There were surprisingly fewer tasks than I expected which needed to be done before I could head south. Rena was managing the Tamers Guild just fine without me and had been for years, and Horg had long since got a handle on the Adventurers Guild. Morgun and Nodel practically ran the Kingdom for me, and Atlessoa’s spy network was a smooth machine of intelligence gathering and counter-espionage, insofar as anyone still tried to peek behind the curtain of how the Kingdom was being run.
As my double, Atlessoa would be working closely with Seranedra anyway, who I built a special communicator for so we could stay in touch during my travels. If anything came up that I needed to know about, either one of them could contact me through that, although it was mostly so I could call Sera before bed each night. Despite being excited to make this trip, I knew I would miss her while away from home.
The hardest part of leaving was figuring out what to say to the kids. Atlessoa was only going to play my double for public-facing issues, not to trick my children. Rodessa did not understand that I would be gone—though no doubt she would cry when she wanted me later and I was not around—but the boys were old enough to get it. They were also young enough that it was still a very big deal to them.
“You’ll be gone the whole summer?!” Siral exclaimed, while Boshan’s eyes watered.
“I might get back sooner,” I said, hugging them. “But I’ll be back by winter. I promise.”
As far as an extended business trip went, a whole season away was pretty long, though I knew it would speed by for me. For a five and six year old, that was a significant portion of their life, proportionally. It was comparable to a military deployment on Earth, though, and did not even compare to the potential deployment times for the army in this world. Still, logic did not apply when it came to how a child feels.
“Why are you leaving?” Boshan asked through a sniffle.
“Papa’s just got some work to do in the south. But we can still talk through the communications artifact I gave to mama, and I can tell you all about my adventures.”
That caught their attention. “What kind of adventures?”
“Well,” I said, scratching my chin. “First I’m going to sail the seas, past the jungles, then into the desert where Haklan is. Then I’ll start searching through the desert for some mysterious caves filled with all sorts of beasts, which I’ll explore in order to find a… treasure, I guess.”
“Whoa,” Boshan said.
“Cool,” Siral agreed.
“I’ll tell you all about it whenever you want to talk. But I’m going to need you boys to behave, help each other out, and take care of your mother and sister for me. Understood?”
My sons nodded, and I gave them a grin. “Good boys. For now, let’s get some ice cream.”
I would miss ice cream when I was in Haklan. Maybe I’ll put a few bowls in my inventory.
* * *
“You the lad that booked passage?” a gruff sailor asked as I approached the moored barge.
“That’s me,” I said.
Sailors were busy loading and unloading various goods across a series of barges in the canal. The capital was not actually directly seaside, and did not have a contained port. Instead, there was a canal which ran from a port at the sea inland, which ran into the capital, which allowed for imports and exports to the city.
The canal was much too thin and shallow to allow for seafaring ships. There was a bit of an inefficiency in needing to load and unload goods twice—from ship to barge and barge to land, and vice versa—but expanding the canal would be a massive project, even with mages, and would disrupt the farms on the west side of the capital.
I had debated making changes at one point over the years of my reign. Canal barges were faster than oxilire, but tarands might be able to compete and that might be the simpler option. In the end my advisors and I decided that this was a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” as there was a whole industry around the canal and the amount of change needed for minor gains was maybe not worth it.
On Earth, rail largely replaced canal shipping. The Kingdom could buy coal from the Velgeins, but that was an Earth technology that, so far, I had decided to leave on Earth. Now, if I could find a way to run a rail system magically, instead of with fossil fuels…
“Don’t get passengers on this ship often,” the sailor grunted, forcing me out of my thoughts. “More of a transport ship. Not going to be comfortable.”
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I shrugged. “That’s how I’d prefer it. Fast and cheap.”
The sailor barked a laugh. “Aye, it’ll be that,” he said. “Jump on a barge when we’re loaded up and ready to set back out for the ship. And hold tight on the ride. If you fall off, we aren’t turning back. You can swim the rest of the way yourself.”
I grinned and nodded, letting the man get back to it and getting out of the way of the other laborers who were trying to get the job done quickly. I set my pack down and sat on it while I waited, my leather armor stiff as it bent with me.
Once I decided to set out south, I had needed to decide on an identity to travel under. I almost settled on the stone mage, Bil, but he was not really the man for the job. He did construction and city work and was known by a number of people in the capital already, and while he was often seen around the Adventurers Guild, he was not exactly the type to go hunting through the desert for dungeons.
