Okay. So this is the first author’s note thingy I’m writing. Might be a bit long or maybe slightly ranty though I don’t intend it as a rant so prepare your buttholes if you intend to read it.

So I read the newest review I got which was pretty negative. And here people might expect me to go on a rant about it but no. In fact thank you reviewer for pointing out what you don’t like about my fiction. I do agree with the reviewer on some things they pointed out though I still think they were exaggerating on some parts.

Anyway yeah. I like criticism. So if anyone has any problems with my fiction feel free to point them out. If anyone has any ideas on how it might be improved feel free to point out those as well. Criticism (not baseless criticism but criticism with an actual explanation for it) helps me improve by pointing out my mistakes and is by no means anything bad… unless it’s just “you suck kbye”… but I think we all know that.

Also I would like to point out how hilarious it is to me that he gave me 3 stars on grammar because he didn’t like how I portray laughter. That… ironically got me laughing. Sorry I just had to point that out.

Anyway enough about me and my raging boner for criticism. Enjoy the chapter… or hate it idk.

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We left the capital the same day the king was mysteriously assassinated.

“I knew this would happen.” (Lily)

“But he called that scumbag lord a great guy! And he was getting slaves as fucking visit presents!” (Kenos)

“You know the king has no sons yet right? What if they can’t decide on an heir?” (Lily)

“Oh you don’t need to worry about that. He has a younger brother who can take the throne. I mean I don’t know if he’ll be a better king or not but hey, can’t be worse than terrible right?” (Kenos)

“What about the other countries? Won’t they try and make use of this?” (Lily)

“The human countries tend to not mess with frontier countries because they know that if there’s a beastkin invasion they’re gonna be the ones getting the most fucked over it. Also it’s the leaders’ jobs to deal with mysterious assassinations. Not my problem some lord of darkness decided to waltz in and kill the king.” (Kenos)

“Your logic is… amazing…” (Lily)

“We’ve been travelling together for more than a week and you’re still not used to it? Just look at Cel! Don’t see her complaining about me killing someone who was pretty much asking for it!” (Kenos)

“Huh?” (Cel)

Oh she was spacing out while we were walking. Seems like she was thinking about something and not listening to our conversation. Seeing her confused face I put my hand on her head.

“Nothing Cel don’t worry about it.” (Kenos)

She still seems a bit confused but she doesn’t mind the patting I guess.

“I’m not complaining. It’s just did you REALLY need to kill him?” (Lily)

“No not really but by that logic I didn’t need to kill the lord either. In fact I would have felt slightly sorry for that if it wasn’t for the fact that one of the slaves turned out to be the past lord who got fucked over by Shitbag and he is in the middle of correcting Shitbag’s governing mistakes.” (Kenos)

“How do you even know so much?” (Lily)

“Well let’s just say that he always has a part of me with him.” (Kenos)

Lily stops for a second and looks at me weirdly.

“So it’s something like the clothes we’re wearing?” (Cel)

Cel was the one to realize what I meant and hearing that Lily could only facepalm embarrassedly before continuing to walk.

“Kinda but it’s more like a black marble. You know if everyone’s black swords vaporized but part of yours remained you would take it as a sign and keep it… and so he did. It’s good for keeping an eye on him… or ear.” (Kenos)

“I still think you don’t think things through enough.” (Lily)

I think about it a little bit… maybe she was right. Maybe I WAS getting a bit too absorbed in my new powers and doing whatever the hell I wanted. *Sigh* I never thought I would be one to get corrupted by power but I guess you never know until it happens…

“Fine. I’ll try to be more diplomatic from now on.” (Kenos)

Lily seemed to have been caught a bit off guard at my honest contemplation but she just nodded approvingly and kept on walking.

“On another topic.” (Kenos)

I took my hand off Cel’s head by which she looked disappointed.

“Cel you said you were a mage correct? What kind of spells do you know?” (Kenos)

“… I only know a bit of water and wind magic…” (Cel)

Weird…

“No darkness? I can feel that your affinity with it is the highest.” (Kenos)

“… I… wasn’t taught darkness magic…” (Cel)

Again. Weird. I didn’t read too much about vampires I admit but from what I did I learned that they all had a high darkness attribute which was their main weapon besides the unique blood control that vampire lords use.

