Ocean’s Rest is not what I expected it to be. I was expecting an ordinary looking city similar to Midriver adjacent to the ocean with a few ports added on but holy shit, what an amazing city. Ocean’s Rest is actually built into the Nasaar Kingdom’s eastern coast and the entirety of the city is built on top of water. Or that’s what I originally thought but Derriv explained to me this entire area is a special oceanic region made up of hundreds of small islands and the kingdom built the city’s buildings on those islands. Instead of streets, the city has waterways; instead of traveling by foot or horse, you travel in boats; and finally, instead of crossing roads, you cross elevated bridges. The moment we entered the city, I couldn’t help but marvel at such a phenomenal sight.

We’re currently standing on one of the city’s many plazas as we bid our goodbyes to the Wellock Company’s caravan leader. We’ve already left all of our horses and wagons with a stable on the outskirts of the city. We’ll be picking them back up when we leave, which should be in a few months as we wait out the winter here.

The caravan leader, whose name I never bothered learning, gives Derriv a big bear hug and laughs, “It was a pleasure through and through, Derriv! If it wasn’t for you and your boys, I wouldn’t have made it here in one piece. I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you with Mr. Wellock. I wouldn’t mind having your help again on whatever trek I’ll be on in the future. But for now, let me thank you with your payment for these last two weeks. Mr. Wellock left it up to my discretion on how much I pay you for the last leg of this trip, but you’ve been incredible the entire way and I’ll be paying you one full gold coin for each head in your band.”

Everyone on our side erupts into cheers hearing the caravan leader’s words. He hands Derriv a small coin pouch filled with our payment and leaves with the rest of his men, probably to do what they came here for in the first place: trade. Derriv distributes the gold coins to everyone around and keeps the pouch.

It seems in addition to his personal monthly wage of 2 gold, Derriv received compensation from the Wellock Company for accepting the escort mission in the first place as the leader of our outfit. I guess that’s what he meant when he told me he receives compensation when we take on these requests. Once everyone’s sorted and have their gold coin pocketed, we wave down a few of the city’s ferrymen and get them to bring us to one of the city’s inns.

Our group’s pretty large and each boat can only fit five or six people which means we need six boats to carry all of us. The ferrymen don’t work for free but for short trips they’ll only charge a few copper coins which is fine by us. On their recommendations, we’ll be staying at Azureview Manor.

It’s supposedly one of the mid to upper tier inns in the city and has some of the city’s best seafood which I’m honestly excited for. I’ve had fish before but only the ones that could be caught in the stream behind Augustine’s farm. Even when Wraine and I were trekking across the peninsula to Mountain’s Toil, we couldn’t catch any fish. We definitely tried a bunch of times but without a fishing rod, we ended up just splashing water around and scaring the fish away.

Even though it’s lightly snowing in the city, the waterways are still fully functional and it looks like it’ll need to be much colder than it is now for the water to freeze over. It’s a bit chilly and I can see my breath in front of me but the boat ride is relaxing enough that I don’t even mind the cold. I’ve never been on a boat before but I think it’s a pleasant experience. After a few minutes, we arrive at our inn and carefully step off the boat onto the protruding sandbar.

Azureview Manor is a huge three story tall wooden building covered in colorful festive decorations symbolizing reindeer, snowflakes, and the winter father. It’s almost the winter solstice and it looks like the city’s in the full swing of things preparing for it. Most of the buildings in Ocean’s Rest are awfully tall, much taller than Midriver’s buildings from what I’ve seen so far, and perhaps that’s because there isn’t as much land here to build horizontally and the architects decided to go vertically instead.

When we get inside, the innkeeper gets us all situated with some people opting for private rooms while the majority of us are fine with the 15 copper a night public sleeping quarters. We do have quite a few coins we can spend now but we’ll need to make sure they last us through the winter. Though some hot water to clean myself sounds amazing right now considering we’ve been on the road for almost four months at this point.

It feels a bit awkward walking around without a sword and shield or even my pair of axes but Ocean’s Rest has a strict policy on civilians walking around with weapons. It was alright since we just arrived in the city and haven’t found a place to stay yet, but the entire way from the moment we entered the city’s walls until we reached our inn, we kept getting stopped by city guards actually performing their job. They flagged us down, asked us why we were brandishing weapons, checked our adventurer licenses, and then told us to make sure we stored our weapons the second we got to our inn.

