Christopher was now ready to resume his travels, since most of the matters were taken care of.
He cared not about the immigration that was happening all around them while they left, Jackcity was relocating, leaving the houses and building behind for some other bandit group to take over, such bases were in the hundreds and the bandits normaly only immigrated for three reasons, first being then winter comes and it gets too cold or when summer comes and it's too hot, second when they are in danger by some subjugation troop comming towards them and lastly because the Bandit king says so.
Of course Christopher could not know which of the three were the reason for this, but neither did he care, he was leaving.
The caravan was once more ready to move, in his carriage were now three people, him, Tris and Tanna.
Riff and Raff were accompanying the two "talented rogue" bodyguards that Tris had recruited.
It might sound to you like it all cost a vast amount of money to do, but in reality for them it wasn't even a drop from their evergrowing capital.
The caravan guards were of course mostly new people, but there were still a few familiar people, whom decided to be recruited again, which included Bertha's and Clint's groups and the couple, whom for some reason had decided to enlist once more instead of going an living their lives.
"Poor Ocland, I heard that he died without even a cause"
The nameless male adventurer said.
"Well a good half of the adventurers died by the caravan's master, but most of them were scum to begin with"
The female retorded.
"If only you weren't so beautiful, we could probably had stayed with the bandits"
The male said teasing her.
"If only you weren't so weak, we would have been fine"
She said giving him a metaphorical Slap in the face.
"You make my heart bleed, I only hope that I'll have the eyes to look strait at you again"
He said seemingly embarashed but mostly jokingly.
"Did you even look at me strait in the eyes, I'm rather sure you don't even know their color, all you see is walking boobs"
She said, insulting him even further.
"But what a pair of wonderful boobs you are"
He said as they begun to kiss.
"So how's the evesdroping, did they do it yet?"
Tris asked Christopher whom was somewhat embarashed having witnessed everything going outside.
The caravan was rather safe, it wasn't strange that during the day they didn't meet a single monster and bandits didn't seem to want to attack a big caravan like theirs. Thus ending in a rather boring travel it took them a single week to pass the borders to Greddor, from where they would head South westward towards the wild lands, leaving Munnero behind them and the Orkish alliance to their north, while the Goblin Klan was only so far to the South east.
Entering Greddor's boarders was rather easy, Greddor's territory was the land of the Forest Ogres, the slightly taller Green people.
Upon entering Christopher wasn't given even a moment of rest, as 80% of the trees around them held Tree Leeches on them, a strange creature that fell from the tree upon its victims, drugging them while sucking their blood.
The tree Leeches were only as big as a human's palm, but what made them dangerous was that they used stealth, meaning thay you needed a scout with good detection skills, something that the common adventurers lacked at the moment.
Leaving them with only Christopher killing the Leeches in large numbers, he was even becoming exhausted as he commanded them to stop for a while before they continued due to the huge amount of leeches.
He of course could let the adventurers fend for themselves, but this wasn't the reason he was keeping them, their role was to act as a cover for himself and dissuade bandits and other weaker beasts from attacking them.
Of course as a result the stronger beasts might still decided to attack them.
"Master we need Cure!"
Suddenly Bertha came with four people whom had strange green spots over their skin.
The level 100 healers had some problem and weren't enough to keep healing the contagion, in truth the four people were all healers, there were only twelve healers in their group and four of them were now ill, while a huge amound of people suffered from the same decease, but were being cured by the healers.
The truth was that even if they were cured, they would still fall ill once more after a matter of minutes, the reason being the pollen falling from the trees in the area they were passing through, it would be a lot faster if they had followed a road and a lot less dangerous, but it would not give Christopher any experience points.
Christopher's hand extended out of the carriage his hand now having another layer of enchanted rings on it and a flash of light fell on the sick people, it continued for a few seconds until they were all cured.
Their travels through the green lush forest was rather depressing, every once in a while the adventurers would fall ill, most of them were healed by the healers, but at times the healers were too exhausted, thus they had to plead to their employer for help.
