*Swoosh swoosh~*
*Thud*
“...Urgh... again?” I complained as my short sword got stuck in a nearby tree again as I was practicing my swings with it.
After a quick pull though, it was out of the tree.
“...I need to stop doing that...” I muttered, bored of constantly swinging my weapons into trees, and getting them stuck.
I didn’t have any problems with my weapons getting stuck in the trees while I was practicing my mace, and my halberd’s spike, but when I was using practicing with my halberd’s axe, or any of my swords, they’d constantly keep getting stuck in the trees after I accidently swung them too far, or too strong.
Though... can I be blamed for being this bad at using these weapons? Afterall, the first time I even saw a sword, or a halberd was 4 days ago, when Gram brought them in a cart to me.
I mean, I had seen pictures of swords and halberds, and played a few medieval games where I used them, but I had never seen one in real life before, much less had the chance to touch one.
And I probably don’t need to say that I’ve never had a chance to practice the way of the sword too!
But I’d like to think that I am at least better at using a sword than a complete novice now!
Hell, maybe I am a sword prodigy that appears every millennium or so, and my speed of progress is simply superb!
And as there is no one to disprove that claim of mine... I am just going to say that I am the best goddamn sword user this world has ever seen!
...Probably not but, hey, like I said before, there’s literally no one to disprove my claim!
“I am a sword prodigy!” I yelled as I held my short sword up to the sky, and as I did so, I saw that the night sky was slowly turning orange, and then into blue in some places.
“Ahh... its morning already? Didn’t even realise time had passed that quickly...” I muttered, and willed a nearby golem I had brought along with me to pick my weapons up from the ground, and handed my short sword to it, and started slowly walking towards the goblin village.
I wasn’t that far away from where the village was, at most 30-40 minutes of walking.
And why was I this far away in the first place? Couldn’t’ve I just trained in the nearby woods?
Well... there are multiple reason really.
First one being that I just didn’t want goblins to randomly wander into the area I was training at, and see me absolutely sucking at using a sword. I mean, I gotta keep my street cred up, ya know?
Second one being the fact that I actually needed an area where I could train without being bothered by goblins, but I also needed it to be close enough to the village that they could come and find me if they needed my attention for some reason.
And the third and final one being.... well, I just wanted to be away from the goblins and the village for some time, and clear up my mind.
I may not act like it in front of the goblins, but I still was just another person not even 3 months ago. And while choosing to larp as a god was a decision I made my self, on my free will, getting transported to this world was not something I wished to do.
Whenever I was watching or reading stuff about reincarnation or other worlds I had always thought that it’d be a really shitty experience to be reincarnated in an another world!
And, not to talk about all the shit the main characters in the things I read went through!
I mean, seriously, who actually would want a fate like this? A fate like being transported/reincarnated to a whole another world suddenly?
And it’s already very hard being a reincarnator when you are just a human, or any other race that has some sort of civilization that they’ve built. But being reincarnated as an undead?
It’s... it’s really mentally challenging sometimes. And even though I’ve gotten used to who and what I am right now, in this new world of mine, I just need some me time to think over the things that have happened every so often, you know?
...And, no, I am still not a masochist if you are wondering. Not like I can even feel pain or any other feeling sharply anyways. Though if I felt pain sharply, like what a normal person would feel it instead of this distant/disconnected thing, like in the case of all my other feelings, I may have had become a masochist... and very quickly at that... but thank the sadistic god that created this world, if there is one, that I don’t feel it that sharply.
“...And there the village is...” I muttered as I left the tree line and laid my eyes upon the log wall surrounding the village, and the new wooden houses that were popping up around it.
I had long made Gram and the senate aware that I was going to bring people from up north, and with the help of my golems, the village had started improving the already existing buildings and infrastructure, and started building new ones!
And yes, the goblins had started farming. Though, the farms were nearby the river, and we had to do some slashing and burning to actually make the farms... well, farmable.
Though, I would not be focusing on that part of the nation a lot myself as I hadn’t read any of the books Rifu-san had sent, because I was still fucking illiterate.
I mean... I knew how to speak some gob—grei now, and I could read a bit of it, but I was nowhere close to being fluent in speaking, or reading the grei tongue.
“...Oh well, not like I have literal decades ahed of me to learn it...” I thought to myself, and lumbered slowly towards the front gate of the village, which had 2 goblins guarding it.
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And I passed by the buildings under construction, I saw a few goblins had already started working on the construction of the houses, with the help of my golems of course.
Walking through the main road that barely had any people using them, I entered the temple in the middle of the village, and closed the doors behind me.
We were still using this place as the temporary library, so there were quite a few books piled around, and in crates.
Walking to the books, I took one that had the characters of the gob—I mean grei... you know what, don’t care. It’s spoken by goblins, and I am just going to continue calling it goblin.
Walking to a pile of books, I took one that had the characters of the goblin script on it, and sitting on the throne in the corner of the room, because I didn’t want to seem presumptuous by putting it in the middle, I started practicing my reading, and continued to do so until a few hours passed, and someone knocked on my door.
“Come in.” I said, knowing it was either Ryuji or one of his caravan members that had come to deliver me the spell scrolls before heading back to Rifu’s domain.
And I was proven correct as an ent with a white tulip for a head walked in. And brought me the 10 scrolls, and the communication artifact Ryuji had promised me long ago. 2 of them in fact as both me, and the goblin village needed one.
And they were just... orbs, with seemingly no inscriptions whatsoever on them.
But I knew they were the real deal as I very much doubted that Ryuji would try to scam me... at least more than he had already.
After the ent went away, I took a look at the scrolls, and the detailed inscriptions on it that covered every corner of the scroll, which must have been at least the size of an A4 paper, if not slightly larger than that.
