I tucked into breakfast with gusto, despite the unfortunate side effects of yesterday's dinner. It turned out that greedily stuffing your face after an entire day of not eating made one's body rather unhappy, Constitution be damned.

  I just couldn't help myself. Bell—who'd turned out to be Jack's wife—had [Expert Cooking]. Skills bent reality, and while [Cooking] might teach someone how to make best use of their ingredients, [Expert Cooking] let them extract flavours from ingredients that nature didn't quite put into them. Things just tasted better.

  Spending skill points on my undeveloped [Cooking] Skill was once again inching up my to-do list.

  Thankfully, this inn laid on hot water for cleaning. I'd been able to have a wash for the first time in a while, just when I'd needed it the most.

  "Someone's a healthy eater," said Bell, turning up at my table with a glass of fruit juice. I had no idea what type of fruit, but I felt I could drink a gallon of the stuff. "Want thirds?"

  Gluttony fought against Reasoning, which ganged up on me with Memory to replay my experiences of the previous night in excruciating graphic detail.

  "... No thanks, I'm full," I squeezed out, needing to put considerable effort into enunciating each syllable, in case I accidentally mispronounced them as 'yes, please'.

  Town residents could just pop to a place like this and eat this food whenever they wanted? For the first time in my life, I felt some serious class jealousy.

  Then again, I'd paid out a silver for the privilege. I'd never even seen a silver, back in Cargellen Canton. Were they commonplace in Greenhold? The bandits had managed to get their hands on even bigger coins. I simply didn't have a good idea of what was considered expensive in a town.

  If I got to the clothes shop and new clothes turned out to be priced in gold coins, I was going to get irritated.

  "Hah. And you look like you regret that fact immensely," grinned Bell. "I guess this is it, then. Thank you for your custom."

  "And thank you for the food. The bed wasn't bad, either."

  Bell giggled, then returned to the kitchen with my dirtied plate. I downed my fruit juice, and then it was off back onto the town streets, following Jack's directions to his uncle's clothing store.

  The sign outside proclaimed the sale of reasonably priced second hand clothing for all ages and genders.

  Second hand?

  Back in the village, most clothing had passed through so many hands that the fingers of a single hand wouldn't be sufficient to count them. Things had presumably been created at some point, but each item had been patched, let out, taken in, hemmed, and re-sewn so often that asking about their origins tended to not matter, on account of nothing of the original item being left. Presumably there was one person in the village somewhere with [Sewing] at the head of the chain, but I had no idea who it might have been.

  I'd assumed that townspeople with their fancy food and brick houses would have new clothes. There were certainly no obvious mismatched patches on display on the people walking down the street, like there would have been back in the village. Maybe I was wrong?

  Either way, I didn't particularly care who'd used my clothes, as long as they were clean and comfortable, so I opened the door and walked in. A bell, cleverly fitted above the door, tinkled.

  "Hello!" boomed a voice from the back. "I'll be with you in a moment."

  I looked around while I waited. The place was... disorganised. Tunics, skirts, trousers, dresses and overcoats were all mixed together on the same rack. Things sized for babies were next to things that even a tall, muscular guy like Leo would get lost in. I spotted a random collection of canes lying haphazardly in a corner. There was a single, solitary top hat, hooked over the doorbell.

  How was anyone supposed to find anything?

  "Sorry for the delay," came the voice as its owner stepped through an archway behind a counter. "Welcome to Bob's Preloved Garments. How can I help you today?"

  Once again, I could see the family resemblance. This guy was a little shorter, but he had exactly the same nose as Jack. The same volume, too.

  "This may come as a surprise, but I'm after some garments," I joked.

  "Well, I wouldn't like to presume. You might have come just to get a look at my radiant beauty."

  I squinted, not quite sure if he was joking too. It was phrased like a joke, but he hadn't inflected it as one, and his face was completely flat. "Uh... I'm just looking for a few outfits that fit. I'll trade in these old hand-me-downs, because I'm not convinced I'll ever grow into them."

  "Pah. Thought you were going to be fun, but apparently not. Guess I'll avoid suggesting the maid uniform, then. Hmm... Brown hair and eyes. Rather soft features, and still a little more growing to do. I've got a few things that would suit you."

  He walked around the counter and picked up item after item from the racks, not searching for them, but going directly to each one. It took less than a minute of zigzagging through the store before he was done, having plotted an efficient route for everything he wanted.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Was it actually organised after all? Was there some pattern beneath the madness? Or had he just put some points into Memory and memorised the mess?

  "Here you go. Three full outfits. I picked tunics that are slightly longer than you need, not so much that they'll look ill-fitted, but they should last you until you're fully grown. Trousers that are a little baggy, with a hem that can be released. An overcoat, too, given that winter is coming. Some clean underwear, although you'll need to forgive me if I haven't matched the size exactly. Why don't you try everything on?"

  The store had a tiny room to the side, containing nothing but a stool, apparently for no reason other than to permit customers to try on clothes in private. The town just kept throwing up one luxury after another. If we bought stuff from the village store, and we wanted to check the size of something that would require stripping to the point of indecency, we just held it up against our body and guessed...

  I pulled on the first outfit, and while I had no idea if it was perfectly coordinated with my eyes and hair, it at least fit properly.

  "Perfect," I called.

  "Well, come on out. Let me see."

  "Why?"

  "I want to check my picks are correct, obviously."

  "Fine," I sighed, stepping out of the changing room.