Healing magic after all was still magic, of course there was a defining difference between a healer and a mage, one used magicality to cast it and the other mentality, one needing to chant while the other simply activating his skill, of course a healer's spells won't be interrupted by magic defences, meaning that magician heals will heal less in some cases, also to heal a mage it can only be done by a stronger mage or any healer.
"We've arrived at a tree village!"
The scout shouted as they saw the tree houses of the forest Ogres in the distance.
Forest ogres were humanoid creatures, with Orkish green skin, ape length arms and consideably hairy.
The village they arrived at was rather happy to see them, they bought every single leech corpse they had for a rather good price of 1green coin for 100corpses, Christopher was told that it was a good price, although to him whom didn't exactly understand their value it looked like a scum to give away 1000corpses for 10coins, especialy since the green ogres only have three types of currency, green coins, tablets and Bricks.
The expanation however came shortly after, Tris explained to him that one green coin was worth 1000DP, in other words their worth is rather high, but the main reason why they are so preciou is because they can be exchanged with antidote or poison bottles, they say that if you have a green brick, you can even by an elixir called panacea, that is a miracle of alchemy only the forest Ogres know how to create.
The village Chief was happy to welcome them into the village, but there was no dwarven bank in the village, thus the member of the caravan couldn't stay at the Inn, even Christopher decided to stay with the caravan.
It was funny how the Ogres tried to offer their daughters to him as partners, there was of course valid enough reason for that.
That being their sircumstances, in general, forest ogres had around the same lifespan as humans, but they used plant symbiotes to extend that life to at least double of that, in other even the most common of symbiotes would raise their lifespan, seeing a caravan of course they had to try and aproach the master of the caravan, since such a large caravan meant that he had money and since he was not a slave trader it was more to their liking, if he was one, they would shoot him with rock and drive him out of their village.
Forest Ogres respect freedom and forbid slavery, of course there is only so much they can do about outsiders, like forbidding them from taking people as slaves.
Of course their ideals do have a bad extreme to them, as all their prisoners end up dead, they take no prisoners at all.
Christopher wasn't really interested in the Ogres, until he saw one of them that looked exactly like Alexxa, only with green skin and red hair, with strange thorny vines all around her body.
He of course was a little tempted to take her in, but he knew full well that she was a different person.
The problem created however was that another person detected him gaze stoping on her.
"Is that your type of woman?"
Tris whispered silently into his ear.
"Well close enough"
He said as he turned around to leave the crowd whom were showing off the unmarried women of the village.
There was a tradition, that the husband had to provide the wife with a symbiote, in other words that woman was already married already, of course Christopher had no way of knowing that in the large crowd of women, he just thought of her as one of the candidates.
"You with the red head, why are you out here, aren't you married?"
Tris asked her with a smile on her face.
"Divorsed"
She answered shortly with a small hint of anger in her voice.
Truth was that in the forest Ogre society married women spend most of their time guarding their home, like flowers in a pot, while males were hunters and warriors.
Ogres could jump high in the air and use their vine like symbiotes to lounge onto tree branches, making them rather adept in forest battles.
In truth Forest ogres need no food as they absorb sunlight and nutrients from the ground, the reason as to why they hunt is to create alchemical concotions they can sell for important igredient that they lack or to buy symbiotes for their brides or themselves.
The females work was rather difficult in a way, they had to collect nutrients and sunlight and create a strange nectar for themselves, their husbands and their children.
Of course the beauty standards of the forest ogres were also different, for both males and females. In general the more fat the person looked, the more powerful and strong he were, for the females the more food she could generate.
In general in their society both men and women had their own roles, women prepared food and men brought money home. The money was most usualy used to buy antidotes and medicine, since there were lots of deceases spread in the Greddors' forests and with the lack of roads it was rare to see people whom were not lost stumbling upon a village.
With some disappointment and a sense of jealousy the other Ogres looked as the forest ogress called Rosetti was taken in by the caravan's master.
Rosetti was rather happy at first that she was going to be the caravan master's wife, but when she discovered that there were two other women in their carriage, she felt disgusted and had a sense of regret.
Christopher didn't even look at her, as he was more interested in why the fuck did Tris invite her in the first place.