“Okay… do you want me to teach you? I mean I don’t know too many advanced spells but I memorized a few basic ones.” (Kenos)

Don’t ask me why because the answer should be obvious. I’m a total whore for knowledge. Anything I see I love to absorb so naturally I learned the basic spells I found in the books and even memorized their chants. My memory was the most inhuman thing about me even in my previous life and I love learning things because of it.

“I… I guess…” (Cel)

She seemed reluctant. Did she have some reason for disliking darkness magic? I could think of a few things… wait… now that I think about it.

“Now that I think about it Cel are you fine in the sun?” (Kenos)

I mean it’s not as if vampires burn or turn into dust under the sun but they are supposed to be weak to it… the only exception I can think of are vampire lords. I’ve been saying a few things about them and have addressed them as if there are many but don’t get me wrong vampire lords are by no means common. They are the elites. The royalty. They are the ultimate vampires. At least that’s how they are seen.

“Oh! I’m fine. You… don’t need to worry about that.” (Cel)

So she’s a vampire lord or would it be a vampire lady since she’s female? Okay… that was unexpected. I honestly thought Cel was just a normal vampire and that I had completely forgotten about the sun until now. At least I don’t have to feel bad about that.

We traveled for a few days while resting during the night. Meanwhile I trained Lily with the sword and instructed her on body strengthening which I also read quite a bit about and I taught Cel dark magic.

Cel seemed reluctant to learn at first but as things went on she seemed more and more eager. As for Lily she was even more enthusiastic than before I left for the library back in Karpas. She seemed to be ashamed of the fact she couldn’t even put up a fight with those guards.

The frontier countries ironically usually hold the weakest influence and weakest soldiers. I have no idea why. Maybe because they were newer? Maybe because they had the most criminal activity and corruption? I don’t know but from what I read the coutnries further south weren’t as bad. I mean corruption and crimes still exist obviously but they weren’t so fucking open about it. The frontier countries were just survival of the fittest basically.

What was Zahrah saying about a safe country I can live in until I get strong? Seriously Zahrah? For fucks sakes really? *Sigh* Maybe she meant safe as in it holds the weakest humans. I don’t know. Eirene didn’t correct her which meant that she was either in on it, agreed that sending me to a place with weak people was better than a place with actual laws, or just didn’t know the current situation of this place so she just didn’t say anything.

My rage about being betrayed by Zahrah has honestly cooled down a bit thanks to Lily and Cel. I mean I’m still angry at her. I’m not a fucking saint. But I also don’t feel the need to go out of my way to get revenge. I first want to confirm what her intentions were and whether Eirene was in on it. Not to mention I have no idea how strong gods are so I don’t feel like fighting one just yet. The strongest thing I’ve currently fought in this life were some of the weakest guards humanity had to offer and that wasn’t too good for measuring my strength.

Nothing much happened as we travelled. Other than a few bandit attacks it was all peaceful. There weren’t many monsters around here as they lived in more mana rich environments which were places humans usually don’t go to. Like deep in forests or maybe in secluded mountains. Both Lily and Cel were overjoyed at the soup I made for them. This time I also tried some of it and I have to admit that my cooking somehow IS truly delicious.

The closer we were to the northern border the further spaced out the towns and villages were. The only thing separating the Beastlands from mankind’s territory is a huge mountain range that spans the whole continent in length.

Though the height on the other hand isn’t that impressive. It’s apparently quite easy traversing but that’s by mountains with barely any roads standards. I could probably use earth magic to make a huge road or tunnel through it but I somehow don’t think that’s a good idea to do right after deciding not to abuse my power anymore.

Still it served to separate the humans and beastkin and it was doing its job… albeit not very effectively seeing as there are quite a few human-beastkin wars in the history books.

In two weeks we had passed through a couple of villages and had kept to the quickest road to get to the mountain range. There was a single village at the foot of the mountain which was sort of a gathering place for adventurers that wanted to explore the mountain. It was the perfect place to gather information about traversing it. Who knows maybe there’s a road across that we can find out about.

