The evening passed without incident, though due to vision limitations for both Regina and the horses, we did not make as much progress heading back towards Diamond Lake as we would have liked. There was little choice though, she drove the carriage for hours, doing her best to make distance safely, and after only a couple hours she eventually decided we would be better served by letting the horses rest, so she handled unhitching them, brushing them down, and so on, before settling down to guard into the early hours.

I had not expected for her to make camp, but I did not complain. I'm well aware that if your visibility is limited it would be all too easy to have one of your horses break a leg, or to overturn the carriage, or have some other form of misfortune befall you. I have a lot of faith in her judgement when it comes to... Well, a lot of things, but doubly so for travel related concerns. If she feels she can safely guide us at night for a period of time, I believe her. If she feels she can no longer guide us safely, I believe her then, too. The horses are in good condition, so my trust in her judgement was not misplaced.

I am not a fan of being unproductive, so I put my skill related schematics to work on relatively quiet tasks, primarily potion brewing and fletching replacement arrow shafts and quarrels to replace our losses during the previous battles, since I still have ample raw materials for those. I even use the manufacture schematic to recraft her damaged quicksilver armor. The remainder of the night passes and in the predawn light I hook the horses back up to the carriage and resume our trip, leaving my magical crafters to do their work.

We need to make the absolute most we can of the daylight. Orcs are active during the day, but they are more active at night. Similar to how my own "Night Vision" is highly effective at night, they have what is called "Dark Vision", so if they get close enough they can see and fight us without being disadvantaged by the lack of lighting. Without having personal experience with their vision I have to rely on the details I've read regarding how their vision works, but anyone would expect that their night vision should be better than my own considering that they usually live under ground and are thus accustomed to no light at all, while I explicitly require light to be able to see, just not as much light as humans do.

I do not know when the search parties will begin, but in my mind they have already set off, and we are to play a racing game of accordion, where Regina and I make progress during the day, and they close the gap at night. A few hours into the trip Regina comes out of the wagon somewhat refreshed and picks up scouting, confirming our path and checking our surroundings for threats. There is no sign of Orcish pursuit yet, and for at least a little while there are no clear threats or problems in front either.

We discuss it and although scouting is very important, haste is our priority. I return to the carriage where I once again spend my time crafting while she steers the carriage. It is hard on the horses as we spend as little time as possible resting for several days, continuing our journey each day for as long as there is enough light for Regina to safely guide the carriage, while I do most of the camp setup in the dark where my superior nighttime vision makes the act of setting camp routine.

I check on our prisoners many times each day, waiting for them to wake up. The shaman awakens for the first time after 2 days. I claw him back into unconsciousness and then bandage him back up. One Eye takes 4 days to awaken for the first time. I force him back into a coma as well.

The plan was to have them do their own walking, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized they are just too dangerous to allow any autonomy. We still don't have a good way to allow them mobility without risking an insurrection, and I would rather have to spoon feed them and wipe up their messes than give them a chance to engage us in another fight, especially not one that might be remotely fair. If we gave them a fighting chance, even as injured as they are, the odds of them coming out victorious are too high. One Eye at the least can heal them both if we give him half a chance to do so, and once that happened we'd our fate would be sealed.

For that first week, Regina does not get to spend much time foraging for food or herbs, and without Joaqim I have to start using some spell releases to get us regular access to water. Luckily, we do still have a respectable stockpile of herbs for potion making. We don't have enough to craft continuously all the way back to Diamond Lake, but enough to craft a few more days without foraging. We have to ration our food very carefully since we would normally rely on Regina being able to hunt while scouting, and the horse’s health has begun to deteriorate due to them having fewer and shorter periods in which they can graze.

Rotating the draft horses with Reginas horse helps keep them all alive, but I feel rather bad for the horses. Not as bad as I would if they were caught by the orcs, just bad. It is better for them to be tired and hungry than for them to be food. After having spent a week traveling at the expense of our well-being, we have little choice but to slow down and allow for more foraging and grazing.

Although we have been careful to only move during the day and to provide rest spots, the horses are getting numerous sores from their yokes, are shying away from pulling the carriage, and are moving slowly once hitched up. If we have no choice about our pacing slowing down, it is better that we be slower while in improving health. Regina returns to foraging and scouting, while I steer the carriage, and my magical crafters perform the bulk of the day to day crafting, only requiring that I interfere for the spell casting portions.

We are actively trying to avoid conflict with other creatures, even weak ones, though occasionally we still get set upon by stupid or desperate creatures, and on one occasion in the first days of travel we were even set upon by a family of large, mutated brown bears, whose tentacle whips and gaping maws caused us to desperately flee, with me climbing into the driver’s seat to keep the horses running while Regina fired off arrows one after another until they stopped following us.

For the most part Regina can dispatch attackers without noteworthy difficulty, and aside from that one instance I did not have to even change our pace to address threats. Regina seems to be stronger than she was before, and faster when firing her arrows. I think she has leveled up, though I do not ask to confirm.

Although it truly is stupid to travel without a guard, there is a period every night where there is no one on guard. I set up camp and immediately go to sleep, after a few hours on guard she will join me for sleep, and I will pick up the guard when I wake up. Neither of us spend time hugging the Orcs anymore, finding each other to be better company even if the transition between sleeping and guarding results in mostly hazy, blurry memories. It might not be safe, but we are short on manpower and need to capitalize on the daylight hours. The blurry night time activities are a bonus, but even without them our process would have ended up adjusting to allow more travel time even if it required creating a more vulnerable period.

