City Of Sin

Book 1: 1-10

Growing Up

Spring was a well-liked season. Humans could finally start the new year after the slow crawl of winter, no longer needing to bear with the freezing cold and being able to obtain food much easier. There was an increase in the variety of food as well, so spring was the most important season of the year. Be it for humans, dwarves, orcs, elves, or even ogres, supernatural creatures and carnivorous beasts, they had important events during spring.

Of course, the world was really complicated, and there would always be exceptions. For example, spring was mostly meaningless to those that lived underground. In the most extreme case, snow demons absolutely hated spring. On the other hand, however, a majority of the human race found the season delightful. When the warm, moist air flowed crossed the mountains and the sea with difficulty to reach the village of Rooseland, the villagers knew that spring had arrived.

Rooseland was located amidst a mountain range near the coast. It was a tiny speck amidst the enormous mountains that stretched for thousands of miles, ruled by Baron Tucker under the Sacred Alliance. It was almost three hundred kilometres from the Baron's castle, so only during harvest season would the villagers see the Baron's tax collectors come over. His leadership was otherwise negligible, only felt for this short time.

The Baron taxed lightly as well, only collecting the specialties of the area so that it didn't have much impact on the daily lives of the villagers. Were the tax to increase in a poor harvest year, there would be dire consequences. It wasn't all that bad living in the mountains. As long as you worked all year round, you would be able to survive.

The lands outside the village needed to be plowed and seeded in spring, and the food harvested in summer. Hunters would begin to enter the forest at this time as well. The magical beasts, having just woken from their hibernation, would be exceptionally dangerous and aggressive in their search for food, but there were some specialties in their bodies like precious medicinal ingredients or glands that could be turned into perfume. Their quality would be the highest in spring, so despite the casualties and injuries every year hunters always entered the mountains without fail. This made the Goddess of the Hunt the most worshipped of all the gods. Aside from the Eternal Dragon, there were as many gods and religions in Norland as there were stars in the sky.

Norland was a continent with abundant resources, ruled by divine powers under a strict hierarchy. Even a remote and peaceful village like Rooseland had quite the history, and despite being simple and sincere the villagers respected experts and disdained the weak. The small village, with only tens of households, followed its own implicit hierarchy.

The petite figure of a boy appeared outside the village, carrying a wicker basket filled with breadfruit almost as tall as he was. The winter reserves would normally be used up by spring, so before other sources of food could be obtained even this bland fruit was still an important source. It was easy to find as well, growing in the forest beside the village.

There were three other boys beside him, each one of them a head taller than the child. They had bows and pitchforks in hand, and daggers at their waists. Even if they were less than ten years of age, they were all carrying deer and rabbits on their backs, able to go hunt already. Of course they only targeted the docile animals, but it was no simple task to lay the traps to catch these animals. Be it of commoners or nobles, children of the village learned these things from their parents.

The leader of the trailing group suddenly shouted out, "Hey Richard, where's your father? Hasn't he taught you how to hunt? I was already in the mountains at your age, setting traps to catch rabbits by myself!"