Chapter 9: Problem's escalation

A week passed since then and Evin was lying on his bed, thinking that maybe he overreacted a bit too much.

'Surely, someone wouldn't decided to take matters to the next level for a few words? I must've overreacted,'

He was half-awake and half dozing off, but a loud slam jolted him awake.

Then came a series of loud footsteps and smashing sounds from the bakery, followed by Theor's shouts. Evin then heard Theor's grunt and a loud thud after what seemed to be a punching sound. Lora screamed at the top of her lung for help outside the house and the group of people started running away.

Evin walked towards the window to maybe catch a glimpse of the intruders. He looked around, and could see a group of men in black clothing, scurrying into the darkness of the streets. But a familiar silhouette caught his attention, one which looked very similar to Norna.

Only after they left, Evin's shaking heart calmed down.

Evin cursed at his weakness again and toddled out of his room. He then saw all the shelfs and furniture of the shop destroyed and broken. Lora was tending to the groaning Theor, wiping off his bloodied nose with something damp clothing.

Elina came out of her room soon after and started helping. Soon, one of Evin's neighbors came with a wooden plank in his hands, curiously eyeing from outside the broken down door.

The women in the family spent the rest of the night cleaning up the bakery. Theor had to tend to his nose, and Evin could not be useful, so the male members of the family could only watch in silence.

Evin saw much worse happening back on Earth, but he still could not stay calm after the same thing happened to himself. He clutched at the shining lodestone in his grasp, cursing at his uselessness.

…

The next day, Theor and Lora went to the guards to complain about the last night's occurrence. Forced intrusion into the house of a 2nd grade citizen was a serious crime, which would usually garner not a small amount of attention from the town management.

But the attitude that Theor received was of indifference and scorn. Theor felt that the guards recognized him when he went inside the post, but Theor had no memory of ever seeing the man. The guard's eyes darted around the room and the things he were saying seemed rehearsed. Like the man was told to not give any attention to whatever Theor said.

Met with a stone wall, Theor tried going to other guard posts. Shockingly, every post showed him a similar attitude.

'Did he bribe the guards? How much money did that bastard spent on bribes? How is it even possible to bribe every outpost? What kind of useless town management is this?' Theor thought inside his head.

Helplessly, Theor walked home and explained the situation to the family.

The family gathered and decided on the next course of action. Evin and the women decided to go to Liza's house and stay for a while there, since things were becoming a bit too dangerous. Theor would stay at home and look after their household.

…

Two hours later, Evin and the two women appeared in front of a luxurious-looking house. The neighborhood was clean and orderly, with stone tiles covering the roads, instead of just a dirt filled excuse of a road that Evin's old neighborhood possessed. It was the first time Evin's family came here, since 3rd grade citizens weren't allowed in the living area of 1st grade citizens.

Lora knocked on the door and a sweet voice sounded from behind the doors.

"Coming!" Liza shouted.

A few seconds later, the door opened, and she saw the familiar faces standing uncomfortably outside their door. The bland colored clothes made of simple wool the three wore looked quite outlandish in this colorful and luxurious area, but even if a 2nd grade citizen had money, they couldn't buy certain items that were made specifically for 1st grade citizens.

But noticing their distressed looks, Liza guessed that something must have happened to them. She hurried them inside.

"Come in!"

The three went inside and Evin saw a house that could almost be compared to a modern-day apartment. First thing he noticed was that the inside of the house was warmer than the outside, but he couldn't hear the crackling of fire, or any smell of something burning, which meant that this house was heated in one way or another. One more thing he noticed were the light sources on the ceilings and walls that looked like electric lamps.

Liza started questioning them about what happened from Lora, while Evin was left inside Arza's room, tasked with taking care of Arza. As he waited Evin started pondering about how these people could replicate modern appliances. He glanced at the different objects that exuded a magical feel to it, and noticed that they all had various etchings on top of them.

'Are these runes, or something?' Evin observed everything with interest. This was the first time he met magical objects after coming to this World, after all. There were many magical objects inside the room and Evin didn't know what most of them did, but he could kind of make guesses here and there. For example, the pipes with crimson red runes that ran near the corners of the house were most likely the heaters in the house.

Evin didn't know what the item with eyes and ears drawn on them did, but he supposed that it was a sentry device of some sorts.

And looking more closely at the glowing lights, Evin could see that they looked more like a solid metal of some sorts, instead of glass bubbles that held electricity.

Two hours passed, and Evin was starting to feel left out and annoyed. He could hear Lora and Liza talking about something in the other room, but it didn't sound like it was going to end soon. The other thing was Arza.

Aran's boy was a surprisingly violent child. After checking out Evin for a few moments, he started testing the newcomer. He tried lightly grabbing, punching, head-butting Evin with a giggle. The latter simply ignored these attempts at first, thinking that the boy would get bored of it soon enough, but boy was he wrong.

