Everyone was busy in the campground. The women continued their cooking while Anna joined them and kept complaining bout their father taking the Grizzly Bear.
Since he kept being interrupted, Anton decided not to enter his Diablo II game system and joined in on the fun. He first arranged the white blanket that would serve as their screen so he didn’t have to set it up later. He then tried to ask the women if they needed help but they just subtly drove him away. He decided to water the horses with mana water and heal them using his auras.
The horses all became very friendly towards him and after indulging the animals, he cleaned everything he could see using his cleaning spells including the animals so now all the horses were all sporting gleaming coats.
He also let Charsi repair the two carriages so after he retrieved them from his inventory, the carriages not only looked new on the surface level, but they were at the peak from inside and out.
Several minutes passed and his father returned with the Grizzly Bear. Devon and Lucas also came back.
“Anton your bear doesn’t seem to run out of stamina. Normally something as huge as this bear wouldn’t have the stamina to run for a long time but your bear didn’t stop running when I told it not to and when we did, it didn’t look tired at all,” Anders said wonderingly.
“Unfortunately, we can’t use something as large as my bear as your mount, Father. Something huge like that would probably cause commotions to any villages, towns, or even cities that we arrive in,” Anton said to his father.
“I know that! I’m not a moron. It’s just a momentary whim of mine. Besides I still prefer riding my dire wolf. The bear, although very powerful is not a comfortable ride. Their bodies are not made for riding since they tend to stand up during battle.”
Anton saw that Devon and Lucas agreed with his father.
“Do you want me to dismiss the bear, Father?”
“No! I want to play with it!” Anna suddenly interrupted.
Anders climbed down from the bear and allowed Anna to ride it but their father gave her an admonishment to not go too deep into the forest, although strictly speaking, there wasn’t anything that could harm her there.
Besides with a Raven and the Grizzly Bear summons with her, Anton would be aware of her location since he did have a connection to his summons.
After several hours, the women were done cooking so they stored all the food they prepared in their spatial items but the majority of them were stored in Anton’s Private Stash inside his Diablo II game.
Before the sun came down, their camp was interrupted by travelers.
“Good evening sirs, can we join your camp?” A man cautiously approached them.
Before anyone could answer the man though, a few people screamed. They were some of the people who accompanied the man who asked if they could join Anton’s group. They were yelling “Monsters!” and Anton realized that they were screaming about the Dire Wolves and the Grizzly Bear.
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The travelers looked like musicians since they had instruments on their backs. They looked like they were about to run but the Anton gave the Dire Wolves command to encircle them. He didn’t want them travelers to leave in misunderstanding possibly causing a quest to be issued to adventurers to hunt monsters in the wood.
Anders tried to pacify the travelers. On a quick count, Anton saw that there were eight of them, four men and four women and they were leading a huge carriage.
“I’m sorry that we scared you. The animals are tamed animals by our wizard. He summoned them for our protection.”
After a few moments explaining the situation, the people seemed to calm down and with urgings from Anders and Nemina, joined them in the camp.
“I really do apologize for scaring you but with the situation right now, we just wanted to make sure that we’re protected while we are on the road. We’re on our way east and were one of the few who ran from Zalnothel,” Nemina said.
“We’ve heard about that. Zalnothel’s currently being besieged by the undead and a lot of people did run.” One of the travelers said.
The travelers said that they were traveling minstrels and were supposed to go towards Zalnothel but since it was currently being besieged, they would stay in Greton for a while. The minstrels introduce themselves but unfortunately, Anders enforced his rule of not watching the TV show while they were with somebody.
Anton’s father did mention that he would relax that rule once they were farther away. They did share their food with the minstrels as a sort of apology for the scare they experienced encountering Anton’s summons but he could see that the minstrel group was still wary of the summons.
Of course, Anton could understand since the summons were truly frightening. After a while though, Anton retrieved his guitar from his inventory and asked to compare notes with the minstrels.
One thing Anton could say was that the traveling musicians were good. All of them had beautiful voices but they were all impressed when Anton belted out one of the old rock ballads from Earth. They were comfortable with him since the musicians thought that he was just a regular youth blessed with the gift of music. When Anders indicated that they had a wizard, they thought that they were referring to Frederick.
After a couple of hours of jamming with the minstrels, Anton's father looked proud at every praise Anton received from the musicians but was flabbergasted when they tried to invite him to join their group.
Anna laughed at their father’s expression when the minstrels enthusiastically invited Anton to join their group.
“My son wouldn’t be able to join you! He will become a merchant like me,” Anders said, which of course was just an excuse.
“Your son has the gift of music! If you let him pursue music, he will become a bard renowned to the world. Kings and queens would clamor to hear his performance!” One of the minstrels, possibly their leader, said.
Anton guessed that belting out a BonJovi song really impressed the traveling minstrels. Everyone in their group gaped though when they heard what the minstrel had said about Anton’s musical talent. He had to admit that his singing was greatly better than his original voice when he was on Earth and he had an inkling that his increased stats were responsible for that.
“Enough about that. I will not leave my family please stop inviting me again. Let’s just continue enjoying music,” Anton said.
For the rest of the evening, before they rested, Anton and the minstrels sang song after song but the musicians kept requesting for Anton to sing since the songs that he was singing were unique and they had never heard them before. Anton had a penchant for singing classic ballads from rock bands and they tend to be songs that needed to be belted out so his voice floated in the forest for a couple of hours.
After that, the minstrels requested a copy of the songs he sang so he wrote one of them as a gift since he enjoyed jamming with the minstrels. This world’s musical notation was highly different though but since the minstrel knew their craft, after several minutes, a copy of Bon Jovi’s Bed of Roses landed on the minstrels’ hands complete with their musical notations and chords.