20 days after the explosion – Caravan

 The caravan was pretty big, with around 120 people including guards, merchants and civilians. Of course, there were also wagons, carts, etc, all full of people or stuff to sell

The reason the caravan had so many people was the danger of the road. Not only by monsters but also by people of course

Like most caravans, some merchants were transporting a large number of products and materials, so they banded together to travel together and cut the expenses of protection since even though each merchant would need like 5 guards to protect their wagon, when they have like 10 wagons, 30 guards would be enough instead of 50. Well in this case they had 15, so as long as they have like 40-50 guards, they should be ok

 And even though traveling by carriage was faster and cheaper, some civilians preferred to travel by big caravans since  it included protection. Besides, the merchants could save some money by allowing some extra people and charging for the protection, and a merchant never turn down something that can bring profit

Besides, traveling with a lot of people made the journey more enjoyable

And this is why the little group of a "warrior", "slave warrior"(that was actually a magician), the "magician"(that was a warrior) and a little "boy" were traveling with some other guards on a wagon

Of course, this group was the prince and company, disguising themselves so when the pursuers start asking questions, they could pass as a different group

Each one had a role different from others would expect but in a way that looked natural, making really hard to tell who they really were

For starters, the prince was dressed as a warrior(inner mana user) and he could even use the inner mana, something that no one knew(literally since he haven't shown it to the other 3 yet)

And as for the other three, the prince dressed Lina as a boy and cutting her hair, use the same trick with Susan, and made Aria wear a magician robe with a hood

Since Lina was a kid, she hadn't hit puberty yet, finding out if she was a boy or a girl without pulling out her pants would be impossible. As for Susan, she had to cover her chest tightly and needed to act as a mute, since her voice would give her away(not really a problem since she was the quiet type)

In Aria's case, a robe that cover her face should be enough since it was common for female magicians to do that(especially on the road)

As for their cover story, the prince was taking care of his nephew(Lina) while his father was doing a dangerous mission and at the same time, helping a family friend as a new adventurer(Aria). The slave(Susan) came from his savings and a discount for helping the family friend

And that's the story they told to the merchant, the people traveling with them on the carriage and anyone that asked

Not a flawless plan, but the less complicated the better. Besides, taking in consideration he had to take care of a kid, a muscle head and a traitor, this was the best he could come up with

But for the looks of it, all of them brought it, so at least it was good enough

By the way, even though Lina cried, and Aria looked really sad and was tempted to break every bone in prince body, the prince told them they must leave the cat in the city since people in the villa knew they had a cat and how he looked like

It was  a few days later that the prince find out that the cat find his way to one of the wagons and was also traveling with them

21 days after the explosion – Caravan

The day was completely uneventful, but the prince did make sure of getting to know everyone and any information they had, just to be safe

The caravan had 123 people on it, not including the animals. This includes 15 merchants, 47 guards(including prince, aria and Susan) and the rest were civilians

Since the civilians paid protection money to the merchants, they had the same priority than the cargo if an incident occurred, but at the same time they weren't more important so if they neglected the cargo while taking care or the civilians or vice-versa, they would get a reduction of the salary at the end

The prince even felt impressed at how ruthless the merchant were

As for the cargo, since it was his first time doing this kind of job, the prince asked the other guards if it was ok to know first (he usually did alchemy request and vermin extermination) and they told him that it was rude to ask, and even suspicious

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Because some adventures told the route, number of guards, and cargo to bandits, even if it didn't happen often, it would cause insecurity on the merchants if someone asked too many questions that could be used in an ambush. For this reason, only the leader of the caravan and maybe 2 or 3 more knew the actual

For this reason, only the leader of the caravan and maybe 2 or 3 more knew the actual route. As for  the cargo, it was up to each merchant to show what they carried or not

If they were transporting something illegal, only the merchant owning the carriage(and anyone that help him) would get arrested. The reason the rest of the caravan wasn't dragged with the perpetrator(except maybe the caravan leader) was because big caravans were a necessity and it would be unfair(and problematic) to drag everyone down for an a-s hole that tried to make a quick buck

Of course, some people take advantage of this, like making the caravan leader and the carriage owner scapegoats, paying them or forcing them into the role, but it was better than increasing the danger of forming caravans

Well, at least this information made the prince happy, since it would be dangerous if someone cargo was transporting something illegal and he had to make a "deal" with the authorities

Not everyone could be bribed, and using his status as the prince would be dangerous

As for other news, everyone knew about the explosion and the infamy of the prince, but nothing else

Well, almost nothing else. Some heard the rumor that the prince did it, but no one believes it, and some people talked about his blue face since there was photographic evidence

There was also the protest outside the palace, but no one was surprised when they heard everyone pass out outside since it wouldn't be strange for the palace to have a defense mechanism

Of course, there was also speculation about the explosion, blaming the other human empire, elf empire or dwarf empire(not the beast men since they were muscle heads). Some even blame it on the nobles, church or even the demon race

As for the royal family in question, the common belief was that they were in hiding while trying to root out the culprit while using the prince as bait

This last part even surprised the prince, and he didn't know if he should be amused at the imagination of the people or sad for being treated as bait

But in the end, there was no news of his disappearance or anything he didn't know already, but on the other hand, they were far away from the capital, so the knew where a few days old. Maybe in a few days, something would happen

Happy with the information he got, the prince chatted  some more with the guards, merchants and civilians while traveling, having no problem on the way or even when they set up camp at night

25 days after the explosion - Caravan

The next couple of days they also didn't have any problem and even though they passed a few towns, they kept going and capping at night to save money and time. They only stopped a little while to buy and sell some stuff, eat and leave some of the passengers while adding some more. The numbers stayed practically the same, so there was no problem

So at the end of the night, like the last few days, they camped on the road

Of course, since prince group was hired to guards, some of their duties was night watch, and even when they weren't on night watch, they had to be ready in case of a sudden attack

Luckily for the prince, he didn't have guard duty that night, so he could sleep at peace, unlike poor Aria

Well, "lucky" wouldn't be the best word actually, because when he got woken up at the middle of the night, he finds out Aria screw up really bad

Someone turn up dead while she was on watch, and she was one of the suspects