It’s a completely different experience than in Midriver but I suppose this is what a real, regulated city feels like rather than the bandit hideout Midriver has become. Azureview Manor has their own armory for their residents for situations like ours and they’ll keep an eye on our weapons for a small price. It seems that Bertrand’s sword is exempted from the city’s regulations and he’s allowed to keep it with him as long as he keeps it sheathed and wrapped with linens at all times. I only found out just now but Bertrand’s sword is made from mithril and it even has a name: Verona.

Mithril is a special type of metal in the Nasaar Kingdom that’s sharper, more durable, and infinitely more expensive than iron. A mithril sword like Bertrand’s can go for around 1,000 gold coins but even if you have the money, you most likely won’t be able to buy one. The kingdom heavily restricts the circulation of mithril to the general public due to how lethal the weapons are and only those with specific permission from the government can own them legally. But if mithril was just stronger than iron, the kingdom wouldn’t nearly care as much as they do.

The kingdom only cares about the fact that mithril can conduct mana which amplifies its inherent properties to an absurd degree. By being able to conduct mana, mithril swords go from being able to cut a person in half in their inert state to being able to cut through most other swords like a hot knife through butter in their active state. For example, swords belonging to the kingdom’s guards and soldiers. That’s why having a mithril sword without the kingdom’s authorization is highly illegal and if one is caught owning such a sword without permission, they’ll likely be hanged for possession of the sword. I have absolutely no idea how Bertrand got his hands on a mithril longsword and I have even less of an idea on how he received the kingdom’s sanction for the sword. But when he spoke with the city guards and showed them a few pieces of paper, they let him go without another word.

For the rest of the day, our whole group went sightseeing around the city but we barely made any meaningful headway. Ocean’s Rest is nearly triple the size of Midriver both geographically and population wise. If I was back in Midriver and I started my day by walking from the southern side of Midriver until I reached its northern side, it would take me around half a day as long as I kept a moderate pace throughout and I’d finish the trip sometime in the afternoon. I can’t do that here. I suspect if I wanted to travel from one end of Ocean’s Rest to the other end, I’d need two days to complete the trip.

Not only that but Ocean’s Rest is filled with people and everywhere I look, there’s groups of people hurrying along to their destination. The waterways always have several boats traveling their waters going in either direction and every elevated bridge we passed under had numerous people walking across them. Back in Midriver, you’d only see this many people on the busiest main streets but here it’s everywhere.

When it gets dark, we head back to the Azureview Manor and settle in for the night. Tonight we’re celebrating the completion of our four month long mission with all the delicacies Ocean’s Rest has to offer and we’re all getting wasted. Over the past few months, Riane has had a big hand in taking care of the girls and watching over them especially during dinnertime. I think she started taking it more seriously around the time Georgil died. Maybe she feels guilty that someone in Candle died but she wasn’t there to help since she doesn’t participate in fights and she wants to do more to help us outside of fighting. But regardless, it’s reassuring having her watch over them because the rest of us get pretty rowdy when we drink.

When the innkeeper starts bringing out dishes and setting them down on our long table, my mouth starts watering the moment I catch a whiff of the food. When he finishes delivering all our dishes, the feast in front of us looks like something you’d only hear about in a fairytale. I can’t even recognize most of the dishes in front of me and someone had to identify them for me as I ate them. There was fish, crab, lobster, shrimp, oysters, mussels, squid, octopus, sea snails, abalone, and something called sea worm. Apparently sea worms are classified as monsters but they’re relegated to the bottom of the ocean’s food chain and they make for a tasty meal for humans. I was a little hesitant about eating it but when Bertrand laughed at me and said it wasn’t any different from eating goblin meat, I went ahead and skipped out on it entirely.

Derriv’s paying for this whole lavish spread using the coins he earned from negotiating with the Wellock Company. But this will be the only meal he’ll be paying for since the entire thing cost him 2 whole gold coins and then some. He can’t really blame us since wine is horrendously more expensive at 15 copper a glass than ale at 3 copper a mug and we needed the appropriate alcohol to go along with our seafood.

I’m not the biggest fan of wine but I do agree matching suitable alcohol with your food makes everything that much better. For instance, mutton with mead goes hand in hand together while ale with anything fried or greasy is a match made in heaven. Before the night is over, I’m pretty sure our table alone emptied at least two barrels of wine. None of us can walk back to our beds on steady legs but at least we don’t have anything pressing going on tomorrow or for the next few months anyways.

I’d say we’ve earned ourselves a well deserved break after being chased out of Midriver and escorting a trading caravan nonstop for four months. Staying in the public sleeping quarters makes it a bit harder to sneak in my dose of Schon for the night but I’ve gotten good enough at it that no one sees me take it. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if we stayed here forever. The environment is interesting, the food is amazing, and everyone that I care about is here with me. It’d be nice to live here.