Chapter 29

Elder Yui and I had already decided that we would move towards the center of human lands. We had considered heading into the wild lands and hunting for monsters. However, the monsters near human civilization were weak. The energy I’d gain was minimal. Heading any deeper would carry a risk of running into high level monsters. The reward just wasn’t worth the risk.

Human civilization carried a number of opportunities. I’d have numerous opportunities to gain life energy. My range had increased to just over two hundred feet. There would also be some opportunities to gain death energy. I could find a slaughterhouse near one of the cities. If I could find one that processed magic beasts it would produce a massive amount of death energy. There were also arenas where gladiators and slaves fought. Although I suspected in those places I’d get more life energy from the crowds than death energy from dying gladiators. Unless a high level gladiator died.

I was sure I’d find more opportunities I hadn’t thought of. Far more than I’d find trying to hunt the occasional monster in the wild lands. Plus I wouldn’t run the risk of dying and losing ten percent of my energy.

Over the next few hours I slowly felt like I was going to go insane. Each time I entered my universe and then exited it I’d travel around a hundred and fifty feet. I could have traveled two hundred. However, if I did that I had no idea what was just past that two hundred feet. I could come out just a few feet away from a clan Hill soldier. By limiting myself to a hundred and fifty feet I knew that I wouldn’t come out within fifty feet of an enemy.

I finally gave up after about six hours of traveling. The sun hadn’t risen yet but the sky was starting to get brighter. During that time I estimated that I had traveled about once a minute. Which meant I had traveled around ten miles. Far enough that I doubted I’d run into random groups of clan Hill scouts looking for clan Ashton survivors.

I was sure I’d run into a few clan Hill soldiers. At the very least they had probably established some checkpoints along the major roads. Those would be obvious though. When I ran into one of those roadblocks I’d just slip back into my universe. Once night fell it would be easy to slip past them.

For the next week each day was roughly the same. I pulled the stolen mount out and rode it the entire day. Horses on this world were quite a bit better than horses on Earth. In fact the one I was riding was considered a magical beast. The one I was riding was a mid level five magical beast. Which meant that if nothing happened during the day we could travel over a hundred miles a day. Of course an uninterrupted day of travel never did happen.

The first couple of days were cut short after less than a dozen miles when we ran into a clan Hill checkpoint. I simply guided my mount off the road and out of view of any other travelers. Then I transported myself to my universe. The soldiers at the checkpoint spotted us. But they found nothing when they came to investigate. I was sure a report would get filed somewhere. It was doubtful anyone would actually follow up though. Once night fell I simply used my space to slip past where the checkpoint was.

After we passed the checkpoints we kept getting waylaid by bandits. I was actually surprised the first time it happened. I had thought that bandits would avoid someone traveling alone. Chances were that anyone not traveling in a group was a powerful mage or cultivator.

Edler Yui explained that many bandits had at least one person in their group that could sense the level of their prey. Which meant that they could tell that I was only a level four cultivator. Easy pickings for a dozen or more rank five cultivators.

Of course each time elder Yui was overwhelmingly more powerful than any of the bandits. The strongest among them were only low level six cultivators. After subduing the first set of bandits we were left figuring out what to do with them. At first I figured we would just kill them. Which would net me a few thousand death energy.

Elder Yui instead proposed that we take them to the nearest village. There they would be judged and either executed or enslaved for their crimes. In return we would get a bounty. It would also engender some goodwill among the villagers. Which would make it easy to buy supplies for the nearly one hundred survivors of clan Ashton. Most of them had escaped with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

Over the course of a week I ended up being bait nearly a dozen times. At least the bandits usually gave some type of warning before trying to kill me. Of course they were still planning to kill me, they just didn’t want to injure my horse by accident. It gave me plenty of time to transport elder Yui out of my space.

Unfortunately once we captured the bandits I couldn’t put them in my universe. For now I wanted to keep that universe a secret. Which meant that we had to spend quite a bit of time walking them to the nearest town. I was sure they would mention elder Yui appearing out of thin air. However, everyone would assume that was because elder Yui was so much stronger than the bandits.

On the plus side bounties for bandits weren’t too shabby. Each of them earned us a few small gold coins. In local currency I estimated a small gold coin to be roughly a hundred dollars. The occasional level six bandit leader paid out even more. Plus there was whatever money we found on the bandits themselves. Unfortunately even that amount of money wasn’t nearly enough to buy the basic necessities for the clan Ashton survivors.

Clothes and food alone used up nearly all the money we made. And that was just to buy a couple sets of clothes for each survivor and supplement the food the dryads grew for us. Everything else was spent on other basic items such as soap and cooking utensils. If anything was left after that I’d see if there were any magic vegetable seeds I could buy.

Once we had enough space I was hoping the dryads could start growing those magic vegetables in bulk. That would get me more energy and give me something to trade for basic necessities. Hopefully it would be enough to cover the basic needs of around a hundred humans and nearly forty dryads.

Although I didn’t need to buy much for the dryads. They didn’t even wear clothes. The only exception was Rubi. Whenever I walked past her tree she would inquire about purchasing new books. In this world books were a little bit more expensive than on Earth. I gathered that they had printing presses. However, they were hand operated. So the average book was about ten times more expensive.

Fortunately Rubi understood that she would have to wait until we had more money. Although like all the dryads she didn’t seem to understand why humans cared about clothing. Some things like soap the dryads learned the importance of quickly. Dryads may not use it, but they certainly didn’t enjoy smelly humans living in their grove.

Besides for elder Yui I had fairly limited interaction with anyone inside my space. Most of my time was spent either sleeping or traveling. The only exception was collecting the bounties and buying supplies. Each night I went to sleep alone. And each morning I woke up with Emma, Kristen, and most of the dryads sleeping nearby. Although nothing happened. I wasn’t an exhibitionist, especially when elder Yui was one of the people also sleeping nearby in the grove.

After just over a week we finally reached a major city.