DMS Chapter 25

  When Flinx was about to call the waiter to pay for the rounds that he had promised, he remembered that he didn’t have any coins. He called the waiter anyway and asked the man how much a few rounds of whatever the men were drinking in terms of mana stones.

  The waiter gaped at him and looked at Dalin and the others for assistance.

  “You don’t have any coins?” Dalin asked.

  “I’m sorry, but no. I only have mana stones.”

  Dalin and his three friends ughed. They told him that he didn’t have to pay for their drinks since his question was simple enough. They did advise him to exchange some of his mana stones for the local currency since mana stones were too valuable to use for simple trade.

  Flinx said goodbye to the adventurer and headed to the market to follow their advice on acquiring the local currency. He didn’t pn to use his mana stones, though. He would sell some of the salt that he had left.

  When he arrived there, he questioned some of the people there and was led into the spice store. Speaking with the spice merchant, he asked how much he could get for 1 kilo of salt. When he showed the salt to the merchant, the man tested the salt and admitted that it was the purest and most delicious salt he had seen and tasted. According to the merchant, it was the first time he had seen such salt with no additives and no bitter aftertaste. The merchant paid 100 gold coins for his bag of salt.

  Flinx stored the 100 gold coins from the merchant who bought his salt in his 4th tab space and spent the rest of the morning walking around the market. He found some items that he thought he could use in his adventures. They were just regur items, though, and he knew that the quality of the items that he could get from his system shopping site would be better, especially if he was willing to spend more money, so he didn’t purchase anything. The market exploration was useful because Flinx had started to learn the price of common things.

  He then thought of taking pictures of the whole town using his recently purchased tablet. The fact that he was a well-known mage meant that his action would just be construed as some sort of spell that mages cast, so he retrieved his tablet from his 4th tab space and started taking pictures of everything and everyone.

  Some of the people looked at him in askance while he was taking pictures; the rest would stare and then ignore him. Soon, a couple of guards approached him.

  “Mage Flinx! Somebody reported that a wizard was casting spells in the market,” one of the guards said when the two got near Flinx.

  “Oh! Sorry about that. I’m just taking pictures,” Flinx told the two guards.

  “Pictures?”

  Flinx then showed the guards his tablet and the pictures that he had taken. The guards gasped and asked if he was capturing the townsfolk's souls. He had forgotten about that kind of reaction, which he was familiar with, because some fantasy movies showed that very same reaction from the actors when shown the results of a camera’s picture taking of someone who hadn’t seen modern technology.

  “Of course I’m not capturing souls! I’m just taking some images of the town and townsfolk using my device. I have a Teleport spell that I can use to instantly travel back here in this town once I’m done adventuring deep in the forest, but the spell requires me to be extremely familiar with this pce. That’s why I’m taking the images so I can have something to refer to, to make sure that I will not make any mistakes when teleporting. I don’t want to end up inside the belly of a dragon when I use my teleport spell.”

  “Regardless, you need to follow us so you can expin to our captain. You armed a lot of people,” One of the guards said while eying the tablet.

  Flinx followed the two guards obediently to the guard station. He was then led into the Captain’s Office. He had to expin to the middle-aged captain what a tablet was and how it captured the images of the townspeople as well as the images of his home area. The captain and his beautiful secretary were fascinated by the pictures that he had taken, and Flinx was a little proud of himself for managing to take almost professional-level pictures. He knew deep down, though, that he was far from being a professional photographer and was just one of those who thought of themselves as having the talent to take photos just because of having taken beautiful pictures, not considering that their subjects were beautiful.

  Flinx even forgot where he was since the captain and his secretary were amazed by his pictures and boasted the tablet's other capabilities, like taking videos and pying some simple pre-installed games, like some of the famous card games.

  “Where can we get such devices?” The captain of the guards asked Flinx, and that interest made Flinx pause.

  He knew that he had probably made a mistake in boasting too much about the tablet.

  “Uum, the device came from my homend, and as you know, I only arrived here because of a teleportation mistake. Besides, the energy that powers my device also came from my homend, and once that energy is drained from the device because of use, I will not be able to use it again,” Flinx told the captain, and he showed him the icon for the battery remaining.

  Of course, Flinx didn’t mention the sor charger since he didn’t want to suddenly become a supplier of tablets to people. Doing such an unnecessary thing would just be harmful to him and others. The captain looked longingly at the tablet, and for a second, Flinx thought that the man would command Flinx to hand over the device to him.

  The captain then sighed and told Flinx not to do the “image capturing spell” again since it armed the townsfolk. He apologized profusely and told the middle-aged captain that he wouldn’t repeat that mistake.

  After that, Flinx stored the tablet in his 4th tab space since he thought that “out of sight, out of mind”. The captain then suddenly asked him a question.

  “You mentioned that your Teleport spell allows you to teleport to anywhere that you’re familiar with. Why can’t you use it to teleport home?”

  “I tried, but the spell indicated that I was being blocked by some sort of spell,” Flinx said after some quick thinking.

  He knew that his excuse was flimsy, and it probably removed a lot of trust in him from the captain, but there was nothing more he could do. Flinx knew that the captain would probably fg him as a possible foreign spy or something. He just mentally shrugged and accepted the situation. Besides, he knew that the majority of his time would be spent in the forest, killing monsters.

  While Flinx was on the way back home to his tower, he knew that his idea of purchasing magical items from this pce was probably going to be put on hold. He didn’t know if the townsfolk would sell him powerful magical items if they had any. Besides, he was a little paranoid about spending his mana stones.