ALL NOVEL CH.486 New Year’s Celebration
And so, the year came to an end. It is kind of funny. I have been in this world for over ten months, this world months, which are a bit shorter.
Doesn’t feel like it. I feel like I’ve been here for over two years, but what do I know? Probably a lot, but also nothing at the same time.
But let’s not get overly philosophical, we have a busy day ahead of us. … kind of.
Realistically, we don’t really have to do anything, but it is the new year, well, it is currently still the 28th of the thirteenth month, so not yet the new year, but we will be getting there.
I guess I can talk a bit about how the new year is usually celebrated in this world. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but the Heroic calendar this world uses has thirteen months. Each month is exactly 28 days. Which when you do the math results in a year that is 364 days long. One less than on Earth.
Or it would be were it not for the Goddess’ day. Or as you may all think of it, the New Year’s day. So Yeah, that is the recap, let’s get to what we are actually doing on the last day of the year.
… the answer is, nothing super special. HomeBase had a celebration, because tomorrow, on Goddess’ day, we’d be going to different places to celebrate, so I decided to have the HomeBase celebration on the last day.
Yeah, it wasn’t that special, but we had fun, ate good food, the dhampir students liked it when they saw me bleed a dragon and offered them dragon blood
I don’t usually offer dragon blood to the HomeBase dhampir students, mainly because it is difficult to let go of. That stuff is addictive. And naturally after they leave, they won’t get any more of it.
So instead they usually drink beast blood, from my Beast-type monsters, or HomeBase monsters. Lua then mixes a bit of dragon blood into it, about 1 to 100 ratio, to give it a better taste, while not being overwhelming. It is similar to how she used to mix human blood into her blood to make low quality blood taste a lot better.
But on special days, I do offer them pure dragon blood. And naturally this is one of them.
And because this is me, I naturally offered them a chance to also ride dragons.
I think the dhampirs that didn’t get the chance to ride dragons will be jealous when they hear that this group got the chance to, because I don’t do it for each group. But I think I’ll start doing it. It only costs me an afternoon, so maybe a graduation present to them.
The next day, on the Goddess’ day, my girls and I were planning on visiting a few places.
First is the Capital, so we can hear the King address the people. He does so in a few different places across the city, so we listened to the speech in the nobles district.
The speech was honestly nothing special, and I was actually almost disappointed that I wasted my time on this. But luckily it was just almost, because Cailie actually enjoyed the speech. She said it reminded her of the speeches her clan leader would give, you know, during the time before Amilie took over.
Alice was also happy to hear the speech, as it was her first time, but she did get bored eventually.
Next stop was naturally Sawyer city. We had a late lunch with the Sawyer family, and yes, I made sure to pick up Paulina from HomeBase so she could take part.
There I introduced both Cailie and Janina as my fiancées, since Thomas is the closest thing to a grandfather I have in this world. And while he has met both of them before, back then we weren’t engaged.
I offered the entire family some Level Up! services, as a new year gift, and they naturally accepted.
After that, it was time for us to head to Alewatch where the actual party would be.
… okay, that sounds like there aren’t celebrations everywhere, but Alewatch is still my home outside of HomeBase. There is a reason HomeBase levitates above Alewatch 95% of the time.
And oh boy had Alewatch changed in the ten months I’d known it. The town, which sure was somewhat busy during the days, has had a population increase of nearly 20% because of TinaWood, so there were a lot more people.
Houses that used to be empty or used to be used as storage sheds were now lived in, and a bunch of new houses had been made.
It was interesting seeing the town grow, but it did come with its fair share of problems. Mostly the fact that the space inside the town walls is filling up, and they might need to make new walls further away, so they can extend the town outwards.
Luckily I can offer them a hand with that, because with my monsters, I can probably get a new wall made in a day, or maybe two. But still something to consider.
But today isn’t a work day, today is a celebration day. So naturally almost everyone from HomeBase came down to Alewatch to celebrate. Yes, dhampirs included. Sure they didn’t have the papers that would normally allow them to just casually go into cities and towns, but knowing the town’s leadership does come with some perks.
Most of HomeBase people spread across the city to see what was happening, and don’t worry, I made sure everyone had some small silvers on them, so they could buy some stuff. Even the dhampirs.
