thomasdarkrose
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Vol. 8 - Intrigue - Chapter 1
🕑 Added 2020-05-02 20:35:51 +0000 UTCThomas left the rest of the group standing in the middle of the road as he made his way into the forest with Snowlily. Once they were far enough away he retrieved some of her clothing from his inventory and constructed a small wooden hut for her to change inside of using his Wood magic. Thanks to diving into the dungeon and messing with most of his elements, he'd become a lot more proficient in using them. Making a simple temporary hut was no issue and barely put a dent in his newly increased mana pool. He even went so far as to make a door with working wooden hinges and simple windows that could be opened and closed. It was a total waste of mana but it amused him so he did it anyway.
After setting her clothing on a table he conjured, Thomas left her inside of the hut and closed the door to give her some privacy. After a quick flash of white light and a few minutes of waiting, Snowlily left the hut wearing some sturdy, if basic looking, travel clothing. After he dismissed the spell for the hut, the two of them walked back toward the rest of the group. Thomas knew he would need to explain Snowlily's ability to transform to them and he wasn't looking forward to it. Still, he was willing to do so as he wanted Snowlily to be able to be in whichever for she chose. With his available weapons and gear, he could protect her from any threat below Mid to High Emperor class. Anything he couldn't protect her from he could, hopefully, flee from using his wings.
As the pair stepped out of the forest they received looks of confusion from Selena, Aria, and Minerva. To try and forgo an overly long conversation, and a possible punch to the chest from Selena, Thomas poke first, "Everyone, this is Snowlily. She's not a wolf but a Garou and can take on human form." He gestured to Lexiana, "Her people were the ancestors to Lexiana's kin. And as far as I know, Snowlily is the last of her kind. I discovered her on accident and was asked to take care of her until she reached maturity. If you want to know more, it would be best to ask Lexiana as what I've said is pretty much the limit of my knowledge."
That's right, he foisted the responsibility of answering questions onto Lexiana to spare himself the effort. When he saw the look of dismay on Lexiana's face as the other three women turned to look at her, he couldn't help grinning. Selena and Minerva kept their attention on Lexiana but Aria's shorter attention span soon flipped back over to the adorable little girl. With a squeal of delight, Aria pounced on Snowlily and began hugging and snuggling the little Garou in her arms while shouting, "So cute!!"
Snowlily immediately began struggling in Aria's arms while looking over at Thomas with pleading eyes. He quickly looked away and began to whistle while smiling to himself. Snowlily could have gotten herself free pretty easily with a bit of Ice magic, but she considered Aria and the others part of the group and didn't want to deliberately hurt her over something so petty. Though, that didn't stop her from lobbing a snowball at the back of Thomas's head for his 'betrayal'.
Seeing the snow falling off of the back of his head caused all the women to laugh at him. Thomas shivered as a few pieces rolled down his spine. He turned a playful glare on Snowlily. She mimicked his earlier actions by turning her head away and whistling. He rolled his eyes and wiped off the last bits of snow as the mana they were constructed from began fading away, "Alright, enough playing. Let's get moving."
He plucked Snowlily from Aria's arms and the group resumed their walk toward Kefla while chatting. Lexiana explained as much as she knew about the Garou to the group. Selena gave Thomas a somewhat accusatory glance when she learned that his 'pet' was actually a legendary being. Still, given everything else she'd seen in his presence, she wasn't quite so shocked that his 'pet' was actually a true monster. In this case, monster was a compliment as Lexiana explained how large and powerful a fully matured Garou could become.
Selena couldn't help wondering what it was about Thomas that made all these events seem to converge together. First, he became a Nephilim right before her eyes. When she caught up to him at the pirate den she witnessed him crafting a powerful magical item with his bare hands, not to mention purifying a mana crystal. After that was his complete set of Epic rarity gear and now his companion was a Legendary creature. She couldn't help wondering what would happen next. She also feared that her perception of what was 'normal' was being drastically thrown out of whack by his constant world-shaking actions.
