I had enough supplies to last me, at the very least, a month. Maybe longer if I rationed it, but I didn't see the need to do that just yet. For now, the plan was to make my way from the southern part of the continent where I assumed I was, all the way to the north end. From there, I would travel northeast until I reached the elven continent, where I would do...something. I would cross that bridge when I got there, but for now the priority was travelling quickly and as discreetly as possible.

Being effectively exiled from the continent meant that I had to minimize the chance of encounters with any beastfolk I saw, who would likely mark me as a poacher more than anything else. If any fights had to happen, I didn't want to be the one to start them.

But, that doesn't mean I'm not going to finish them. If the dragons are going so far as to call me an enemy, then can they really blame me if I act like one? Whoever heard of an enemy sparing those that attacked them first? At the very least it would mean more bodies in my little army, which was looking a bit low in numbers. Two thousand was a deceptively small number when it came to available troops.

All the political stuff aside, I would follow the coastline until I reached the primitive port town in the north and try to buy passage on one of the elven ships that occasionally came to trade. The scattered islands around the sea that housed the teleportation formations were probably not an option for me, given that my passage wasn't registered, and they had logs of all upcoming visitors. Well, that, and it was expensive as hell from what I'd heard.

If buying passage aboard any elven ship didn't work, I would have to traverse the sea myself, a daunting task at best. I still hadn't forgotten that gargantuan ocean beast that I witnessed before. That behemoth surely wasn't the only one of its kind, and even if I struggled to imagine what other horrors were lurking in the depths, I had no doubt that they were there. The skies were just as bad, if only because the main threats had all outgrown sleep. Their bodies literally didn't need it anymore due to their sizes. The last option was to attempt to sneak aboard a ship, but that meant possibly making an enemy of elves if I was found, the one race that hadn't marked me as unwelcome. Hence my reluctance.

It was at times like this that a space affinity would be useful. Teleporting would solve all these little logistical problems, and I would be less dependent on other modes of transportation. I could even feel something I suspected was a spatial affinity growing within my soul, but for some reason, it had yet to truly awaken.

I released a small fox into the surroundings, looking through its eyes to make sure there was nothing out of place, before moving myself out beside it. The fox went back in as a six-legged horse came out, ready for me to ride. Thankfully, I'd had the foresight to buy a saddle somewhere, so I was up on the horse in moments and galloping east towards the closest beach at speed.

For a while, things were alright. I was making steady progress and had reached the coast within a week without coming across anything troublesome. A few wild creatures attacked, but a single pulse of essence mixed with my intent to Control made light work of them.

Things changed on my fourth day on the beach.

Barely two hours had passed since I came out of my inventory and saw a sight I wasn't expecting. I had traded my horse for a winged serpent to avoid the sand, and so I was treated to an aerial view of a grand battle. Two tribes of beastfolk were fighting a small legion of voranders, both sides numbering at least a thousand. While the scale was slightly larger than what I had seen in the past, what truly sent me for a loop was the fact that the voranders were fighting in formation.

They never did that. Ever.

The voranders were all some category of semi-aquatic, but the more defensively oriented monsters were at the front lines while those with natural projectiles were in the rear, arcing their attacks towards the beastkin that were fighting. They were still demonstrating the ferocity they were known for, just with much more cohesion than I had ever seen from them before. There were still gaps in their formation that a few well-placed spells could exploit, but these particular beastfolk either lacked such capabilities or were holding their trump card back for some reason. Every beastfolk was capable of performing minor earth and nature magic, but none of them were doing so now, to my surprise.

And then I saw something equally shocking.

Twenty or so beastfolk in the rear began slaughtering their comrades without mercy or hesitation. Cries and screams from the back lines went unnoticed by those in the front, as members of the same tribe began cutting their kin down without any weapons, biting at necks until blood flowed freely, gouging eyes out with their sharpened claws, ripping off arms and breaking bones like it was second nature. And while the massacre in the back went unchecked, those at the front fared no better, as voranders tore them apart with their own ranged support. While the attacked beastkin tried to talk their 'confused' comrades down, it was all in vain, as the number of casualties rose ever higher.

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It was all over within an hour. The beastkin were completely wiped out save for the traitors, while the voranders had lost two hundred at most out of their thousand-plus army. When a small group of the monsters approached the treacherous beastkin, there were no signs of conflict. Instead, they were simply added to the back of the army while the voranders formed a perimeter around the dead beastkin for some unknown reason.

