Bringing The Advanced Arsenal To Another World 98 Side Chapter 98 - From Cero To Zero

The Duke had caught wind of his son's failures and sent someone to replace him as regent. As punishment for a.s.sisting Robert, Cero was cast out of the castle. Homeless and hungry, Cero roamed the streets looking for work. With no experience with fighting monsters, he couldn't make it as a mercenary. With little experience with melee combat, he couldn't become a soldier. The information brokers already knew about his recent failures so they wouldn't take him in. He couldn't think of any marketable skills that he had besides being stealthy.

After going without food for an entire day, Cero became desperate. His throwing knives and armor were easy to sell and the amount that they sold for let him buy a small shack in the slums. There was enough money left over that he could eat for the next few weeks if he stretched it out.

For a couple of days, Cero was content with his life and thought that things might not be so bad. His fingers were dextrous and he quickly found out that he had a talent for sewing clothes. It wasn't much but he finally had an income.

Then, out of nowhere, disaster struck. While Cero was out to buy food for the night, the heavy snowfall had collapsed his roof. As bad as that was, it was not the worst thing that had happened to him that day. All of his in-progress and completed projects had been stolen after the collapse. Almost all of his money was used on the materials to make those clothes so he was back to being broke. His house was completely destroyed and, besides the tools he hid under the bed and some furniture, there was nothing left that he owned.

There was a family nice enough to let him stay in exchange for patching up their old clothes. They were originally one of his customers so they knew how skilled he was with a needle and thread. Finally, good news reached their doorstep a couple of days later. Someone was going around removing the snow from the buildings that had collapsed and it was all done for free. Although he wouldn't be able to fully rebuild his shack on his own, there was enough sc.r.a.p wood that he could find to at least patch it until the end of winter.

In the morning, Cero said goodbye to the nice family that let him stay with them. The family only lived a few blocks from his home so it didn't take long at all for him to reach the street he lived on. "It's still covered in snow. Did they not reach this place yet?" There was a crowd of people in the streets that seemed disgruntled. Cero wasn't really asking anybody in particular but a nearby man told him what happened.

"If you're talkin' about the kind young lad that had been helpin' out, he's not comin' back." An older man with a thick beard spoke out. Cero recognized him; he was an independent mercenary that lived only a couple houses down from him and he could remember that the guy's name was Krieger. "Those darn b.a.s.t.a.r.ds from those guilds 'tacked him and made him run for the hills. My partner, Suze, saw it all happened with her own eyes. There were nothin' that she could do 'bout them."

Cero felt dejected. He already said goodbye to the family that allowed him to stay for a while so it would be awkward to return. "Now what am I supposed to do? I don't have a place to stay and I don't have enough money to move."

"I'm 'fraid I don't quite got an answer to that. If you got a good arm you can make a livin' choppin' wood or somethin'." Cero didn't have a strong arm. His body was flexible and agile but it wasn't what people would call strong.

For the next few days, Cero lived in someone's stable. They no longer had horses to tend to so it was empty. There were other people staying in the stable so it wasn't secure but everybody there was down on their luck.

Cero didn't like to sleep in plain view when there were others around. He slept on the beam near the ceiling and made sure that n.o.body noticed him. If he didn't have odd sleeping habits then maybe things would have been worse for him. At night, several men entered the stable and rounded up the sleeping vagrants. They attached slave collars to them, tied them up, and gagged them before loading them up onto a wagon.

Cero felt bad about abandoning the other homeless people but he knew from experience that guys like that would either pay off the local guilds that provided security in the slums or be under the guilds' orders. He wouldn't be able to win a fight against those men or free them now that they've been enslaved. The only thing that he could do was pray to the G.o.ddess to save them and to thank the G.o.ddess for sparing him from a similar fate.

The weather was slowly improving but it was still cold. Even with the blankets he took that were left behind at the stables, he was s.h.i.+vering every night. He was only able to survive because he found a structure made out of ice in an alley.

Cero didn't know how long he had been on the streets but he finally ran out of money. There was only one option left. He needed to sell his tools. There was also the wrist launcher that his master had designed but who would buy such a thing? It was only useful for someone in his old line of work. Well, it wouldn't hurt to try selling it.

Cero's luck seemed to be improving. Some strange warrior in an oversized fur coat was actually interested in the wrist launcher. "Is that a crossbow? No, it's a bit too small to be one. Hey, how much are you selling this for?"

Cero didn't think of a price to sell it at. "It's a wrist launcher. I don't know how much it's worth. It's one of a kind. It's pretty useful when you want to put a target to sleep. Just put some sleeping medicine on the tip of a dart and you can launch it from a distance." Cero was pretty desperate to sell it since he didn't want to sell his sewing needles. The wrist launcher wasn't even that useful on missions because guards usually wore armor.

"How does two gold coins sound? It's not that useful to me but I like the design." Two gold would last him a long time. He would be able to survive the Winter and rebuild his shack with that much money.

"You've got a deal!" Cero was smiling from ear to ear.

"Papa, hurry up! You're taking forever!" A little girl's voice came out from the cart that was behind the warrior. Hmm? FMC was written on its cloth cover. Why was that so familiar?

"Ah, sorry, I've got to hurry. Here's your gold." The man handed Cero the money before running back to the cart. When he was close, Cero noticed something unique about him.

Green eyes. No wonder the FMC on the cart seemed so familiar. That was the new name of the business that kid ran. Cero was glad to see that he was doing well and thankful that his plot failed. The only reason why his life was spared by the Duke was that the boy wasn't harmed. Now he had one more reason to be thankful; his life would be saved by the money he received.

His life might not hold much purpose now but he enjoyed being a regular person. Maybe it'd be good to settle down and have children like that kid did. Wait, how old was that kid? How could he have a child that was already capable of talking?

Cero decided not to bother thinking about it any further. It wasn't his job to keep tabs on the kid anymore. From now on he was just Cero, the tailor.