Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

Chapter 90  The Mayor

'I'm at around 400 gold now. It's an okay sum but I'm gonna need more if I want to buy any half decent weapon.'

Alex walked through the streets, thinking about his plans for the near future.

After selling the beast corpses to Martha, he now had a total of over 400 gold coins to his name, give or take a few. That may seem like a lot, but that couldn't even buy him a decent weapon, but that was without factoring in any beast cores he was lucky enough to find.

If he counted in his beast cores too, he'd be up to 700 gold, as he currently had 3 F- rank beast cores to his name.

His current routine was boring. Wake up, eat some Shadow wolf meat for breakfast, go out to hunt till sunset, come back and sell anything he hunted, sleep, repeat.

This carried on for the next two days, until he woke up just like usual, but unlike the previous few days there was a commotion going on throughout the village.

Alex exited the inn he was staying in and walked out onto the streets, curious to see what was going on.

What he saw was the residents of Monty town all lining up the sidewalks, cheering and celebrating even though it was barely 7 in the morning. He was confused at first, still not fully awake, until he realised what day it was.

'Oh right, the Mayor's returning today!' Nôv(el)B\\jnn

The moment he figured it out, he saw a caravan marching its way through the centre of the crowd all the way towards the town centre, where the elites of the town lived.

The caravan was made up of various types of carriages, with food carriers, people carriers scattered across the whole thing.

At the centre stood the most expensive looking carriage. It wasn't luxurious when compared to the real nobility's ability to splurge money, but it looked like the sturdiest and most reliable carriage of the bunch.

Soon after the caravan stopped, the door of the expensive carriage opened and an old man in his early sixties stepped out and took in a deep breath of fresh air.

"Ahhh, it feels good to be back. I can't stand the stifling air in the cities, I prefer much more natural and refreshing air like this." The old man clamored.

'You're still in the same cave no matter where you go…' The air in this place that actually had magical blue skies and green scenery everywhere one looked was much, much higher in quality than the air he was forced to breathe in the dark and damp depths of the Darkness he had first found himself in.

Alex listened to the old man's monologue and joked to himself. Of course he knew that there was in fact a huge difference in air quality in different parts of the cave system. He had experienced this for himself.

The air in this place that actually had magical blue skies and green scenery everywhere one looked was much, much higher in quality than the air he was forced to breathe in the dark and damp depths of the Darkness he had first found himself in.

As the old man stood outside his carriage, he took in sights of the town he was so familiar with, yet felt so distant after such a long time away, and smiled at the crowd.

He turned to the soldiers guarding the caravan and spoke.

"Unload the cargo into my manor, you can go back to your posts when you finish." He dismissed the guards to go start their work, while he walked towards the crowd of people waiting.

"I'm sure most of you heard of my return beforehand, but be rest assured that this town will be even more prosperous now that I'm back!" He spoke to the people, prompting cheers from nearly everyone present.

Naturally, when Alex heard this he knew instantly who this old man was.

'Father Bertram, the Mayor of Monty town.'

He hadn't expected him to look like this.

Father Bertram was wearing a normal suit that businessmen usually wore on outings. His clothes and appearance weren't anything special, which surprised Alex a little.

From hearing that Bertram was actually a noble, and seeing the actions of the guards under his employment, he had expected him to at least show something a little more high class.

Martha had mentioned that he was nothing like the nobles of the cities. But Alex was a 'seeing is believing' kind of guy, so he remained skepical until he saw the man himself.

But what he had seen so far showed that Martha was at least telling the truth on her part.

He continued observing from a distance, not bothering to join in the clamor of the crowd as he was still an outsider in this town. Alex wasn't planning on approaching the mayor just yet, instead he felt it better to wait for all the celebrations and chaos to die down before he made any moves.

After a few minutes of chatting, Bertram excused himself and tended to his caravan, helping to unload supplies and checking that everything was still where it should be. The crowd also started to disperse and go on to do their own jobs.

Alex himself just exited the town, continuing his same mundane routine.

***

In a lavish looking office, inside the manor at the center of the town.

"Good morning sir, I'm glad to see that you made it back safely and without commotion." A smartly man wearing a tuxedo addressed Bertram, who sat behind his desk looking out through the window at the bustling town.

"It's good to see you again, Kilian. Anything interesting happen while I was away?" Bertram answered Kilian, the head butler of the baron estate.

"All is good sir, though there have been some intriguing developments recently that you may be interested in." Kilian remained respectful throughout the whole conversation with Bertram.

"Oh? What is it then?" Bertram seemed slightly interested when he heard what Kilian said.

Normally Kilian was a tough guy to impress, or catch the attention of. That's why he made for a good head butler. So if something had actually intrigued him then whatever it was, was surely going to be interesting.

"Around a week before you returned, an interesting fellow made his way into the town. The people know of him as Alex…"