133. Engagement – Market

“Come quickly! Over here! Take a look! Items from the capital Barnau!”

“I’m selling ‘Totter’ brewed alcohol! Alcohol! Brewed right at home! There are snacks too!”

A market was set up in the open ground where the Ainar Tribe usually did butchering.

It was a small-scale merchant group, but the traders were busy showcasing their goods brought in by carriage.

Many residents of Abrival Castle, seizing the opportunity, set up stalls, and the market became lively, while the people of the Ainar Tribe were delighted by the long-awaited market, busily selecting necessary items.

Amidst the hustle and bustle, Lena Ainar asked, “How much did you bring?”

Despite it being mid-winter, she was dressed lightly, and to be honest, her clothes weren’t pretty.

A rough upper made from fur leather paired with thick cotton pants of faded color, which she often wore. She didn’t have any adornments to complement her appearance.

Lena Ainar always looked like this. She had no interest in embellishing her looks.

“This should be enough, right?”

Of course, Leo wasn’t particular about her attire either.

He pulled out two silver coins and extended his elbow. Lena raised an eyebrow, looking puzzled for a moment, but she didn’t refuse his arm.

Alongside the burly Leo Dexter, Lena Ainar, with her strong physique, walked through the market with their arms crossed. The bargaining voices of customers haggling for lower prices and merchants offering bonuses could be heard everywhere.

It was peaceful.

“Where do you want to go first? What’s on your mind to buy? I’ll buy anything, just say it.”

“Oh? Flexing with just two silver coins, huh?”

With a chuckle, Lena laughed softly.

Her unwavering eyes, gazing up at Leo, locked onto him.

Her red lips, straight nose, and refined eyebrows looked pretty.

Although Leo wanted to keep staring at her face, Lena soon turned her head and pointed.

“Let’s go over there. I saw something interesting yesterday. Ah! Hello! You came too.”

A warrior from the tribe greeted Lena warmly.

Lena was popular among the Ainar Tribe. Before she could walk ten steps, someone would approach her to chat, and they often paused.

Leo Dexter, who wasn’t a tribe member, remained aloof and tended to avoid attention each time.

“Yeah! I’m going on the next hunt too. In a few days, I’ll become an adult, so just watch! Everyone thinks I can’t hunt… they just don’t know my skills yet.”

Leo chuckled at Lena’s naive confidence. She thought hunting was done with swords, and once she actually went hunting, she’d be quite flustered.

The warrior who spoke to her smiled slyly and said, “Well, I’m sure you’ll do great. No doubt about it,” seeming to look forward to her anticipated future. At that moment,

“I’m looking for someone to undergo the trial of the Great Warrior together!”

As the conversation dragged on, Leo, feeling a bit awkward, turned his attention to a pair of sisters who were calling out from afar. Two robust female warriors were shouting.

They had long hair flowing down to their waists, tied up in unique knots.

Decorated with vibrantly dyed feathers, they were unmistakably warriors from another tribe.

‘This merchant group and those women… why are there so many unfamiliar faces?’

Leo tilted his head. This hadn’t been the case in all the repetitive cycles until now.

Lena had once complained about the merchants being scarce.

However, given that Abrival Castle was heavily oriented toward military purposes and predominantly inhabited by the Ainar Tribe, it was understandable that merchants wouldn’t visit frequently.

The Ainar Tribe was nearly self-sufficient through farming and hunting, while supplies came only for the soldiers dispatched to the castle and their families.

‘Could the impact of the childhood friend scenario have reached this far? The timing isn’t quite right…’

Le Reb, who would become the Apostle of Barbatos, would stir up trouble next year, around the end of spring. Right now, he was likely preparing for massacre and laying ‘traps’ all over Nevis.

While he did annihilate two large families in Nevis, there was no way that would have affected things here.

‘What would Minseo have noticed?’

Leo Dexter shook his head.

He didn’t want to think about such things. No matter the scenario, he would happily live here with Lena.

“Leo! Were you waiting long? Sorry, let’s hurry.”

As he was lost in thought, Lena nudged him. Once again linking their arms tightly,

“Does that person think I’m oblivious just because they keep laughing when I talk? Just you wait. When we go hunting, I’ll show you…”

– she said, while Leo looked at her with honey-dripping eyes, only to feel bittersweet afterward.

My name is not Leo. Yours is probably not Lena…

Caught up in a chaotic conflict, Leo grumbled and finally reached their destination.

Where Lena led him was not a shop selling beautiful accessories or light clothes and snacks. A merchant, sweating profusely, looked up.

“Welcome! Do you need anything? Or are you here to sell or store some leather?”

A merchant wearing an apron stained with grease and white residue.

Lena had come to a leather trading stall.

The merchant, apparently also involved in tanning, had various tools hanging from his long apron, and the stall was cluttered with racks of leather stacked haphazardly.

“I’m here to buy leather. There was something I saw yesterday, um…”

While Lena was placing her order, Leo Dexter habitually glanced around.

From one side of the stall, a small pot was bubbling, releasing a murky smell and white steam.

In the center was a table that formed a curve as round as a cow’s back, and it was smeared with blood and fat, indicating that work was in progress.

It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar sight.

Leo knew how to tan leather and had done it many times. However, the unfamiliar smell drew his curiosity.

‘What is that smell?’

Tanning involves changing hide into leather, the skin of animals into what we recognize as leather.

In the Ainar Tribe and at Dop Bijan’s lodge, tanning was practiced (the un-tanned leather easily rotted or crumbled when exposed to sunlight), but the methods used in the Ainar Tribe and by the hunter father in the childhood friend scenario were different.

