"Whew, now I'm starting to feel warmed up."
After completing the repetitive quest, I felt incredibly refreshed.
But somehow the number of nuns watching me seemed to have increased. Most were young nuns, and when I looked back, they giggled and chattered excitedly among themselves. Then a solemn-looking senior nun appeared, gave the young nuns an earful, and dragged them away. What was that about?
The boulevards extending in all four directions from the plaza each had names: Linz (west), Kisling (east), Neuden (north), Beien (south). The royal castle was at the far edge of the northwest district. Originally a fortress city, as the population grew, the current Breisburg took shape.
In the northwest district, upper nobles with titles and court nobles holding high government positions were established. The northeast district was inhabited by lower nobles of the knight class and some titled nobles. Among the knight class, the lower the rank, the closer they lived to the boulevard. That's why my house was close to Kisling Boulevard.
South of the boulevard was an area where commoners lived. The southeast district was relatively affluent, home to commoners, merchants, and various guilds, but the southwest district on the opposite side had poor public safety, with slums formed by the poor, anchored by the brothel district.
There was a stark class divide across the boulevard.
"Venetian textiles! Beautiful ladies! Come take a look!"
"Selling Rosenheim rose perfume! The perfume Madam Beatrix wore!"
The market was full of things to see. Each stall had a tent for a roof. Livestock merchants selling pigs and chickens, textile merchants enticing ladies with fabrics, craftsmen selling baskets woven from straw, artisans displaying various crafts—there were merchants everywhere.
Agricultural products brought from nearby villages accounted for half of all the stalls. Many people gathered to browse goods, watch the hawking, or grab snacks from street vendors. Not so different from the traditional markets we know.
Occasionally, there were relic merchants making a fuss about suspicious veil fragments supposedly brought from Rome or claiming to have St. Peter's finger bones. Who on earth buys that stuff? And there were plenty of geese and pigs roaming the market floor.
After thoroughly looking around the area centered on the boulevard, I headed home. I didn't forget to carefully check whether any ladies upstairs were dumping filth. If you were careless, you could get drenched in it. Personally, I wanted to wash this smelly coat and hat, and I wanted to take a bath.
So first, I tried to light a fire in the furnace to heat the bathwater.
I somehow managed to strike what appeared to be flint to create sparks and light the firewood, but it took about an hour. Not bad for a first attempt.
The problem was that there were absolutely no toiletries.
There was one bar of soap made from some strange oil, and it was pitch black.
So I accessed this thing called the shop for the first time.
I went into the sundries section and easily found a toiletries set. A week's worth of toiletries cost 50 points. I'd earned 100 points from completing the repetitive quest twice, so that was more than enough to cover it.
Soaking in the warm bathwater and looking at the toiletries I thought I'd never see again, the frustration and tension seemed to melt away. The fact that I could wash properly in the Middle Ages using something called points brought real peace of mind.
But the happy feeling was short-lived. Rubbing my hungry stomach, I rummaged through the kitchen and found 3 pieces of black bread and 1 bottle of wine in a small wooden barrel. I poked at the hard black bread. Could a person really eat this? I searched around to see if there was anything else.
"...This is all there is to eat?"
I didn't often drink wine, but as soon as I tasted it, it tasted like it was made from grape dregs, so it wasn't to my liking at all. A cheap red wine from the convenience store would have suited my palate better. And this hard black bread was difficult to cut even with a knife.
How do you make bread so black and hard?
Were there impurities in it? Or had it gone stale from sitting too long?
Gathering my courage, I chewed the black, hard bread—like chewing sand—and barely washed it down with the cheap wine, then reflected on the days when I had taken the abundance of civilization for granted. If this was the typical staple food, I had no confidence I could survive on it.
But the saving grace was that I had the shop service provided by the system. I had bought toiletries from sundries and enjoyed my bath quite a bit. So when I accessed the shop again, the first thing I noticed was the food section. Inside were countless types of dishes.
It felt like glimpsing paradise.
To put it in Catholic terms, God was there.
"Thank goodness. I almost lost heart."
I was a modern person who took abundant meals for granted. Of course, it's true that many people still suffer from hunger throughout the world, but by my standards, I had always eaten well. I wasn't wealthy, but I was the type who didn't skimp on spending for the pleasure of eating.
So the shop service the system provided was like manna from heaven.
There was every type of cuisine imaginable from across the modern world: all kinds of ingredients, drinks, and desserts spanning every culinary tradition Earth had to offer. Desperate for something warm and familiar after that awful bread, I searched for comfort food, and right there I found a hearty home-cooked meal with roasted meat, potatoes, miso soup, and so on.
Twenty points per meal.
After paying 50 points for a week's toiletries and 20 points for a meal, the points I'd earned from running repetitive quests dwindled to 30. But it was definitely worth it. I didn't know what principle made it appear, but the set meal was sitting on the table in all its glory.
With trembling hands and a racing heart, I carefully brought it to the table and dug in. A familiar yet utterly satisfying flavor spread from my tongue through my whole body. Ah, this is what delicious means.
Just being able to taste the familiar flavors I thought I'd never experience again gave the system shop tremendous appeal. Personally, I believed that as long as I had familiar food, I could adapt to any place. So I had to keep doing repetitive quests consistently.
After scraping up even the last drop of soup without leaving anything behind, I finished a satisfying meal. I must have looked starved. I ate so cleanly I didn't even need to wash the dishes. Then the dishes vanished in the blink of an eye. Well, that was convenient and fascinating.
With a clean body and a full stomach, I drew the longsword engraved with the crest of the Streit family that my father had left me. Our family crest was a relatively simple design: two longswords crossed in an X against a blue shield. A lower knight family's emblem wouldn't be fancy.
This was my first time seeing a longsword in person. It was a staple sword that appeared in almost every game, but it was mostly depicted as a one-handed weapon. The longsword wasn't actually a one-handed sword but a two-handed sword. It was heavier than I'd expected and similar in length to a bamboo practice sword.
The handle, the cross-guard protecting the hand, and the blade that thickened closer to the hilt. Peculiarly, the blade near the hilt wasn't sharpened, so there was no problem gripping it with bare hands. The long blade toward the tip of the sword was honed to a keen edge. I liked the sword itself more than I'd expected.
The problem was that I, who didn't know the first thing about swordsmanship, had to learn to wield this longsword proficiently. The only weapon I could handle was the M4 carbine I'd trained with in the army. I couldn't even chop ingredients with a kitchen knife properly, so could I really master this sword? That's what the shop was for.
[German Swordsmanship Manual]
This was the first thing I found in the shop's secret techniques section.
If I, who knew nothing about swordsmanship, could learn through this manual, couldn't I hold my own as a knight? It was expensive at 1,000 points, but if I kept doing repetitive quests consistently, I could afford it within a week. According to the system's explanation, repetitive quests were unlimited.
So my immediate goal was to save up for the German Swordsmanship Manual.
"Yeah, let's chin up. I'll adapt slowly and make this work."
I muttered like that, as if willing myself to take courage.
I had no choice but to adapt and live in this world anyway.