CHAPTER 70: HOME

Seeing Ashvalis again felt comforting since I’ve been around it all my life... It was basically my home if you don’t count the junkyard.

I just never really stayed around too long when visiting the city since people are quick to judge when they know you are talentless. People always knew that about me since I was a junker from the moment it became a possibility for me.

"Are we stopping in the city at all or just passing through?" Akina asks with a bit of curiosity.

"Just passing through." I answer without any hesitation.

My wallet would really be empty if I decided to pay for everyone to stay at the hotel. It was never really that cheap to begin with and I haven’t really gotten much silvite lately.

Food is also pretty expensive to get but maybe it won’t be so bad with Akina in our group. She is definitely capable of doing quite a lot... Food might be something she can get us easily.

As we enter the city people continue to go about their daily lives, no hunters seem to be roaming the streets right now, and the previous destruction of some buildings seem to be fixed.

Of course some people exchange glares towards us since we are in a rather large group. I think groups are usually 3-4 people max and we definitely have more than that.

Only by two but it is still a lot in a technical sense. None of us really paid any attention to them since our goal was getting back to the junkyard.

"I really do hate the way humans stare here." Lilly says quietly.

"I agree. It’s rather annoying." Velia responds with a bit of an irritated tone.

Ghost looks back towards the both of them. "Not much longer and then you won’t have to think about it." She says with a smile.

"True. We shouldn’t be that far right?" Lilly questions while crossing her arms.

"We aren’t far." I answer while stretching.

Walking everywhere sure is exhausting but at least we’re finally almost there. My shop is definitely a mess but at least it’ll be some place safe for us to talk.

Monsters won’t be a problem at this point in time, at least not the ones that usually roam around the junkyard. Whisperspawn probably will do their best to avoid us from now on.

Any other monsters are a mystery since I’ve only dealt with a handful of them so far.

At long last I could see the junkyard once again, my old home. There wasn’t any monsters lurking about which meant we didn’t have any problems.

The shop also looks like it hasn’t been touched since we left so that’s a good sign for us. "Home sweet home." I say without thinking.

"It’s definitely quite messy here." Lilly chimes in with a bit of disgust.

"I like it." Akina says with a positive tone.

Velia, Mari, and Ghost all seem to be quiet about it but I can understand why Ghost would be silent. She woke up in this place after I save her.

Click. Creeeek. I unlock the door and push it open for everyone to go inside. The lights kick on automatically after one of them heads inside.

The shop was definitely just as messy as I remember, shit was just thrown everywhere with no real organization. I knew where everything was though since it was my own system after all.

"It could use a bit of a pick me up but it’ll work perfectly as a nice cover base." Akina speaks with a bit of excitement.

"Cover base?" Ghost says while confused.

Akina just looks back at us and gives a big smile. "I’ll make sure we have the perfect setup!" She shouts with excitement.

I closed the door after everyone went inside and watched for a moment as I waited to see if Akina does anything. She did just talk about the perfect setup.

"Akina reminds me a lot of you Mari." Velia says while staring right at Mari.

"I’m nothing like Master Akina... I could never be like her." Mari replied with a bit of sadness in her voice.

I was about to speak until out of nowhere everything started to change in the room. The floors weren’t littered with my junk anymore and actually have a nice look to them.

The marble from the tower replaces the old floor but this time it’s all black and the room also seems to be expanding a bit. Won’t it look weird from the outside if someone peeks inside?

That was the original thought I had till I remembered that the tower was a lot like this in a sense. Floors always seem a lot different than you think... At least until you walked in.

She probably made it look the same to others but it has a completely different look to us.

"Ta-da! It looks beautiful in here now. I didn’t get rid of anything, rather I stored it away for you." Akina says happily.

"It does look a lot nicer in here now Rokuro." Ghost speaks up while looking around.

I can’t deny it, it does look a lot better than it did before. I’ll miss my messy shop but people change. I’ve finally hit a point in my life where I can make a difference so that old junker life of mine can stay in the past.

We need a good home base for us to fall back to anyway so this is definitely perfect.

Crazy to think Akina can alter a room like this so perfectly huh.

I don’t think it’s that crazy since she was the being at the top of the tower who granted wishes and even managed the floors. It makes a lot of sense that she’d able to do all of this in my opinion.

I’d rather everyone be comfortable here anyway instead of them having to move my junk out of the way to sleep at night.