The group chatted as they walked. It should be noted that their walking speed wasn't exactly normal as all of them had heightened parameters. They moved at the pace of their slowest member, Selena, but still moved at a brisk forty kilometers an hour. As Kefla was around eight hundred kilometers from Breidset over difficult terrain, it would take them about two days to walk there. With his current Agility, Thomas could just barely breach the speed of sound. However, the stamina provided by his Endurance wouldn't allow him to maintain that speed for more than a hundred kilometers. If he moved that fast he would be completely drained and take several hours to recover. Or, he could comfortably walk the same distance in about the same amount of time total without exhausting himself.
As the group moved they crested a particularly large hill and could see far into the distance. They got a nice clear view of the mountain range that Kefla was built inside of. The mountains were tall enough to easily see from Briedset, only now they could see the enormity of the entire mountain range. Right now they were traversing the rugged terrain between two large mountain ranges. The mountains on the west, that contained Kefla, were much larger and towered far into the sky. To the east was a smaller mountain range. Though smaller, it still contained many tall mountains with snow-covered caps.
The group marveled at the view of the two mountain ranges and the gap between them that they were moving through. After enjoying the view while eating an early lunch, the group continued on. Being so close to two mountain ranges, Thomas started using his Ore Detection skill regularly in the hopes of finding some new metals to play with later. Since Kefla provided all the Mithril available back in Breidset, along with other metals, he hoped to find some on the journey.
Things were peaceful as they walked along the road leading them to Kefla. That isn't to say monsters didn't pop out every now and then to assault them, it was just that the monsters were too weak to deal with the current overall strength of the group. Single monsters and small groups of them didn't stand a chance and ended up dead long before they could do anything to damage the group. Between the senses of Lexiana and Snowlily, it was almost impossible for anything to sneak up on them.
They walked for the entire day and managed to cover a little over half of the distance they needed to travel. disappointingly, Thomas hadn't located a single spec of any ore as they traveled. Either the ore was outside of his range or this area had been picked clean a long time ago and there was nothing left. His bet was on the latter. The group found a small clearing off of the road and decided to set camp there. Everyone started setting up their tents and gathering some nearby wood to make a fire. It was unanimously decided, by the women, that Thomas would do the cooking. He rolled his eyes at them but didn't object.
Once the fire was set, he pulled Snowlily with him and made her his assistant. He pulled out a set of cooking knives he'd purchased, he was too lazy to make his own, and began teaching Snowlily how to hold the knife and chop up the vegetables that she dreaded so much. She pouted at him but followed his directions carefully. A threat to make her eat double the amount of vegetables she wasted kept her from trying to destroy her foe. As the other three women watched Thomas teaching and guiding Snowlily, Minerva said, "It's like he's her father."
Aria grinned so wide that her eyes looked like crescent moons, "Nothing sexier than a father taking care of his kid."
Lexiana rolled her eyes at Aria while Selena smacked her shoulder, "Don't even think about it!"
Aria put on an innocent expression, "I don't know what you're talking about Princess."
Selena rolled her eyes as well before looking seriously at Aria, "Just keep your hands to yourself. Understood?"
Aria pouted but gave Selena a small salute and a nod, "Yes, Princess."
Minerva silently lowered the fist she was about to use to punch the back of Aria's head. She had worked with Aria for several years now and knew exactly what kind of man Aria liked. A strong man who treated his children right. It didn't matter to Aria that most men with children had a wife, she'd get her greedy little claws into them. More than one marriage had fallen apart shortly after she and Aria had passed through during their work or training. Right now, Thomas had become exactly Aria's type and the little minx might have acted on it had she not been warned off by her boss.
Thomas was too busy teaching Snowlily how to cook to pay any attention to the four women off to the side. After she finished with the vegetables, Thomas removed a large slab of meat from his inventory and set it out on the camp table. He smiled at the wide-eyed and greedy look Snowlily was giving the meat while a hint of drool appeared at the corner of her mouth, "When preparing meat it's usually a good idea to slice against the grain of the meat. Doing this makes it more tender and easier to chew."
