FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife

'To think a slight change of mood could change my perception of this city so freaking much!'

I took in the views all around me with my wide-open eyes, staring at every detail of my surrounding like a forgotten child in a closed-off candy store.

Earlier, when filled with nothing but the doom and gloom thoughts of having to get by without any source of support in this harsh world, all I could see was danger lurking in every corner.

An alley? I could almost see the shadows of the vagabonds hiding there, only waiting for some unsuspecting victim to walk into their domain to rob him naked and leave his bloodied body to rot in the darkness.

A street? It was just the right place for a noble carriage to run an innocent person over, only for said person to end up kidnapped, tortured, and then silenced for the affront of delaying the carriage's path.

And the market? Don't even get me started on it!

All of that was gone now.

The saintess, like a rising sun of the day discarding the darkness of the night, basked this entire town in the radiance of safety. And with the film of ever-present danger now removed, this place finally revealed itself to my eyes for what it really was.

A living and breathing museum of what I once could only read about in museums, trying to decide which replicas were accurate and which were just a historian's creative side outdoing his research.

Everything around me had meaning, one born out of very specific and often practical reasons.

The ditches on the sides of each road? They weren't there just because, but served as channels for all sorts of filth and trash to gather, only to be swept away by occasional groups of town cleaners.

The streets themselves?

After just a few moments of observation, they proved to be just wide enough to allow two carriages to pass by while leaving some room for the pedestrians to move.

'It's like in that internet pasta,' I thought, the corners of my lips surging up as I recalled the amusing theorem, 'how is the width of a horse's ass related to spacecraft design?'

While the whole thing was long gone from my memory, I could still remember the logic behind the entire thought process, where most of the carriages were designed to be pulled by two horses, establishing their width to be twice as much as… well, a horse's ass. Then, double the width of the average carriage would decide the average width of the old, classical-era roads, which would be then replicated in the medieval era and even later, all the way up to modern times.

And it was exactly in those modern times when the width of a random tunnel that connected a rocket factory with its launch location was based on the width of a road passing through it which, to some extent, could be then traced all the way back to the width of a horse's ass.

Then, there were the statues.

Some were huge, nearly high enough to rival nearby buildings. Others only grew as high as your average human, while there was a whole lot of small, decorative ones scattered all around.

On one hand, I couldn't help but wonder - what were all those statues doing in this frontier-looking city?

But that was too much of a practical, pragmatic detail for me to care about in the moment. Because it was the second realization of mine that baffled me to no end.

Those statues?

Yeah, they were all painted. And some were even dressed in real clothes!

'It's nothing like those sculptures saved in the museums,' I thought, too amazed by all the sights around me to even notice where the saintess brought me to. It was only when she stopped by the doors to some sort of an inn and drilled her eyes into my face that I've managed to shake my amazement off and return to the reality.

'She's might be making me feel a bit too safe for my own good.'

"We are here," the saintess spoke as soon as I raised my eyes to her, curious to learn what was this place that she brought us to visit. Yet, rather than shining some light upon my confusion, she simply shook her head, threw, "let's get going," before pushing the doors open and stepping inside.

'Oh my gawd!'

The inside…

I had to resist the desire to clutch at my heart to stop it from jumping out of my chest.

If the streets of the city were enough to make me dazed, then how could anyone blame me for reacting like a nerd on an idol's meet and greet when stepping into a legitimate smithy?!

The insides of this wide, yet surprisingly low-hanging building were filled with enough smoke to make it hard to actually see much further than the length of my own arm. It was with greatest difficulty and quite the pain to my eyes that I managed to make out just enough of this place's outline not to stumble over every piece of furniture as I hurried it up to follow behind the Saintess.

"Greg," she called out as she approached what looked like just your everyday, thick, wooden counter. She then leaned in over it before peeking her head past the counter and into the separate part of the building, one clearly not for customers to enter.

"Selia, dear!"

Once again, my heart threatened to jump out of my chest.

And it wasn't because that Greg person turned out to be either a robust midget or an actual dwarf.

No.

It was because only now did I realize that up until now… I never thought to ask Saintess about her name!

"What brings you into our humble house?" the dwarf approached the counter only to then climb up a set of cleverly hidden stairs, rising just high enough above the counter for his eyes to match the level of the saintess' face. "Did that fancy sword of yours finally succumb to its age?" Greg asked, mirroring Selia's pose as he leaned over the counter and peeked towards her left hip.

"Not today, man," Selia, against all odds, showed a relaxed, somewhat amused smile while shaking her head with a glint of smugness in her eyes. "Now, I know how eager you are to get your hands on my primordial steel, but today still is not the day," she stated while shaking her head. "No, instead," she reached out to her hip. Yet, rather than grabbing her sword, she plunged her fingers into her pouch and fished out the very core I saw her, just a few hours ago, pluck out of the jungle guardian's chest.

"I want you to cash me in."