My group headed for the Watchman estate, so we could talk with them a bit. It was nothing that special, but they did ask for a few favors. Mainly Alice joining them on a walk across the town. They do something like that every new year, but previously they always did it in a carriage. But this year, with how much the town’s population had increased, they decided to do it on foot instead.
And besides, with all the Level Up!s, because Christina does have a few copies of that card, there isn’t that big of a chance of an assassination. And even if there is an assassin, death doesn’t mean much when I’m around.
So we had a nice walk, or if you are Cailie, float, around the town. We got more than a few looks, mainly because of Cailie, but I don’t think Lua and Janina’s wings helped either.
After our walk across town, Brandon gave his own speech at the town square. He talked about the town’s growth, about the dungeon, and about how the town survived destruction thanks to everyone believing in the prophecy.
He then gave me a chance to talk, which admittedly I hadn’t prepared anything, so I had to wing it. I thanked all the adventurers, and everyone else that worked on making TinaWood as good as it is, and made sure to congratulate everyone who had gotten themselves the Card Summoner skill.
In case you were wondering, at this time, the number of people who have gotten the skill is 62, excluding people who did it while I was there.
Coming to the end of my improvised speech, I told everyone listening that I’d be offering free dragon rides outside the town walls. Because you know, I do that kind of stuff. Because why not?
And as always, having people ride dragons for the first time, okay it wasn’t the first time for some of them, as I’ve done this before, but still. It is great to see. Can’t say that I argue. I remember my first dragon ride, and it was amazing. Or would have been if some random Kevin didn’t bother me afterwards.
While I was watching over my dragons, I ended up talking to some adventurers. Mainly the Saber Fang and the Diamond Sword parties.
That eventually led to Tye challenging me to a summoner duel, like the one we had way back. … you know, that time when I almost died to his spirit tiger. … yeah. Memories.
But hey, I now actually have the regular Summoning Magic skill, well Advanced Summoning Magic to be accurate, so I can take part in the duel without having to rely on my cards.
And once we began our duel, it became apparent why Tye wanted to challenge me. He had a new summoning contract, and he summoned a dragon. An earth dragon to be specific.
Judging by its size, which is a fairly accurate way of telling a dragon’s strength, his dragon is still quite young, and not all that strong. Then again, the summonable dragons aren’t exactly the same as the true dragons are. But still, that earth dragon should be at least A-rank, if not low S-rank.
I naturally summoned Himeśaila to oppose his dragon, because I wanted to show that I can summon dragons not only with my cards, but the regular way as well. Yes I could have summoned Nir, but that might have been overkill.
I then set up a barrier around our two monsters, because I learned from last time.
… and I won’t go too much into detail about the fight, because Himeśaila dominated the earth dragon. Not only could the earth dragon not fly, its attacks, while powerful, were quite slow, so Himeśaila could easily dodge them, while pelting the earth dragon with attacks.
I then asked Tye about his experience taming the earth dragon, and he told me how his Baby Dragon helped him in that endeavor. I was happy to hear that the little dragon I gave him was able to help him like that.
I then asked Jack, the leader of Diamond Sword, for a practice match in swordsmanship. He uses a greatsword, so he will be perfect for it. When he asked why, I explained that I had been asked to take part in an exhibition match before the adventuring tournament, and I wanted to check how good I am against someone who knows adventuring ranks better than I know.
We were pretty evenly matched in terms of skill, I think Jack was maybe a bit better, but I could overpower him, as I simply had higher stats than he does.
Admittedly, overpowering and even almost skill matching a B-rank adventurer in sword combat might have been a mistake, because the Diamond Sword members, who know how sucky I used to be with a sword, questioned how I got so good with a sword in under a year. … which I didn’t really have an answer to, other than claiming I had good teachers.
My stats being higher than Jack’s didn’t raise as many suspicions, as they had definitely heard about me taking on SS-rank monsters, and I do get full exp from monsters my monsters kill, so my level could be quite high, even with them not knowing about Level Up!
As the day was coming closer to the end, Janina asked me to bring myself and my fiancées to the Coast, so I left Ria in charge of HomeBase personnel, we jumped into a ship and flew over to the coast.
There we enjoyed the evening and the first sunset of the year with the dragons.
As we looked towards the ocean, we could just barely see Prabhu Jala giving some mer-folk their fifteenth birthday dragon ride.
Yeah. I think times like these are what make being in this world worth it. Sure I could probably find a way to return home, but do I really want to? Probably not. I’m happy here.