Chapter 204: Commission to Clean the Statue
"I'm not happy."
Miss Elf said the same lines as a certain dark-haired guy.
On a sunny day, in the city's central square, stood a statue of the renowned Saint King Norn.
In front of this statue, two figures were busy at work.
Time, wind, and rain had left their marks on the stone. Dark green moss crawled between the cracks, and tiny fissures had begun to spread at the base.
At this moment, Serie was hovering above the statue, with delicate blue magic threads lingering on her fingertips, peeling off the hard-to-reach moss on the stone peak without damaging the statue itself.
She moved quickly, but her face, hidden under the hood, was filled with obvious impatience.
Below her, Kurtz was responsible for cleaning stains and repairing minor cracks on the statue's base. The method he used was very simple—a bucket, a few rags, and some mud to fill the cracks, looking like an ordinary worker.
"Kurtz." Serie's voice came from beside him.
It turned out that she had cleaned the moss and stains from the top of the statue and landed lightly on the ground, coming to Kurtz who was bending over to scrape stains off the base.
"Hmm?" Kurtz didn't even raise his head, not noticing the unfriendly expression on the elf lady's face.
"I need an explanation." Serie's voice rose a little. "Why should I use my precious magic to clean the stains and moss off a statue's head!?"
This was simply the most boring thing she had ever done in her long life, even more difficult to accept than when Kurtz forced her to wash her hair.
Kurtz stopped what he was doing, stood up slowly, and looked at the elf lady beside him who was emitting a low, dangerous pressure.
He didn't answer immediately, but slowly took out a deflated wallet from his pocket.
Under Serie's puzzled gaze, he poured the contents into his palm and showed it to her.
There were a few soft metallic sounds.
Serie looked down and saw several small dark metal discs lying in Kurtz's palm. They were black, dull, and looked very inconspicuous.
"What are these black things? Where did you dig them from?"
"This is not something I dug out from anywhere, but it's for our upcoming travel expenses." Kurtz answered seriously.
"Travel expenses?" Serie's brows furrowed even deeper. "Is this money? Human tastes are becoming increasingly strange."
She simply couldn't understand the logic behind humans using such magic-less, even dirty-looking pieces of metal as a medium of exchange.
"Yes, it's money." Kurtz explained patiently. "In human cities, you need this to eat and buy things."
"Don't you have any with you? I remember that over the past thousand years, you have occasionally collected some shiny treasures and high-quality magical gems."
She remembered that Kurtz had placed a large pile of gold coins and gems in a corner of the room. Last time, she almost threw them away because they took up space, but he stopped her.
When he asked me to take the risk, I thought he didn't even bring any money with him, right?
"I did bring some." Kurtz sighed, his tone full of helplessness. "I brought some gold coins out. But..."
He paused, his expression indescribable.
"The currency is not universal. Although gold is a hard currency, most of what I brought was minted by dwarves, mixed with other metal ores to increase hardness. The purity isn't as high as the gold coins currently in circulation among humans."
"Moreover, times have changed. Human kingdoms now recognize their officially minted gold and silver coins more. My dwarven gold coins either need to be sold at a specialized exchanger for a steep discount, or they can only be sold as low-purity gold raw materials, greatly reducing their value."
He weighed the few pitiful copper coins in his hand. "As for gems, I only brought a few. I can't just take one out every time I need to buy something, right? It would be too conspicuous, and I can't find any place to sell them."
Serie looked at the few shabby coins in Kurtz's palm and imagined the scene of Kurtz taking a gem to exchange with a roadside vendor. The corners of her mouth twitched involuntarily.
This was indeed unrealistic.
"So," Kurtz spread his hands and pointed at the tall Norn statue in front of him. "When I entered the city yesterday, I happened to see a commission looking for a magician to repair and clean this statue. I thought it was quite interesting, so I accepted it."
"Interesting?" Serie's voice rose again. "I don't think it's interesting! Don't you have any commissions like clearing monsters?"
Rather than cleaning statues, Miss Elf would rather clean up monsters, which would be more interesting.
Kurtz smiled and looked at the statue in front of him.
"Don't you think it's nice to do simple things like this every now and then? And..." His tone was tinged with nostalgia. "Looking at this guy's face, don't you feel anything?"
Serie followed his gaze and looked at the familiar face on the statue.
Norn.
The guy who used to be silent by the campfire but had been quietly preparing everything for everyone. He seemed almost lost when Kurtz first asked him to establish a kingdom.
His ideals, his persistence, his final farewell...
An indescribable complex emotion quietly replaced the disgust in Serie's eyes.
She was silent for a moment, then whispered, "It's a little too old."
The Norn in the statue was a middle-aged man with a dignified and steady image, which was far from the spirited young man in their memory.
"Yeah, being a king is tiring." Kurtz shrugged, with a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "But this guy only built such a big statue for himself. It's really too much. What about us? There's not even a shadow."
He spoke in a deliberately complaining tone, but there was something deeper underneath.
To Kurtz's surprise, Serie spoke up to defend Norn: "These statues were erected long after his death by his descendants to commemorate him."
She paused, as if trying to recall a detail. "I heard about it later. When Norn was in power, he wanted to erect a statue for all his companions who had adventured with him. He made sketches and hired craftsmen, but..."
Serie's gaze fell on an inconspicuous spot on the base of the statue, where inscriptions about Norn's achievements were engraved, now blurred by time.
"But regarding your statue," she looked at Kurtz, her previous impatience replaced by memories, "he was never satisfied with the finished image. He revised the design draft again and again, but he was still not satisfied. In the end, it was put aside."
"It fits his serious but somewhat hesitant personality quite well."
There were only two things in Norn's life that he had never hesitated about.
One was the decision to go on an adventure with Kurtz and Serie.
The other was to agree to Kurtz's request to establish a kingdom.
Kurtz shook his head with a smile and picked up the rag on the ground: "This guy had very high standards. Forget it—since he had such good taste, I'll clean it up for him today."
Serie watched Kurtz return to work, then looked at the statue in front of her.
The slight unhappiness in her heart seemed to dissipate quietly in her memories of the past.
[End of Chapter]
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