After traveling for around thirty minutes, Lee opened the covering flap that led to the driver's seat of the wagon.

“Kooco… Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

Kooco fanned her wings as she sat in the driver's seat. The reins of the two horses held in her tiny beak. Without taking her eyes off the winding dirt road, she responded.

“Of course, friend Lee Barnes! Kooco knows!”

Lee stared at Kooco for another few seconds with doubt before he shut the flap and sat back down.

Looking around the wagon, it seemed to Lee that the others with him were afraid to speak up. They awkwardly glanced around or just let out little coughs. They shifted in their seats and ignored Lee’s very presence. This was not something he wanted to deal with, so he decided to try and break the ice.

“So… I’m sorry you all had to leave your post at The Wall. I know what it’s like to be torn away from your place and thrust into another. What can you tell me about the kingdom?”

Meriah looked to Jeremy, Jeremy looked to Belgrate, and Belgrate started to look to Kendri but quickly gave up on that idea. Realizing that he was the odd man out, he let out a slight cough to clear his throat, then started to talk.

“Well, Sir Genesis, worker of Mira….”

Lee quickly waved a hand and cut him off.

“None of that. Just call me Lee. It’s not like I have any titles.”

Belgrate and Jeremy both looked at him like he was a dullard, but their faces quickly changed to ones of confusion. They no longer had any instinctual insight into Lee’s titles, as he had just turned them off.

Lee could see the gears in Jeremy’s head turning, but before he could ask the question Lee knew would eventually be asked, Lee spoke to Belgrate first.

“Please, continue.”

Belgrate seemed to read the mood of the wagon and just continued on as if nothing had changed.

“Well, the kingdom is nice.”

Lee waited for him to continue, but after a few seconds of silence, he realized that was all Belgrate had to say. Exasperated, Lee looked at the others in askance. When none of them spoke up, he just flopped back in his seat.

“Kooco said the nearest village was a few hours away. I’m not traveling a few hours with this awkward silence; someone say something, please. I’m just a guy traveling about.”

He scanned the wagon once more, then decided to point out Jeremy, who seemed to be the most willing to speak.

“Jeremy, you’re a noble, correct?”

He nodded as he sat up a bit straighter in the slightly shaking wagon.

“Your father is the lord of Felispar? Is that a large city?”

This line of questioning knocked Jeremy out of whatever funk he was in as he started talking with confidence.

“My father, Jeremiah Blight, is the lord of Felispar. It is indeed a city, but not as large as some others. It’s located up north along the River Fel and the Evergrand mountain range. Being at the bottom of the Evergrand makes it a secure defensive location, and being near the River Fel makes trade simple.”

Lee smiled, glad to have a conversation starting.

“There are mountain ranges in Thexis?” Lee asked.

Instead of Jeremy, Meriah responded—Meekly and unsure of herself.

“There is a chain of mountains to the north. My mother used to tell me about the view from up high. Apparently, on the other side lies an ocean. From up high upon the mountains, you can see hundreds of miles.”

Smiling, Lee nodded along.

“How far away are the Evergrand mountains? Say, if we took this wagon?”

Jeremy smiled ruefully and shook his head; he turned in his seat to face Lee fully, now more invested in the conversation.

“This wagon would take us weeks at the best, likely more than a month. And that’s just nonstop travel. Accounting for resting in nearby cities or towns, more likely two months.”

Lee tried to imagine how far a horsedrawn wagon could travel in two months on Earth. They were not traveling fast at all; they needed to feed the horses and let them rest so they could travel maybe twenty miles a day. Doing some quick mental math, with no interruptions and moving at twenty miles a day on average, thirty days would end up being six hundred miles.

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That sounded like a lot, but Lee vividly remembered vacations as a kid, taking a sixteen-hour drive to travel a thousand miles. His parents never wanted to buy a plane ticket and deal with the hassle. Lee shook his head from the fond memories.

“And on the other side of Thexis is the Kingdom of Bardum? Out far to the west, if I remember?”

At the mention of Bardum, all but Kendri dropped their smiles. Kendri was only smiling because he was asleep, having passed out from drinking as soon as they started their trip. Lee was going to give him a rude awakening later on.

Jeremy was the one to speak. Just from watching, Lee could tell they were withholding information from him.

“That’s correct.”

Lee raised an eyebrow in askance.

“And? How is Bardum? Have you ever been?”

Jeremy and Meriah shared a look, and eventually, Jeremy let loose a held in breath.

“I have never been. We are currently at war.”

That was something Lee would have liked to know. Lee looked at their uniforms and came to a conclusion,

“As part of the army, I assume you wanted to join the war front?”

Jeremy spoke. “As a noble, I am required by law to join the kingdom's forces for a period of two years. I would appreciate the opportunity to prove myself, but it seems that I was more suited to watching The Wall.”

