Kevin Curry
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Chapter 25: The plot thickens
🕑 Added 2022-08-08 14:16:45 +0000 UTCLong distance travel over land as an adventurer could take many forms. The majority of them just walked places, occasionally deciding to earn a bit extra pay by following merchant caravans and providing them a small amount of protection. Some had their own carts or wagons yoked to beasts of burden and carried enough stuff to make the act of traveling more tolerable.
Once you get rich enough that you could buy enchanted items for sheer convenience, packs get lighter. You could travel comfortably with just the goods you could carry on your back. On top of that, while Veteran ranks could get away without significant amounts of mana cultivation, the act of using magic slowly improved the body, making even one of those wizards who conducted battles with pure spellcraft like Hana did became, after a decade or two of frequent combat, be able to run for hours at speed.
If you were put into a strict magically augmented regimen of physical exercise, the amount of time to reach such heights became drastically shortened. It presumably had nothing on the kinds of results those sects that focus entirely on improving their bodies and souls could achieve, but the six months or so of training and that one week of experimental torture achieved results that Casimir didn’t achieve until he had already graduated from the Academy, at nearly a decade older than they were. Granted, he couldn’t go from his basic education to the advanced courses immediately like they could, but it was still a notable achievement.
Still, Casimir was used to mostly just running across landscapes, following the trade roads most of the time for convenience and easy navigation, and while he had to slow down to allow his students to keep up, a few curses closed that gap a bit.
“Teach!” Peter shouted, a necessity when moving at these speeds. “There’s people in the way!”
Casimir was about to just tell them to jump it, but then he looked over the group in question. It was large, and all people with only a few disorganized wagons. It was difficult to tell exactly, but he would bet if he could see them clearly they would be disheveled and filthy. These were no merchants, but refugees.
“Flying brake, like we drilled!” Casimir called out, and the group leapt up, not particularly well coordinated but within acceptable bounds, and used Flight in the direction opposite of their trajectory. After a few seconds, they started to actually move backwards instead of just slowing down, so they cut off the spell and landed on the ground. With that handled, they proceeded to walk towards the group, just five people with only what was on their backs, plus one crate of potions. He could only fit half of the crate in his bags, as the high mana density of alchemical mana screwed with expanded space enchantments and took up obscene amounts of space in comparison to their actual size. So he just took a few out and equipped them for easy access, and kept the rest in the crate, which sported some new enchantments to help keep the contents safe.
It only took a few minutes for the remaining distance between the two groups closed. “Hail.” Casimir called out in Dwarven. While the group didn’t have nearly as many dwarves as he thought normal for this part of the world, it was still the language used by local traders so it was the safest bet.
The haggard human at the head of the crowd judged the sun’s position, looked again at Casimir’s dragonhide and exotic metals armor, and made the decision to break for lunch. Many of the children and elderly cried out in relief at the break, but the bulk of the group just got to work, a sign that the group was mostly farmers, as city folk would be complaining more. Fire pits and cookpots were quickly erected as they started to prepare meals for the crowd. Supplies were taken from the few wagons, all durable fare like root vegetables, beans, flour, cheese, and beer. Runners were sent out to fetch the ones that had set out a bit to forage and hunt while the column moved.
“It seems you’ve struck some hard times.” Casimir observed as the man who was leading the group invited them to sit with him.
“Yes.” The older man said in agreement. “My name is Horatio Alderman. We’re refugees from Yellow Valley.” Casimir winced, but Horatio continued. “Our village was sacked by soldiers wearing the livery of the Jurta Federation. They allowed us to flee with modest amounts of supplies, but they claimed as spoils the vast majority of our recent harvest.” Tears welled up in the man’s eyes as he recounted their tale.
“Teach?” Whispered Peter. “What’s the Jurta Federation?”
Casimir sighed. “About ten years ago, there was a war in these parts.” For as long as coherent records exist, the various governments around here have been fighting each other over all kinds of things “The important thing here is that this particular war ended in a victory so horrible that the kingdom that won immediately collapsed and had their citizens revolt, splitting the territory into five parts. According to the mapmaker I talked to back at Vault of Redoubt, The Jurta Federation is when two of those territories decided to work together to conquer their neighbors. They’ve since reclaimed the full territory of the Kingdom of Jurta and then some.”
