The expedition traveled on foot and there were only small carriages that were trained by a horse each.

Markus was leading it from the front while standing on a high brown horse, there were also a few officials rising from the ranks wearing a heavy and beautiful steel armor. Some soldiers kept high up a banner with Southern’s Army and South Reign coat of arms, it was a beautiful sight; every soldier had some decorations of yellow and red on their armor, Dominik explained that it was used to differentiate ranks.

They were moving a bit behind from the front leading Markus, Dominik was sitting on a carriage full of packed food and Noah was walking right beside it. There weren’t many soldiers near them, food provisions were kept in the middle of the ranks, only a line of infantry guarded both sides and a platoon with horsemen among them was on the rear. Further back stood a small convoy from the adventurer guild, it consisted of players majorly and some NPCs riding on a carriage.

“ Pestilence, since there is enough space, try to perform some moves from the sword dance while marching! “.

Dominik sure was all about training thought Noah and he didn’t really mind it usually but now they were in the middle of people, everyone was already watching him and he wasn’t used to this kind of attention, madly swinging the sword in the air didn’t help to alleviate his embarrassment but he trusted Dominik and followed his suggestion.

At the first try, he got halfway before loudly stumbling on the ground, it wasn’t easy to keep a marching pace while practicing a sword dance that required to jump, turn, leap, rapidly swinging and striking with a swirling force. Dominik said to do it slowly, keeping up with the army, and to take a step forward with each figure, not more than that, and he inevitably stumbled when it was time to jumping forward and swirl.

Laughter followed his unfortunate show, these soldiers really did find funny this young man wearing rags and followed by a wolf that was swinging madly his sword at a slow pace but, as soon as Dominik spoke, everyone quieted down. Admiration, respect and a bit of fear could be seen on their faces, only his laughter sounded in the air right now.

“ That sure was comical! Don’t mind if you fall a few times, concentrating on keeping tempo with the march and practicing my dance while maintaining the strong, whirling tempo is hard but necessary if you want to get stronger”.

Noah was reminded once again why he was following the guidelines of the Instructor, this man was a treasure of stats, a walking training machine; realizing this and looking at the big instructor that was actually giving him a thumb up, Noah started to laugh too while lifting up. He enjoyed his time here.

After 2 hours they left the main road and took a mountain one. From the constant training Noah gained a level up in Enduring Body and one in Unending Maelstrom, his stats were constantly increasing, his trust in Dominik only deepening; seeing his stats increasing he decided to invest the 2 free attributes points from level up in charisma once again, with a value of 18 it was his highest stat.

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The outpost stood on the other side of this valley. From here on, the terrain began to sprout low and gentle peaks that turned higher in the distance. It wasn’t possible to see the sea since tall mountains blocked the view at the horizon, those were the region of bandits and lone hermits.

A plain, after these hills, stretched before South Sea Mountains and the undead plague appeared east of them; the outpost was built there to keep in check the bandits and to facilitate a constant communication between it and Divel, by horse it took less than half a day, on the other hand, they weren’t even at half of the road.

This road was large enough to fit a small carriage with a line of soldiers or two horses, this slowed down the process because the front row had to wait for the supply chain at the other end; the uphill road didn’t help with speed too. Noah was able to estimate the number of people following the expedition, it was close to 1000 soldiers plus the adventurers that were behind. The adventurer guild detachment consisted of a bunch of NPC and around 100 players, nothing praiseworthy thought Noah: their number was too low compared to the army and those players didn’t stand a single chance in 1vs1 against a soldier from the division.

Once that everyone crossed the hill Markus spoke with his loud voice: “ Now we are in the wilds! Keep your eyes open and stay ready to fight. The leading team will take care of every beast that approaches our expedition. En marche! “.

The ranks were assembled again like before, Noah resumed his training and was excited by the possible actions that were going to take place. He was soon cooled down by Dominik though, he said to keep practicing and that there won’t be a problem with Markus on the lead: if something happened that he wasn’t able to resolve, then Noah would be like a mosquito trying to fight a rhino and himself was required to take action.

Noah was feeling tired, marching for 2 hours, climbing the hill for another one and then marching again while practicing started to weight on his mind. He decided to take a break and talk a bit with Dominik to see if he could learn something on the matters that will take place at the outpost.

The instructor wasn’t too severe and had a reasonable mind, he was going to stop the young boy soon anyway. Too much constant training can lead to isolation or a twisted personality, he knew all too well since his old days when nothing else mattered to him other than training, by getting older he began to appreciate some other aspects of life but conserved his like for adventures too; with time he found out that both could coexist. It was important to know how to live the moment: sometimes it was better to just sit and enjoy a bit the calm time. Considering this kind of life, when at times there is an expedition that can last even years, it’s important to grab a breath of life when it still possible. He hoped to pass this down to this young disciple of his too.

“ Teacher, why there is a delegation from the adventure guild following us? Their members look so weak? “. Obviously, Noah was referring to the players and he also could guess the reason for the Guild to come but it was better to see if Dominik knew something more.

“ Pestilence, I won’t say that their expedition is weak. True, they have some cannon fodder but their leader is the vice-director of Divel’s branch. Second only to Markus and me in strength”.

Noah just confirmed his guesses about the strength of the instructor, it was a lot, probably Dominik was the strongest in the city or definitely close to it.

After a second of pause, Dominik talked again: “ They are coming to establish a branch at the outpost, it is going to be a long matter and they will give out missions to adventurers to lend a hand. It was almost forced upon them by the higher-ups of the military. You know, to set up a branch they have to agree at giving out a hand in difficult times “.

It was as he guessed and there were a lot of opportunities to achieve a rapid growth at the outpost for the adventurers of the guild, Noah began to worry about his role in all of this. Sure, he was going to train more under Dominik tutelage and it was thanks to his constant pointers that he was able to display a better execution of the sword dance, but he had a role of an aide here.

Noah sat there in silence with the Head Instructor while waiting for his stamina to refill and start to train again, the road was still long.