Rosetti's face however grew in a large smile when she saw her ex husband with his huge wife arriving, he was a short fatty, she smiled at him as she left, but he simply snorted as he looked at his new wife, not realy caring.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Rosetti's face lost all her calm seeing as he gave her no attention at all, she even thought of jumping down the carriage and making a scandal, but the carriage was moving rather fast for moving in the forest, of course it was because it wasn't any regular carriage, in truth the most precious thing about the caravan was the carriages themselves, not the adventurers, not the giant lizards that moved them but the enchanted carriages that carried the materials and people around.
"So what is your name?"
Rosetti asked, but was rather surprised that Christopher instead of answering to her was gropping at the air for some reason.
"You shouldn't disturb him, he's casting spells outside"
Tanna whom was sitting next to her eating a large piece of meat said.
"But he isn't even chanting"
Rosetti said not believing in what she was told.
"Keep it a secret, but master is one of the..."
Tanna tried to say summoned heroes, but she was stuck with a piece of meat in her mouth, chocking on it and then falling down seemingly dead.
Of course the murderer was Tris whom shoved the large ham into her mouth, by pushing it with her foot.
"Are you crazy, you killed her"
Rosetti shouted in distress.
"Just take the meat out and you'll see"
Tris said disregarding her comment, of course this wasn't the first time that Tanna choked on her food, the first time Tris too was somewhat panicked, but after removing the piece of food from inside of her with magic, she came back to life as if she was playing dead.
"Are you insane!"
"She has no pulse"
"You the master do something!"
Rosetti made such a big fuss that even the adventurers were somewhat distressed.
Christopher looked at Tanna and teleported the piece choking her out of her neck, the next moment Tanna's pulse came back and she begun to eat again.
Rosetti was left sitting like an idiot not understanding what was going on.
"You Glutton ghost don't dare revealing her secrets before master bestows upon her a new symbiote, if she doesn't accept it we will let her leave her behind"
Tris said, making Rosetti even more surprised at how well informed Tris was.
"Yes mistress, I not talk anymore, only eat"
Tanna reported as she continued eating the same piece of meat she had just choked on.
"And you newbe, I hope you will be of some use later, otherwise don't even think about getting an antidote potion for your decease"
Tris said, making Rosetti even more disturbed, her decease was the main reason why her husband left her, the cure was simply too expensive.
Lets talk a little about deceases, of course there is the universal Cure spell, but not all deceases can be cured, those uncurable or terminal deceases like genetic anomalies cannot be cured by the cure spell and skill, you will need an artifact or elixir to cure them, of course those sort of unique items were not easy to get.
You have to understand that there are three ranks in potions.
The simple concotions, meaning they are not even worth being called potions and are used to concote potions.
The Common potions, which are regularly bought and sold in shops.
Lastly Elixirs, potions of great rarity, made out of expensive materials and sold in auctions.
Of course there are classifications of what should be called a potion, in general anything that has an evident effect withing 24hours is called a potion, otherwise it's a concotion.
Elixirs are potions that have been assessed by the Alchemist association to be precious for multiple reasons that common people cannot even begin to comprehend.
Artifacts are the Elixir's equivelent in the enchanted item category.
Returning back to reality, Rosetti's condition needed an elixir to cure, meaning it costs tons of money, as to what her decease is all about may be you will learn mayhaps not in the future.
--------------------------------------
Back in the Dungeon Pillar's Nivava's domain, John the rather short ace of the soccer team had a rather mundane time, he didn't even touch the young 17 years old Erica, the ex-princess given to him by the Queen and had not intention of doing anything with her.
John didn't even care about the village as much, all he did was go on hunts with Erica whom acted like the leader for the others, but he did as he saw fit.
Even during the first month he had already filled the quota. By now John had reached level 71, for a warrior this wasn't bad, of course the main reason as to why he was somewhat slow was because he had a hunting group with him, if he was strong enough to hunt solo, then he would have probably hunt even faster, his most however troubling thing was his cheat power, all he could do was summon an indestructible sword and at the early levels it didn't help much in hunting.
