Demon's Virtue-Chapter 802: Street Food
"Oh, shit, look over there! That guy's grilling a whole goat right now," Arc yelled out excitedly, pointing forward with a broad grin on his face. Sammy snapped her finger next to his ear with her free hand. She used to hit his arm when he acted like this, just out of instinct, but she stopped at some point. For one, it didn't work since Arc wouldn't even notice that it happened, and two, he got a pretty bad bruise there at some point and when Sammy hit him she just made it worse. Getting his attention with snaps like this worked way better anyway.
"Stop pointing, that's rude."
"But Sammy, it's a whole goat! A whole! Goat!"
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"I know, and we can all see it very well," she pointed out, and Arc dropped his head into his neck with a loud groan.
"Fiiine! I'm gonna go talk to him!"
"Wait, hold on!" Sammy wanted to stop Arc, but he's been getting more and more reckless recently. Grabbing his arm at this point could just lead to it popping out of his shoulder without anyone realizing. Confused about what was happening, Felix squeezed Sammy's hand.
In a low voice, almost too quiet for Sammy to hear with how much other noise was around here, he asked, "Is everything okay?"
Sammy quickly nodded, quickly signing and speaking to him with one hand, "Everything's fine! It's just Arc being Arc again, don't worry."
Felix smiled, looking forward through the long road. It was filled with trolls, kobolds, orcs, goblins, lizardmen... molemen mere walking at the side of the road, squeezing into small tunnels hidden between the buildings. Blood wolves were just walking around together with monsters in armour, accompanying them. Harpies were perched on the side of buildings, and Felix could swear he even saw some wyverns in the distance, with monsters riding on their back. Slimes were on the rooves and in the alleys, eating the dirt and grime and trash that would otherwise be strewn around all over. And mixed in, here and there, were some humans. Just a couple, of course, but still. They were just there interacting with the monsters like it was the most natural thing in the world. It was a sight like none other that he had ever seen before.
There were just so many things he never thought about before. The doorways were all massive to account for the size of the trolls, though none of them had actual doors in there. Because obviously, a door that both the molemen and the trolls could open was pretty complicated to figure out. There were specific poles hung up between the buildings that the harpies sat on, and there were small holes at the bottom of walls and at the side of roads that were seemingly made for just the molemen to enter a network of tunnels below the roads.
Back in the day, when Felix used to live in the middle of a big city, he would always keep his eyes down, away from the hustle and bustle. All the noise alone was just too much for him to handle, so he never stopped to look at anything. Skyhart's capital was also a bit nerveracking at times, so he spent most of his time either hanging out with Sammy, Rudy, Arc, and Clementine, or in the library, studying or learning new painting techniques from his teacher.
But now that he was on this trip with everyone, something was different. He wouldn't be bothered by all the noise anymore, so he could take his time to really look at everything. Felix had been feeling a bit drained of inspiration, but this? It was... breathtaking. It was beautiful in a way that he simply wasn't able to put into words. It was a world that just seemed impossible.
Felix immediately just wanted to take out his sketchbook and draw something, but he should just wait for now. He would be able to do that later. In the first place, he had pretty good visual memory, and a sight like this? He would never forget it. Even so, Felix took a few mental notes, trying to etch a couple of things into his memory as well as he could, mostly things that he had not seen anywhere else before.
By the time he was ready to move on, Arc was already coming back with a whole cooked goat's leg, biting into it with a massive grin on his face.
"You guysh wand a mite?" he asked with his mouth full. It was hard for Felix to read his lips like that, but he got the gist of what he was trying to say anyway, with how he was standing there, holding the leg forward. Rudy quickly took the offer. He pulled up his sleeve, and a hatch opened up on his arm. It was hard to see if you didn't pay attention, but there were was a certain small 'workshop' in there. By now, Rudy was on his second iteration of his unique class, away from castle over to 'Grand Castle', giving him a ton more space inside of his body. And with that, being a craftsman, he took full advantage of this ability.
Inside of that tiny workshop, the little folk living inside of his body put together and provided whatever tools he needed at that point, hoisting them up for him. In this case, it was a small knife. Using it, Rudy quickly cut a few chunks of meat off of the leg, giving a bit of it to everyone. He also cut off a few chunks and held them on his palm, watching as another hatch opened and pulled the meat inside. Basically, Rudy was just giving his unique ability a bit of a treat.
As Felix ate the meat, he was more than just surprised. Somehow, he expected it to just be bland goat's meat, which wouldn't have been bad either, but this was incredibly well-seasoned. It was salty, flavourful, somehow fruity, and just packed a punch in the back of the throat that was to die for.
Everyone else also seemed quite surprised by the taste. Felix was hurriedly glancing around to see what everyone was saying, trying to decypher their words, when he saw something trickling from the corner of Arc's mouth. His face went pale, and he quickly swallowed his food, pointing at Arc. He tried to get the words out, but he was too worried he was going to scream it out. Luckily, Sammy realized what he was trying to say.
"Oh gods- Arc, you bit your tongue again," she groaned loudly, and Clementine let out a long sigh, already able to tell that it was much more than just that. She was the only one that hadn't eaten any of the meat yet, so she slowly put it away.
"Come here," Clementine said, pulling open her brother's mouth before he could protest, "Oh no, you bit it off fully this time... This is why you should be careful when eating red meat."
Felix turned his head away immediately. He was pretty queasy when it came to this stuff. But the others were totally fine.
"I think it's the chunk there in the corner," Sammy pointed.
"I hope he didn't swallow it again..." Rudy added.
"Hoohheee," Arc said, trying to apologise, when Clementine pushed her fingers into Arc's mouth, fishing out the chunk of tongue that Arc had cleanly split off.
"Swallow," she instructed, giving Arc her waterskin to wash everything down with. When his mouth was empty and 'clean' for a bit, Clementine pushed the chunk of tongue into her brother's mouth and healed him, pressing her own mouth shut as she did.
Flinching deeply, Clementine pulled away from Arc and tried to press her own mouth shut. The pain she was feeling from that must be intense. Sammy quickly held her sister, while Arc got out one of the healing potions that he carried on him at all times for emergencies. With the healing compatibility Clementine had, even wounds as bad as this could be healed with just basic potions. But this one was actually a high potion, so it should do the trick immediately and relieve her pain the moment she had a sip.
Clementine quickly filled her mouth with the potion, just holding it in the for a while. Her expression immediately calmed down, and she swallowed the mouthful of potion. Clementine looked at her brother with a slight frown and a bit of a pout, "Please be more careful... This is really not fun... And you know that I can't sense pain that well in big crowds like this."
Arc gave his sister a side hug, "Sorry, I'll be more careful. Here, let's get ourselves cleaned up a bit."
He held forward the waterskin, and Clementine nodded, using magic to pull the water out of the bottle. She quickly used it to get rid of the blood around Arc's mouth, before her brother held a mirror in front of her, which he carried with him exactly for situations like this where he inadvertedly caused a mess because he wasn't careful enough. Clementine got rid of her blood from the corners of her mouth, plus the blood on her fingers from fishing around in her brother's mouth.
"You guys good to go?" Rudy asked, and Clementine and Arc both nodded. But as they turned away and were about to keep moving on, they realized that everyone around them was just staring at them intensely. That made sense, they had done something pretty crazy in the middle of a crowd, after all.
Arc smiled broadly, looking around at them, doing something that not even his siblings expected. In the innate language of each of these monsters, he apologised for the commotion while slightly bowing his head.
