Chapter 9 We woke up pretty refreshed. As usual Grim made breakfast. I offered to do it but he just growled me away. I spent an hour at the training grounds dummies with the axe. Practising my swings. It took a bit getting used to as it was a gigantic thing. By the time breakfast was ready I had already worked up a sweat. Grim had as usual outdone himself. I had somehow missed that there was a big plank mounted to the bottom of the wagon that could be slid out and Grim had grabbed two sawhorses from inside the wagon to put it on so we had a table. Grim had also packed a few fold-out chairs so we didn't have to sit on the damp ground. Breakfast was an expansive feast. Soup with bread, what looked like a cooked chicken and a bowl of mixed vegetables. For dessert, Grim had made some pancakes. To be fair most of the food would end up in Grim's belly anyways. That guy ate for four normal men. Aura showed up just as we were finishing up and putting everything away. Her cart was a sight to see. Looked like a huge chest about 2 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1 meter high. The cart only had two wheels. the other end held up by the pony that was dragging it. Or when we would camp the font had two fold-out supports it could rest on. It didn't have any space for a driver so she walked next to it leading the pony on foot. We did some small introductions while hooking up our horses to the wagon. We took the slightly more northern road to get to the first village on the list. It would take us about a week to get to Timberdale. A small village mostly inhabited by lumberjacks. The valley it was in had gigantic redwood trees. Some of which were over 100 meters tall and about 25 meters around at the base. They would chop down a tree and then spend the next month extracting all the wood from it and its branches. Because of the size and strength of the wood, it was prised in shipbuilding and building construction. After an hour or two Aura was getting tired from walking so I had one of the skeletons take over guiding her cart and had Aura get on the wagon with us. Grim had enough leftover from breakfast that we could have sandwiches for lunch while we kept moving. Along the way, we all got to know each other better. Grim and I talked about our childhood and how long we knew each other. And Aura telling us why her dad decided to move to the new continent and take a lot of his cousins and friends along with him. Authors note: You can find Aura's story in the next (side) chapter as when she read what I wrote she asked to rewrite it herself so it made more sense. Most of the day was uneventful. The road wound through a few different valleys and when we did get to a rise in the road all we could was more rolling hills. This area only had a few clumps of regular-sized trees here and there. And after asking Aura about the clubs we decided to stop a little bit early at one of them so she could make some side weapons. At least I was able to use the axe to good effect. I went and chopped down a tree while Grim and Aura set up the camp. Our wagon was set up the same way as the day before and grim had the table out again. Aura's wagon expanded to a big platform in a way that looked like magic but Aura assured me that it was all mechanical. On the platform was a spatial trunk like we had that held all her tools. A workbench on one side and enough floor space that she could use to put up her tent later. Aura asked me to chop off the thickest branches of the tree and to then shop the rest into 10cm thick round slices. The smaller branches we would save for firewood just in case we ran into an area without much wood later in the week. Aura used the branches to create 50cm long clubs. She had extra nails that she affixed to one side of them to give a little bit extra punch. The round slices she used to fashion some crude wooden breast and backplates for the troops. Just a round plate at the front and back linked together with some ropes over the shoulders and on the sides so they would stay in place. Looked a bit cumbersome and heavy. But the skeletons seemed to have no problems moving around with it on. Grim had done some foraging and had found a few patches of edible mushrooms. So for dinner, he made a thick mushroom soup with whatever we had over from breakfast thrown in as well. We turned in just after dinner so that we would be well-rested and ready to go early in the morning. We would keep our food relatively simple until we got to the village from now on. As I fell asleep I was pulled back into the white room again. This time I was half expecting it and had a look at my skills. Lumberjacking learnt 1/1 (5) Axe learnt 1/1 (5) Seems the practise this morning and felling that tree and needing to be precise with the cuts worked wonders for my skills. After checking out the skills I went back to sleep. The next couple of days were uneventful. Again the only thing that happened was on the fourth night I was sent back to what I started to call the dreamscape as I was tired of just calling it that white room. Milestone completed: Have a troops march 100KM Rewards: 1. Any troops you command will now have the tireless trait 2. Level cap increased by 1 New level cap: 6 Tireless: Units will not suffer any morale loss on forced marches Now that was useless for my current unit of skeletons who didn't have morale at all. But maybe for when I unlocked more units down the line. New Milestone: Have two different units I had a quick look at the milestones I had. Milestones: Have 2 different units Have a unit develop a personality Increase an armour or weapon skill to 3 I would ask Aura to craft me a crude bow and go do some hunting with me. We would get to the edge of the redwood forest somewhere around midday so I figured we could camp on the edge and do some foraging and hunting to level up a bit. I would talk it over with the gang tomorrow, but for now, sleep.