Chapter 16 - Shion

Red quite fell in love with the surrounding culture.

Some customs differed, but others resembled something he knew.

Like a good beer after tasting the expensive wines, him, one after the other, the taste couldn't be compared to quality.

Business thrived here.

At a first glance, Shion rivalled even the capital city with its beautiful scenery and the amount of tourists.

Thanks to this flow of people. They had very formidable defences in place.

Huntsmen lived here well and with the amount of manpower.

Only large swaths of Grimm that happened a few times a year threatened their peace.

Most of the times. Even those swarms couldn't do much.

Nowadays, people dared to hike beyond 3 kilometers of Shion's walls and people who paid extended that to 5 or more.

Patrols of huntsmen took care of the routes.

Directly cutting the odds of large groups of Grimm from appearing.

Some people invited him instructor, including his instructor, to travel around.

Red declined, though. He already had a plan in his mind, along with the routes he found.

It felt distracting, but not harmful.

Business thrived and people livened up their surroundings with their shouts.

From vendors to guides and many more.

Guards passed through multiple times, keeping the order in check.

He noticed that some guards had a white lily on their backs.

The other group wore red flame. Striking crimson red.

A slight shiver went down his spine. This logo looked eerily similar to the one that the fire syndicate used.

Except that their flame had a bright yellow colour.

Nevertheless, they looked way different from a syndicate, and people around them seemed grateful.

They didn't look at them in fear. More like reverence and gratitude.

He walked around some more, deciding to ignore it.

Though he did actively listen if anyone talked about the guards and their organisation.

In just two hours. He toured the city from east to west, taking the best routes.

Although not nearly as huge as Vale.

The place looked and felt like a condensed version of the capital. They didn't waste any space.

And with housing areas being on the outskirts with some rare ones in the inner circles.

Most of it became entertainment or shops.

Here, he truly got the taste and experience for why they called it the artisan city. Almost every culture gathered here.

Even some Vacuo artisans came here to test their strength against others.

A sort of holy ground for blacksmiths, scientists, artists and many more, which in turn made this place a perfect marketplace.

Anything you wished for, you could find.

And if you couldn't?

Then just some lien would solve such troubles. Red heard that even some world renowned blacksmiths resided in this city.

Though they remained in the shadows. Only the people with connections knew where they resided.

He wanted to try his hand at a junior blacksmith competition.

The amount of people guaranteed many newcomers. That meant that the competition happened every month.

Sadly, the next one happened to be in three days.

By that time, he'd be long gone.

However, he decided to return here once he got to Mistral.

This place looked perfect for training.

Low level Grimm in the surroundings combined with endless resources.

The only problem remained.

His lack of funds, or rather a stable income. Right now, he could live for three months in the more expensive parts of Vale.

But lien dwindled. Not to mention his adventure today that cost quite a lot of lien.

Food added up. Especially small snacks that tasted good.

Throughout his journey, he gathered some info.

They called themselves the Fall society a merge of three societies that existed for almost a hundred years.

Before, four organisations struggled for supremacy.

The white lily gradually became the most powerful, while the other three couldn't compete.

When it looked like a white lily was about to win.

They merged out of nowhere.

The most surprising thing that came out of this ordeal was the lack of conflict.

Seamless merge. People inside didn't struggle for power.

And no one knew who stood at the peak. Nor did anyone know why they renamed themselves as Fallen society.

In the end, taxes got cut. Instead, shops had to pay the protection fee.

People paid overall less tax, which gave them more spending power.

On the other hand. Influential shops got hit the hardest, while the smaller ones could develop.

A strategy that could work only here.

The city of artisans. Place where people didn't gather because they had to.

On the contrary, when the news spread of this change.

Many ambitious upcoming craftsmen took root here, intending to forge their foundations.

What became even a greater surprise to many.

Was the transparency. People loved it and the Fallen society didn't even need to fight the white lily.

They began dying on their own.

No incentive for people to support them and they had no resources to support the giant like the Fallen society did.

A crushing blow without losses.

Red had to admit. The level of something like this could perhaps rival the Schnee.

Although they used drastically different methods.

He believed that this one might be superior, he grew interested in the person who managed to build all of this.

In just a few months. News still didn't spread far enough.

Meaning that this prosperity might triple.

Maybe even quadruple. Their distance from the capital granted them autonomy.

The relatively close proximity to Vale gave them another advantage.

Overall, crushing.

He really wondered what kind of genius made this.

And once again, he realized. That he couldn't underestimate the people of this land.

Some of them could crush him any day of the week.

But he had to confidence to outgrow them in strength and pure power after few years.

This? To make this might take him years of hard work.

Or he might just make it worse. People like these run the society.

Aside from these, the power of Semblances and their influence on the world. Famous artisans often awakened semblances related to their occupations.

Some of them had minor ones like superior dexterity and other perks that came with it.

Others, though. It bordered on real magic.

The most famous blacksmith in the world didn't have a known confirmed semblance.

However, people said that he had a gravity or mineral manipulation semblance.

His creations oftentimes got called artifacts.

Near indestructible. He even turned basic iron into a formidable weapon.

Thanks to people like him. The world lived on without the use of technology hundreds of years ago.

While some traces of decline remained, no one could argue about the value of people like him.

Aside from obvious weapons.

Another cool thing turned out to be the obscure artisans that didn't have a deep heritage.

Like painters.

No matter how long they existed. People never used them in combination with aura, semblances or dust.

That is, until the Great War.

A genius pioneered a way for painting to influence their surroundings.

He considered it a way to defend his family.

It brought calmness and in return made the settlement almost invisible to the Grimm.

Apparently, a tragedy followed and his teachings got lost alongside his family, where they all died.

Nevertheless, three paintings survived.

One called a 'Wandering Doe' which brought solace to people and sucked them into some sort of illusion.

There they traveled until their doubts disappeared.

Such an effect didn't work on everyone. Mostly powerful huntsmen or other notable people.

Then came the 'Hole Without an End'. A different work of art that worked the other way.

It forced the grievances and negative emotions in you out.

Blocked in darkness until even the darkest emotions seeped out, which then fall into the hole.

This one held a level of danger.

People reported losing their memories of the traumatic events. But that fuelled the value of those paintings even higher.

And finally, the last one.

'Light'

Everyone saw something different. Some saw the most valuable thing to them and others something completely unrelated.

That man's masterpiece and the painting that gave him his title.

The Painter Of The Light.

Most mysterious and confusing of them all. Sometimes they had no memories.

Other times they lived entire lifetimes and the most common result was nothing, but the benefits still came.

They just felt better. As if their mind opened to new possibilities.

Rare cases even reported that they met the painter.

That he lived inside the painting. For some it was a beautiful woman, for others a sickly old man.

Forms varied, but the female counterpart showed up the most.

No one could confirm if they lied or not, though.

As such, the paintings gained more mystery and intrigue than ever before.

Eventually they got split.

Rumours say that Schnee own one of the paintings.

One's location is unknown. The third one.

It resided in this very city, the hall of artisans and one of the reasons why painters from all over the world gathered here.

To become the next painter.

And Red wanted to visit it, the 'Light' and judge for himself.