The trip that had taken Moriko about a day at a full run was taking much longer by merchant caravan. It could be worse, Ricardo’s wagons were designed to optimize a ratio of strength and weight and he had large, sturdy draft horses instead of donkeys, but the cargo was what weighed the most and even well-built wagons could only go so fast without causing damage to the frame.
There were at least a dozen sorts of vehicles that were faster in some way, even dwarven clockwork wagons and elvish airships if one was able to pay for them, but Ricardo was obviously a savvy businessman so if he didn’t use them there was probably a good reason. She guessed that the increased speed of travel did not offset the cost and upkeep, especially for the options that had significantly less cargo room.
It didn’t seem important enough to bring up in conversation, and Moriko felt she might not want to ask too much anyway. The lead wagon, Ricardo’s personal vehicle, was reinforced and smaller than the others, but had the largest ‘horses’. Moriko did not believe for a moment that the paired black and white creatures were actual horses. She wasn’t quite certain what they actually were, and their true forms were probably horse-like, but her instincts were telling her that both of them were smarter and far more dangerous than they appeared. There was a sensation of restrained malignancy from the black one especially, and she couldn’t imagine her father-in-law wasn’t aware of it. She was equally certain she didn’t want to know how he’d gotten such a creature to work for him, especially in such a humble guise as a draft horse.
She did get to know him a little better on the trip, he was quite a witty conversationalist and rather well-traveled with an endless pool of stories. It was also entertaining to watch him stumble over breaking his flirting habits. Moriko had usually flirted as part of the dance, but Ricardo had flirted as a cover rather than carrying through. So if she wasn’t pursuing that particular dance it was easy to not flirt, while Ricardo was breaking twenty years of habit. He didn’t flirt with her at all, which she appreciated as his daughter’s wife, but it was clear that he was used to flirting with several of the women in the caravan, the same ones who had been Akahana's informants, and that Moriko had made sure to get to know and inform that Ricardo’s cover was entirely blown. Who were therefore taking advantage of the situation to torment the man by acting outrageously flirty when they had been amusedly tolerant before. But that particular entertainment was mostly an evening activity.
During the day Moriko worked on finding the balance between her self-training regimen and her new focus of trying to help others find or pursue their passions. And the base of that path was surprisingly straightforward: talk to people and actually listen to whatever they chose to talk about. Which wasn’t the same as saying it was easy. Moriko liked people well enough, but she usually chose to talk to someone about specific things. Opening up a conversation to try and encourage someone else to talk about what they wanted in life, well, that was tricky, and often took time to build up to.
Once people were willing to talk about their dreams, the next step (according to the notes her master had given her) was to ask questions about their goals while being encouraging. Ideally, you find a way to ask questions that let them find their way forward. If there is an obstacle, what would it take to overcome that obstacle? How would one gain the skill or item or whatever to be able to overcome that obstacle? How hard is that to do? Etc. The exact questions varied of course, but that was the general idea.
Beyond that one could start to be more direct, offering suggestions, guidance, or training. This was still helping them find a way to move forward to pursue their passions.
There were also certain things that seemed helpful but would generally turn out poorly. An avid collector of art who truly appreciates a particular type of pottery might seem well served by gifting them a collection if it is within one’s means. In truth, this can often sour the experience of finding and collecting the pieces or working to collect information and hire proxies to find it for you. Oh, rare small gifts for someone close to you are usually fine, but the steady gathering and building of a collection was part of the pleasure.
The notes held more tips and information than that of course, but that was the gist of it. And while Moriko wandered the length of the caravan to socialize in pursuit of figuring out who might be able to use her help she also did her best to keep up her chi training as well. Mostly this consisted of trying to hold a particular chi flow active for as long as she could, even when not doing anything with it. It was a new sort of difficulty, and not what she would consider efficient training normally, but unlike deep meditation or physical training, it was relatively easy to do while conversing with people.
She still made sure to take an hour or so each evening to maintain a training routine, but this was a lot less than she might have done otherwise. Before she would have been more inclined to spend the caravan’s travel time either meditating in a wagon or pushing herself with some physical activity that would then require her to catch up/pass the caravan before starting the next set. Part of her mind rebelled at this loss of time, but Moriko was also finding how much she was enjoying trying to help people just by talking and listening to them. And as much as Sakiya did promote pursuing one’s joys there were limits that started to become selfish. The monk was beginning to think she might have been a little self-indulgent at times, though not terribly so.
