Malin slouched in the mentor’s seat, listless after watching the day’s competition. It was so calm it felt like yesterday’s events hadn’t happened at all. Even the team captains from the mid-level team of the Church of the Goddess of Harvest had shaken hands with their opponents from the War God Church.
Please, even if you have camaraderie from battle, could two grown men hug it out? They were just swelling each other’s faces moments ago.
Malin despondently watched as the teams from the Church of the Goddess of the Night and the Shepherd’s Church took the stage... Ah, compared to a major church like the Church of the Goddess of the Night, these little religious groups once passed down among shepherds seemed so fragile. Nowadays, capitalists have industrialized sheep farming with thousands of lambs in a single farm. Malin really didn’t know when the big shot would embrace mechanization--ah spit, that’s not right, industrialization.
Hmm, when the time comes, will it be called the Concisen Shepherd or the Syndicate Shepherd?
Thinking of this, Malin looked around, seemingly without any Punishers from the Shepherd’s Church coming over to chop him.
Ah, it really was a small church. Back when Chaos invaded, even the War God lost a tooth, and with such a weak divine power as the Shepherd’s God, they must have fled to who knows where by now. I wonder if their hierarchy of priests could hold up.
Lost in his thoughts , Malin suddenly realized that he was thinking so much because he was bored--he had been watching since the morning, and almost five hours had passed. Thinking of this, Malin glanced at his peers and found most of them were already sprawled out. The mid-level team hadn’t left the field yet—they had to tidy up, which was something the junior team couldn’t be bothered with, and these half-sized kids had to fix up the field.
The reason was twofold: the junior team basically couldn’t dismantle the competition field, and the mid-level team had too much energy to spare, naturally going all out in events .
"Why haven’t they come down yet?" a mentor muttered.
Malin offered him a cigarette, and the young mentor immediately accepted it with a smile, instantly perking up the other smokers around him. Watching these hungry youths, Malin smilingly handed out one to each person.
"Mr. Malin is reliable," said the young mentors, boasting and subtly throwing shade on the older group along the way.
To this, Malin actually empathized with the older group. Middle-aged, with families above and below them, as mentors, they had only their salary. Moreover, the tobacco in this world was not the ordinary fare from Earth times. Malin heard the tobacco leaves were grown on islands in the south, with Thanan people nearly monopolizing the trade, and the monsoon fleet connecting both ends of the continent was one of the reasons why Thanan culture had penetrated so deeply into this land.
Truth be told, all Malin could think when his own mentor talked about "The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way," was how messed up this world really was.
Now, Malin could listen calmly as his swollen-faced mentor shouted at him in Thanan, demanding a hammer.
"What the hell are you lot thinking? Didn’t I just invite you for a smoke last week?" laughed an older mentor.
"But Mr. Malin’s cigarette is from the South Wind Tobacco company, it’s an exquisite Silver Leaf cigarette," declared the young mentors, insisting their cigarettes were completely outclassed in terms of price, quality, and even taste.
So Malin pulled out his pack and distributed it to the older mentors, until he reached...no, not Punisher. Sayer’s swelling had already gone down, so Malin offered a smoke to his dear Mentor Amet Selk.
"I thought you’d forgotten about us old folks," said Amet Selk as he accepted the cigarette. With a snap of his fingers, a pure black flame emerged from his fingertips, which he used to light the cigarette and then moved his fingers toward Malin.
Malin smiled and snapped his fingers too, igniting his cigarette with a pure white holy flame.
"Come on, can’t you light it with a black flame like me? Aren’t you a curse-bearer?" Amet Selk still seemed to have a strong case of PTSD about anything divine, and Malin could only offer a sympathetic smile, "Look, isn’t this a blessing ten? Besides, I like the taste when I light it with a holy flame. The scent of positive energy goes straight to the lungs, repairing the damage caused by the smoke."
As a traveler from a bizarre world where one could differentiate fire, water, wind, nuclear, and solar energy by listening to music, Malin had truly mastered the art of tax-free bragging.
Amet Selk fell silent for a moment, then eventually stubbed out his cigarette and gestured for Malin to light it for him.
As for the wayward brother of the Sayer family, Malin was more than willing to offer a humble service. A snap of the fingers, a holy flame, a divine scent. Amet Selk took a deep drag, first savoring it, then seemingly hit by his PTSD, he grunted but eventually couldn’t resist the undeniable charm and started smoking again.
Malin turned his head to see the young leading mistress, who had already activated an air barrier, looking at the collective smoking syndrome of the male mentors with a hint of helplessness.
"By the way, how did you come by Thanan tobacco? I remember they don’t even have enough for their own fleets and never openly sell it," said one.
That got Malin excited, "Yesterday, an envoy from Thanan visited me. He seems to have heard about that warped suit of armor from the elves and was desperate to invest in it."
"With the relationship between Thanan people and elves, why don’t they just take it directly from them?" wondered Amet Selk, quite puzzled.