Chapter 14

Travel.

I enjoyed traveling. Especially by beast and carriage. Samantah paid 10 gold for the carriage services. The owner was an old man, long retired from adventuring. A large war horse pulled the long and spacious carriage through already traveled paths of deep snow. Instead of wheels, the carriage had been fastened to a giant sled.

The grey mottled horse was named Athuul, and she was a level 1100 conjure familiar. Calling her a horse was fine when you saw her from behind, despite the fact that she was a single story tall. From the front, she was an entirely different beast, almost monster-like. Her mouth was long like a crocodile, though her skull was vaguely horse shaped. She had a serpent’s tongue that flicked out to snap at the air. Her teeth were shark’s teeth and her tongue slithered between the multitude of rows. Her eyes were large and white, ringed twice with icy blue irises. She had a lavish straw colored mane that was as thick as a lions.

Otherwise she was entirely horse-like and pulled us with ease over half plowed roads. Samantah was quite pleased with the spacious carriage. There was enough room for the six of us to lay down. Fluffy cushioned benches lined the front and the back, and several closets were occupied with our gear and weapons.

The driver rode atop Athuul and an orange bubble covered him. The bubble was thin and only the outline of it could be caught from just the right view. I guessed that it was a shield of some kind to ward off the inclement snow and to keep him warm.

Since I was a bit hungry I fetched a loaf of herb baked bread and the waterskin from my bag. I’d bought the loaf to share with everyone.

“What’s with the bag there?” Seeud said.

“What do you mean?” I said, returning to sit beside Samantah.

“That’s not for inventory is it?”

“Uh-yea, that’s where I keep my stuff.”

The warriors shared a hearty laugh and I felt my face redden. What was wrong with my bag? I couldn’t help but smile, drawn in by their merriment.

“Well,” Seeud said, “we’re crawling the same dungeon at least six times.”

“Maybe more,” Samantah said. “Depends on if the spellbook spawns each time. We might not get a single spellbook.”

“Which means at least six times the loot, kid. You’re not going to have anywhere to store things.”

“Couldn’t I just keep things in the carriage between dungeon runs?” I said.

“That’s awfully trustful of you,” Henrick said, opening his eyes from what we’d assumed until now had been a deep sleep. “Jorge, Seeud, and I aren’t the thieving type, but you might consider getting yourself an inventory pouch.”

He patted a thick leather pouch that was strapped to his belt. He opened it, took a glance around in it, then pulled out a bottle of Pyrrhon’s potion.

This was the first time I’d ever seen an inventory pouch in action. My eyes went wide with astonishment and Henrick laughed.

The potion was twice the size of the pouch, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand how that could be. Then he pulled out another one and there was no way two could fit in there.

Henrick sat up and undid his belt.

“Excuse you,” Samantah said. “What are you doing?”

“I promise I’m not getting naked,” Henrick said.

He slid off his inventory pouch. He tossed it to me. It was much heavier than it looked. I almost dropped it, not expecting it to weigh nearly half my flagstaff.

“Take a look inside,” he said.

The inventory pouch was small, the size of a wallet but stretched a bit longer. It had a long loop wherein a belt could slide through. A single flap covered the pouch and locked closed with a toggle button. I flipped open the flap.

“Divine Felke!” I said.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My brain had trouble understanding what was going on. The inside of the pouch was filled with at least a hundred different items. There were ingots, potions, scrolls, trinkets, arrows, and a ton of other stuff.

“Reach in and grab something,” Henrick said.

The warriors laughed uproariously, enjoying my reaction to something which every adventurer seemed to have. At least everyone above the levels of beginners.

When I turned the pouch this way and that, it was like looking through a large keyhole into a room. A leather room. With solid leather shelves that held various items. If I wobbled the pouch, the items inside were not affected, only the view shook. I moved the pouch around to better look at everything. This meant that I had to turn it slightly one way, then the other to fully take in everything.

“There’s a waterskin on the bottom far left, if you don’t mind grabbing that for me,” Henrick said.

“You can pick up something else for yourself while you’re at it,” Jorge said.

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“No, no, no,” Henrick said, admonishing his comrade with a friendly glare. “Don’t listen to him. Just grab the waterskin.”

I reached a hand inside and angled for the waterskin. The corner of the room inside the inventory pouch seemed to zoom in until the item was within reach. I pulled out the waterskin which itself was thrice the size of the pouch, which simply adjusted to the width of the waterskin.

“That’s incredible,” I said. “This is from another world!”

I tossed Henrick his waterskin and inspected the outside of the pouch. I found several runes embroidered beneath the flap.

“A basic inventory pouch starts at a specific internal size,” Antoine said from beside me. “Each rune performs specific functions to level it up. His has a rune for capacity and one for weight—for reducing weight.”

“Probably sucks up a lot of permanent mana hunh?” I said.

“Of course,” Henrick said. “But I’ll walk away with six times the loot you can carry in your arms. You won’t always have the luxury of a carriage. Especially one of this size and comfort. That’s why I’m surprised you’re not prepared.”