Arza, who seemingly decided that Evin was an easy target, started to extensively bully him. His arm swings became faster and he would clutch at Evin's hair and start pulling it. It took Evin's every effort to keep the boy in check.

Arza was for some reason much stronger than Evin, while being much faster as well. Evin thought that him being able to walk on two legs while being only less than a year old was a miracle achievement, but Arza showed him how weak he was, since the boy could practically run at this point.

Evin could only use his 300 hundred years of wisdom to keep the boy at a hand's distance. As he struggled with the violent toddler, Liza finally came to his rescue.

"Come here, Evin, Aran wants to talk with you," she said.

Liza knew that Evin was much smarter than he appeared, since Lora told her about it a lot of times.

Evin followed behind her, sighing with relief, and Liza lead him to a room filled with books and unfinished devices.

"This is Aran's study. Go sit on that armchair and press the button on this box, I won't disturb your talk. After you're finished, you can knock on the door to let me know. Don't worry, no one will be able to hear what you say in that room," she said and gave Evin a metal box carved with various symbols.

'Is this a communication device of some sorts? Magic is so cool,' Evin thought with curiousity.

He sat on the couch and pressed the button as she instructed. The device hummed a bit and started glowing in a mix of silver and gold. Then, a blurry image of Aran appeared on top of it.

"Hey, how are you doing?" the mage's voice sounded from the box.

Aran had changed a lot from what Evin could remember. He used to look like a delicate scholar, always thinking about something or another every chance he got. Every time he wasn't speaking, he would be making a serious face, staring at blank space.

Now he looked more gritty, manly, and sharp. He gained some muscle while he was away, and there were some small scars scattered under his left sleeve. Evin found them similar to the ones that were made by shrapnel weapons back on Earth. Evin cringed just by thinking of how much it would have hurt.

"Hello, mister Aran. I'd like to say I'm doing fine, but things could be better, I suppose," Evin replied politely.

"Yeah, heard about your problems. I was just about to finish up here and go back and get you started on your magical journey… but I suppose I need to hurry on about that now, eh?" the man said in with a grin on his face.

"You mean to teach me about magic?" Evin involuntarily smiled.

"I actually planned to take you on as my disciple after Arza became old enough to study with you. Children of the Empress are nice to have as friends, after all," Aran smiled.

Evin, hearing the familiar term, tensed up slightly. Noticing the boy's reaction, Aran hurriedly added.

"Look, I don't know where you came from, or what you did in your past life. But I can assure you that I don't care not one bit about it. You're good to your new family from what I heard, and that's good enough for me," Aran said amiably.

Of course, Aran would not tell Evin about how he was planning to kill him for a brief moment, since he suspected that Evin was a dangerous criminal, or the sentry device he put on Evin's house.

Through that, he was able to double-confirm that the "replacement" in the child was a normal person before. Most likely from a foreign country, considering the fact that Evin seemed to spend a couple months learning the native language here.

If Evin was actually going for the long-con: pretending to be an ignorant newborn, while also pretending to know nothing about magic, spending all that time staring intently at a lodestone, just because he was paranoid of getting found out, Aran could only admit defeat in front of such a persistent foe.

But he was still quite confused for a long time, since Evin really did not seem to know anything about the World, always asking for more and more info. He figured that the "replacement" was most likely a child before inhabiting Evin's body. Obviously, Aran would not think that the Evin came from a completely different World.

Thus, he had dropped all his vigilance towards the child, deciding to groom this potential talent from a young age, instead of vigilantly keeping him under surveillance.

Evin, of course, knew nothing about this fact and was simply thrilled.

"Well, let's get started. Chant after me, and don't stop holding that box, alright?" Aran said and took out a lodestone. Holding it, he chanted a sentence.

" 'I beseech Authority Veidrakar to lend me her powers' "

'What? He didn't use a lodestone, and he used a chant. That's completely different from what he did previously. Are you serious? What the hell was I doing for the past half a year?' Evin grumbled.

Aran turned very slightly grey in Evin's eyes, like he was being filled with smoke. The child believed that the last time he used magic; it also took about a couple seconds for him to turn greenish after the light in the stone dimmed.

Evin memorized everything about the process as fast as he could and followed the chant.

" 'I beseech Authority Veidrakar to lend me her powers' "

Almost immediately, the World around him turned completely silent. The small natural noises that the device made was all but gone. Another thing that he noticed was that his mind was working much faster than normal here. Everything in his head seemed clearer and sharper.

He looked around himself and found that the room he was in was the same, but he could see people from behind walls, but they all looked blurred and weird. His mother, who was looking at the door that Evin went into looked just like a very familiar silhouette. Elina and Liza were also in a similar state.

They also seemed like they were stuck in time, staying still like statues.

Evin looked around in wonder, and after a few seconds, Aran materialized in front of him from inside the box, like some kind of genie.