Jonas lead his mount—a two ton behemoth bull with a frightening temperament, comes with the size weight, Jonas believed—closer to Frezar’s. He had to look down towards the butler because Jonas was the only one riding a monstrosity of pure muscle and contained wrath.

Everyone else had safe, though tough looking, warhorses bread for long distance tidings. Endurance and what not.

“Why are they following us?” Jonas kept looking back at the trailing small army of cavalry riders.

They had been on their tail for the past three entire days. At the beginning, he thought it a farewell ceremony or something native to the colonies, yet they never broke off or even showed any signs of leaving.

It took a while before he felt a bit of dread. Ash was going to be upset, very upset.

“D-do you think they are coming with us?”

Frezar smiled as Ash finally made her entrance. Her frown was beyond enormous and eyes open as slits only.

“Master. How good it is to finally see you after three long days of unannounced and unnecessary logistics and planning. The paperwork was up to my neck, if you could so believe.”

“Err...good to see you too.”

Ash’s brows twitched.

Damn. Wrong response. He had to work on that, big time.

Raneria laughed boisterously from the distance. She was literally hanging off of Gregor’s arm farther back in the column. A fortuitous interruption, he knew it was the right decision to get the naive orc to stay away from him.

To be honest, he wasn't really sure why she was here. You know, she’s supposed to be a hostage, but treats this like some field trip to an exotic zoo.

After a while, Ash could only sigh. “Never mind. Let’s focus on what will be our biggest struggle, if I’ve gotten you understood.”

“What?” What was that supposed to mean? Was he so obvious to guess his next move. He had to be shroud in mystery, that’s the way he would like it. Nobody truly knows who he is except what he shows.

Ash smiled at his confused expression. “Bandits. We are entering-”

“Pirates on land…?”

Her smile twitched. “Yes, master. You could consider them pirates on land, just a bit poorer. Especially considering they’d have to deal with any orc bands that actually make it this far into the colony.”

“Hold up.” He had to get this down. Two things of great import had been said. One is more vital than the other.

“Poor? They’re pirates on land, they should be raiding everything around them. When thinking about it, the cities coup up like turtles, they can deal with them even if they wanted to.”

How could a land pirate he hadn’t raided be poor? What did they feed themselves and pay their soldiers with? Stones? They couldn’t be that backwards, could they?

“They can only raid tiny villages, young master. No caravan ever leaves a walled city without at least a few thousand soldiers. Hence, the walled cities only trade twice a year. We just missed this one.” Frezar said.

“So, you're basically saying they’re two-bit burglars and thieves? Jackals and hyenas?” Jonas could believe his ears. He knew he didn’t hear wrong, Ash and Frezar made sure of that. They stuffed him like a pig with the highest quality mana infused meat they could find.

Now that he really thought about it, the world had been getting clearer and even at night he would see much better than what he could possibly remember him being able to when he lived under his father, Duke Hadin.

Even when he watched Gregor beat Raneria to a pulp every sparring session—Jonas started to think the quiet and massive man had started to warm up to Raneria’s unrelenting and most naive approach to battle, head on with real consideration to tactics—they didn’t look as fast as they had been before.

He could clearly see Gregor take his first and even second step before disappearing, a task he thought impossible beforehand.

Raneria, from what he understood, couldn’t see him either. She just swung her massive...to be honest the thing shouldn’t even be called a hammer. It was a slab of metal as large as his entire torso put on top of a long pole of, of course, metal.

Oh...did he mention the slab of more metal that was supposed to be sharpened to a point on the back of the hammer?

The crazy wo-orc—woman, orc, genius—threw that weight around forcing Gregor to dodge or be sent flying. It helped to keep him at bay for two swings, after that she was done and utterly exhausted. He took his time to methodically take her apart.

It was almost like he enjoyed it. People and their weirdness, seriously. Though it makes sense, a battle crazed monster like Gregor would be interested in such a forward person as Raneria is.

“Young master,” Ash huffed. “I would advise you do not underestimate these vagrant men and women. Poor they may be, but they’ve lived on these lands for years already without massive walls to protect them. They have to be skilled beyond the pirates we’ve faced. To not only survive the orc raids that reach here, but also create a niche of their own, they must have some strength to rely on.”

Jonas gulped. He had done it multiple times now. Luckily for him and everyone else following him, it had not had any adverse effects. Like Ash said, for all he knew, they could be monsters in disguise waiting for the sheep to slowly get closer before they pounce with a savage ferocity.

And with Clay nowhere to be found, he should not risk the harm of his people. For they were the only thing between death and himself. Jonas himself barely had enough strength to beat the common bandit, let alone any lieutenant or the actually bandit leader.

They would get rid of him as fast as swiping a fly out of the sky. A persistent and constantly annoying fly to be sure, but one nevertheless.

He would have no hope of winning.

It occurred that, maybe, just maybe, he should take all the serious advice from Clay and Frezar on his Path without the pound of salt he drizzled on them.

“Okay. No underestimating anyone, even if they are poor land pirates.”

Ash’s eye twitched, but she couldn’t refute what he said. His gold-mongering ways had begun to get to her.