His words stung an unhealed wound in my heart. I gazed completely through the inventory pouch for a few seconds before handing it back to Henrick. He polished off a good swig from his waterskin before returning it to the pouch, then slipped the whole thing back onto his belt and buckled up.

I didn’t know what to say. We were only just passing by the last farms in rural Klayvale and already a comrade was telling me I was unprepared.

“Yea, I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m still new to all this and I’m trying my best.”

“He didn’t mean anything by that,” Samantah said.

I should have been prepared. I should have bought an inventory pouch. Several people had already suggested I buy one. Yet here I was, pouchless.

“Every adventure will only better prepare you for the next,” Samantah said.

“I know,” I said. “I just feel so behind all the time.”

“Don’t worry too much about that,” Seeud said. “That’s the way of things. We’ll help you as long as we’re around, healer. Isn’t that right boys?”

Henrick and Jorge gave a singular affirmative.

I picked up the herb baked bread from my lap, picked off some lint, and tore a piece off. The rest was shared between everyone and I listened to the rest of the party talk for a while.

Their conversations helped keep things off my mind. I curled up in my cloak as the cold began to seep in. Night was approaching quickly and the temperature was dropping.

“So Antoine,” Seeud said. “Congratulations on achieving level 100 on your familiar there.”

“Yea, thanks. I’m looking forward to using her in battle.”

“She got a name?”

“Syrune.”

“Lovely name,” Jorge said.

“What about you guys,” Antoine said. “What level are your weapons?”

Henrick clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. He crossed the lurching carriage and retrieved his longsword.

“This here is Betty,” he said. “Level 220.”

He set the longsword upon his lap and it extended over the laps of Jorge and Seeud as well. He held his hands out, palms up. A blue ball began forming in the shared space above both palms. It didn’t get very large, before he widened the ball into a circle. The longsword floated up into the middle. The blade was so long that it floated through either side of the circle and hovered in thin air.

Several runes sheened metallic red on the hilt and base of the blade. Then several rings of gold brackets materialized above the weapon. Each ring hovered above a rune, except for the highest ring of brackets which indicated the durability level. That one had no rune.

“35 levels of durability,” Henrick said, pointing at the highest floating ring. Then he pointed at the other rings one by one. “Level 50 power, level 45 weightless, level 40 sharpness, and level 50 bloodbite.”

“That’s a lot of levels,” I said. “That must be why you don’t have such a big mana pool.”

“There’s not much need for mana as a warrior,” Seeud said.

“What’s Bloodbite?” I said.

“Converts your kills to health, if I’m right?’ Samantah said.

“That’s it,” Henrick said, withdrawing his mana bar and catching the longsword as it fell. He returned the weapon to the closet, carefully walking across the carriage. “Every kill grants the sword a point of health which I can harvest and add to my health bar. That’s what really matters for warriors. I’ve got somewhere between 500-600 health. I stopped counting some time ago.”

“I’ve seen a couple of warriors use their health bars the way everyone else uses mana,” I said. “Is that true?”

“That’s a fine comparison. Warriors do use a bit of mana, but most of our power comes from using power techniques in battle. Unlike spells, or runes, warriors train to sacrifice health in exchange for activating power techniques. It requires a lot of training, a lot of learning, and a lot of studying.”

“Are these power techniques something that you level up?” I said.

“No,” Seeud said, taking over. “It’s only powered up from training. Drilling these techniques increases how powerful they are.”

“You can also adjust how much health you sacrifice in order to boost whatever power technique you use,” Jorge said.

“Well yea, that too,” Seeud said. “However, getting more powerful happens mostly through training. Each technique is different and requires different amounts of training and conditioning to master.”

“Could you teach me?” I said.

All three warriors looked at me like I was crazy. Samantah’s eyebrows shot up and Antoine just looked confused.

“Not sure that’s a good idea, or a fair use of time,” Seeud said. “It could impact your class the closer you become to legendary, if you ever want to progress to that level. Learning warrior skills as a healer might do you more harm than good. Divines, deities, demi-deities aligned to your class might turn you away—might want nothing to do with you. Not to mention that there's nothing I can teach you that you can pick up overnight.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“Besides,” Seeud said. “We’re going to need you as support.” He nodded at Samantah. “What do you think we’ll be up against?”

“Bandits,” she said.

The warriors gave low growly chuckles. They seemed pleased to hear that. I fought highwaymen before. Bandits wouldn’t be much different would they? I asked Samantah if there was a difference.

“Bandits are more wild and uninhibited,” she said. “Pain doesn’t stop them from fighting. When they engage in battle, they lock on their targets relentlessly until they’re completely destroyed.”

“The only annoying thing is their numbers,” Jorge said.

“That’s precisely why I designed our team,” Samantah said. “To deal with their numbers.”

Samantah didn’t have any other information on the dungeon. She had an idea where the dungeon was, but it sounded like we would be scouting for it. She had set aside an entire day for us to locate the dungeon, then another week to hit the dungeon over and over.

It wasn’t long before we all grew too tired. The carriage came to a slow halt, and the driver informed us we would stop for the night and to get some rest. I barely heard anything else he said. I was already drifting to sleep, bundled up in my new cloak.