On the second night of the journey from Mirut, I was again struck by the consequences of my actions.
The ratman attack was surprisingly well organized. They had our camp fully encircled before rushing in, silent as a whisper. Several of the beasts even made it past the guard and into the camp before the convoy guard jumped to respond.
Buda was actually a major factor in protecting the convoy goods. He noticed the ratmen poking around the wagons and started squealing and chasing them down, which brought the guards to attention and initiated the full defense.
Fortunately for everyone involved, the ratmen weren’t trying to kill people. It was a raid, and their goal was to make off with food items. Unfortunately for the ratmen, that sort of thing demanded a pretty serious response from the humans who were put out by the affair. There wouldn’t be any mercy.
As soon as the counter-attack began, I snuck away from the camp under a shroud of invisibility to hunt down the leader of the pack. I knew ratmen didn’t normally operate like this. In fact, it was arguably too early in the season for ratmen to even be this far south, which also told a story about new tactics from specific leadership. This was the group that had been causing trouble on this road over the second half of last winter, a problem I had created.
Somewhere in the jungle, there was an alpha ratman, an evolved version of the upright, tool-using, capybara-like creatures. If I could find him, the group’s tactics would likely fall apart and they would cease to be such a problem. I would have hunted the evolved beast down in the summer, but he had migrated away for the season. In a way, I was glad I had a chance to sort this out before I was gone.
The alpha wasn’t actually that hard to find, once I realized he would be watching over the battle. I was surprised to find him up a tree, observing from a sturdy branch–a behavior I had never seen in regular ratmen–but once identified, he didn’t actually put up much of a fight. The air was still that night and my scent wasn’t able to betray me. I knocked him out of the tree with a stone bullet to the back of his head, dispatched him, and moved his carcass to my inventory.
Once the ratman formation was broken, the survivors fled into the jungle. With no leader to guide them, they would likely become prey to the beasts who hadn’t yet moved south for winter.
* * *
In the morning, I finally advanced my strength skill. The transition wasn’t as gradual as I would have preferred, but I had kept myself pretty well covered by my cloak to hide my body since heading out of Mirut. I wanted the advanced skill now, before the convoy was attacked during the day. If I found myself needing to fight, I would be limited to physical combat, so the extra strength would be critical.
Upon advancing the skill, I felt the muscles of my young body bulge and thicken. It was, if not painful, certainly a surprising and intense experience. I wondered how many months or years of hardcore resistance training dropping the 10 SP into the skill was equivalent to. Increasing my strength this way made me famished, so I went about cramming my belly full of meat. The protein was probably necessary for my new muscular body. I was still probably a bit too small for this much muscle, but I planned to keep myself hidden under my travel cloak. Eventually, my height would catch up. Probably. I didn’t know how magical muscles affected growth. Since my skeletal growth plates should be unaffected, I assumed it would be fine. If not, maybe I could unlock some kind of height skill. I chuckled to myself as I brainstormed what I would need to do to acquire such an unusual skill.
I also decided to don my replacement homemade stingknight chitin armor under my cloak. It was another product of the previous winter of skill development after the draconewt encounter. I had to make some adjustments with the buckles to fit my thicker frame, but it was still within the limits of the armor. I would probably check the shops and smiths in Roko for a nice replacement set for when I fully outgrew this. I wanted something a lot tougher than chitin for my next set, anyway.
Instead of wearing my father’s sword, I switched to my baselard and hoped none of the guards had paid enough attention to notice.
The road through the jungle was cool but damp. The trees kept the light and heat of the day off our backs as we continued the trail east. Every once in a while we would encounter a beast, but it was usually just a creature passing through, living its life, rather than an attack. The ratman attack had at least provided plenty of meat for the first leg of the journey, much as it displeased me to eat ratman stew.
I formed a few friendships with some of the young guards and old tamers as we traveled together and got to know each other. The tamer at the front of the procession, a retired farmer named Bilgus, was surprisingly inquisitive about my taming. I attributed that, in part, to Gregory, who had stuck by his side for most of the journey so far after discovering the comforts of wagon travel.
In fact, more often than not, I started seeing the flying nodmouse curled up in Bilgus’ lap, the old man softly stroking my familiar’s soft blue fur.
“Still can’t believe that beast is a ramhog,” Bilgus said to me, breaking the amicable silence as I traveled alongside him. “I’ve seen a number of those little bastards while traveling through this jungle, causing a ruckus whenever we cross their paths.”
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I had already explained beast evolution to Bilgus and a few others who were interested in my beast companions, as none of the people recognized my powered-up beast friends. Only Bilgus was really starting to see the implications.
“He’s a good bit smaller than this here oxalire, but he’s got a comparable strength. If you could get two of them working together to pull a wagon, the weight wouldn’t be an issue, and they’re a lot quicker on their feet.”
I nodded, glancing at the oxalire’s long, heavy tail which dragged on the ground behind it. “Oxalire definitely don’t seem built for speed,” I agreed. “Unfortunately, it takes quite a lot of commitment to train up a beast for evolution.”
