As always, she doused herself in a monster-warding potion and set out for the Citadel City.
And as always, a guard stopped her at the Citadel City checkpoint and demanded 20 percent as an entry fee, to which she pulled out four or five potions. Unlike the entrance to the kingdom, a fee shouldn’t have been necessary for entering an adventurers’ hub like the Citadel City. Though he said 20 percent, he would take away the most expensive potions, so that’s why she put the cheap ones in her basket and hid the higher-priced ones in her bundle of dried herbs. It seemed she had successfully hidden them yet again.
After entering the Citadel City, she visited her most familiar patrons to sell potions and herbs. The very last one was the bordello. Since that area wasn’t particularly safe, she had to be as nimble as possible. There were empty bottles of potions that had been drunk and discarded on the ground nearby, so she placed any she found in her waist pouch. That day, Mariela had collected around ten. Finding this many was nothing to sneeze at. As always, she went to the bordello’s rear entrance and handed potions over to the male caretaker, and in return, she received 30 percent of the sale money. As always, small profits. If she couldn’t grow the materials she needed in her garden for free, she’d make no profit at all and would be forced to haggle. However, this man was the only customer who would buy in bulk, so in Mariela’s eyes, it was a good deal.
Had this day continued just like all the others, she would have visited a bakery called Copper Bread. The bread there was hard and dry, and the owner hardly ever used eggs or butter, but she would buy a large loaf for one copper coin—hence the name. Then, after purchasing a small number of necessary food items and potion bottles, she would have returned to her cottage in the Fell Forest.
But unlike all the other days, the toll of bells signaling a monster invasion reverberated through the Citadel City just as she received her payment from the caretaker.
The man immediately shut the door to his bordello and urged Mariela to go. The large white gate to the Kingdom of Endalsia in the outer wall had already been closed, and people crowded around it crying “Open the gate! Let us in!” Adventurers were gathering in the plaza as they planned their counterattack, and those who couldn’t fight had long since fled or shut themselves in their homes with barred windows and doors.
Mariela dashed toward the entrance to the Citadel City. Countless times she bumped into people and fell down, and in the chaos, she somehow lost both the day’s earnings and her wooden carrying rack with the herbs inside. Not a single soul stopped this girl, now completely empty-handed, from rushing headlong into the Fell Forest all alone, nor did anyone offer to take her into their home.
But Mariela knew—even those who shut themselves in the Citadel City had no hope of being saved. She knew that both the people who took shelter in their homes and the adventurers preparing for battle understood they couldn’t be saved. And Mariela knew that was precisely why none of them had stopped her.
At the entrance to the Citadel City, the guard who always confiscated her potions had said to her, “I’m shutting the gate. Get out of here now!” and tossed something to her before kicking her out. It turned out to be a monster-warding potion. She hadn’t brought any that day, so it was probably something he had been rationing.
Mariela remembered the guard’s trembling hands as he closed the gate. Even though he was afraid of the monsters, he’d given her his own potion.
It really did feel like yesterday.