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Bellona’s caravan was not having such a peaceful time as Moriko’s. The orc champion pulled her axe out of a monster’s skull with a grunt and then looked around the battlefield to see who might need her help. Fortunately, this attack seemed over for the moment so she could focus on healing instead of fighting.
None of the merchants had been badly hurt, and the other warriors and guards hadn’t been hurt bad enough that some medical care or a spell-prayer couldn’t fix them up. When she was certain everyone was okay at the moment she climbed atop the tallest wagon and took a deep breath.
“Listen up!” Her voice carried clearly over the other noises and every head turned toward her. “You are going to have to make a choice shortly, and there aren’t a lot of options. I am going to be doing my duty and tracking down the spawning grounds of these beasts. You can either make camp early and free more people to join me, or you can continue on your way and those not under a contract can decide whether or not to join me. You have until I have cleaned up and collected my kit to decide. I am not going to debate anything, it’s not my choice to make for you and I already know what I am doing.”
She didn’t wait for any responses before she jumped down and went to the wagon where her gear was stashed. Getting blood and gore off was the first part of maintaining weapons and armor so she hastened to do that before breaking out her full armor and traveling kit and began changing.
No place in this world was perfectly safe from monster spawns, though they very rarely happened near major cities. She didn’t understand the details of how they happened and had nearly fallen asleep the one time an arcanist had tried to explain it to her, but she got the gist. Magic energy flowed around the world in unseen currents, and sometimes enough somehow gathered at one point that random crap happened. Sometimes that crap was to spawn monsters.
As for this recent batch, she had no idea what they were supposed to be. Their primary appearance was that of a wolf, but they also had vaguely bat-like wings and some strange tentacles growing in a ring around their necks. They didn’t strike her as a very balanced creature and they had been extremely aggressive against a group of armed people so she suspected that they were the first generation of something new. Especially since they’d been crap at flying, the best she’d seen was wing-powered jumps.
When she was done, Bellona climbed back out of the wagon to start arranging some of her gear on her horse. Even if they were staying put nearby there were certain things she wanted with her and she was going to ride on this hunt. At the very least it gave her a better vantage and the ability to chase down anything that fled.
With her preparations complete she went to find the caravan master who was talking with some of the other merchants. “So what’s the decision?” Normally she’d be more polite but this wasn’t the time to be dawdling.
“We’ve decided to find a camp nearby and wait. Some of the guards have to stay of course, but we agree that taking care of this problem efficiently is the best choice.” The man responded. Not all of the gathered merchants looked happy with this, but the caravan master’s tone was firm.
“Excellent. I thank you for your assistance in this matter, and will note it in my report.” Which was probably something he was hoping for, but that was fair enough. This was going to delay their business and might cost them money. “Hopefully you have some people who can also skin and prep bodies. I recommend burning anything that can’t be harvested, we don’t know if the meat is toxic and those tentacles are weird. Just make sure the fire is downwind from the camp.” With that said, she tilted her head back and breathed deep again to shout, “Everyone joining me, gather at the back of the caravan!”
Once her volunteers were assembled Bellona laid out the rules. “I don’t know who's done this before, so here’s how it goes. These are highly aggressive beasts, so we will be hunting down every adult and near adult. If possible, cubs will be subdued and captured so that they can be evaluated, we don’t know if this breed will stabilize into a predator that knows to stay away from civilization or not. That said, your life is more valuable than a living specimen, so be careful. Are there any questions?”
When there were none, Bellona nodded in satisfaction. “Alright, double-check your gear and then we head out. Who has scouting experience?”
While Amirume’s domains included civilization and culture, her sister’s domains balanced that by including nature and wilderness. This was part of that balance, even with new monsters. They were going to try to not wipe these aggressive predators out if they did not need to be completely culled, but that was going to take some work to figure out. And even if they did kill all the cubs, now that the concept existed it would tend to ‘stick’ and had a chance to be copied during another spawning. It was better to try and breed a less aggressive variant to release into the wild as this would tend to adjust the nature of any fresh spawns of the species.