Testing My Luck in the New World

The salty scent of the ocean had already long since perforated my nostrils before we reached Guerraway, but by the time we got to the city gate, I was questioning why anyone would willingly choose to live by the sea.

I'd never been one to lounge about on a beach for hours on end. My past self never could have found such a public setting relaxing, not unless I was the only one there, anyways. So, whenever I needed to wind down from the daily grind of the job I hated, I typically just pulled out a good book or video game, sat myself in a nice quiet room and lost myself in it.

Still, I had been dragged to the beach a time or two in my past life, so the fishy smell permeating the air was familiarly hard to deal with.

That being said, I had no idea how these two girls, whose noses were both several times more sensitive than my own, were able to carry such undaunted smiles on their lips as they gazed up at the long wall surrounding the city.

While the wall was not even half as obnoxiously tall as Amoranth's, Mana was still unbelievably taken with them as she wrung the life out of my hand in the excitement.

"Wow! Human temples are so big!"

Mana's tail wagged energetically as soon as she saw how tall the city wall was. Yua and I chuckled to each other a bit at her excited misunderstanding.

"That is not a temple. That is just a wall that surrounds the human city."

"City? What's that?"

"Think of it like a village, but a way bigger. And with a lot more people. The wall keeps them safe."

"Ooooh."

Looking like a little girl excitedly skipping through her first trip to an amusement park, Mana clung to our hands and pulled us towards the gate. Smirking to myself at how her curiosity had taken over and she had all but forgotten about the little dress we'd forced her to wear, I let her lead the way.

"Yua, were you this excited the first time you saw a city?"

"No," she smiled embarrassedly and shook her head. "I was too scared to go in and ended up waiting in the forest for three days..."

"Really? I would have thought you'd take it head on like you would a fight."

"Hehe... Well, I'd never seen so many people. So many humans... It was a little scary at the time."

"Yea. I guess if your only interactions with humans had been through the occasional merchants passing through your village, seeing so many at once would have been a shock."

I know I felt the same way after meeting her people, at least. Even if my shock was born of a completely different reason, one that made me grateful to myself for letting Mana borrow my cloak, as her excited movements would have already created a dozen wardrobe malfunctions since she first saw the city wall on the horizon.

"..."

Unmoved by Mana's cuteness as I was, Yua drew in her chin when the gate guards' eyes locked on us. Surely, as beautiful as she was, she'd never had a man look at her with such pure disinterested disgust in her life. When they saw her, they gripped their swords. I had almost forgotten Tama's warning about their dislike for the cat-kin.

There was no fear in Yua's eyes, but there was a heaping helping of regret when she belatedly tried to cover her ears with her cloak. Mana, however, missed all of this and continued letting her gaze wonder, completely missing the threat when her big blue eyes landed on the guards well-polished bronze armor.