Horatio nodded along with Casimir’s explanation. “With all that food, Jurta’s armies will be well fed for their next military campaign.”
Faron seemed disturbed by the story. “If your village was so close to the border with Jurta, why didn’t you have a military garrison?”
“We’re not that close.” Horatio corrected. “They bypassed the primary garrison at the pass, somehow bypassing the mountain range without being detected. What few soldiers we did have guarding the harvests from monsters were no match for Jurta’s armies.”
Casimir frowned. Through the mountains? That the kobolds were reported from? He didn’t like the sound of that. “So where are you headed? I can spare a few hours to get a message out.” According to the map, they were only fifty miles away from Yellow Valley; he could check out the situation himself if needed as long as he left his students behind.
“Ah, we’re heading for Fort Waller.” Horatio explained. “It’s a citadel up in those mountains over there, it should be able to house us for long enough to get everything sorted, and it has a sizable garrison.” He pointed to a mountain peak you could just barely make out over the horizon at ground level. Casimir whistled. That was a bit of a trip… The mountains around here were pretty short, so… he guessed one hundred and fifty miles? Somewhere around there.
Casimir did some mental math for the trip, then nodded to himself. “Alright.” He turned to his students, handing Illivere the potion crate. “Protect these folk while I go check things out.” Turning back to Horatio, he took out some paper, ink, and a slate for a writing surface. “Write whatever letter you’ll want me to run to Fort Waller. I’ll pick it up on my way back.”
“Back?” Horatio asked as Casimir stretched a bit, putting a drop of the water mana potion he reserved as a waterskin, feeding the mana into his hydration curse without needing to convert anything, then following it up by downing one of the life mana potions to feed his physical enhancement curses.
“Back.” Casimir confirmed, before taking off at thrice the speed he and his students had been moving at, towards Yellow Valley.
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Yellow Valley was, from the high position that Casimir secured, pretty much as he expected: a bunch of fields, most of which recently harvested, and a few patrols of Jurta soldiers.
Casimir didn’t know much about their military traditions, but from his brief overview, he was fairly certain that he took too long to slow down and put effort into concealing himself, as the soldiers appeared to be mobilizing for something, and sensing Casimir’s top travel speed would be consistent with that. So whatever they had, it included a core of diviners keeping an eye out for heavy magic usage. Which was a necessity for good security, in Caismir’s opinion.
From the movement of their soldiers, Casimir guessed they were veteran troops, as their formations were crisp and their speed was fairly high. Given how much warfare Jurta has been going through, they’re bound to have large amounts of such troops, and the alternative, that this was just the results of their training regimes, was uncomfortable to think of.
Still, the army was not the purpose of his presence here, so he should move on. Casimir ran along the ridges, doing his best to blend his mana emissions in with the environmental mana profile of the area. Eventually, he found himself at an elaborate entrance to a structure built into one of the mountains, guarded by Jurta soldiers. Did they dig themselves a tunnel, perhaps? The amount of mana that would take… impossible to conceal. The logistics would be improbable for more mundane methods as well. Did the locals not have enough diviners?
Casimir approached stealthily, casting some quick curses to dull the senses of the sentries and skillfully avoiding the enchantments. Once inside, he saw what was hiding behind the entrance: one massive tunnel, wide enough to fit twenty men abreast and long enough that Casimir couldn’t quite estimate it beyond ‘more than a mile’. Casimir put his hand on the ground and carefully pulsed his mana. Pinpointing the origin of a mana pulse like this one wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, and there were ways to modulate it so that it was even more difficult.
As such, while Casimir was sure the pulse was detected, he had plenty of time to duck into one of the side tunnels that his scan revealed well before anyone who could possibly do anything about that detection acted on that information.
The information that he got, on the other hand, was exactly as dire as he expected: Kobold doors leading into a more complex tunnel network around the larger but simpler tunnel network. It was exactly the kind of work they found in Anima, kobolds assisting humans to malicious ends. Potentially literally, given this ‘Malice’ entity that may or may not be a spirit.
