The sun had already gone down when the military escort finally arrived in Losla, carrying torches and orbs which formed a small worm of light moving through the forest. Many of them were weary from the journey, some of the soldiers brought bad attitudes with them as they were behind schedule after having to fight a treant hectopede in the forest. It wasn’t necessarily a hard creature to kill, it was more that it was hard to catch.
The military escort was quite small, as they had only stopped at two other villages before coming to Losla, though the soldiers with them were enough to deal with things in the forests.
Currently the escort was made up of ten soldiers being regularly hounded by two officers, and following them like lost sheep were all the adventurers who joined them from the previous two villages.
There were about twenty of the new recruits so far, most of them looking weary from the journey too.
They didn’t enter the town but instead marched up the hill on the east side of town towards the adventurer association.
As they arrived, an officer approached the adventurer association gate guards.
“Military recruitment escort, southern regiment, under authority of his majesty requesting shelter.” He handed the guard a scroll with a thick golden coloured wax seal on it, the guard then quickly ran it into the association building with it.
After a moment, the guard came back out with Michael walking behind him. Michael stood at the front door of the building as the guard rushed back to the gate.
“Shelter granted, come through sir.” the guard said as he stood to the side of the floating boulder gate.
The military escort began walking through the gate. Since it was night time, it was easy to see the threatening blue glow coming from the mana-veins coursing through the floating boulder gate, and a blue gleam shined off the officer's armour as he walked through.
The soldiers and adventurers entered one by one, followed lastly by the second officer.
Sullivan had made sure some makeshift fireplaces had been built up for them as they set up their tents and camped in the association's courtyard; the men and women were of course separated into opposite sides of the yard.
Women were allowed to serve in the military in this world, as their classes weren’t diminished in power, though they usually got dexterity or ranged based classes rather than strength-melee based classes.
This wasn’t their choice, but was due to the mana conduits; no one gets to pick their class after all.
Of course, this wasn’t a rule as there were many women who were prodigies with the sword; they were just very rare. Some even got unique melee-based classes while others trained endlessly and acquired a second class; though the latter was even more rare than the former.
Michael watched as the two officers used their ten soldiers to coordinate everything. They had done this for the past few years in many different villages so they were quite proficient at setting up a campsite, and it showed.
It wasn’t long before there were tents set up along with some bubbling large pots of stew on various fires. One of the adventurers floated around the camp on a floating metallic golden disc, while another created a chair from the earth.
Most of the adventurers were melee types though, which didn’t have such abilities and were limited to chatting around different fire pits - while the soldiers had their own fire pits.
They were all chatting and quite lively compared to the soldiers who sat around quietly and stared into the fire, it seemed like they had seen the horrors of war and weren’t ‘enthusiastic’ to say the least.
The two officers, seeing that things were in order and that the adventurers were behaving, walked to Michael at the door.
“Michael,” he nodded. “We’re behind schedule so we’ll be gathering the recruits tomorrow and leaving at lunch time.” This officer had met Michael every year for the last few years and remembered his name, though he wasn’t one for idle chit-chat.
“Very well. As usual, we have prepared two rooms for you, come inside.”
“Thanks. Also, this package was sent for someone called Viladore. Usually we don’t do deliveries but there was extra money in it. Anyway, here you go.” he took out a small package from his inventory and handed it over.
“Hmm. Ok thanks.” he grabbed the package. It was wrapped with noon-leather, a type of anti-magic material. The wrap of leather was held together with a red ribbon, apparently it was quite an expensive purchase. It would definitely be sealed with some form of anti-tampering magic, so the soldiers wouldn’t have tried to take a peek inside.
“Wonder what that crazy mage ordered this time..” Michael thought as he put it into his inventory.
Michael promptly showed them their rooms and they soon settled in.
The adventurer association unofficially competed with the military for recruits, but ultimately they both served the monarchy; the adventurers dispatched threats within the borders and provided dungeon resources, while the military enforced the borders. This allowed the officers rooms while the soldiers all slept outside - of course, they had different ranking systems and could not give direct order to one another without a special document, similar to the one the officers presented at the gates.
Because Sullivan was already expecting the military escort, Michael didn’t go upstairs to tell him. All Sullivan had to do was look out the window to his office and see the soldiers after all. Sullivan preferred to not interact with the military anyway.
[15 Exp][15 Exp]
Two more leeches died - whether they were in the ravine or the forest, Jay wasn’t sure. He simply couldn’t determine which skeleton killed them.
After Anya had rested, Jay and Anya climbed up the vine-covered boulders, and began their walk back to Mark, Kel and Naria.
The sun was setting as they began to walk along the ravine, and it went down completely before they began hiking back up the hill towards the hamlet.