Of course later he begun to train in swordmanship, not the skill, the real thing, he had someone with the swordmanship skill instruct him in how it's better to slash, stab and other basic stuff.
Later he decided to learn two skills for his level, one being the swordmanship skill, despite many people disuading him from doing so and the other the Mow Skill, which allowed him to cut any vegetation in a 180degrees of himself with his sword or other sharp tool, of course monsters that were in the path of his sword would also be cut, although it didn't do a large amount of damage, it still caused damage.
Of course from a swordman's point of view this wasn't even an offensive skill, this skill was used by farmers to harvest wheet, but there were still some adventurers who used it to cut obstacles that blocked their path, but the rocky clean ground that the slimes left behind them made the skill useless.
Of course John didn't think so, he ingeniously mowed down the low level slimes as if they were grass, thus quickly raising his experience to what it was today, he even evolved the skill into the leg harvester, making the skill more combat orriented, of course it lost some of its might against plants to specialize for being used against living creatures.
The thing however that made him mad was the dodge roll skill. He remembered that it was the best active dodging skill and seeing how the other adventurers had gotter a flash step out of it, he too begun to evolve it like crazy, but all that he got as a weird skill called Ball form.
Which some of you might consider and equivelent of the metroid skill samus uses to turn into a ball.
The skill only lasted for a few seconds, but it turned him invinsible for those seconds, of course all he could do for those few seconds was roll around.
The problem was that the skill looked fucking lame, whom would want to turn into a ball without a hint of offensive capabilities in the middle of the battle, but he didn't despair, one more level and it would evolve again.
He thought as he Lay in his armchair in front of a magic fireplace, it was a place looking like a fireplace, but inside there was a small stone that emitted heat.
The endless night wasn't cold, but he was feeling chilly as he layed in his underwear.
All his clothes were sent to be cleaned by the only mage in the village, it was of course no secret as to why Erica didn't know how to use the clean spell, after all she was a noble princess with lots of servants, why would she even need to learn magic in the first place.
In the end all she could do was command others to fight and giving the general's buffs or bestow titles.
Just the day before John asked her to give him a title and when she asked what title he wanted he said I wanna be the "Ace".
Of course the effects were to his liking, it raised all his stats by a x2 pernamently and when he fought alone they were raised by x3 instead.
Of course there was one person whom was somewhat disatisfied with her own situation, it was Erica the
ex-princess. The reason for her bad mood is of course because she too was forced to stay in he underwears, but due to her dignity as a noble, she spent that time under he bed sheet, which too wasn't at its cleanest state.
Of course this situation was the result of the village not having enough mages, their only mage being an adventurer that now charged an incredible fee for his work.
Of course when she complained to John about it, he said, "if you want something done about it just go learn the magic arts skill", a skill that allowed for non mages to use magic.
His answer of course didn't satisfy the teenage princess whom was too used to the life of a lady, even the food was something only commoners would eat, even after so many months of it, she still couldn't get used to it.
Of course to those of you reading, the magic arts skillbook isn't exactly common, thus not everyone can buy one or learn it, otherwise all the people on axis would be able to cast basic spells.
Another thing you should know is that the number of mages in a village depends on how many adventurer mages come to the village, in general there's a 3in10 rule, but at times there might come times where there is no mage at all at the Guild, meaning that they have to stay dirty for days or at least change clothes.
Of course the clothes Erica had to change into were a common peasantly dress and as for underwear peasants had no need for things like that.
Meaning that the set she was wearing was her only set, John of course could still go out after donning a pair of dirty trousers, a luxury that she didn't have due to her royal dignity, which she hang onto with all she had, in truth if she was touched by John she would have simply commited suicide.
Of course the only reason why John had selected her was because he felt it was a pity to have a beautiful girl die, if posible he wouldn't have selected anyone, but since death awaited the beauty, he simply extended his wing over her.
"So cold!"
Erica said silently as she approched the magic fireplace where John sat scratching his balls.
"How disgusting!"
She said silently almost to herself as she saw his action.
"Oh, Erica what good wind brought you down from your room, wanna chat?"
John asked in a rather good mood.
Hmpfum!
