A Bustling Metropolis

Reader's first impression was that someone had organised a cosplay event in a market square. Everywhere his eyes came to rest, he saw beautiful women - and the occasional man - eating, haggling over wares, or just standing around chatting. And to a woman they were dressed in the sorts of eye catching, brightly-coloured, ornate yet revealing costumes he associated with fictional characters that girls from his old word dressed up as. Across from him a slender girl in a short green dress had leaned her bow against the front of a market stall, seemed to be arguing over the sale of a pouch of eyeballs with a woman in a low-cut, red and black dress with a pointy hat.

As he surveyed the crowd, Reader began to attract some attention himself. Most of the women he perused blushed and looked away once they confirmed his attention, but others returned his gaze more boldly. One short, robust woman with two pickaxes hanging from her belt even grinned and rubbed herself suggestively when she noticed his gaze, before fleeing giggling into the crowd. Reader felt his face grow warmer with the welcome, but still rather intense, scrutiny he was attracting.

Haven gotten a baseline for the people, Reader focused next on the setting. Mountains flanked a city that seemed carved out of stone, which flanked an open square sprawling with temporary shelters and wares of all kinds. The market square he was in was... pretty darn interesting. Clothing, food, and various household goods predominated as one might expect, but there were other, much stranger items as well. One stall seemed to have nothing but walking sticks carved with runes, while the witch who'd bought the sack of eyeballs from the huntress seemed to be selling all manner of weird animal parts. Another stall seemed to be selling live plants and fungi, many of them visibly glowing even in the bright daylight. Reader inhaled, smelling cooking, sweat, and a miscellany of unknown things on the thin, crisp air.

As reader began to walk into the crowd, something caught his attention...