I turned as many of the bodies into shadowsoul undead as I could, bolstering my army to a total of 120 shadowsouls. The rest of the corpses were too damaged to use so I just burnt them. like I was originally supposed to do.The equipment on the bodies was taken by the elder to be repaired and given to the villagers so they can arm themselves in case of another attack. The unfortunate thing was that most of the armour had been rendered useless and was there for just put into storage bags to be sold in the future.

We had finished clearing the damage of the battle and disarmed any remaining traps that weren't triggered. Wouldn't want an unfortunate hunter to set an unused trap off and die now would we? That process took a short amount of time and after that there wasn't much left to do. The moon elves reinforced the walls once more and taught those villagers who didn't know how to use the weapons. It took a few days but the villagers were roughly able to hold and swing a weapon now without killing themselves. The rest of the teaching was to be left to the hunters in the village. The elder even left a book on swordsmanship for the village head and then we set off once more, to our destination of Modran.

~~~

"That small side trip took so much time. I didn't expect that bandit camp raid to take this long." Said Ronia.

I heard Herald laugh as he walked and said "Yeah, I know right? It feels like this side trip as you call it, took more time than our actual time fleeing from the church." Herald stopped speaking for a moment, as if realizing something and then spoke up. "Speaking of which, what about the church? The Retributionist cast some mark of light spell on zane didn't he? Wonder what it does."

That made me pause for a moment. Shit he marked earlier. Thats not good. "The mark is going to cause some trouble if we don't find a way to remove it. Its going to be a pain to stay in the city of I have that mark on me."

Herald turned to me and asked "What does that mark even do? I've never heard of any priest using it and that was my first time meeting a Retributionist so I'm a bit curious."

I sighed and then answered Herald by saying "Yeah the mark of light spell marks me with a type of mana so whenever anyone from the church is near me or casts a spell on me, they see chains on me that glow with varying intensity. From what I remember, the brighter the chains the more of a priority target the person is. No one but people affiliated with the church can see the chains though so I just have to avoid any priest when we arrive at Modran."

Ray nodded his head and said "That will be very annoying to deal with. D-did he mark me with it?"

I thought back to when we were fighting and answered Ray with "I don't think so, the Retributionist was focused entirely on me when he was casting the spell but I'm not 100% sure." I saw Ray start to panic and quickly spoke to calm him down. "Don't worry man, we'll get the mark removed from me and from you as well if you have it. We jsut have to be careful when we arrive in Modran. There should be a group of people that can deal with this mark....even though they are annoying as hell to deal with they get the job done." I shivered while thinking of that one guy. He gave me the creeps whenever I met him in the game. Gives me the heebies all over, and most of the jeebies too.

Ronia laughed when she saw me look creeped out and teased me a bit. We kept travelling with that sort of jovial mood. The moon elves around us were also trying to get over the death of one of their comrades. It seemed they were all far closer with eachother than it may seem.

We made good time and within another 2 weeks of rapid travelling, we saw it on the horizon. Modran, the dungeon city. The city was rather massive, with high walls surrounding it and guards patrolling every inch of the walls, leaving nothing on the outside out of sight. There was various magic weapons and even a couple of cannon like objects on the walls. We started to head towards the city and saw there was a huge line to get in.

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"Holy crap thats a large line. Is it always this long?" said one of the moon elves nearby. Another answered and said "Not really, last time I visited this place, there wasn't even half as long a line. Also, arn't like half of the people in line villagers? You don't think they were also attacked by those bandits do you?" I then heard more talking but tuned it out as it started to turn into speculation and random chatter. Everyone got in line and checked where their id cards were. An adventurer's licence worked just fine as id, but a lot of people just got a citizens card, that let them travel anywhere in the kingdom and wasn't nearly as hard to get as an adventurer's license. You couldn't even use your adventurers licence to travel within the kingdom of you were too low rank of an adventure.

After what felt like 2 hours we finally got to the front of the line and the guards looked at the massive amount of moon elves with suspicion. He talked with the elder for quite a while and even then they didn't relent and let us in. They decided to scan each and every single one of us with the massive crystal things to check our status and see if we had commited any crimes. The guards also checked each of our id's thoroughly This wasted another hour of everyones time. I mean I get that a small army of moon elves walking around is suspicious so I understand why they did this, but it didn't mean I wasn't going to be happy about it.

When everyone finally made it inside the city the elder told everyone which inn we were going to be meeting at and said he would look around for a larger residence to rent. He then dismissed us to relax and do whatever we wanted in the city. Everyone started to scatter to different locations. Over half of the moon elves simply went to look for a public bath and then probably a tavern. while the rest went their various ways, chatting away the entire time about various things.

I had asked the others whether they wanted to head with me and Ray to get the marks of light dealt with or would they rather go off on their own and Ronia told me to wait just half an hour so she could take a bath. She also got everyone else to take a bath as well after a lot of convincing. We did smell like garbage after such a long time of travel. The entire time we travelled Ray and I had to keep a sharp eye out for any priests and the like. We fortunately only saw 1 priest who we avoided.

~~~

"I feel alive again!" said Ronia with bliss as she exited the changing room of the public bath. I was glad the public path here only cost 5 copper per person. Some places were rather expensive. I shook my head and focused on the task at hand. I really need to stop getting so damn side tracked. It's not good. I started walking towards a certain tavern while telling the group about the people we were going to meet.

"Alright, these guys specialize in getting around the church and other, not so legal things. Before you ask why the hell I know them and crucify me. I don't want to know them either! It just happened!" I kept talking about various things and people from the tavern, such as the mega drunk who would drink you under the table and not bat an eye, as well as the con artist twins and several other shady characters.

We finally made it to the tavern, the sign above the door was a crown with blood dripping from it with writing under it saying 'The Bleeding Crown'. I took a deep breath and opened the door. The smell of alcohol and various fumes hit me in the face as we walked in. As I expected, that damn drunk was sitting there at the bar, chugging drinks down. I head over to him to quickly deal with the mark but before I made it half way I heard the dreaded words I didn't want to hear.

A womans voice could be heard as she yelled out from across the tavern, saying "Zane! Oi Is that you crownbleeder!? Zane darling it is you!!" I shuddered as I turned to see the woman I dreaded meeting rushing towards me like a mad bull. "H-hi Lisa how-" I was cut off as she tackled me to the ground while chatting away about whatever nonsense she wanted, saying crownbleeder this, crownbleeder that. This caught the attention of various other people in the tavern and some muttered. "Crownbleeder? As in The Crownbleeder?"

"I just wanted to fix a stupid mark of light...why did I have to meet this crazy woman?!" I called out in frustration as she kept me pinned to the ground while talking on in her usua hyper way. It's probably been hundreds of years in this world since we last met so how did she even remember me? Was she that obsessed?! Why does stuff never go according to plan like I want it to?