Heirina wanted to drive the vehicle as much as possible to keep her mind busy, and after those three hopped on, she began to drive it. Zelos was on the back of the wagon, keeping a close watch on their backs and for possible pursuers, but it was too soon for that.

As the group began to move south, the sun began to rise as soon as they left the town. It looked like Irlan and Kaitrine didn’t sleep that much last night since they were already dozing off. The cold wind of the morning sure was relaxing, but not that much. Edea was full-on alert, but as usual, it looked like she wanted to kill time by talking.

“Didn’t you buy new ones to throw at the enemies?”

“Iron balls? Yeah. I asked a blacksmith to make new ones.”

Edea looked like she wanted to ask where they were, so Zelos sighed and took them from a small bag on his belt. She frowned when she saw that they were the size of marbles, but they were as heavy as the other ones.

“I asked the guy to make them as small as possible. It cost me quite a bit of money, so I am not going to throw them away without planning to recover them somehow.”

That could put the entire group in a bind, but Zelos was serious about money and the value of his hard work. Those weren’t arrows that could be easily mass-produced, after all. Zelos looked at the bow on her back and wondered if she could actually use it. Maybe she had some talent and polished it up in the last few weeks. Maybe she had a trait that would help her with that. She looked like she wanted him to ask about it, but Zelos just looked away in the distance. It was too much of a hassle.

“Give up, Edea. You will find brick walls that are better conversation partners than Zelos.”

Heirina had a point, and Zelos couldn’t deny that. Still, it was fine, since he wasn’t training to become a diplomat or anything like that. Putting that aside, they were moving quite slowly, so he wondered if Heirina was dozing off as well. Still, it looked like she was being mindful of the sleepy heads.

In the middle of the morning, they woke up feeling refreshed and then Heirina began to pick up the pace. All of a sudden, Edea suddenly got up from the floor of the wagon and then grabbed her bow and nocked an arrow while looking behind them. Zelos followed her line of sight and soon found a rabbit jumping over the path they just passed, and without hesitation, she fired the arrow and pierced the stomach of the rabbit… she was skilled, and it looked like she had been waiting for a chance to show that off. Heirina nodded as she looked over her shoulder.

“Good shot. Considering how much Zelos eats, we should start stacking up food.”

“I already solved that problem.”

Zelos had brought a big bag with him, and it contained a lot of rations, and things like bread, milk, and cheese. It wouldn’t last long, and it would go bad in a few days, but he had the money to buy more along the way. He wouldn’t let his daily calorie intake become a problem for the group.

In any case, Zelos went to grab the rabbit and then gave it to Edea… she hesitated a bit in doing that. While she might have some skill, it was obviously the first time that she had shot anything. In the end, Zelos passed to Irlan.

“I guess I will be the cook once again. Not that I am complaining.”

Irlan smiled and then began to skin the rabbit. He was pretty skilled at that as well, so everyone couldn’t help but nod, impressed.

“I am planning to take it easy while we are in our territory and then speed up after we reach the next ones. We will only cross one and a half, and while Dad didn’t tell us that we need to be in a hurry, I think that we need to hurry up. He has been working a lot lately, and he only does that before big conflicts.”

Zelos began to connect the dots, and soon he understood the reason behind the odd feeling that he had three days ago.

“... I had the feeling that something was off when we received this mission. Do you think that he wants to keep us away from the front lines in case something happens?”

“I would guess so… this might be part of the reason why he made this group; it might be necessary, but it was convenient too… probably we might be targeted after the mess of the previous mission. Some accidents happen in wars, after all.”

In the middle of the chaos of war, some people might die thanks to friendly fire and no one would be able to confirm or deny that. It might be easy to put a crossbow bolt on the back of someone in the middle of such a place to silence people who knew too much, and Zelos could imagine that. In a world of constant wars, underhanded tactics should be almost bread and butter to some people. Irlan didn’t agree to all of that, apparently.

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“It might sound like that from a certain perspective, but I believe that Captain Hei wouldn’t act out of self-interest that much. There are many people who trust him and trying to save his daughter alone wouldn’t be something that he would do… Besides, gaining experience in a real conflict in the right conditions might improve your chances of survival in the future.”

“... I guess so… In the end, let’s just do this job to the best of our abilities and then prepare, like everyone else, for whatever happens. Thinking about what might happen and might not happen can blind us to too many things, and that won’t help us in the long run.”