Meriah added in. “I joined because once my enlistment is over, I’ll get ten gold.”

Lee looked at Meriah as she shoved her glasses back up her nose.

“I don’t mean to come off as an ass, but ten gold doesn’t seem like it’s a lot of money, at least, from what I understand. Maybe prices and currency are different here?” Lee asked.

Meriah seemed a little embarrassed, but she answered anyway.

“It might not be a lot for you, but for me, that’s several years' worth of work. I’ll be able to buy a nice house and be safe.” When she finished, she got a far-off look into her eyes.

Lee looked to Jeremy to see if he had anything to share. Seeing his look, he added on.

“Ten gold is a good amount of money. You must remember that the kingdom is paying out ten gold to thousands of people; we can’t afford to pay each member more.”

Thinking back to his time in Neldam, Lee remembered Neia had explained that a gold coin was worth a fancy set of clothes, probably those for a noble in the human lands, or a night out for a meal in a top-end restaurant.

Leaning in closer to Jeremy as Meriah stared off into the distance, Lee spoke quietly.

“Can she afford a home for ten gold coins? That seems… unlikely to me.”

Jeremy glanced at Meriah quickly before he answered.

“A small abode, perhaps. Nothing in a city, that’s for sure.”

A tap on his shoulder stopped Lee from thinking deeply about the worth of gold. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the large oval eyes of Kooco staring back at him from mere inches away. He jumped and stared back.

“Can I help you Kooco? Wait… Who’s driving?”

Kooco stared deeply into Lee’s eyes for a few seconds before she chirped.

“The horses are still taking us where we need to go! They’re smart. Very well trained. Very well.”

Kooco looked at Meriah for a moment, then turned back to Lee. In the eyes of Kooco, he saw no childlike innocence, no happiness or glee, just a blank observance. It was offputting.

“Friend Lee Barnes, become friend of Meriah Camp. I ask this of you because we are friends.”

It was asked in such a solemn tone that Lee was unsure of himself. Glancing over at Jeremy, he just looked weirded out. Looking back to Kooco, Lee spoke seriously.

“I’m willing to be her friend, but friendships aren’t as easy to build as you think they are. I’m open to the idea at least.”

Kooco stood stock still in the shaking wagon, then adopted a big smile with her beak and playful eyes.

“That’s good! Very good.” Kooco patted Lee on the head with her wing before turning around and leaving through the flap leading to the driver's seat.

“So, I have to ask, how do you speak bird?” Belgrate asked.

Lee shrugged. “I have my ways. Does it sound like I’m a bird when I speak to her?”

Belgrate nodded, then seemed like he was dying to ask a question. “Yeah. It’s all tweets and chirps. Is it some kind of spell? Can you cast magic?”

Lee chuckled at the sight of a grown man geeking out over magic. Something he himself would have done if his arrival on Pallesia wasn’t so rough.

“It’s a type of magic, I suppose. I can indeed cast magic. Even expert-tier magic!”

At the proclamation of expert-tier magic, Lee heard Jeremy legitimately scoff. The most cliche noblelike thing Lee had seen from the man since they’d met.

Lee saw that Jeremy didn’t believe him whatsoever,

“Kooco! Stop the wagon for a moment!”

A moment later, the shaking of the wagon trailed off as it stopped. Lee hopped out the back and walked around fifty feet away. Turning around, he could spot both horses, Kooco, and all the others, minus Kendri, watching him. He gave a gentle wave, then cast Glacial Cascade.

The eruption of glacial frost created a shockwave of pale white-blue mana, freezing solid every single thing it touched all around him for thirty feet. The slightly swaying grass was flash frozen mid-sway, and the dirt beneath his feet instantly cracked, creating tiny little fissures in the earth.

Lee looked up and saw the dropped jaws. The horses even had dropped their jaws, letting their wound-up thorny tongues flop forward out of their mouths. The one person unsurprised was Kooco, who just inspected the frozen landscape with excitement.

Lee walked back to the wagon and, as he was climbing in the back, recited something from his memory.

“Expert-tier Glacial magic, courtesy of Dark Elf Neia Sindris of Neldam, from the Shadowgrove Forest. Kooco, carry on!”

He sat in his seat with a giant grin as everybody settled in for the rest of their trip. It slowly fell off his face as it seemed that all the ice-breaking he managed earlier fell away. Jeremy sat ramrod straight in his seat, unwilling to even glance in Lee’s general direction. Meriah wouldn’t pry her eyes off Lee, in fear that she would miss the moment she died, Belgrate shifted nervously in his seat, and Kendri was still asleep.

Sighing, Lee had a thought.

Ice breaking the road, broke the ice breaking in the wagon.