James made his way to his store just as it was scheduled to open; it appeared that Fletcher had also done some advertising for it for him as there was a large group of people in front of it. James began trying to work his way through the crowd to get to the front; he didn't want to start shoving people as it might end up devolving into a brawl, mob mentality was a scary thing,
When James approached the front he was stopped by one of the guards holding the crowd back from the entrance, he was intent on holding James back as well. This was one of the downsides of having someone hire for you, they wouldn't know what their boss looked like. Thankfully not long after one of the other guards recognised James and told the other guards to let him through.
The guard had no particular reaction and just apologised for stopping him until he saw James walk up the steps and turn around front and central. Then he realised this youth was his boss and the colour drained from his face.
"Welcome everyone, this is my new store called Dominators Tower, in here you can find everything you could possibly need. There are lots of things you may want as well; we aim to stop people from wasting their time walking between eight different stores just to find what they need and instead come to one and get all that and more. That is all I have to say, thank you for blessing my store with your patronage." James gave a smile to the crowd and ordered the doors to be opened; the group were all shocked to see such a young man managing the store, especially those who recognised James from begging on the streets.
One thing James noticed was that even though he had opened his store successfully and there were massive amounts of people who had come to try it out he didn't feel as happy as he expected he would be. Instead, he just felt something gnawing inside himself; this was accompanied by the feeling that he was going to vomit.
'System can you interpret my feelings?'
[Host is currently feeling the effects of a guilty conscience]
'Yeah, I figured as much.'
With all his knowledge from his past life, there was no way he wouldn't know the symptoms of a guilty conscience and the shame that came with it.
'It seems I shouldn't have let the noble get away with what he did to my mother; I guess I'll have to pay him a visit, this feeling is too bad to let it persist.'
James quickly left the store opening which was running smoothly and headed towards the inner district, he happened to catch the same guards he had met both times and before he could even get a word in the guard rushed up to him holding a letter.
"The man from the royal family sent this as a reply, I don't know what it says, but he was sure you would come back to check."
James opened the letter and saw one sentence and a signature 'Come to see me at the castle, Raymont Chapman.'
With this letter in hand James easily gained access to the inner district and rather than heading for the castle began to search for the nobles house, all of the buildings in the inner district were much higher quality than those in the outer district, they included stronger materials than wood; mostly being made from stone. Clearly, they were a lot more expensive.
After asking a few people he found on the street, he found his way to the nobles house quickly enough. It was even larger than Fletchers mansion, it had giant gates that were even more intricate as well, either the man was rich, or he was awarded this mansion for meritorious service. James guessed the latter although he wasn't sure how he felt about that.
Rather than go to the front gate, James decided to try once more to use his newly gained powers to climb the wall around the estate. James took his time to imagine a carefully built structure with connections between every elemental particle forming an extensive pattern of honeycomb shapes between them; this was the most robust structure James could make with his still limited control of the particles at the moment.
After some small tests, he felt that the fire dagger should be able to hold his weight and this time and began climbing, the flames would stab into the wall and James would pull himself up and stab with the next dagger. He gradually scaled the wall using this method, after a few seconds of climbing he made his way over the fence and jumped down to the inside.
Looking around James saw a few men patrolling the grounds but apparently, security was quite lax as they thought the wall would stop anyone from coming in. He carefully made his way through the few patrols that were around quite quickly and made his way to the main house. Once he got to it, he found that it was locked, but he merely created a jet flame and cut the wood around the lock away.
After entering the house James saw a straightforward layout inside, he entered the house and looked around and eventually found the room where a woman was tending to the noble. Apparently, he was in pain with his missing hand and couldn't handle it, he was writhing about screaming every so often.
"Well, isn't this a touching moment. Can I assume you're his wife?" James walked inside with a tone of self-depreciation, he felt hurt seeing the woman tending to the man, it seemed some of the vessels emotions had carried over to him, it wasn't his body after all.
"How did you get in here!" The woman was startled by the sudden appearance of a strange young man in her bedroom, so she shouted out in fright.
"You could say I'm a travelling bard of sorts I guess, I've come with a story to tell you" After he finished his sentence he heart a voice shout behind him down the corridor, it was a kid who appeared to be around his age, they even shared some similarities but overall they weren't that alike.
"Perfect, let the whole family gather round for the tale of the ages!"
"Please, James, I beg you don't do this." The noble choked out in a quivering voice, it seemed like he knew exactly what was about to happen and what it would cost him.
"I'm sure there are plenty of people who have begged you not to do things in the past that you have gone through with anyway" James said these words and they felt like a knife stabbing the noble right in the guts, the accusatory stare from James as he said it was the twist of the blade.
"There once was a man who had just become a noble in the outer district, with the newfound power he decided to go out and celebrate, it appeared that he took an interest in one of the commoner women while he was out celebrating. That night he and the commoner woman partied the whole night, it seemed they had a great time together and grew a lot closer.
Well after his night of celebrating the man just went back home to his family he had to wait for him and from what I can tell he spent the next night 'celebrating' with his wife as well." After saying this James threw a glance to the kid who had entered the room and was listening to the story.
"The noble then continued to enjoy his life and used his power to get more, until after a while he had a woman turn up at his door, she was holding a small child. It appeared to be the same woman from he had 'partied' with about 9 or 10 months before.
They had partied that hard that the Gods decided to reward them with a child, but the man had just received a blessing from the Gods with his wife as well. This man indeed was the best partier out there! He didn't want to take responsibility for his partying so he shooed the woman away and hid the child from her so she wouldn't come back.
That woman didn't stop trying to find her child, and after a few years she succeeded, she approached the child to tell him his name and then was dragged away by some men before she could so much as embrace him, the woman tried to contact the child a few times but was stopped every time. The noble was worried that people would find out that he was a party maniac and that he was blessed by the Earth so much that he couldn't even raise both of his blessings, so he decided his only course of action was to get rid of the woman.
So he set his men on it saying she won't leave alone something that was his, now some may say this was vague, but his men honestly didn't think it was weird at all they just thought that she must have stolen something from their boss. Well, there's a standard treatment for thieves with his men. Pig food. So they did just that." When James got to this point, he was practically spitting the words out.
"Can anybody tell me the child's surname?"
This'll do for today, I've been writing for most of the last 14 hours so I'll take that as enough.
Also, leave those votes and reviews, I'm up to 5 now and it still doesn't display the rating so guess it must be ten for that. Thanks!
Also, thoughts on me setting up a discord for discussions and whatever else?