“And you said that they just need to eat a beast crystal to evolve?”
“Yup. You’ll know when the beast is ready for it because they’ll happily eat it up. If you have to force them to eat it, they aren’t ready.”
Bilgus thought for a bit, then glanced at his oxalire. “Think I should try for this old gal? I could probably pick up a crystal in Roko,” he mused.
I shrugged, but shook my head. “I heard from a sailor who heard from his grandfather that evolved oxalire grow quite a bit bigger and stronger, but not any faster. They also might grow spikes out of the end of their tails, which would rip up the underside of the wagon,” I said, pointing out the tail which dragged under the front axle. “You’d need a whole new harness system to make it work, and a larger wagon to benefit from it.”
He nodded, frowning a bit, but then grinned at me. “Sure would be neat to see it happen, though.”
I laughed, delighted by yet another convert. “Agreed.”
I appraised the older oxalire with 3-point magic, and saw that while she wasn’t maxed out in level just yet, she was close. I could easily get her there by feeding her some of the high-rank meat in my inventory, but it would mess up the whole convoy. Oh well.
“There are probably even better beasts out there for travel,” I mused, thinking of the horses of Earth. “Just takes the right tamer to find it.”
I saw Bilgus chew that over as he looked back down at Gregory sleeping in his lap. I peeled off with a smile to head down the line and chat with someone else as we continued the march through the jungle.
* * *
Days passed by the dozen on the way to Roko. I was beginning to appreciate just how remote Mirut was, and why so much of our trade was exclusively by sea. I asked Marshan why the convoy even traveled to Mirut when it was such a massive trek to get there along a land route.
“The fish, mostly,” he confessed. “Going to Mirut is rarely profitable. It’s a nice town, but not a lot of money. The people can’t buy most of what the merchants that travel with the convoy sell, although the lord’s house usually will buy enough so that they break even on the trip, just to encourage the convoy to keep coming back. On the whole, the trip there and back is profitable because of the fish.”
He motioned to the wagons behind us. “A lot of this is various dried and salted fish and other sea products. Salt stores well, so it can come to Roko from anywhere, but despite how far this journey is, it takes even longer to get to Roko from the capital or Haklan. There’s not a massive appetite for seafood so far from the coast, but there is enough to make the trip worthwhile.
“There’s also a royal subsidy,” he concluded with a shrug. “Keeping the kingdom networked is important to His Majesty. We get paid just to make the trip. It’s still not as profitable as other routes, but we do it often enough to keep His Majesty happy.”
I ruminated on Marshan’s words as we continued traveling. I immediately saw room for improvement in two major ways.
As I had mentioned to Bilgus previously, there was surely a superior beast out there for hauling a wagon. The lack of tamers hurt the Kingdom; more tamers meant more wagons, and tamers hunting down and training beasts would be able to provide superior services. The oxalires in this convoy were really nice beasts, but as Bilgus had caught on to, even ramhogs could provide a possible improvement if a sufficient number were evolved. With enough tamers, everyone could travel by wagon, and the overall speed of the convoy would increase by a lot.
The superior improvement would be ice magic, or some way to preserve fresh fish. It might be too expensive to pay a strong mage to make the trip with the convoy, but surely with enchantments a convoy could maintain a wagon full of frozen goods the whole way back to Roko, especially if they were traveling faster with better mounts.
I scribbled my thoughts onto a parchment I had earmarked for brainstorming business ideas. While the apprenticeship was really just a means to get out of Mirut, I actually was learning a lot from Marshan and the others. It encouraged me to think about my future in this world beyond just getting stronger and uncovering magical mysteries.
After many more days of travel, I was hanging out towards the rear of the procession with some of the guards when I heard my name being called down the length of the convoy. I got Buda to go around and charge up to the front and came up alongside Marshan.
“We’re just about out of the jungle now,” he said. “I wanted you to be the first to see it.”
I peered ahead, and that was when I noticed it. Instead of the dappled light breaking through the jungle canopy that I had become used to, the road ahead was brightly lit and washed out. I looked to Marshan, who nodded, so I pushed Buda into a trot towards the light.
As we stepped out of the jungle, my eyes strained to adjust to the bright light. A wind blew away the damp feeling and the mid-autumn air was surprisingly warm from the light on my skin.
Before me lay a sea of grass covering the land, small hills slightly breaking up the endless green. The wind blew the blades around creating a ripple effect that reminded me of the ocean I had grown up next to. In the distance, I could see a herd of wild, grazing oxalire. The orange giant in the sky, surrounded by its brilliant purple rings, looked surprisingly different on a horizon of green instead of blue. I looked side to side and was amazed at how the jungle just suddenly stopped, a shockingly clear line of demarcation between the type of nature which surrounded my town and this new environment.
Marshan caught up and briefly stopped next to me. “It’s something, yeah? Sight for sore eyes after all that time in the jungle,” he said with a chuckle, then pressed on ahead.
I broke out into a big smile and followed my merchant mentor into this new world.