Chapter 317
The moment Arran set foot inside the city, he knew things were even worse than he could have imagined .
That the streets were filled to the point of bursting was no surprise . The large tent camps that lay around the city were enough to tell Arran that the city itself would be overflowing with people .
But what he hadn't expected were the chaos and filth .
The streets were covered in waste, and the air was filled with a nauseating stench so thick it nearly made Arran gag in revulsion .
And the waste wasn't even the worst of it . He had barely walked a hundred paces when he saw a body on the side of the road, robbed of its clothes and abandoned, several large knife wounds visible on the dead man's torso .
Arran found himself shocked by the sight . Not because of the body itself, but because the masses that crowded the filthy streets paid it no attention whatsoever . Instead, they stepped around it with practiced ease, treating the body no different than they would any other piece of waste .
Yet amid the muck, there was commerce as well . Barely a few dozen paces beyond the dead body, Arran passed a small food stall, its owner loudly announcing that he had the cheapest food in the city . Find authorized novels in Webnovel,faster updates, better experience,Please click www . webnovel . com for visiting .
And no wonder . If the pervasive stench of the city hadn't already been enough to sour Arran's appetite, then a quick look at the hawker's wares would have achieved the same thing . Because what the man sold was clearly rat meat .
Arran could not help but be astonished by the state of the city . Filthy, overcrowded, and lacking even the slightest semblance of order, it was a hellhole that no sane person would want to remain in even a second longer than necessary .
And yet, there were thousands of people in the city, most of whom looked to be travelers of the sort Arran had already seen in multitudes on the road to Esran .
He could not help but feel some wonder at this . If they wanted to travel to the Hunters' lands, why remain in this sad excuse for a city?
The border was barely a week's travel away . With their destination that close, there was no reason to spend more than a single night in Esran — not when the city offered neither comfort nor safety .
That could only mean there was something stopping them from traveling onward . And with that the case, Arran might face trouble in reaching his destination as well .
But there was nothing he could do without information, and the best place to get that would be an inn .
The first three inns he entered, he left immediately . Like the rest of the city, they were filthy and overcrowded, filled with rough-looking travelers . And while Arran did not mind rough company, he could see at a glance that none of these inns would have private rooms available .
As he moved closer to the center of the city, the streets steadily grew slightly less crowded and decidedly less filthy . Even the stench that had filled the city's outskirts was less pungent here, if still not entirely absent .
When Arran came across another inn that looked at least halfway acceptable, he quickly went inside, and found the common room mostly clean and empty — a rarity in Esran, he understood by now .
He approached the innkeeper, then asked, "Do you have rooms available?"
"Of course," the man replied, an ingratiating smile on his face . "And at very reasonable prices, too . Just two gold for the week . "
Arran looked at the man in astonishment . No wonder the inn was mostly empty . Two gold was more than most commoners earned in a year of work .
But Arran was no commoner, and gold meant little to him — certainly less than a warm, clean bed for the night .
"I'll take a room, then," he said . "And I'll give you another gold if you answer some questions . "
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