“Is it time to go?” I asked Cassira who came to wake me up.

She nodded. “This is some light armour the chief told me to give you.” She handed me a brown leather chest piece and leggings. I couldn’t help but look at her forearm.

“Is it healing well?” I took her hand, pulled her in, and rolled up her sleeve. She had a black cloth around the wound.

“It’s doing fine. I think the goddess will bless our wedding.”

I wanted to check the wound; however, I didn’t want to aggravate it by removing the cloth. In all honesty I wasn’t sure she would make it. After sleeping on it I felt like something was missing in the ritual. She wasn’t a real Slar after all, and I doubted that the one who claimed that title in this village was either. I pulled her on my lap and looked into her eyes. “Make sure to do what I told you to do. It’s for the goddess and the people who haven’t lost their path. I am blessed by Selanni after all.”

She nodded in a meek manner. The mayor had probably taken her in as a maid out of pity. Her defences and guards had crumbled a long time ago.

“I’ll search for people who truly believe in the water goddess, I’ll tell them to wait for your return, and I won’t tell the chief.”

I pulled her on my lap and gave her a tight hug. After a few seconds, I pulled away and petted her hair. “That’s a good girl. Now, can you help me put on the armour?”

“Of course,” She stood up. I slipped on the piece of leather. She went around the stool and started to lace the leather around my waist and back. Next, I stood up and she did the same for the leather pants. When she stood up, I gave her one last hug and she stayed in my arms for another minute. If it weren’t for my mission, I would have taken pity on her and probably kept her around as a pet.

“Lead the way,” I said.

Cassira got up, however, before turning to the door she began to speak in a low voice. “I promise that the goddess will approve of me. I swear she will, I promise I’m not the infidel.”

She was truly the most pitiable person I had seen in a while… Well, maybe the most pitiable person this month. “Yes, I already know. As someone blessed by her, I can tell everything will work on.”

When she pulled away, her eyes were red. I wiped away her tears and she walked out the room.

While we walked towards the city gates, I asked my last question. “How many do you think have not lost their way?”

She continued walking without looking back and answered in a low voice like I had ordered. “I have adopted one child who is not lost, however, other than him, there might be five to ten others who are responsive to my words.” Her voice increased slightly in excitement, “But, I’m sure after your display they will kneel in front of you in the name of Selinna.”

“That’s good," I said.

It still hadn’t rained since I had come here. The skies seemed a perpetually clear and made for a beautiful view of the azure sky during the day, and of the constellations at night. Perhaps in a few weeks I could see a rainbow.

We passed through the town market and reached the same entrance where I had met the two guards the other day. However, this time the scene was much more hectic. There were ten men loading cargo onto a wooden wagon, eleven armed guards surrounded it, and a boy about eighteen years of age who ordered them around.

Cassira brought me to the boy. He wasn’t tall and wore robes embroidered with golden silk patterns, a turban over his head which draped all the way down his back, and golden earrings.

Cassira bowed to the boy and spoke, “Young master, this is Bonaventure, the swordsmen from beyond the desert.”

The boy turned around and looked me up and down. “It might be true. I’ve never seen someone who looks like you. Well, I’m busy right now. I’m curious about your origin so I’ll ask questions later. For now, go to the caravan leader, he’ll tell you what to do. He’s the man with the largest sword.”

I nodded and went to the caravan leader while Cassira waved me goodbye. I also noticed that she kept her other arm tightly pressed to her sides. I could only hope everything went well, however; I couldn’t put all my eggs in one basket. I needed to continue to push my desert kingdom con. Since the young kid had brought it up himself, it shouldn’t be too hard to speak about it. I would only need to sell it to him now. Seeing that he was young, he probably wanted to prove himself capable. But, I could also sell it with the angle of fame, wealth, and woman. Well, I had to get to know him first.

Anyhow, I went to the guard leader. “Hello, I’m Bonaventure, I heard you’re the head of the caravan’s guards.”

The man was sitting a wooden crate. He stood up and gave off his best authoritative aura. Unfortunately for him, although he was the tallest person amongst his peers, he still had to look up to meet my eyes. When added with the fact, he wasn’t much more muscular than me it was evident his intimidation tactic wouldn’t work out too well.

