Astartes of the Bear School

Chapter 504 505. Temple of Apollo

There were no war horses available, and Lan En had to take care of Phob's leg strength, so the two men, one large and one small, did not arrive at the city-state deep in the hinterland of Megaris until nightfall.

 “Megara! The first stop of the adventure! Woohoo!”

Standing in front of the city-state's outer wall, which was almost three stories high, Fubai gave a small cheer.

Next to him, Lan En muttered, "I don't see what's risky in this", but the little girl ignored him beautifully.

The city-state is the essence of a region, and from Megara we can see the tug-of-war in the Megaris region between Athens and Sparta.

Off the coast of Megaris a fleet of Athenian warships was towed, while the beach was blocked by the Spartans.

The Spartans robbed the farmland and crops of the local people outside the city-state, but within the city-state, Athenians were still the consuls and were defended by Athenian troops.

 The forces of the two parties are intertwined in the entire region.

Therefore, Lan En spent a lot of time before taking Fu Bai into the city wall before the night was about to get dark.

 There is no doubt that before the war began, the land of Megaris could still be called the most coveted land in the Greek world.

But after becoming a see-saw point in the war, the city-state's wealth is shrinking to an unimaginable extent.

By now, when Lan En and Furbo came in, they already felt that except for the larger area, this city-state was almost the same as the Sami town on Kefalonia Island.

 The road surface is exposed to rocks and dirt. People's clothes are shabby and their faces are sallow and thin. While walking feebly on the streets of the city-state, Lan En and Fulbo could even feel the hopelessness that they had "no future."

 Lan En is a promising warrior, and Fu Bai is a lively little girl who has just started traveling. The two of them can feel an obvious sense of strangeness in this city-state.

 Their mental state seems too 'lively' here.

However, this city-state still has its shining points.

—Temple of Apollo.

 It is a longhouse style temple built of marble and red tiles. On both sides of the temple, there is a marble sculpture of a muscular male about four meters high with a golden snake wrapped around his feet. That is Apollo.

Because of the uneven terrain, the base of the temple is already two to three meters high. Adding the height of the marble columns, the height difference between the entire temple and the horizontal plane is more than ten meters, which is nearly five or six stories.

 Looks majestic and tall in today's era.

 Many people with ripped and open clothes knelt down in front of the temple to pray day and night.

 “Let’s find a place to live first.”

Lan En walked past the temple with a cold expression and said to Fu Bai.

 The little girl raised her head, looking a little surprised.

“You still want to stay in a hotel? Why don’t we just find a place on the street?”

 In fact, this was indeed a normal way of rest for people in the Greek world of this era when traveling far away. This is the case with the homeless people sleeping on the ground in the city-state streets.

“I don’t want to have to watch out for petty theft while I’m resting. We are different from those poor homeless people. You have to protect your property, right?”

Lan En spread his hands towards Fu Bai.

Just the bits and pieces of his equipment, such as iron buckles, small leather bags and other handicrafts, are all good things worth stealing here.

“Okay, let’s find a hotel.”

Fauber said relaxedly, looking at Lan En.

 But as she looked at it, she found that Lan En seemed to have no intention of moving at all, so the little girl showed an incredible expression.

 “You want me to find a hotel?”

 “I will follow you.”

 “But didn’t you say you take care of me?”

 “I mean to keep you safe.” The shameless adult made supplementary terms to the child. "But you also know, Phoebe. I am a foreigner, a foreigner who has come all the way from afar. I can't even figure out which is a private house and which is a hotel! No! Ever since I came to the Greek world, I haven't known anything about it at all. I’ve seen a hotel!”

“So, when I brought you out of Cephalonia, I said, ‘I need a guide.’ Do you think I was joking? I really can’t figure it out in this place!”

 Lan En stretched out a finger and tapped Fu Bai's head with an expressionless expression, reminding the kid to pay attention to his identity as a 'guide'.

 “Stop talking nonsense and lead the way.”

Fauber's fledgling energy collapsed, her shoulders slumped, and she rolled her eyes to Lan En.

 “Okay, okay, you come with me.”

She has been running errands for Marcos and Cassandra in Kefalonia for many years. In terms of her life experience in the Greek world, she is indeed infinitely better than Lan En.

Not long after, the little girl led Lan En into a hotel in a small alley.

 Lan En has no idea how Fu Bai found this place.

The hotel owner was a bald bearded man. When the two came in, he was putting one hand into the creaking hole of the toga and scratching it.

 “Tongbu? Single room?”

 He asked inarticulately while putting the hand that had just scratched the creaking hole under his nose and smelling it.

Fubo looked up at Lan En, meaning to let him make up his mind.

 “Single room, plus two dinners.”

The boss nodded, then reported a number, and then Fubo jumped up like a puppy whose tail was stepped on.

 “Are you robbing?! Three drachmas? This can buy a suckling pig!”

 “If you don’t have food and only have accommodation, you won’t even need a drachma, you little thing.”

The hotel owner said indifferently. At the same time, from the stairs of the small hotel, several men wearing simple armor and holding short swords poked their heads out.

But after they looked at Lan En, these people immediately retreated upstairs.

 This should be the guard hired by this hotel.

　　Seeing that the hotel guard did not dare to say a word in front of Lan En, Fubai could continue to question the boss with an angry and slightly proud tone.

“Ha! Two meals are worth more than two drachmas? Did you add sea bass to the meal? Or sea lamprey? Or beef?”

"Nothing, kid." Seeing that the guards he hired were useless, the hotel owner still looked indifferent.

 He raised his eyes and looked at Lan En, whose hair almost touched the roof, and his tone became a little polite.

"I myself can't afford sea bass, sea lamprey and other fish that only noble people can eat, and naturally I can't afford beef. All I can provide you is barley bread, salt-grilled sardines, and a small bowl of olive oil. Come and dip the bread.”

“But this is the best hotel meal in the entire Megara, I can guarantee it. Look at the hungry poor people outside, sir. They are willing to use everything they have to exchange for this food.”

"War leads to hunger, I can understand that." Lan En spoke under Fulber's questioning eyes.

“But food is already scarce to this extent? I also saw a pile of flower petals as high as a person in front of the Temple of Apollo. Aren’t those things rarer than food?”

The hotel owner looked at Lan En as if he had seen a ghost.

“Heaps of petals, but they are dedicated to God! How can they be compared with human food? There is no comparison.”

Lan En was silent for a while.

 In the end, he shook his head, separated out three drachmas that he had taken from the one-eyed man's dock, and handed them to the innkeeper.

Took Fubai upstairs.

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 (End of this chapter)