  "Ah, perfect. The colours match exactly," beamed Bob. "Give us a twirl."

  I glared. "Now I know you're just messing."

  He shrugged. "Don't blame me if it turns out that top has a hole in the back."

  "Of course it doesn't. I just checked!"

  Bob grinned. "Go try on the next set, then."

  "Here I was, thinking I was a full canton away from my mother, but no. Apparently I've been followed," I muttered as I stepped back into the changing room.

  "Wait, what?" asked Bob as I changed again. "You aren't from around here?"

  "Didn't you notice you didn't recognise me?"

  "Well, obviously, but it's not like I know the faces of the whole town. Just how good do you think my Memory is?"

  "Hmm... I suppose this town is quite big," I admitted. I didn't know quite how big, but I could accept it would indeed be tough to keep acquainted with everyone. A big change from the village, where you couldn't get away from anyone. "But yes, I'm from out of town. Stayed the night with your nephew Jack, who pointed me here."

  "Oh! Why didn't you say?"

  "Was it important?" I asked, stepping out of the changing room. The second outfit fitted, too. He was obviously pretty good at judging size by eye, whether via Skill or experience.

  "I suppose not. And yup, that suits you perfectly too. Twirl?"

  I stepped back into the changing room without answering.

  "You know I can see your back when you turn around?" he pointed out.

  "Yes, but I wasn't going to be so petty as to walk backward into the changing room. You are being helpful, after all."

  Bob snickered again.

  The third outfit fitted too, so I kept it on. "How much for all this?"

  "Five silver," he answered.

  "For clothes that aren't even new?" I said, surprised.

  "Sheesh. You could get brand new clothes for five silver in your home canton? Which one was that? I might want to move."

  "Cargellen, but honestly, I have no idea how much new clothes were there. I've never paid anywhere close to what you're asking for, but... well... the type I'd normally get were rather extensively preloved."

  Bob smirked. "If quality means nothing to you, there's a store out in the slums I can suggest."

  "No, it's fine. Anyway, how much are you offering for my old clothes."

  "Hmm... Pretty good quality. You said you had more in your pack?"

  I got them out and Bob inspected everything with an expert eye. "Damn good quality. Been through a scrape or two, but held up well. Two silvers for the lot."

  There was a small niggle from Reasoning, informing me that I should argue—or haggle, I believed it was called—but I didn't even know how to begin. I knew nothing about clothing, or the value of money, or how this town differed from Cargellen. "Fine," I sighed, handing over three silvers.

  "One last bit of advice," said Bob, holding up the coif. "Please don't ever wear anything like this. It's a crime against fashion."

  I had no idea what to say to that, so I said nothing and left the store instead. Dressing more like the locals, in clothes that actually fit me, dropped the number of curious gazes down to almost nothing. [Expert Stealth] was rather happy about it, although not happy enough to give me experience. This was probably the longest timespan since unlocking I'd gone without seeing a blue box.

  The skill crystal shop was exactly where Jack had said it would be, an inviting doorway open wide. I stepped in and looked around at shelves filled with brown crystals of various shapes and sizes. All the blue boxes I could want, although they'd all tell me the same thing; insufficient skill points.

  Each one was neatly labelled, which was helpful because the storekeeper hadn't said a word, merely looking up and keeping a suspicious eye on me as I examined the merchandise.

  There were familiar Skills. [Farming], [Blacksmithing], [Cooking], [Sewing], [Leather-working], [Cleaning] and the like, all at twenty coppers each. Then there were occupational Skills I'd never seen before, like [Dancing] and [Musician], too, for the same price, but they weren't really what I was looking for. There was [Gold-smithing], although how it differed from [Blacksmithing] I wasn't sure. Those were no longer the sort of things I was looking for, either, though.

  I found [Stealth] in a locked cabinet, next to [Lock-picking]. They were both priced at ten silver, and a little note on the cabinet window indicated that a licence was required to purchase anything inside. Had the crystal we'd found by chance in the Fluffy Meadows actually been a rare find? And did that mean my possession of the Skill was illegal? No-one had ever said anything, and I'd made no secret that I had it... Mum hadn't half ripped off Simon by only giving him five coppers for it, though.

  [Analysis] was in the same licenced cabinet, too, at an even higher twenty silver. I'd never heard of the exact Skill, but it sounded appraisal-related, and if it needed a licence, I couldn't say I wasn't interested.

  "Are you actually here to buy anything, or are you just here to breathe over everything?" asked the shopkeeper, apparently getting bored of waiting for me.

  "Yes, I am going to buy something," I replied, having just spotted another of the brown-coloured crystals all on its own in another locked cabinet. This one didn't have anything about requiring a licence, but the extra security was justified by the price of one gold. [Mana Sensitivity]. I knew very little about magic—mostly just the fact that it existed—but that sounded like the first step towards learning it. "Or at least, I will do, if you keep a grip on that tongue of yours."

  "Don't take that tone with me, brat. It's not like you're going to..." He stopped, mid-sentence, then audibly swallowed. I could practically hear the gears in his brain stuttering to a halt and switching into a hasty reverse. "... Please, take your time. If there's anything I can help with, don't hesitate to ask."

  I grinned at the abrupt change in attitude. It was amazing what effect flashing a gold coin at someone could have.

  Another shelf had [Identify Monster], [Identify Mineral], [Identify Plant] and [Identify Animal]. They'd all be useful for adventuring, especially [Identify Monster].

  So much for my glut of skill points. I'd never have enough for everything here.