the neighborhood around the Golden Cathedral to the east of Altor's Nobility District.
"Yes, so it's not very crowded here. Once we enter the commercial district, sir, you'll see more gondolas than you can count, along with merchants and travelers from every nation under the sun," the boatman replied with a grin, guiding the skiff beneath a magnificent stone arch bridge.
All at once, the surroundings erupted into raucous noise. Skiffs were moored alongside various buildings or steered directly into the ground-floor waterway entrances of large structures.
The Common Language rang through the air in a babel of accents — "Copper Fel," "Silver Nahr," "Gold Thaler," "bank," "loan," "ten carats," "sturgeon," "sea carp," "citrus fish," "steel," "timber," "slaves," "delivery" — the words reached Lucian's ears in an endless stream while scenes of haggling and bargaining unfolded before his eyes, ten times more bustling than Altor's Market District.
The entire city pulsed with vibrant vitality, and even the sea breeze seemed to carry the scent of money.
"More prosperous, more steeped in the spirit of commerce than I ever imagined Stewart could be," Lucian murmured in genuine admiration. Having come from a modernized city on Earth, he found himself drawn to this kind of lively scene — he seemed to relish the quiet that lay beneath the clamor.
The boatman spoke with undisguised pride: "Our city of Stewart sits on the edge of the Storm Strait, connecting north, south, east, and west, and boasts a natural deepwater port — making it the perfect transit hub for countless goods and the most ideal free city there is. Moreover, we Stewartians are born with a head for business. The first goldsmiths' guild, the first bank, the first certificate-based trade — all of them were born right here."
"East and west?" Lucian caught the odd note in the boatman's introduction. In Stewart, "east" clearly referred to the Holm Kingdom and other nations across the Storm Strait. Could they truly be connected directly?
The boatman, long accustomed to dealing with travelers and merchants, saw nothing strange in Lucian's puzzlement and launched into an eager explanation: "Surely you've heard of the Holm Kingdom's 'nightingale' silk and their unique precious gemstones? The Colette Kingdom's 'golden' porcelain? The Galais Duchy's various spices? And the Brianna Kingdom's premium tobacco?"
"Of course — they're luxuries reserved for true nobility," Lucian agreed with the boatman's account. Intelligence from someone in the boatman's profession wouldn't even be half true and half false, but it was better than nothing.
Flushed with Lucian's response, the boatman grew even more animated: "Those four countries sit right across the strait. But because the profits on these goods are so immense, the Church has monopolized the trade — only those nine noble merchants who've received Church authorization are permitted to organize fleets to sail across the Storm Strait. Tsk, so wealthy are those nine that pooled together, they could buy Stewart outright."
"Oh? Which nine families?" Lucian asked curiously. Could it be that Granief was one of them, able to use trade as a perfectly legitimate cover for sending mages across the Storm Strait?