The village itself was peaceful overall. There were the normal people trying to bother Lily and Cel but as promised I only scared them away this time rather than breaking their limbs. I even warned them first but I didn’t expect them to listen. Lily was getting decent with the sword at this point and her body strengthening had gotten pretty good. If she was an adventurer she would be around C rank so she still had a long way to go.

Cel was strong. Like… unexpectedly strong. She caught on to dark magic fast and before long I had nothing to teach her about that so I thaught her some more water and wind which she had a bit more trouble with. She would probably be considered a genius but I had no idea what rank she would be as I’ve never seen anyone stronger than C.

We had now been at the village for almost a week and I became quite famous for always scaring away bastards trying to make moves on Lily and Cel. We were still gathering information but…

“So nothing?”

“Nothing.” (Lily and Cel)

*Sigh* We can’t find anything about crossing the mountains. The adventurers around here were knowledgeable about the mountain but never strayed too far so they didn’t know anything about ways to get to the Beastlands.

“So what now?” (Lily)

“I dig.” I say with the most serious face I can put on and Lily gets ready to rebuke me only for me to smile.

“Relax. I’m joking. I found a request at the guild today for an escort over the mountains and went to negotiate.” (Kenos)

“So?” (Lily)

“Well it goes like this. We escort a caravan over the mountains and they provide us with the transport. Of course it’s not gonna be only us. There’ll be other guards as well though I think we won’t need them honestly.” (Kenos)

“Why are they crossing the mountains? I thought humans weren’t welcome there.” (Cel)

“Well that’s… because of… slavery reasons…” (Kenos)

“I thought you hated slavery though?” (Lily)

“Hey we just need them to cross the mountains. We don’t really need to help them with the rest of the deal. In fact we can just… you know. Murder them? Or if you’re still against that we can just break their wagons and force them to go back or something” (Kenos)

I mean yeah not abusing my powers is nice and all but… come on. We’re getting across the mountain in a caravan and then we can get rid of some traders while we’re at it.

“*Sigh* Well I guess killing a few slave traders will only make the world a better place I guess.” (Lily)

I kind of disagree. I kill them because I don’t like them but there are definite positives to slavery… for the owners of course not the slaves.

“When are we leaving?” (Cel)

“Tomorrow” (Kenos)

We didn’t really need to get ready. Food and stuff would be provided though I still bought some in case of emergencies. There was no training that day though as I wanted the two of them to rest up well.

The next day we met up with the caravan. I wasn’t very specific about what they would be doing across the mountain but it’s what you would imagine. Animal ears are cute. Therefore female beastkin slaves are popular. The end.

I talked a bit with the caravan master. I had already negotiated a place for the girls on the caravan as a replacement for the cash reward and he had readily agreed. I had thought that we would be starting off on a path nearby the village but instead we first headed further east for a day or so before we reached the place where we would actually climb the mountain.

The mountain formed a sort of natural road apparently but not many people knew of it. It’s not as if it was as comfortable a walk as it would be on modern day roads in my previous world but it was still better than using cliffs to climb over.

The reason the caravans needed guards was simply because of the mountains being populated by monsters. We were honestly in danger of attack the whole time. There were some goblin bandits that lived here. But unlike the goblins I fought before these ones weren’t green but brown and they also had a few hobgoblins amongst them which are pretty much a larger, stronger and ,albeit slightly, smarter goblin. Between them, the horned wolves and the trolls I’d say we would make it just fine.

The other guards seemed to be having a bit of trouble but I was fine. At this point I had learned to use the normal versions of the elements already so I pretended to be a strong fire mage. I still used chantless incantation though. Didn’t feel like that was worth hiding.

It was going well. We only had a few casualties as I was trying to make sure enough people remained for the caravan master to feel like we don’t have to turn back. Morale wasn’t at an all-time high but it wasn’t particularly low as we were getting close. And after about a week we made it off the mountain. Everyone sighed from relief when we finally made it out into the Beastlands as if the most difficult thing wasn’t coming up only now.

And as everyone relaxed an arrow flew through the air and pierced the leather helmet of one of the guards prompting another to scream.

“AMBUSH!”