I woke up after being gently shaken by one of Matt’s family members. They were really nice people who treated us like family in this harsh time. If only we could stay here and protect people like this and the rest of the town from the knights. The only one with the guts or temper to do anything was Stephen and he got his leg chopped off for it.

Which begged the question of why they would only cut off his leg? Wasn’t this the knight order that had destroyed the past knight order of Sanae Patil? At least, that’s what they claimed to have done. Surely if there was a full-scale knight order, they would’ve had far more divine items than us and demonstrated the full prowess of the divine items, regrowing extreme wounds in a short period of time.

As much as I wanted to know why, it wasn’t important at this moment and it was better that Stephen had survived rather than them making sure the job was done. I dragged myself off the ground and per the directions of Matt’s family, went outside to find a wagon with a donkey pulling it. It was a far cry from Jeff’s horse-drawn carriage but it was best we could scrape together with such short notice.

Most of the space in the wagon was taken up by Stephen and the luggage, from food supplies to whatever weapons and personal belongings we had left. Jerry and Chris sat in the front area, with Chris steering the donkey and Jerry continuing to rest. Meanwhile, Matt and I had to walk. There simply wasn’t enough space for us to get on the wagon comfortably and there was only one donkey pulling it so the weight was already beyond the donkey’s comfort. I didn’t mind too much as the wagon went down the road at a leisurely pace, but Matt was annoyed and kept complaining every ten minutes.

We headed North, towards the closest city. Its name was Somum Nov and was almost as big as the capital due to its location and the trade routes going through it. The trip would take us about two days if we kept going at a good pace. Hours and hours of constant grueling walking for me and Matt. Which was a bit of an exaggeration as we’d be swapping out with Jerry and Chris eventually.

The roads were hard and flat, the dirt below was beaten down by generations of feet and carriages passing over it, with the occasional rainfall to flatten and smooth things out. It felt good against my bare feet but would feel like sandpaper grinding against me after a few hours. A trip to the city wasn’t complete without a new layer of callus and blisters on the feet.

After the wagon hit the rare bump in the road and nearly threw Jerry off, he decided it was time to get up and walk with us, leaving an empty spot on the wagon. Matt surprisingly didn’t take it and motioned towards me while pointing at my wound. Despite all his complaining, he’d rather continue walking than have me while I’m wounded. That action alone improved my opinion of him as I hopped onto the wagon next to Chris.

“Want me to take the reins, Chris? I’m not tired and you can take this chance to nod off for a bit,” I said.

“No need, I actually enjoy stuff like this. I could ride a wild horse unsaddled if I so wished,” said Chris while tugging on the reins to get the donkey moving again. Matt and Jerry trudged along, just a hair slower than the wagon.

“That’s quite the skill. Why did you become an adventurer instead of a stable hand or breeder?” I asked.

“That’s quite simple, money. My older brother inherited the family farm which had plenty of horses and I was left with only a bit of money I stupidly wasted. To get my own plot of land and some good breeds I need cash, lots of it,” said Chris.

“I imagine you’re not too interested in the transition from adventurer to knight order, are you? Just a means to an end,” I said.

“Isn’t that the same for everyone here, even you? Tell you what, I’ll let you know something special,” said Chris while looking back. Behind us was Matt and Jerry chatting and they had fallen back a bit, out of earshot. Meanwhile, Stephen was passed out in the back, making not a bit of noise.

“Jerry was actually one of the people who stole your ale, not Stephen,” said Chris, ratting out his friend in what might have been grand reveal.

“I know. He told me and has made up for it. I suspected as much from the beginning and still formed this knight order with him,” I said.

“Oh, I see. Well, if we’re being honest here I’ll come out as the perpetrator. I was the one who convinced everyone else to steal that ale from you, so if you hold it against anyone, hold it against me,” said Chris. This statement confused me. Not in the way of not understanding why he did it, but more why he told me and whether I should be happy he came out or pissed that he did that.

“That makes no difference to me as I’ve already forgiven all of you. In fact, I’ve actually got a new brew from the dungeon I plan on sharing when we stop for the night,” I said.

“That’ll be nice. I suggest giving Stephen a bigger portion of the brew to help with his pain. Nothing better than getting hammered to forget about injuries, even if it might interfere with the healing a bit,” said Chris. The healing process might have been disturbed if he had been healing naturally, but with the divine items, it would be fine for him. Only I had to watch how much I drank tonight without the shield as a crutch.

