The following morning Ajax woke up early from one of the most restless nights he had in a while. He still wasn’t sure what to do about his grandparents and the connection they represented with the Open Plains Trading Company. In the morning his mother made no more reference to what she said last night and didn’t act any differently but if her bloodshot eyes were any indication she didn’t get much sleep last night.

The morning passed by in a blur as he said a quick final goodbye to everyone before he left with Hatched while pulling a small cart filled with all their luggage. Both him and Hatchet walked in a comfortable silence, neither feeling the need to make awkward conversation after their years as teacher and student.

“Ajax, you made it.” Bobby greeted him as they arrived at the caravan. “Who’s the old man?”

Ajax and the Collectors had made travel plans together even after they went their separate ways after their final dungeon run. As of now Ajax was a solo adventurer and no longer registered as a member of the collectors with the guild.

“This is Hatchet,” Ajax said as he started loading their packs. “He was my teacher back in the village.”

Ajax didn’t want to say any more, he knew that Hatchet was fairly convinced his friend in the capital would help him regrow his lost arm but it wasn’t for him to share.

“Bobby, nice to meet you.” the big man said, offering his hand. “You did a hell of a job with Ajax here.”

“Nice to meet you.” Hatchet responded.

“Hey, I’m not paying for you to stand around and talk, get everything put away and we can get moving.” a short rotund man shouted at them.

This was the biggest difference between Ajax and the Collectors right now. When Ajax and Hatchet got their passage on the caravan by simply being adventurers, the Collectors took a job to offer them protection for the journey.

Ajax didn’t know why they would bother with a job that would pay so little. Considering that almost all adventurers were given free passage with any caravan for one simple fact : that they would provide protection if they were attacked, not out of any duty but because the attackers would not ignore them.

“How come you took the job defending them?” Ajax asked Nelly once they finished loading everything and the caravan got moving.

“Tristan” she said, pointing to a young man that resembled her. “He doesn’t have many missions completed with the guild, and no protection ones at all. This one will be good for his record now that we are moving.”

Ajax frowned a little at the news. He hadn’t thought about that when he made his travel plans, after all while he did have quite a number of missions completed with the Collectors all of them were Dungeon related.

“You don’t have to worry about that kid.” Hatchet said he was one of the few people who still referred to Ajax as ‘kid’. “You’re not a healer so your mission escorting people through the Dungeon’s second floor is so much more impressive that doing another mission like this won’t matter.”

“He’s right,” Nelly nodded. “Especially if you are willing to advertise that you can do some healing on the side.”

Despite having whispered the last part, Hatchet was a former scout and his Perception was high enough to have heard it. He was mildly surprised at the news, he knew it would be a possibility considering that Kate was a healer and Ajax had access to his mana but he didn’t expect he picked up enough to be useful in just a few months. At least not with how often he went to the dungeon.

The first few days of the trip weren’t that bad. The reason why Ajax chose this caravan specifically was that it was one that moved at a higher speed, a normal caravan would make the trip from Lessis to the capital in a little over two months whereas they would do it in three weeks.The boredom was however starting to get to him.

For the first few days he talked a little with Tristan, despite the man being close to thirty years old he was quite a bit younger than everyone else in the Collectors and he was just starting out as an adventurer so he had quite a bit in common with Ajax. Tristan was very excited after his first dungeon run despite having contributed little, as a healer he was mostly there in case things went bad.

Jones was the other person who spent quite a bit more than usual talking to Ajax. More than anyone else on the team, besides maybe Nelly, he had watched Ajax’s growth over the last few months. He was sure that he had outgrown their team, if only just, and was looking to keep a good relationship with a future powerhouse.

Unlike in Lessis the capital had a wide enough range in the power of adventurers that delegating missions was very wide spread. Certain jobs would have tasks that didn’t require a person of the level contracted to handle and they would have weaker teams do them for a cut. Jones was hoping to have the Collectors become one of Ajax's go to teams in a few years.

Having run out of topics to talk about and with his mana sitting at a little under half after finishing his mana training Ajax finally decided to study the map his mother got him. It would be a long journey and he had been planning to leave learning about the nobility boundary lines for later but he had nothing better to do.

As he spread open the map and took a closer look at the capital a few things stood out to him. First all the major roads and quite a bit around them were the property of the royal family. He suspected this was done for military reasons, he was also wrong as the roads all belonged to the royal family to ensure that no other nobles put extreme taxes on traveling merchants.

The other thing that stood out to him was how almost every Marquis Duke and Archduke seemed to have a small plot of land no bigger than his village somewhere around the capital. This was the land for the mansions these families had. He had learnt through reading that this was done to ensure each noble could have the rules governing their territory apply there.

The next thing he noticed was the sheer volume of noble families that existed in the kingdom. His history from Earth led him to believe that in medieval times there were very few nobles, this was very much not the case here with multiple families having access and ruling over the same territories, each with a specific family nominated by the royals as being currently in charge.

What Ajax didn’t know was that this world had one issue stopping it from following in Earth footsteps when it came to noble families wiping each other out as they took over territory. This was that the strong and talented people would reach higher levels and as such live longer. With the best and brightest of each family living longer it made wiping out one another much more difficult and a new system was needed. In Gryndor this took the form of royal family nomination.

After a few hours of studying the map and doing his best to memorize names, locations and house sigils Ajax felt a headache coming on. The sheer number and minute differences in sigils made learning this a real pain. Knowing the importance of this knowledge however Ajax was determined to set aside a few hours each day for the reminder of the journey to study.

The first two weeks of the trip passed without anything of note happening. They would frequently run into wild animals and monsters but the highest they encountered was a single level fifty that resembled a rhino at the end of the first week. The beast had some power but was quickly brought down without much effort.

When Ajax asked why they didn’t encounter anything else like that or something stronger he was quickly informed that the royal family had soldiers patrol the roads to ensure safe passage. They had in fact met one such group a few days after and the merchants had quickly taken the opportunity to try making a quick sale.

Everything seemed to take a turn for the worse as they approached the city of Lordin. It was their last stop before they would arrive at the capital.