We decided to leave by the end of the week.

We would sell Albert’s house and use that money to buy some gems as my mana source for the road. I explained to them that I was a warrior mage; seemed to be the best explanation. And because of a nasty curse, I could switch between the bodies of a guy and a woman and in rare cases, a monster that could kill anyone on sight; this was the longshot explanation I gave the guild and they just believed me.

Weird people. They even gave me some promotions. I was no longer a F ranked adventurer but rather a D ranked one.

“I wish I had to authority to make you C rank, but I don’t,” the branch master said. “But good luck. And if you ever decide to retire, please consider living here with us; and become an instructor. We would happily welcome you back.”

“Thanks. I’ll consider that.” Once I’m dead.

There was a lot of us. Like, a lot of us!

So, we had to take on four carriages. There were no stagecoaches for the border lands, so we had to buy the damn carriages and horses and all that cost a lot of money. Money, I didn’t have and had to make. So, operation buy some gems didn’t really work out as I wanted it to.

I didn’t hold back though. I made a bunch of fake (that wasn’t fake) money and bought a lot of gems and recovered my mana and kept going at it. I was making roughly 10% profit every hour and after a long day of work and nearly screwing up my head with constant MP drainage, I was able to save up enough money to buy the carriages and have some backup stones.

I even bought some Manatite crystals which weren’t as expensive as I thought they were. If only they were as efficient as gems though.

Anyway, I learned some very important lessons due to this venture. One of which was, even if I was refilling my MP, I couldn’t get rid of the headache resulting from the lack of it. I almost always got migraines of sort whenever I neared the bottom 10% of my mana. And it just didn’t go away for hours! I’d tried switching to a slime body to mitigate that and although that did work to a certain degree, I still felt uncomfortable and the moment I switched bodies, the pain was back!

The guards at the gates stopped us and bid us farewell. They were surprisingly a nice bunch.

“What creatures have strong mental capabilities?” I asked.

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If I wanted to keep doing this, I needed better bodies. Human bodies weren’t working. Elven bodies were too damn weak. And goblins lacked any real intelligence, so even with me in there, I couldn’t do much thinking. Heck, I had way less MP as a goblin than human.

“Mental cappa…” Sen paused. “Do you mean intelligence?”

We crossed a short forest path, and then there were fields for miles! I saw maybe one or two houses, or trees in the distance but nothing more.

“Yeah?”

“I know some dragonborn in the north who claim to be the wisest in the land.”

Dragonborn? The people who descended from dragons!?

“North?” Well, that sucked. We were headed northeast.

“I mean, we could always take a detour in case you want to meet them,” Sen said.

Sen, Josie, me and Zina were in one carriage. The rest of the group were behind us, in their respective carriages. Zina happened to be driving while Josie, sleeping.

“Meet them? I want to eat them,” I said.

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Sen said. “They are backed by a lot of powerful individuals.”

“Stronger than me?”

“Stronger than you.”

“Tell me more.”

Sen started off with a bedtime story about strong warriors rescuing a princess from an evil castle. Seven heroes, one princess.

The princess being grateful to the seven heroes, married them all and had 1 child with each of them. All of these seven children were said to be heroes in their own right and their children became the heroes of the next generation. These individuals were powerful and possessed enough strength to trample armies and conquer countries but they almost always were on the side of good. And some of them were backing up the dragon people.

“How’d you know she was having everyone’s kid? I mean, she could have just loved one man and had all his kids while lying about it to the others,” I said.

Sen shrugged. “There’s actually another story about how she cheated the heroes with an orc and had a half orc demon.”

“There you go,” I said. “Women like that are bound to be that type.”

“What? When men have multiple wives, they’re all good. But women can’t have multiple men without being a whore?”

Fair argument. But- “If I get a woman pregnant, what’s the worst thing that can happen to me?”

“You’ll have to take responsibility or you’ll be prosecuted by the state magistrate.” Or I could just head to the mart to get some milk.

“Right,” I said. “What about you. If you get pregnant while fooling around and the man doesn’t take responsibility, what’s the worst thing that can happen?”

“I’ll… have to raise the baby on my own.”

“Exactly. And while carrying the baby, you’re at risk, constantly in danger. You can’t fight, you can’t even stay indoors in comfort. Having the baby is also a major drag, and some women just die from the pain. But you know that. What I’m trying to get at is, woman have way more to lose from a polygamous marriage than men. If you’re pregnant and in the later stages, you can’t have sex with any of your husbands and they might seek other company,” I said. “Besides, not all men prefer Harems. Some, if not most prefer a single partner who understands them and cares for them, instead of collecting women like sex toys.”

Sen didn’t say anything. It felt like she had something to say but she chose not to say it. Which was good because we had company.

Some king goblins were headed this way.

Two. I guess the third one died.