After a few hours, Chris stepped down from the wagon and Matt took his place while I held onto the reins. Even later on, I stepped down and Jerry hopped back in and took the reins. Apparently, Matt had no idea how to use them so Jerry helped teach him. No idea why he didn’t ask me while I was there but it couldn’t be helped since he was probably too tired. The only reason why I knew was because of my upbringing back in my old town.

When night finally came, we brought the wagon off the path a bit into a little clearing in the forest and make camp. Camp wasn’t anything special, just some blankets thrown on the ground and a fire to heat up the food. My sword made it easy to light the kindling and we had a raging fire in no time at all. The wagon itself was hidden behind a few trees to make us less of a target for bandits and the donkey was tied to the other side of a tree with some grain to eat.

Our food was some hard loaves of bread and a light vegetable stew. We only had what little food Matt’s family could spare so there was no meat. It was still plenty filling and everyone’s mood perked up when I brought out the wine. With the merry celebrations, we had that night, everything felt more normal and let optimism back into my life. This situation with the knights could be overcome with all of us in good time at the city.

As Chris suggested, I made sure that Stephen had the lion’s share of the drink and he could barely talk by the time he passed out. Jerry and Matt had plenty to drink and passed out cold. I couldn’t drink too much lest I risked a hangover and hampered my healing so I only had one mug, same as Chris. Then I tried to get some sleep. Chris said something about taking the first watch.

In the middle of the night, I woke up from some noise. I opened my eyes a bit and saw Chris walking over to Jerry, guess he was waking him up so he’d take the next watch. Which made sense as he slept a decent portion of the ride to this point. My eyes closed and I tried going back to sleep but my mind remained alert from Chris or maybe Jerry now shuffling about.

Then there was another noise that made me sit up. Stephen was moaning and trying to say something. For some reason, the shield was lying on the ground an arm’s length away from him. He must have dropped it in his sleep and the pain from not having it woke him up. As I got closer to him and pushed the shield back into his hands, he finally made out a word, not a word, a name.

“Chris,” he said weakly while shivering.

Chris? What about Chris? Strangely enough, Chris wasn’t at the camp nor was Jerry awake. Looking around, I still didn’t see him at all. Was he keeping watch in a tree or something? Since he was missing, I decided to go over to Jerry and wake him up. Maybe he had let Jerry know that he was off doing something and Jerry went back to sleep instead of taking over the watch.

“Where’s Chris?” I asked Jerry while shaking him awake. He stared at me in pure confusion as if I had said the strangest thing in the world. It was just as strange to me as I still wasn’t fully awake myself.

A sudden noise made me turn around. The sound of hoofbeats over where the wagon and donkey were tied up. I stopped shaking Jerry and walked over to find the wagon untouched but the donkey gone. Jerry had gotten up and followed me, touching the rope on the tree where the donkey had been kept. It hadn’t been a complicated knot but was cut. Whoever had taken the donkey left in a hurry.

“Where’s the bracelet of Mans Tontrau? Did I pass it over to you at some point?” asked Jerry while patting at his pockets. For the love of the goddess, I hoped he was messing with me or just too drunk to remember. After he had checked every nook and cranny on his person, I realized the worst had happened.

“When did you last check if you had it?” I asked, starting to worry that he had dropped it on the side of the road on the way here.

“Before I went to sleep I felt it in my pocket. I had to move it slightly to sleep more comfortably,” said Jerry. Which rather than relieving me, made things so much worse.

If he had it when he went to sleep then that means that Chris had swiped it while he was sleeping. The bastard waited for us to fall asleep and tried robbing us. He even tried to take the divine items of Sanae Patil from Stephen while he was sleeping. Which is why he made me give him so much wine, so he wouldn’t make a noise while he took them. Thankfully, that part of the plan failed and he left behind the shield in his rush to run. Stephen was warning me that Chris was the thief not that he was missing.

“I think Chris just robbed it and fled on the donkey,” I said to Jerry without explaining my train of thought.

“Don’t be ridiculous. He would never do something like that,” he said while laughing. That laughter turned to crying as he leaned against a tree and sat down. Jerry knew that I was right but didn’t want to believe it, not with all the other shit that had happened to us lately.

The laughter and crying woke up Matt who came over and started asking questions about what was going on, where the donkey was, and where Chris was. Neither Jerry nor I felt like explaining so we told him to go back to sleep and then tried to do so ourselves without much luck. I slept next to Stephen, making sure Chris couldn’t come back and try robbing him again easily.