She made a strange humming sound as she turned away from him, but didn't go too far away from the fireplace.
That particular night was rather cold, many villages run to a healer the next day as they had caught a cold.
"So what are your plans for the future?"
John asked her as he extended his hands towards the fireplace.
"Why do you think I would tell you?"
She said in an Arrogant tone.
"Well I could help in a few ways if the plan isn't all about taking revenge, you do understand that you will be accompanying me on my descend to the 10th floor right?"
John said, this thought was of course one of his worries, after all how could a pumpered teenage girl descend the tower, in a way she was no different than any girls from our world, only in their world most of the stuff we take for granted are considered luxuries.
Erica for the first time realized the dread of her own situation, she of course knew that the 10th floor was not the Demon king they needed to defeat to leave Axis, meaning that she would have to follow him all the way to the 100th floor, which was simply commiting suicide.
For a moment she even considered learning magic arts herself, but quickly extinguished the thought, what they needed was a strong adventurer group otherwise known as Party.
"I'm gonna create my own party and then get revenge"
She stated, making John a little disappointed, 'didn't she understand in what sort of situation she was in?' he thought without of course saying it out loud.
Erica was surprise because after her answer John was looking at her as if he was looking at a corpse, it didn't feel so good.
"Why are you being so rude!"
She repremented him, but he couldn't understand exactly what he did wrong.
"Sorry for not speaking, I forgot myself for a little there, so what kind of party do you want to gather?"
The chat took some time and at some point her sheets were falling, revealing more and more of her teenage body, you could call almost mature, it's like a hard peach that only needs a little time to become juicy.
As much as John wanted, it was hard to hide his hardening little guy.
"So you are saying that you will create an army under the queen's nose, she will not even know about it and then drag her down from the throne?"
John asked her as he tried to comprehend what he had just heard.
"Are you an idiot, of course not, what I will do is create an army and conquer the 1st floor, then I will use its resources to dethrone that bastardly Bloom, since her mother by the time we return will probably be dead"
Erica said angrily.
"Wait, it shouldn't take so long to reach the 10th floor"
John was lost as he didn't know that to leave they had to go all the way to the 100th floor.
"Who said anything about the 10th floor, aren't you going to return to your own world? Then you have to defeat the demon god at the 100th floor or ascend to the 100th floor and reach Ecclesis himself, which of course is not a bit less difficult, in some cases it's even more dangerous than fighting monsters"
Erica explained, only losing John even more.
"Whatever, by the way do you have a boyfriend, or someone you like?"
John asked her in a rather roundabout matter before the finishing move.
"Where did this come from?"
She said rather discontent at the way he simply switched subjects.
"Well would you like to be my girlfriend, at least for the time"
He asked her in a rather straitforward way, making her however even more angry for some reason.
"let it go, it was just wishful thinking"
John said as he turned around and walked away from the fireplace towards his own room.
Erica was somewhat skeptic, at first she wanted to shower him with insults, but then she came to realize something even more troublesome, why hasn't any of her loyal subordinates appeared yet?
In truth she already had a small group of subordinates she sent to act undercover as Adventurers in case she needed to go into hiding, there was even a mage with them, but where were they now?
Suddenly she had a bad feeling, a strange feeling of loneliness overcame her, she had months to speak with someone, her "friends" from the capital of course were out of the question now and associating herself with commoners was beneath her, as for John although she didn't really like him or anything, at least he was a noble with the title of Knight, although the lowest of nobility and most knights don't even get a fief, he was still the Governor of a village and a summoned hero.
She had no doubt that her slutty sisters Leia and Keia had already enlisted their own heroes into their own camp as they plan their future rebellions.
It made her even question herself, what was she doing those past months, if she could gain the support of a hero, she could simply build her own kingdom anywhere she liked, as long as she could win him over of course.
But the idea passed and puffed into smoke when her dignity thrombed, it was a strange sensation of pride and arrogance, something that made her whom she is.
She had however formulated a plan of her own, she would cook the fish until he kneels before her beauty and majesty, she thought as she begun to laugh with a strange pinched laughter reminding the noise of some bird dying.