Well enough waiting, parents just gave the word to move ahead and the patrols are finishing packing. Let's see bedroll, tarps, cutlery, whetstone, mantle, axe, all the survival and camping stuff needed. All the regalia is here and ready, would like to take Eurus but forests are not for horses. On another note Brad and Cade are house sitting to make sure my liege is not running rampant. She is not happy but is compromising by staying at the camp with everyone, thinking about what she will demand I do when I get back to satisfy her, well if I get back. This world is not so kind as the old one and even then it was not a perfect world for people, but I trained as hard as I could and now must rely on it. My stomach is upset and I am rather nervous about this, my palms are so sweaty that if I was not wearing light gloves I would have issues gripping my sword. So this is what soldiers before their first deployment feel like and with how martial this house is I doubt this will be the last time.

I think back to just before when I had been practicing my swordsmanship against larger targets of stone. They were in this case rough mock ups of a large bear and I was taking hits at it with hardening and reinforcement to break off the joints in the arms and legs before a final thrust into the head. As the mass of the bear fell to the ground in a cloud of dust and I walked off to inspect my sword for damage Azalia came by. As I placed my sword back in its scabbard I turned and bowed my head,”My lady Azalia, are you well this day”.

“I see that you are preparing yourself again for battle” she stands somewhat apprehensive before me

“Yes my lady this hunt is important to the safety of the village not to mention my parents want to test me”

“That is so, you will have to head off into the forest hunting some monster”

“Yes my lady, I will admit that it will more than likely be dangerous but I am used to the forest and I will have troops with me. Not even counting the truth there is not a lot that can kill two ex-orichalcum adventurers. Even without their equipment from their active time they will be enough for almost anything. Working together we can prevail against almost anything that could be there and fall back from what we can’t”

“I know but I worry still regardless, you are one of my few true friends and I don’t want to lose anyone”

“I cannot promise but I will come back alive as best as I can”

She fidgets for a second then reaches into her dress belt pouch and pulls out a pocket watch

“Here take my pocketwatch, a charm I guess for your expedition” she is somewhat embarrassed but determined to do this as she looks me in the eye.

“I will treasure it so my lady” I take the pocketwatch and put it in one of the pockets near my heart”

She tries to keep her composure and if it was not someone that has known her for some time then she would have succeeded.

There is the horn time to set off I nod to her and see her back to the area she is staying at. The search groups are patrols with a little over a dozen per group made up of militia and guards but I got the two head servants. The guards are a mix of the new recruits and some vets and the militia is mostly older men who are retired guards. Earlier we set up roughly four zones to be searched along a front and we have the closest edge while the rest are split to other sides of this area. The plan is to slowly move forward and comb the area, we either find what we are looking for or herd the things away. The early scouts thankfully found some more info in the form of tracks, something large is making trails in the forest. Bets are on some sort of large beast judging by the talon marks more than a foot long. This thing is feeding on anything and everything judging by the carrion piles but the scouts haven’t actually found it surprisingly. Apparently the marks are only a week old so it must have moved to another part of the forest nearby.

This forest also called Flielicht forest is a somewhat familiar place since I had to come here for survival lessons. It is a temperate forest and the trees are a mix of oak look-alikes, a new rather smooth and thick barked tree, and a rather larger tree that has alot of lower hanging branches with a type of nut hanging off of it. This thing is called a cracker-ven and as it name includes is very easy to crack and is rather noisy when broken. Makes decent traps for letting you know if someone is coming on a path. Tastes rather dry by itself, clogs the throat but if you mash it up with water makes an ok pancake look alike or just plain mash. Alot of the hunters or nearby loggers grab some to save for later, also is smelly so it masks your scent pretty easily. Of course it smells so you have to be careful. And look some more familiar faces are here, looks like my teachers are going to be the guides. Those were interesting times learning how to set up camps, butchering and cleaning animals, and where to find food and water. Also a little bit on hunting boars with spears and hunting dogs, that was a bit scary but this upcoming is probably going to be worse. MIght have to use that trick with the nuts to make it harder to get found out by animals. Well that bit of escapism later progress has been good if boring

We have marched up to the forest threshold and now is the harder part. There are some trails from loggers and animals but once we get deeper it is hard trekking. The terrain is rough with underbrush aplenty, normally there would be threat of monsters but that does not look to be the case once again. It will be a trek of a few days to get to the farthest planned point while searching, weather is holding up so we should be able to make quick progress hopefully.