Chapter 36 Wooden Building

In a single night, Xia Nan learned more from Hai’an and Wood than he had in all the previous days combined.

Unfortunately, they were still out in the wilderness. Neither the time nor the place allowed him to properly begin training in new combat techniques.

Still, at least he finally had a clear goal:

Learn two more combat techniques and gain a Class Level.

Even if he eventually gave up adventuring altogether, being a class holder would still be like having a technical certification back in his previous life. It was a qualification that could help him live comfortably in this world.

Hai’an had already made arrangements with him as well. Once the mission was over and they returned to Neum, the Half-Elf would try to find Xia Nan a suitable mentor who could help him learn combat techniques.

Looking at it purely in terms of personal gain, Xia Nan had traded away a favor in exchange for two things he desperately lacked as someone newly arrived in this world: connections and the enormous sum of money needed to hire a class holder.

Xia Nan himself had not approached the matter quite so coldly, but either way, he had clearly come out ahead.

So, with the intention of learning as much as he could, Xia Nan remained by the campfire and continued asking Hai’an and Wood about classes, combat techniques, adventurers, and the other supernatural forces of this world.

The conversation continued until the night had deepened and the mist around them had grown thick.

Only then did Xia Nan reluctantly stop asking questions.

This was not a warm, safe tavern.

They were still in the monster-infested Misty Forest, and they had a long way to travel tomorrow.

The group assigned someone to keep watch while everyone else turned in early.

…

They were nearing the place where the wooden plaque had been found.

At the first hint of dawn the next morning, the party packed their belongings and set off again, pushing through the mist and deeper into the forest.

Strangely enough, although they were gradually approaching the deeper reaches of the Misty Forest’s outer region, where dangerous encounters should have become more frequent, the entire morning passed without a single monster attack.

The closest thing to excitement was a Golden-Eyed Black Panther the size of a calf.

Its body was pitch-black, its glossy fur gleaming faintly in the mist. Its paws landed soundlessly on the meadow.

There was no fight.

The panther merely watched the party from a distance. After deciding that they were not prey it could safely hunt, it slowly backed away into the shadows beneath the trees.

If Wood had not pointed it out, Xia Nan and the others might never have noticed the encounter at all.

According to Wood, the four Rust Monsters from yesterday had probably frightened off most of the weaker monsters in the area, which explained why their journey had been so peaceful.

“Hiss!”

A long snake covered in pale yellow spots shot from the grass after being prodded by a battered one-handed hammer. Its slender body twisted over the ground before disappearing into another patch of undergrowth.

“Another one! Did we wander into a snake nest or something?”

Larry wiped the sweat from his forehead and grumbled.

The Rust Monster’s corrosive fluid had ruined his one-handed hammer as a proper weapon, so Larry had repurposed it as a stick for probing the grass and driving away snakes and insects.

Unfortunately, it was still a metal hammer.

Repeatedly swinging it around was burning through his stamina.

By now, Larry was breathing hard.

Even so, he did not suggest taking a break.

The party’s pace had already slowed considerably.

Just as sandy soil became wetter and more fertile near an oasis, or the air grew increasingly humid near a lake, the strange objects around them appeared more and more frequently as they drew closer to their destination.

Things like that abandoned carriage were no longer rare.

Xia Nan alone spotted half a thatched cottage, a collapsed mud-brick house, and even the remains of a five-story wooden building.

All of them had been reduced to ruins, yet enough details remained to make one thing unmistakable.

They shared the same deeply Eastern style as the token and the carriage.

Wood had even led the party into several of the ruins to investigate.

They found plenty of signs that intelligent beings had once lived there.

But not a single corpse.

Even stranger, although the buildings had been badly damaged and looked like the remains of some ancient lost civilization, the materials themselves were surprisingly new.

There was almost no sign of weathering or age.

Crack.

A branch snapped somewhere underfoot.

Xia Nan moved through the misty forest with his eyes fixed ahead, his attention focused on the dense bushes and tall grass around them.

His left hand hung naturally at his side.

Inside his palm was a smooth, cold shard.

A fragment of porcelain.

He had picked it out of one of the ruins earlier.

Even now, Xia Nan found it hard to believe that after being transported into a fantasy world, he could still come across something so familiar: porcelain with a thin body and a soft, warm glaze.

He had been so surprised when he first saw it that he had picked it up from the broken bricks and tiles almost without thinking.

His thumb brushed over the smooth surface.

That brought him back to what Wood had said after examining the towering wooden building they had passed earlier. The structure had once stood more than ten meters tall, though most of it had already collapsed.

“Judging by how much the forest mist has affected the wood, this building couldn’t have been standing in the Misty Forest for more than one or two months.”

“Of course, considering the manpower and materials required to build something like this, not to mention the danger of the surrounding area, I can’t imagine anyone willingly settling here.”

Hai’an and the others had immediately objected.

The building was right there in front of them.

If no one had lived there, then why build it at all?

Xia Nan, however, had another idea.

The others were natives of this world.

Xia Nan was not.

The soul inside his body came from somewhere else entirely.

And with the memories and knowledge of modern society from his previous life, combined with all the familiar details scattered throughout the ruins, he had recognized the towering wooden structure almost immediately.

It was an inn and restaurant.

Which only made the whole thing stranger.

Who was supposed to patronize an inn built deep in a forest full of dangerous monsters?

Judging by the density of the buildings they had seen along the way, even if every ruined cottage and tiled house had once been occupied, the population still would not have been large enough to support an establishment of that size.

And there was another problem.

Anyone with even the faintest understanding of city planning would never have arranged buildings the way they had appeared along their route.

One moment there would be a shabby straw hut fit for the poorest slum.

A few steps later stood an elegant tiled residence fit for a wealthy dignitary.

One building after another, scattered without the slightest pattern.

The more Xia Nan saw, the less it looked like someone had deliberately come into the depths of the forest to build a settlement.

Instead, he kept imagining an invisible hand reaching across space and time from another world, a world whose style had nothing in common with the fantasy realm around him.

That hand had casually selected some distant town.

Then it had pinched up a few buildings and tossed them into the Misty Forest.