In the morning, we all woke up in a terrible mood. Stephen was hungover and still reeling from the traumatic experience of one of his friends trying to rob items that were literally his lifeline from him. Jerry was still in denial over the whole thing, mumbling to himself with bloodshot eyes. While I was just a bit tired from life. Our knight order was one man down in a way that was worse than him just dying or leaving.

How were we supposed to react if we even met that traitor again? Would we cut him down in anger, let him say his side of the story, or forgive him? Just the thought of meeting him again got my blood boiling. For me, I would slay him on the spot. I wasn’t so sure the others would do the same, besides Stephen. Unless the lost leg made him a bit more cautious about attacking people in revenge.

Now we lacked a divine item that was supposed to be used to trade for our kind of divine item or a tidy sum of money. Not only that, we couldn’t use the wagon anymore unless we dragged it along ourselves with the donkey gone. At this point, we didn’t have much of a reason to go to the city besides escaping the knight order, all the excuses were gone. We were fleeing, afraid for our lives, nothing else.

A good part of the morning was spent explaining what happened to Matt and just staring at each other, waiting for someone to take control. That was my job as the knight captain. I wanted to continue heading towards the city and abandon the wagon. However, that would force us to leave Stephen behind as well or carry him the whole way. There was no way I could bring up something like that.

Matt ended up being the one to take control with me being silent and Jerry escaping reality. He went over and tossed four blankets and some food supplies from the wagon at Jerry and me, then picked up Stephen. The decision was made, we would carry the bare minimum of supplies and continue our trip while bringing Stephen along as far as we could. It seemed like Jerry and Matt would have to take turns carrying him. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to as my wounds would reopen.

I did end up having to carry him after Matt and Jerry tired of it halfway through the day. However, with the necklace and shield pressed against my back, I didn’t feel too much pain nor did my wound reopen. Apparently, the effect could be shared through touch somehow. It was probably only because I had worn the divine items before and was a fellow believer. Nonetheless, this provided yet another advantage to knight orders who could cause artificial convergences since they could keep close and share their effects. Even now I imagine full plate men holding hands while skipping through the dungeon merrily.

That image earned a rare laugh from myself. Since the divine items were healing me as I went along, I kept carrying Stephen the rest of the day, refusing to let the others take over when they recovered. Instead, they carried all the baggage. It felt almost unfair to them as they did most of the hard work while I got a free ride compliments of the divine items. Yet, shouldn’t Jerry have felt the effects of the shield and necklace as well?

“Hey Jerry, did you notice anything special when you were carrying Stephen, like feeling their buffs affect you?” I asked Jerry. He was quick to pass Stephen off to me so I doubted he had.

“No. Not that I would know how it felt as I wasn’t injured. Maybe it closed up some of my callus and made my blisters go away, but nothing beyond that,” said Jerry while Matt cut in and mentioned that he felt nothing at all, which was to be expected.

So either he didn’t notice the buff since he had been using the necklace and didn’t know what the endurance from the shield was like, or it wasn’t affecting him for some reason. The healing aspect certainly helped him at least. Perhaps I was just overthinking things, but I felt like I should test out some theories about the divine items later on.

Unfortunately, by the end of the day, we were forced to camp on the side of the road again. With the wagon gone and being forced to lug Stephen around on our backs, there was no way we could’ve covered enough distance. We all hoped to see the city over the next hill so we could find an inn and sleep in real beds. However, we only found more and more wilderness every time we went over the crest of a hill. It wasn’t until the time we turned in did we see the first signs of the city with some plumes of smoke coming from households cooking dinner and a speck on the horizon. There were maybe two or three more hours of walking to reach there and the city only let people come in during the day so pushing on was pointless.

We laid everything out and made camp again, eating another sparse meal from our remaining supplies. My sword once again set a small fire up and gave us some comfort for the long night ahead. I doubted that any of us could fall asleep with what happened the previous night. No one drank and one by one we fell asleep. The fatigue was too much for us to resist. I was the last to fall asleep and I didn’t even try to sleep until I confirmed that Matt was fully asleep.

He was the only one in the group who hadn’t held a divine item of Sanae Patil. Chris hadn’t either and he betrayed us. Matt was someone we would have to keep an eye on or force to hold one of the items before we could fully trust him. I held back on such an extreme method as the three of them weren’t sure if they wanted to join the knight order but kept with us. If we had forced them earlier, chances were that they would’ve left. Stephen was the only one forced to take on the items and that was due to his circumstances rather than us pushing it onto him.