Instead, I constructed a new identity. This man was big and sturdy, but he was green, an upstart, maybe a former blacksmith who decided he wanted to get out and see the world and seek out its secrets.
And he carried a big-ass sword.
The simple truth was that I did not want to sit back and sling spells. Most of my best spells were too showy, anyway, and would tie me too close to my identity as the king. True, the king was also pretty strong and could use a big sword, but that was not unique in the Kingdom.
I wanted to get some exercise on this adventure. Between hauling and whipping a huge hunk of metal around, moving and running a lot, eating travel food, and fighting with my body instead of my mind, hopefully I could burn away some of the extra pounds hiding under the illusion that I had gained spending so much time sitting around in the capital, eating rich foods like cheese and ice cream. Not that I’m complaining about that, just… the effect it had on me.
That said, I had learned some hard lessons about hiding my magic too much in the past, so I would not hesitate to use it if it came to that. I had magic circles equipped as jewelry and also hidden inside my inexpensive-looking leather armor, which I hoped to have broken in by the time I reached Haklan.
What I did not have, for the first time since I was a boy, were any beasts. This identity was not a tamer. I had left Rika and Horsey with Atlessoa, and reluctantly left Pegamus with Rena. I just hoped I could take him back from her on the other side of this adventure, but she had flown off with a whoop of glee as soon as she gained control of him, so I kind of doubted it. If I was being honest with myself, I was underutilizing the beast, and he was a better fit for the Tamers Guild Master.
Well, maybe I’ll find something even cooler to tame in the south, I thought with a sigh. I’ll just have to wait until I’m done with my business around Haklan and heading back north before taming one.
Mostly, my plan was to club things to death with my huge sword.
Swords this large would never be used, back on Earth. The sheer weight of it made it too unruly to use. People concerned with semantics would call it a “sword shaped object” rather than an actual sword, because the size and balance was all wrong for precision swordplay.
That said, I no longer lived on Earth. I lived in a fantasy world with magic. I had a relatively preposterous expert level Strength skill, as well as expert combat skills for single-welding and dual-wielding swords and other weapons. So I would use a giant video-game-slash-anime-style greatsword, thank you very much.
It was still sharp and still very deadly, but given the weight—even with my strength—it was a chore to thrust with, as the tip always wanted to sink down to the ground. This was a greatsword made for swinging, so I had shaped it a bit like a Konda sword, also known as an Ikakalaka, with a spatulated tip. Sheathing it was more or less impossible, so I had painstakingly rigged a method of carrying the behemoth on my back.
The sword had earned me a lot of peculiar looks as I walked through the capital to the canal where I was to meet the barges, but it stood out in a different way from anything I had done as the king. Combined with the illusion of sandy brown hair and relatively plain brown eyes, I was a new man.
“All aboard!” the sailor called out, warning the rest of the crew that the barge was heading back out. I scampered back to my feet and lifted my travel pack, stepped up to the barge and received a nod from the sailor. With a little jump, my feet left the dock and hit the barge, which swayed a bit under the weight of me and my sword, and I moved towards the cargo and grabbed a hold of some of the rope that was lashing down goods.
In short order, the lightermen were pushing off with their barge poles, and we were moving away from the docks and down the canal. We drifted past the walls, the homes and businesses giving way to farms, and I looked back as the capital receded from view. My journey was officially underway.
The ride down the canal was peaceful to the point of being uninteresting. Soon I was settled down next to the cargo, trying to avoid falling asleep as the canal waters rocked the barge, the rhythmic sloshing of the lightermen working their poles in the water lulling me to sleep. I shook my head after drifting off for a moment. I can sleep on the ship.
When the end of the canal came into view, I stood and stretched, and once we hit the docks the sailors leapt into a practiced and coordinated dance of unloading the barges and loading the ships. I maneuvered out of the way, working towards the gangplank and then up to the ship’s deck.
The ship was a big transport that I was quite familiar with from my time at the port of Mirut in my youth. I was excited to finally ride in one.
The man hollering commands at the sailors was the captain, preparing his crew to set off as soon as the goods were loaded. I caught his eye, and he nodded at me to approach.
“You’re the passenger?” the captain asked, looking me over, his eyes resting on my sword for a moment before returning to making eye contact with an intense stare.
“Yessir,” I said. “The name’s Deklan.”