When they arrived, Anya had to use the communication crystal again to find them, as they had moved into a different building.
Kel and Naria were playing upstairs, while Mark was guarding the upstairs hallway. Naria was diligently searching through the toy box of another child - though she had a frown, and even some hesitation while looking through the toys, as she knew the child who owned these toys; a child who was no longer with them.
Mark casually squinted at the stairs, his sword raised as Jay was walking up the stairs. Jay was surprised at how bored Mark seemed to be. He almost looked disappointed that Jay wasn’t a monster.
“Hey Jay, welcome back.” Mark said, seeing Jay walk up the stairs.
It was dark by now, but Mark and Kel had gathered all the luminous orbs from the other houses and distributed them all in this one so they could easily see them.
“Hey. How are you two.. Three?”
“We’re okay. We were about to have dinner and then put Naria to bed. Nothing much happened here.”
“Good, good. We’re pretty tired so we’re going to rest for a bit.” Jay said, walking past Martk while putting his shield and sword away. He peeked into the master bedroom room to see Kel and Naria playing.
Jay went into the other room, sitting on a chaise lounge as he leaned back and relaxed for a moment. Anya followed behind, sitting on the end part of the lounge as both of them relaxed for a moment..
“We think there’s still some out there, in the forest.” Jay stretched himself over the couch, talking to Mark in the hallway.
“Yeah. But we killed most of them.” Anya added, eating some rations.
Mark stood in the doorway, looking at them taking a break. “They both look pretty tired from the journey.” he thought to himself before replying.
“Ah ok, all good, I’ll keep guarding. They’re not that hard to kill anyway so I’ll be fine by myself. You two can rest for a bit, I’ll take the night shift since you guys cleared out most of the infestation today, I’m sure you must be tired.”
“Thanks Mark, appreciate it.” Jay cheekily pulled out a beef-wad ration for dinner, chewing it for a while as he rested on the lounge before asking Anya something.
“Uhh… so can I sleep on the lounge?” he said as innocently as he could - though he gestured to her to get off, his hands saying ‘shew’.
She sighed “Fiiine,” pulling out her small tent as she began to set it up in the middle of the room. It was a little unnecessary, but Anya decided she would rauther be comfortable in her privacy, even if it took some effort. Giving up the couch was not a sacrifice to her at all. They both went to sleep quickly, but were woken up shortly after by a noise in the hallway.
Heavy steps of Mark were coming from down the hallway, along with many movements of shadows.
Jay stood up with his sword, as Anya was poking her head out of her tent with half-opened eyelids.
“Wait here, I’ll call out if we need you.”
“Mmh” Anya was really sleepy, she poked her head back into the tent.
Jay went into the hallway and was shocked at what he saw.
Mark’s moonsword was glowing, coated with a dangerous thick blue aura. It seems some leeches had followed Jay and Anya back from the forest; five of them were currently coming up the stairs one by one - but this wasn’t what shocked Jay.
What shocked Jay, or even annoyed him, was that Mark’s sword was cleaving through the leeches like melted butter, easily slicing them in half and ending them in one swing.
Their bodies didn’t even bend or stretch, they simply disintegrated before his blade.
“What the fuck…” Jay thought with his mouth open as Mark effortlessly killed them all with his huge sword.
The leeches had a passive skill which mitigated 90% of slashing, piercing and stabbing damage - Mark’s sword however was counted as a spell, so he easily cleaved straight through the leeches. It was as if he was waving his sword through water, there was no resistance.
Jay realised he wasn’t in danger, but he looked completely defeated and helpless as he put his sword away and walked back into the room.
Anya had poked her head out again saw Jay’s face. He looked like he was drained of all his blood.
She asked with a raised brow “Everything ok?” Jay still had a dazed look on his face as he walked to the lounge.
“..y-yeah. Fine.” he sat on the couch, deciding not to tell Anya.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Everything’s fine. Perfect. I’m going to sleep.” Jay had enough.
“Hmm ok then...” she pulled her head back in her tent and went to sleep.
“We could’ve.. just taken Mark... shit, he could’ve done the ravine by himself.” Jay thought to himself, trying to get to sleep while he closed his eyes.
“One single fucking swing…” he slowly shook his head “This is a joke.” he stopped himself from laughing at his own misfortune as Anya was trying to sleep.
“We could’ve just sent Mark to this village alone…” he thought as he rolled onto his other side on the sofa and went back to sleep - or at least tried to. He was quite annoyed as he clenched his teeth.
“It’s fine, we’ll go back tomorrow. I doubt we’ll be fighting something like that again anyway.” Jay thought, not seeing the irony as he himself had an ‘unfair’ class.
Eventually, he fell to sleep sometime later after his thoughts drifted to something less painful.
Comments