He turned the meat and ran his finger along the grain the show her what he was talking about. Once she nodded her little head, he used a large knife to cut perpendicular to the grain. He sliced off a steak approximately six centimeters thick, a good thick steak. He looked down at Snowlily while holding the knife out to her handle first, "Now you try. Be sure to try and cut the steak about as thick as I did."
Snowlily accepted the knife and looked at the massive piece of meat, "Why can't we just cook it like it is?"
"We could but the bigger a piece of meat is, the longer it takes to cook. Also, with a good steak, you can get a nice caramelized sear on the exterior and enhance its flavor a lot. It's also a lot easier to cook a steak to a proper temperature than a large slab of beef." He stroked his chin as he thought, "Once day we'll hunt down a boar and have a cookout where I'll cook the whole thing at once for you."
Snowlily beamed happily and jumped up and down, "Want! Want!"
Thomas stroked her head while wondering to himself, 'Is it just me or is she more childish in her human form? It's so hard to tell what she's thinking in her wolf form... Maybe I just thought she was more mature than she actually was due to the difference in species?'
"Alright, start cutting up the steaks while I get the pan ready."
Snowlily nodded her little head sending her long white hair bouncing. He stood by and watched as she carefully checked the thickness of the steak he cut before trying to cut her own. He couldn't help noticing that she took cutting up the meat a lot more seriously than she took chopping up the vegetables. After she did a good job cutting her first steak, he moved over to the campfire and started heating up a pan with some oil in it. Once the oil was hot enough he tossed in some herbs and butter before adding the chopped vegetables. After sprinkling on some coarse salt, he cooked the vegetables while waiting for Snowlily to finish slicing the meat.
When the first batch of vegetables was done, he stored them in a warmed metal bowl near the fire so they would stay hot. Several batches of vegetables were cooked in this fashion before Snowlily came over with a bright smile, "All done! Hurry up and cook the steaks! I'm hungry!"
Everyone laughed while Thomas smirked. He grabbed a pair of the steaks and covered each side in salt and pepper. He wasn't going to do anything fancy with them. Just a simple sear until they were medium-rare. After searing both steaks, he set them on a plate with a large scoop of vegetables before handing it to Snowlily, "Eat it all."
She pouted, "Why can't I just eat meat?!"
Thomas started searing more steaks as he spoke, "Because it's not healthy. You need to eat a diet that's at least somewhat balanced if you want to grow up healthy."
Of course, this probably wasn't entirely true. He didn't know for sure about the diets of the locals. He knew that as a player he could eat whatever he wanted and he would be perfectly fine. He just didn't know if the same thing applied to the rest of the population. So he took the 'better safe than sorry' approach and made her eat her veggies. Besides that, it also made him grin when he forced her to eat them.
Snowlily pouted but sat next to him and started eating her dinner. She went back and forth eating a piece of meat then a piece from the vegetables. While she ate, he cooked a pair of steaks for everyone else, saving his own meal for last. The group enjoyed their dinner and gave Thomas some modest compliments. Nothing about the food was fancy, just a simple meal cooked over a campfire, but it was still leagues above trail rations.
After dinner was finished the group decided on their night watch order. At night they needed to be even more careful as a small group could attract more predators than a large group. Thomas took the first watch, Lexiana the second, Aria the third, and Minerva the fourth. Thomas and Lexiana insisted that Snowlily sleep all night while Aria and Minerva insisted on the same thing for Selena. The two in question weren't given a say in the matter. Thomas found a comfortable spot to sit in for his watch and activated his 'All Seeing Eyes' so he could see in the darkness of the night as if it were as bright as day. He also sent out pulses of mana using his Mana Field ability. Nothing would be sneaking up on him during his shift!
Comments
Yannick Scheer
Hopefully he will then be confident enough to try and combine Holy and Unholy Magic, something that is hopefully really strong! :)
Erik Zorger
He's going to get distracted and something is going to sneak up on them.