“What grade are you?”

Yes, all he had left was the grade. “Four,” I said.

“Then take the back and listen to my orders. You’ll lead one scout and two grades three warriors. Their lives are in your hands.”

Since he didn’t state his grade, he was probably at my grade or lower, however, since he was old and still alive, the answer was most likely four. On the other hand, I wondered how long his attitude of his would last against someone with heroic charisma. After all what made a hero wasn’t his strength but his grasp on the hearts of the people. Accordingly, charisma would be my greatest weapon.

Although I wasn’t a fan of the magical institute back home, I had to admit that reverse engineering blessings was one of the greatest feats of the Strada Republic.

An hour later we started moving. The caravan was composed of ten camels and two carts which were filled with cotton, fruits, vegetables, powder dyes, and some herbs such as mint. The people in the caravan were young, the oldest being the head guard around forty. The others looked about twenty to thirty. However, there were a few younger ones around eighteen to twenty. One of them was my scout.

#

We had already started to march towards the market town. “Fresia, have you sensed anything?” I asked her. She was a girl in her late teenage years. On her back slung a composite bow and quiver. Her black hair was cut short, ending just under her ears. The desert had already taken its toll on her face as her skin had started to wrinkle, and her eyes showed signs of yellowing.

“Nah, can’t sense shit. Perhaps a rabbit or lynx, nothing else.” He words matched her appearance.

We continued our march until we reached a small river.

“Bonaventure,” called the guard leader.

“What is it?”

“We need to decide a rotation for the night. Your group takes the first three hours.”

Although that didn’t sound like deciding and rather dictating, I didn’t press. “Sounds fine.” He would eventually crack under my high charisma. Since I had only gained it thanks to the heroic blessing, I guessed you needed special jobs such as a chief, or priest to gain any. If this was true, then my charisma was probably monstrous, and the first rule of the game was to play your cards right. And that’s what I planned to do. I left and he called over the other sub-leader.

Back in my group’s camping area we had set a cloth on the ground and the others were eating bread and nuts. “Finish eating quickly, we need to get ready for guard duty, we’re on the first three hours.

“Ughhh. You had to take the earliest one.” Fresia flopped down on the cloth. The warm sand moulded to her body, and she started to doze off. “Couldn’t you take it in early morning? We’ve been walking all day. Can’t I sleep?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I said and lifted her to her feet by pulling up her arms. Personally, my brain implant could control the creation of hormones to control my sleep, increase my pain tolerance, or increase my muscle gain so taking the first shift wasn't hard for me. “You’re going to be walking all day tomorrow as well,” I said as I grabbed the scruff of here cloak to straighten up her posture. “Stay near the camp and alert us if you see anything. Grezio takes the upper stream, Siler takes the lower stream. I’ll take the rest.”

Twelve guards weren’t enough to guard such a large group, so we had to make do with what we had. Unfortunately for me, there weren’t any beasts or bandits in the surroundings. We would probably encounter something when we approached the city. We were currently too far from civilization to encounter anything.

We kept this up for four days without encountering anything major. However, we had finally reached the desert. Pale yellow sand dunes stretched for hundreds of kilometres, and the smell of sand, and dryness cooked the nose and lungs.

“Hey, Bon,” said Fresia.

She waited for a response; however, I didn’t say anything. Finally, after a few seconds I spoke, “What is it? I don’t always have to answer.”

“Just answer when I call. It’s not hard. But yea, there’s some big thing squirming under use, so you’d better respond next time or else you’ll die without knowing anything.”

What a fucking idiot. I would make her stand guard for three nights straight after this. A giant worm type beast wasn’t something to play around with. “Hey, Urizzo, does your scout feel something underground.” I saw him turn to his scout. He didn’t respond, however, he told everyone to stop.

These people were rather incompetent.

“Everyone in formation. There’s a beast underneath.” Yelled the guard leader.

Since we didn’t have a mage to protect, everyone went their own way, and the merchants ran away on their camels.

Soon I could feel the sand moving and shifting underground. The wagons which were left behind started to bob up and down in a wave-like fashion. More than one guard tried to stick his blade in the sand, but not even a drop of blood came of it.