To preserve the leather, oil was necessary.

Thus, the Ainar Tribe boiled the brains of their hunted prey and repeatedly applied and washed them onto the leather. This was a method utilizing the inedible mass of fat that was the brain.

On the other hand, Dop Bijan, who served Barbatos, used a different method since he would offer the heads of hunted prey as sacrifices every time. He would rub fat onto the leather and then smoke-tan it.

His son, Reb, skilled with his hands, had often done this while making jerky.

However, this merchant seemed to employ yet another different method.

Leo peeked into the pot that seemed to be the source of the smell. Some plant roots were bobbing up and down in the foamy surface, rising and sinking repeatedly.

‘Are they extracting something from a plant? What could it be?’

“Hey there! You shouldn’t peek at someone else’s secret recipe.”

The merchant, who had been chatting with Lena, swiftly approached and covered the pot with its lid.

Leo shrugged to signal he had no such intention, but it seemed too late to escape the merchant’s glare.

“Hey! Get out for a bit!”

In the end, he was kicked out. He didn’t know why, but Lena shoved Leo outside, and he wandered around grumbling.

“Damn it. I didn’t mean to…”

Having to navigate a ‘game’ where failing could lead to grave consequences, he slipped up.

Habits can be frightening.

With no memories of my past life, only filled with memories of tragic conclusions due to minor mistakes, my body instinctively moved in caution at the unfamiliar smell.

Leo Dexter sighed.

Still, thanks to going out with Lena, his mind felt quite settled.

Minseo. He didn’t entirely fail to understand that guy’s plight.

He must be desperate.

He thought so rationally. However, emotionally, he couldn’t shake off the discomfort of this situation and Minseo’s involvement.

– “Leo… Leo… Leo… please…”

Lena, tapping his back.

To sway the heart of a man who had turned cruel, she discarded her pride and desperately pleaded, her feeble fists turned into dull vibrations.

His right shoulder blade stung.

Leo Dexter, uncomfortably clearing his throat, turned his shoulder. As he stretched out the sore shoulder, he lifted his right hand.

A chill ran down his spine as he noticed a trumpet-shaped symbol on his palm.

[ Achievement: Apostle of Barbatos – You can borrow the power of Barbatos as much as you have offered. You cannot serve any other deity. ]

It wasn’t a tattoo. It was a mark of the ‘qualification’ of an apostle stamped onto him through a forced achievement.

That’s right. I am an apostle.

The mistake from the last scenario had been branded directly on my palm, proving that all those painful memories were not just nightmares.

Of course, Barbatos wouldn’t know me.

I hadn’t performed a ‘ritual’ to announce to him that I was here, like Reb had.

If I were to offer a sacrifice, Barbatos would surely be shocked. It would mean he had an apostle he was entirely unaware of…

Sigh—

Leo shook his right hand as if wishing the mark would fall off. Then a bracelet adorned with three red beads rattled. It was the {Bracelet of Barbatos}, received as a reward from the previous scenario.

It was a great stroke of luck that I got it when Minseo was out of sorts. If it hadn’t been for that, who knows what he might have thought… it’s frightening.

Had I had this bracelet before, Minseo would have surely succeeded in canceling the engagement with Lena.

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Leo took off the bracelet. He contemplated throwing it on the ground but took a deep breath to compose himself.

No matter how much he disliked it, this was a reward earned through hardship. It wasn’t solely mine, so I couldn’t just carelessly ‘dispose’ of it.

Putting the bracelet back on, Leo looked at Lena. She was softly chattering with the merchant, bartering something.

How did I meet her?

How did we get together? How did the engagement come about? What was Lena’s real name? What kind of conversations did we usually have…

A wave of regret washed over him. He loved Lena, but all he knew about her was indirect knowledge from Minseo’s memories.

As he slowly stretched, Lena finally called out to him.

“Leo. Buy me this.”

What she presented was a long leather strap.

The premium black leather was neatly stripped of its fur.

“Sure. But why do you need something like this? What’s it for?”

“I’m going to wrap the handle of my sword with this. The sword you gave me from your dad is nice, but the handle is all worn out,” Lena said, showing the battered handle of the sword at her waist.

The sword of his father, Noel Dexter.

‘Ah, no wonder she didn’t say anything about my sword…’

One trivial question was resolved.

In the last scenario, I had received a sword from my father.

It was the one his mother used.

With no guard, and it seemed to have been made a long time ago, the brown-tinted sword had been ‘bound’ to him, and my father had given his own sword to a jealous Lena.

Here, that had seemingly become a fixed point in the past.

In another scenario, a sword had appeared out of nowhere, prompting Leah and younger sister Lena to inquire about its origin.

“Then I should buy one too. Mine has a really worn handle as well…”

As Leo was about to request another one from the merchant, Lena shouted, “No way!”

“Whoa! Why?”

“T-this is expensive! If I buy two, there won’t be any money left.”

“How could something like this be so expensive? How much is it?”

“I told you no! T-the knight said not to cling too much to tools! Hurry up and pay. It’s one silver coin.”

“One silver coin? There’s no way leather this size costs that much…”

Noticing something, Leo closed his mouth. Handing over the silver coin without further ado to the smiling merchant, who seemed to forgive him for peeking into the pot.

Lena, really… is clumsy at everything except swordsmanship.

She was hiding something behind her back, and Leo Dexter pretended not to notice.

“Hehe.”

On the way back,

Lena seemed excited about something, brightly smiling, and the two walked hand in hand, fondly returning home.

Snowflakes were falling thickly from the sky.