Once he was behind the kobold door, he thought it would be a repeat of the scouting expeditions, but whatever they had that could detect his tremorsense spells, they weren’t sharing information with the kobolds. Further, the warren wasn’t as developed as the one in Anima. Odd…
Finding a small group of kobolds, Casimir brought out his sword and just killed them all, siphoning the cores to prove their presence. With that secured, he made his way out of the kobold warren through a side exit that didn’t even lead into the transit tunnel. As expected, there were quite a few soldiers running about, searching for the source of the divinations he had used.
But, as much as he thought that the Jurta Federation was a bunch of warmongers that blatantly robbed a ton of innocent people… He’s an Adventurer. Killing members of foreign militaries was a very thorny decision, as politics usually were, and while he might be able to do some real damage… he’s not an army killer.
If Casimir put them to this task on their own like he initially wanted to… Casimir sorely regrets messing around with his student’s initial quests, because he seems to have started a trend. Why couldn’t they have had a normal quest?
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When Casimir returned to the refugee column, just a few hours after he left, he found that his students had taken his instructions seriously, and had managed to attract four dozen gnolls, a cousin tribe of kobolds, vaguely dog-like humanoids that were twice the size and tuned towards stone mana rather than metal. They burrowed through the ground at speeds that outpaced civilians and preferred to ambush people by springing up from the ground while brandishing their exceedingly sharp stone weapons.
They appeared to be winning, but Casimir wasn’t feeling patient enough to wait for them to finish it on their own. So instead of slowing himself down, he instead just strengthened his body some more and crashed feet-first into the biggest gnoll still standing, twisting his remaining momentum with force mana into a sword swipe that bisected his four bodyguards.
With the gnoll’s utter shock at his arrival, Casimir’s students rallied faster than anyone else and finished off the remaining gnolls.
“What is it about you four that attracts so much trouble?” Casimir asked before making his way to Horatio. “You finished your letter?”
“Y-yes.” The leader of the group replied. “Here you go.” He handed Casimir back his writing supplies, and Casimir put the letter into an envelope that he had forgotten to give him, placing a bit of wax on it. “Seal?” Casimir asked, and Horatio took out his personal seal and pressed the letter closed, the seal’s enchantments imprinting the wax with not only a physical seal, but a delicate magical imprint that was easy to disrupt if you weren’t careful.
“Right. We need to pass through that garrison that army bypassed, so I’ll be sure to tell them about the situation when we do.” Casimir said as he stashed the letter away. He looked at Hanna, healing the wounded. “You got this handled, Hanna?”
“Yes!” She replied. “I’ll need to use a potion to heal everyone, but they’re all stable so I can take my time now.”
Casimir nodded before drawing out one of the life mana potions he got from Hana. “Use this one.” He said as he tossed it to her. It was a pretty durable bottle, it had to be when crushing water pressure was a significant concern when transporting it. Hana would be pissed at him if she knew he kept them to himself in this situation. She’d be annoyed at the fact that he didn’t heal them himself, in fact. “Take small sips until you have a handle on the density.” He advised. Using a potion’s mana personally isn’t just a matter of drinking it, you have to wrangle the mana a bit to make it usable. If you weren’t used to it, you could easily waste large portions of a high quality potion by drinking too much at once, and every wasted mote of mana contributed to potion sickness. It was kind of like alcohol, you had to know what you could or could not handle.
“Thank you, Professor!” Hanna called out.
Casimir turned to Faron, who seemed to be bragging to some young ladies who were fawning over their heroes. “I’ll be back in the evening, so follow these guys and fight off any more monsters that pop up.”
“Yes sir!” Faron said, saluting. At least two of the girls sighed dreamily at his overacting.
Casimir chucked, shaking his head at the boy’s antics (even if that boy was taller than him). “I’ll be off, then!” For a little flair of his own, Casimir kicked off the ground in a great leap, deliberately quaking the ground a bit and making Faron fall on his ass.
It was a teacher’s duty to ensure their students didn’t get too large of a head.
