Once I am the king, ordering them to stop fighting will be easy enough, but that isn't enough. If I don't find and fix the underlying cause of the enmity then it will come back as soon as I turn my back. I don't want to waste people and time dealing with the same issues over and over.

Especially since I am well aware that a lack of patience is one of my faults. If I have to deal with the same issues multiple times I am likely to snap and kill people. I need to be sure to find someone really patient to handle things like that for me.

In fact I need to find a lot of people that I can trust and so far I feel Knarra is one. He seems patient and appears to have a good hold on his temper, more than me anyway. I also feel that he is honest and will tell me things straight out whether I want to hear them or not.

It is a little soon to make a decision, but I will keep him in mind for later on. I will also see about keeping an eye on him and his people to see if he was in fact being honest. Although, that is going to be hard since I don't have any spies or an information network.

When I see Pol next I will have to talk to him about setting something up. He may already have something for the merchant activities that we can build on. Then again he might not, but I am confident in his ability to build a network from scratch if need be.

The only problem is if he is going to have time with all the work I have piled on him. I can't just keep piling things on him, I need to find him some assistants or something. While I am at it I should probably assign him and Annya permanent bodyguards.

He is going to be making a lot of enemies among the merchants of the Free Union and Pine isn't the only one who can hire assassins. Since he is going to be making enemies on my behalf I should make sure he is protected. Besides, I would be crushed if something happened to Pol or Annya, and Myria would probably kill me.

When I sense people moving around I exit my meditation, get up, and stretch. Then I start handing out breakfast to the tribesmen and for once the smell doesn't wake up Asuna. That is until I take out my own breakfast, the smell of it wakes up Asuna.

Lizzy sleeps through the smell of food, but not through Asuna climbing over her to get out of the nest. Seeing Lizzy is a little grumpy at how she was woken up I quickly pull out some breakfast for the two of them. Luckily, Lizzy soon forgets that she is mad at Asuna as she gobbles down her food.

While they are eating their second helping I go say goodbye to Knarra. Despite only sleeping for a few hours Knarra is awake and getting his people ready to move. As we are talking I notice some smoke above the hills to the north of the camp.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Knarra, what's over there?"

Knarra looks north and says "There is an outcast village over there."

"Alright, thanks. Travel safely!"

Knarra says "You too! I hope you find the heart you need!"

"Thanks! Lizzy, you ready to go?"

Lizzy says "Yeah, let's go find some foxes!"

"Actually, not yet. We are heading north to see what the smoke is."

Lizzy says "That's the opposite direction! You and your curiosity again!"

"There is an outcast village over there, they might be in trouble!"

Lizzy says "Alright, alright! Let's go take a look!"

So I climb on Lizzy's back and Asuna grabs her tail after making her sled. Then Lizzy takes off at top speed heading north, with Asuna behind her holding on for dear life. Despite her teasing it would seem Lizzy took me seriously, she is running at combat speed.

It only takes about fifteen minutes for Lizzy to reach the highest point of the hills. Then we can see the source of the smoke, several buildings in the village are on fire. The village is under attack by several hundred humans, a large scale slave raid from the looks of it.

Lizzy doesn't even break stride as she heads down the hill towards the attacking army. It will still take us a few minutes to reach the fight, even at Lizzy's combat speed. Using combat speed for so long is going to leave Lizzy exhausted, but it is worth it.

"Asuna, are you good to fight? If not, just stay back."

Asuna says "It's fine, daddy, they are only humans!"

"Just be careful! Don't ever underestimate your enemy!"

Asuna says "Okay, daddy, I will be careful!"

As we charge down the hill Asuna creates five snowballs that start rolling along on either side of Lizzy. Luckily, we are heading downhill so the snowballs keep up with us and grow as they go. When they hit the humans they will cause confusion but not much more than that.

At least that is what I think, but that is not what Asuna has in mind, right before they hit she turns them into solid ice. Five huge balls of ice crashing into the troops does quite a bit of damage. Then Lizzy hits them and the snow quickly turns red as she rips apart every human she can reach.

The humans have the village surrounded, but other than the houses that are on fire the beastmen are doing a good job of holding them back. When we hit the humans on the southern side of the village we instantly create a hole in their lines. I jump off Lizzy's back, drawing Blitz as I do, and start cutting down the humans.

Lizzy turns the opposite direction from me and continues to massacre the humans. Asuna starts throwing razor sharp icicles, one from each tail, like a machine gun. While her accuracy isn't very high she makes up for it in volume, and when she hits a human they go down.

To be honest, I wasn't even expecting that much from her, so I am pleasantly surprised. This method of attacking is something I haven't seen from her before, she must have come up with it while I was away. Even if she isn't killing many of the humans, she is making them duck and look for cover.

The beastmen fighting the humans take advantage of them being distracted. So Asuna is indirectly causing a lot of human deaths, and I am glad to see she is being careful not to hit any beastmen. Since she is fighting at range I don't need to worry about her and can focus on killing the humans in front of me.

Not that I really need to, their weapons are just bouncing off my armor. As soon as some beastmen are freed up by us killing their enemies they move to other areas to support their comrades. I easily spot the beastmen wearing my uniform, they are spread out all around the village.