In all, it took us 16 days to reach Diamond Lake. Aside from managing ammunition stores and creating some more paper, I also updated Bucky's armor to fit myself during this time, and succeed at crafting another 12 potions. Added to what was left of our previous stock we are up to 20 healing potions to share between us, though our supply of herbs collected remains constrained due to the limited amount of foraging Regina was able to perform throughout the course of this trip.

Once inside Diamond Lake, we turn in One Eye and the Shaman and collect our 10,000 gold reward along with a 2,000 gold bonus for having returned not just 1 captive with extensive knowledge of their mission, but two of them to allow cross referencing the information they discover. For the second time, Regina and I did not bother to interrogate the Orcs ourselves, instead we opted to keep them unconscious for the return trip. Even if it weren't inherently dangerous to allow someone like One Eye an opportunity to resist, we wanted to be done with this mission as soon as possible.

I speak with Regina for a while, and since she has decided she does not want to go out adventuring any more, we discuss next steps and the future. She does not have any plans for the future at this time, and I ask if she wants to handle the front end for a crafting business that I would like to run for a few months. War is profitable. I do not intend to stop adventuring, but I do feel that my income simply is not sufficient for my crafting needs. She tentatively agrees, though she clarifies that she is only willing to commit on a temporary basis until she comes up with a better plan.

I rent out a smithy with a storefront, a stall simply would not be sufficient for the amount of volume I expect to produce, and I put my small team of magical crafters to work forging weapons and armor. The shop calls itself the “Adventurers Haven,” and within a few days it has a laundry list of items available. Broadly speaking the focus of this shop is on arms and armor: Bows and crossbows, ammunition, various swords, daggers, and armor both leather and metal, and so on.

Significantly, the stock of items starts off rather small with almost everything on display being superior quality. Being able to produce a superior quality item on a daily basis means my best market with the highest profit margins will be equipment for the affluent, though we do keep basic items in stock as well in order to support immediate needs.

It is far more efficient when crafting to produce a large number of standard quality goods than to produce superior quality goods, so keeping some finished products around is not a significant effort and is a useful form of employment for my magical crafters. Regina collects raw materials from the market early in the day and at night, such as steel, leather, and suitable herbs that others have picked, while attending to any customers that come in the rest of the time.

My magical craftsmen are about as capable as I am, and they bear the brunt of the effort when it come to developing and maintaining an active stock of standard weaponry and armor and keeping some of the cheaper stuff on hand, while the quality work such as full plate is crafted on commission via the manufacture schematic with display pieces made when there is no commission. The first month there is little business, but after people begin discovering that we sell healing potions and produce superior goods with very short wait periods, business picks up quickly.

We stay there, tending a shop for 6 months. During this time, Regina grows another year older, as do I. I try to make Reginas birthday special by taking her out around the town, but since she is not particularly into things like Music Halls and Libraries, nor for that matter is the city well suited for those sorts of interests, taking her around town ends up meaning that we spend the day visiting different taverns and getting unreasonably drunk.

Regina spends the next several days apologizing for not having been able to hold the alcohol down while trying to match me drink for drink, though personally I find it silly. Not only am I a lizardfolk, who as a race have an unusually high constitution, I am at the peak of their race when it comes to toughness. It is not bragging to say I can drink an absurd amount: In this world alcohol resistance and tolerance is based directly on your toughness stat. There are precious few humans, or even Lizardfolk, who would be able to drink me under the table. For my birthday we never actually leave the shop, instead staying in our room on the second floor. Regina provided me with a memorable Birthday indeed. Finally, we close for a month.

Regina had originally only been planning to stay for a couple weeks or a month while figuring out what she wanted to do. After 3 months, she brought up her plans for leaving, and asked if I had any interest in just… Staying here after all. Abandoning the idea of seeking my death and instead just being a shop keeper. I reminded her about my conversation with Mental Me, and that as tempting as it was, my fate would likely be far worse if I just try and remain a merchant.

I do not like watching her cry, and I cannot help but explain what I am doing and what I have in mind. Regina is more than a little shocked, but after thinking about it for a while, she asks what I believe my actual odds of success are. Then, she says that she will help. I am once more seeing that greedy gleam in her eye. It still makes me uncomfortable, but I think that after spending so much time together it mostly makes me happy to see her looking alive and engaged while sober and outside of a bedroom.

After closing down the shop and getting a high premium insurance policy in place for the things we do not have space or inclination to carry, Regina and I return to where we burned Jim, collecting some fragments of what was once his skull. Since we are not being actively pursued by Orcish kill squads this time, we return to killing the monsters we are confident that we can defeat, and to my surprise I manage to level up in a fight with some wild Worgs.

One Eye, the Shaman, and the commission must have been worth a ton of experience, because I did not expect to level with so little combat. Although, perhaps all that crafting played a part as well? It is common knowledge that non-combat activities such as crafting actually do provide experience towards leveling, it's just that the experience gained through alternate methods are significantly lower than the experienced gained by killing things.

I have been busy with a lot more than the goods I plan to sell, but first I should address what changed after reaching level 4.