“It’s a sand worm. Everyone, prepare to fight.” Yelled the guard leader. “Aim for a single spot and hammer it with all you got.”

Soon after a tower of sand emerged out of the ground and shot towards the sun. Sand rained down and the figure of a one hundred metres long worm emerged from the massive sand cloud.

After the dramatic entrance, the worm fell back down on the sand and crushed a swordsman; however, his blade had smoothly entered the worm’s body. It squirmed around in a fruitless attempt to ride himself of the phallic which had pierced him and drawn his first blood.

“Fresia release all your arrows into the worm.” I yelled.

“Yes Sir.”

“Sillar, Grazia, stay behind me and get ready to attack.” We continued to dodge the worms’ sweeping motions until all three archers in the caravan emptied their quiver. Since we were moving around the worm and kept a good distance from it. The worm couldn’t do much other than charge at one group, only for them to run away, and for him to be pelted by another group's arrows.

“No arrows left!” yelled Urizzo the guard leader, “Charge!”

And charge we did. The arrows could only help slow, and hurt the beast; however, you needed to use swords to make it bleed out.

I didn’t know how experience points were dished out in this world so I used my quick hands skill to inflict as much damage against it as I could.

Finally, after everyone had cut deep gashes into the worm did it finally stop moving and decides to die.

I opened my status screen and saw that I had gained 450 experience points. This trip wasn’t a bad idea after all. To gain so much experience from a single monster was incredibly unfair and wonderful. Now if he could convince the baby merchant to head to the promised land, all would be perfect.

However, Urizzo’s yelled out commands to regroup and pulled me out of my dream-like state. We started to pick up the cargo which had fallen out of the wagons. Someone also started to dig up a grave for the adventurer we had lost.

“Does this thing pop up often around here.” I asked Urizzo before we started to move.

“Perhaps, once, or twice per trip. However, that guard shouldn’t have died, I don’t know who recommended him.”

That statement scratched on something else I wanted to ask. “Is there no guild for mercenaries or adventurers here?”

Urizzo who was standing closely to the young master turned to face me, “I’ve heard of those existing abroad; however, here we don’t really have many beasts. The desert is as unforgiving to beasts as they are to man. Plus, here every able body serves his village, well if you can call them able-bodied.”

“Why so?” I saw the young master drift away while giving his orders. He certainly liked to point fingers. Perhaps fame and strength would be the way to taunt him. Anyhow, I turned my attention back to Urizzo.

“A decade ago, the sea people attacked. We lost a lot of men in that fight. Without anyone to train and guide the new guys the quality of our men is, as you can see, laughable. It takes time to level up and we only have so many beasts to hunt. There’s only been a few kids who managed to reach the fourth grade, however, even then they lack polish.”

That’s probably why the goblins were equipped with iron tools. Rookies were probably sent to gain levels, however, without anyone to watch over them they end up dead or wounded or ran away, dropping their equipment in the process.

“Although this might not be my place to ask.” I said quietly. “But as a warrior I can’t help but ask. Are they going to attack again?”

Urizzo took a few more steps away from his young lord and spoke in a quiet voice. “Although we’re far, the capital isn’t that far inland. These barbarians come in from the sea and sail on rivers. They raid, pillage, and rape everything in sight. Although we contained them to the coast the last time they’ll come back, and stronger at that. This time without anything on the coast they’ll head straight for the capital. Now if I were you, I’d stay here in the hinder lands until they either pillaged everything of value or decide to rule us.”

“Did you see them last time?” I asked. “How did they fight, what kind of boats did they have, how many were they?”

“No, I stayed in the village at that time. But information regarding them is sparse since most who fought them died. However, the word is that they’re people distant lands. Their skin is extremely pale, their hair is silver, and their ears are pointed. They used magic, and the water listened to each of their words; however, those aren’t words you should say to just everyone since the most devout of the Selanni worshippers would say that this was divinely ordained punishment for our transgressions. Although personally I don’t know what transgressions they speak of.

Now that was interesting. This was the first time I heard of Viking elves. But in other news it seems that my heroic charisma didn’t take too long to start affecting his disposition towards me. I nodded Urizzo and went back to my group.

“What happened?” asked Fresia. “Your face looks too serious even for you.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’re leaving soon so prepare everything.”