I had a short internal debate on whether or not to intervene, before deciding to just attack the whole group and sort it out later. Even if any dragon somehow was aware of what had just happened, the fact that they did nothing spoke volumes about their new and improved isolationist policy. And if any of them tried to attack me for it later...well, I'd never tried subduing a dragon before.

And Reela didn't count. I didn't actually try to mesmerize her, it just kind of happened.

With the mental conviction that I was doing the right thing, I started attacking from my place in the sky, unleashing lightning blasts on the mostly damp and wet voranders, testing out my new affinity. White lightning streamed from my hands to the monsters on the ground, travelling a few hundred feet in a matter of moments and striking their targets accurately. While they were only paralyzed and not killed, it gave me enough time to rip the blood from their bodies and turn them into nothing more than puddles of blood with bits of burnt meat strewn around.

My strike did not go unnoticed, as the voranders and beastkin turned their heads as one to look at me before they began arranging themselves into a dense circular formation, the more vulnerable members of their group in the middle of the circle while those with natural protections remained on the outside. Those with projectile attacks began launching them at me, but I simply urged my beast higher up, out of the range of their attacks, before raining down more lightning on them.

Their formation made it even easier for me to deal with them, ironically, as the lightning split off and shocked all those who were damp, wet, or standing on the wet sand, which was all of them. Any lightning bolts I threw affected multiple targets at once, stunning them more often than not, leaving me time to try out new affinities. I was curious to test out how well my experience with blood translated to water, and I just happened to have an ocean of the stuff right there for me to use.

Long story short, electricity plus water equals easy fight.

After it was all over, I flew down and inspected the bodies, but couldn't find anything to explain the odd activity I had seen...until I found the first clue. A suspiciously colored claw. While most of the dead beastkin had black claws, one of the traitors had a single claw that was white. And soft. It didn't take too long for me to verify that every corpse on that beach, including the voranders, had some kind of body part that was a very specific and suspicious shade of white. In fact, the only outliers were the ones that were being protected in the middle of the formation.

How the hell have those parasites done so much this fast?

It hadn't been that long since they were first discovered, and in that small span of time, they had not only arrived on the northern continent, they had also somehow multiplied rapidly enough to spread to the other side of the world, infect suitable hosts, and devise strategies to infiltrate their ranks. Maybe the dragons were right to close themselves off.

I still had no idea how the parasites communicated with each other, but knowing about them made it clear that the infected were guarding the dead bodies so they could add to their number. I was a little jealous of that, as I couldn't tame dead things; only those on the verge of life and death would be more susceptible to my taming, but in the end, the target would have to be alive to be eligible. Necromancy was still a ways away for me, or at least it was until another accident occurred.

Seeing as there was nothing else useful, I burned the bodies, courtesy of my new fire affinity, and continued making my way north, on the lookout for more battles. I couldn't just go around indiscriminately taming everything I saw, but if I came across another situation that seemed like it involved the parasites, well, I wouldn't turn down the opportunity.

For better or worse, I never came across any other infected while I slowly made my way north. Winter was just starting to make itself known, but thankfully its effects were blunted in the southern part of the world, mainly manifesting as colder nights and slightly shorter days. My sleeping in the inventory made dealing with the weather negligible, though more than once, strong winds from the ocean blew my mount off its course. I couldn't help but think about how the parasites would act if they managed to infect all the denizens of the sea. They were a major fighting force that were often disregarded, but seeing as the voranders had managed to establish nests in the sea, there was nothing from stopping the parasites from doing the same thing. I could just imagine a scenario where the parasites infected every being on the planet other than the dragons, who were cooped up in their realm. At that point, the world would be well and truly doomed. After all, the dragons were self-appointed protectors of this world, but that protection only extended to threats from outside its bounds. Now that a threat had made its way in, would they still be as passive as they were now, or would they eventually try to reclaim the world from its extraterrestrial invaders?

Regardless of what happened, it had little to do with me. My only goals now were to get to the elven continent, work on some spells for my newest affinities, and maybe visit the Wall if I had time. That place seemed to be the embodiment of the phrase 'no risk, no reward'. Yeah, it was dangerous, but it was also a source of bodies I could tame, one that hadn't run dry for centuries, and that could boost my power quickly and immensely. Of course, I had to be careful not to fall into the trap of overly relying on my tamed. They were an external source of power, one which could die out, be hijacked by a superior mage, or otherwise become unavailable to me. Increasing my own strength was the most reliable, even if it took longer and was harder in comparison.

I stopped my inner monologue once I noticed the coast was finally curving to the left. I had reached the northern coast, and now all I had to do was make my way to the closest port town and hope that an elvish ship was either present or would be soon.