Everyone nodded once again, but the doubt was still in the air.

The group didn’t try to avoid villages this time, but they didn’t announce who they were, either.

“The villages look pretty busy and tense. I knew that Dad sent some people to guard those places, but it looks like they aren’t feeling that much of safety.”

“It can’t be helped, since we are closest to the border. A lot of people died in the last conflict as well… people will just have to toughen up.”

Despite her words, Kaitrine also looked troubled while seeing things as they passed through the villages. Eventually, they reached the border with the next territory and then the group began to get tenser as well. That territory was like Hei’s, a clan was ruling over the area, but the clan had died in the last battle. So, the succession took place, but Heirina told them that the new head was only thirteen years old. Usually, people would be worried about that, but Irlan wanted to give a vote of confidence to the new head.

“Well, this kind of thing happened in the past… sometimes it went horribly wrong, sometimes it worked. New leaders can only take place like that and they can only improve by doing the job.”

For some reason, Heirina looked at Zelos with eyes full of suspicion, but he only frowned. He eventually realized that she probably assumed that he was thinking that Hei had to try extra hard to not let his people and territory fall into the hands of Heirina.

“It is true, isn’t it? Or are you ready for it?”

“It is so annoying that I could easily imagine that you would think like that…”

“Only because your actions made it happen.”

At the end of the fourth day of travel, the group arrived at the first village of the next territory and they couldn’t help but frown when they saw the people there… they looked exhausted… There were some fields around, but not enough for the whole village to work on it and it would be hard to maintain it as well.

The people there also closed their homes when they began to pass nearby… even the inns and restaurants closed their doors. They certainly weren’t welcome there… even though the group didn’t look like a bunch of bandits at all. Heirina raised her eyebrows.

“I would dare say that we won’t be welcomed in this territory… This week will be pretty fun.”

Irlan rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment and considered a few things. Nothing could explain that since visitors usually would mean that the people there would get some money for their services.

“Have you heard about any changes here recently, Captain?”

“No… while we don’t have spies, we have some informants and we didn’t hear anything about this.”

The group looked at each other in confusion… The first assumption was that it was something recent, but they couldn’t deny that perhaps they had been fed false information. In any case, Heirina decided not to let that bother them for too long.

“Let’s keep moving… this might be a good thing for us.”

The group soon left the village and, while looking behind, Zelos was able to tell that people were checking that they were leaving the area instead of just faking it. He was curious about what was going to happen next… if they weren’t welcomed in a town as well, it would be safe to say that the whole territory was in shambles.

Before long, the sun began to set, and the group decided to camp at the top of a massive long hill that had some trees at the top. It was a bit windy, and the sky was cloudy, so it felt like it was going to rain that night, but everything else was fine.

Once they stopped, the group went to work on their tasks that each one of them had. Zelos would look after the horses, Irlan would take care of dinner and the girls would make sure that the area was clear… it seemed that the roles were reversed, but that was the best option considering their abilities.

Once Zelos was done with his job, he looked around the camp and then decided to resume his training. The girls were also done finishing their tasks, so they saw him moving the club very slowly… that weapon truly won’t be of any use for quite a while. Kaitrine decided to approach a bit.

“Why do you like heavy weapons so much? You probably could do better with a glaive or something.”

“No particular reason. If there is actually one, then I would say that I don’t want an easy weapon to use, but I want one easy to master.”

That didn’t make any sense, but a few things about Zelos actually made any sense. After thinking a little, they could only assume that Zelos wanted a weapon easy to master, but that he still could improve himself even after reaching that stage. Clubs weren’t popular weapons, but they were very useful since they could block pretty much all types of weapons…

After a while, Zelos changed his training and then began to train his legs. He basically just ran around the camp while only touching the ground with his fingers. While seeing that, the group felt a bit like sparring too, but that wouldn’t be wise… showing their training methods wasn’t what they liked to do either… even if they didn’t mind, that would be unwise since they had to stay focused on the mission.

After a while, Zelos stopped since it was time for dinner. He finished his meal pretty fast, but soon he went to eat the snacks that he had bought: bread, jerky, and some milk. The others offered him seconds from the soup, but since they probably wouldn’t be able to buy anything in that territory, they would need to be careful with food.

“Captain, don’t you think that we should look for the informants and ask about what is going on here?”