Quickly rolling up all the scrolls together, I lifted my head piece up a bit and shoved them down my throat.
I still could open my chest, but doing that would honestly take more time than simply lifting my helmet, so I just took the easier option.
And after another 2-3 hours, someone else knocked on the door to the temple, and let themselves in.
“Are all the candidates ready Gram?” I asked, not bothering to lift the head of my main body to look at him as the golem next to me was doing a good enough of a job already.
“They are ready to go out. Do you want me to send someone to escort you up until where the passage is, or are you okay to go by yourself?”
“Don’t worry about it, at worst I’ll just shamelessly walk back here and ask for you to sent someone to escort me.” I said as I got out of the throne, and placed the book where I had taken it from.
And got out of the temple and was faced with 7 goblins who were my possible first priest candidates... except one.
“...Why are you here?” I asked, confused, as I looked at Grok.
A few days after I had returned from the dungeon, Gram and I had decided to free him from his collar, seeing as it was just no longer to keep him docile. Afterall his father simply couldn’t use mana anymore, until the metal plates inside him were removed that is, and he was in prison too!
So, neither Krone nor Grok had any chance of making trouble for us... at least that was what Gram had said to convince me, though I was more sure that he’d felt bad for the guy, as he was kind of the uncle of the guy.
Not that I bothered by it though, as I was more than happy to let him go free. Not because I had any ulterior motives, but more so because it felt more morally correct to free the guy that had been in prison only because of my actions of overthrowing his father and him.
Though... I would’ve thought his dislike of me would run deeper, and he wouldn’t want to be associated with me at all, not to mention wanting to become my priest.
“I heard that anyone who wanted to become a priest was welcome to join you on your journey, so I came. Will you send me away?”
“...No need to. You can do whatever you want.” I said, not being able to really discern much of anything from his face.
Was he angry at me? Had he actually accepted me as his “god” after I beat his father and the demon? Or was he simply following my lead to take his revenge one day?
Not sure. But along our journey, he will have more than enough opportunities to either back stab me, or at least make an escape into the wilderness.
Though... if escaping is his final goal, I’d wish that he’d just take the few Dark Lord loyalists that still exists in the village, and run away with them.
Then at least there wouldn’t be any major factors dividing the village, and soon the small kingdom I will build here.
But ignoring him for now, I turned my attention to the rest of the priest candidates, and told them to quickly introduce themselves.
“My name is Gro, Lord Eternal.” Said the goblin next to Gram, and then we moved on to the next one, and he introduced himself too, and after a going through the other four candidates, a familiar face introduced himself.
“I am Gob.” Gob said, whom I recognized to be one of the people who was in Gram’s group of loyalists.
“...Wait... is Gram trying to put a mole into the church?” I thought to myself, but couldn’t actually be sure if this was a coincidence, or if Gram was actually putting a rat amongst the mists of my followers.
“Just means I gotta keep an eye out on that guy...” I muttered, and, after getting another 10 golems to carry everything the goblins needed to carry, we moved onto the entrance of the passage, which was a few hours away from where the goblin village was located.
“Stay outside. And don’t come in if you hear some explosions.” I told them, and took 3 of my 10 scrolls out.
Ryuji had said that, to activate the scrolls, I’d need to spend 50 mana, and for every mana point I spent after that would set back the activation time of the scroll for 10 seconds.
So, if I only spent 50 mana, it would explode the moment my mana stopped flowing in. But if I spent 55 mana, I’d have 50 seconds to make myself scarce.
Going to the deepest part of the passage I could before I needed to crawl to go deeper, I placed one of the scrolls and put 70 mana into it.
Then I went backwards and put 65 mana into that. And going backwards some more, I put 50 mana into the last one and legged it!
After I left the cave, and we got a bit away from the passage’s entrance, I heard an explosion coming from inside the cave, that was soon followed by 2 others.
Then I sent one of the golems I had brought with me to check in on the passage, and saw that it was filled with rock.
Then I left the golem there to watch over the passage, just in case, and turned towards the goblins.
“Okay. We will now be travelling for around a week straight from now on, and after a week we should reach the Kingdom Of Teria.
“And we will stop for rest every 2 hours, for 15 minutes. Only times we will rest for longer is for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sleep. Occasionally, I will take one or more of you with me into the forest to talk. And you are not allowed to talk to your peers about what I said to you in the forest whatsoever. Understood?” I asked them, and they nodded.
I was planning on getting to know each of them further along the week we had, and the months we were going to spend in Teria. And, though I would’ve liked to spend some time in her neighbouring lands as well, I highly doubted that I’d be welcome in those countries for the next few months as I didn’t believe for a second that the nearby deities would be okay with me stealing followers from one of their own...
Though, hopefully, I’d be able to still get some trade deals in place as, while Ryuji gave me access to the market of Rifu’s domain, which was probably more advanced in every way possible than the combined markets of the 5 nations of the north, everything I imported from there was stupendously expensive, and I didn’t quite feel like giving an arm and a leg every time I wanted to buy some fucking coal.
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*Clack Clack Clack~*
Echoed the sounds of the cardinal as he walked through the corridors of the great palace. And as he walked through the corridors, servants, young and old, experienced and new bowed down to their cardinal.
And soon, he reached his destination.
Taking a few seconds to fix his glasses, and his orange, red and white robes, cardinal ran a hand through his yellow-white fur for one last time, and after a moment, he barged into the grand hall.
“Stop this meeting at once!” He screamed as the heads of all the nobles and the clergymen turned towards him.
And lifting his head, his gaze met both of the monarch sitting on their gilded thrones.
Cardinal Lukas had returned from his visit to the Octian Chiefdom, and he would now put an end to their schemes once and for all.