Chapter36

The Capital
Hajin walked along the road with his hands in his pockets, keeping his eyes on the distant shape of the capital's walls while the morning sun beat down on his back. 
Juna walked three steps behind him, which was exactly where she had been for the last two days, and he had stopped pretending that was a coincidence.
'It's progress I guess,' he thought, glancing back at her without turning his head, 'she's not running away anymore, so that counts for something.'
She still kept her distance, tensed up whenever he moved too fast, and still hadn't said more than a handful of words since they left the forest. But she was walking with him instead of away from him, which felt like a small victory even if it wasn't really one.
The capital kept getting bigger the closer they got, its walls rising above the tree line like a gray smear on the horizon, and with every step his thoughts kept circling back to the same question.
'Is going there even a good idea?' he thought, looking at the walls and then back at the road ahead, 'a city that big means guards, rules, and people who ask questions I don't want to answer.'
He also didn't know what kind of attention a guy with Rings instead of Shards would draw in a place full of adventurers and officials. The system had fixed his manifestation path, but it hadn't given him a cover story for why he looked different from every other awakened person in the world.
'Then again, sitting in the woods eating deer meat every day isn't exactly a long-term plan either,' he thought, rubbing the back of his neck, 'I need information, supplies, and a place to call my own.'
He checked the stream panel while he walked, since it was the one thing that kept getting more interesting the longer he ignored it.
[ Stream ]
[ Status: Active ]
[ Viewers: 10 ]
[ Comments: 47 ]
He had 10 viewers now, which wasn't much, but it was enough to unlock the basic comment feed, and judging by what they were saying, not a single one of them believed this was real.
[ ShadowMage44:] bro the animation quality is insane for an indie project 
[ xXDarkBladeXx:] dropped episode 3 somewhere? where do i watch from start 
[ LurkerNoMore:] this is definitely an unreleased series, look at the UI design 
[ CringeSlayer91:] still think its AI but the wolf girl is carrying the show ngl