The guards beckoned us over, down the road toward them.
“You’ve got medical personnel, right?” I asked as I limped forward alongside Erani and Ainash.
“Yeah,” one of them said. “We’ve got—woah! Hold on!”
I stopped short.
“You’ve got flamin’ monsters with you?! The Hell’s wrong with you?! Get back!”
Confused, I looked over at Ainash. Was she…on fire? What was this guy talking about?
“Uh,” I waved with my unbroken arm, unsure of what to do, “we’re friendly. She’s friendly, too. Just got out of a really bad fight, and we could really use some medical attention. If you have Clerics, or potions, I’d be more than willing to pay back any sort of debt—”
“Dry yourself! And stay there!” the guard yelled, and then turned to his two companions, whispering among them.
I frowned. Dry myself? After so long not really talking with anyone other than Erani and Ainash outside of strict combat negotiations or interrogations, I suddenly felt completely out of my depth in a normal conversation with a weirdo.
I turned to Erani. “Do you know what’s up with these guys?”“Not really,” she shrugged back. “But I guess they want us to wait?”
“Father, what happening?”
“I don’t know. Don’t think they want us here. You remember talking to them in the previous timeline, right? Were they like this then, too?”
“Do not know much, mother was one who spoke to them. But they are same people, and seemed much more friendly. Can sense…fear, nervousness, hostility from them.”
“They’re probably on edge because of the noise from the boulders dropping. Assuming there’s some sort of monster attack going on, or something, and now they see us. A monster and a couple Humans looking completely beaten up, they might think we’re just leading more monsters to them.”
“These Humans do not like me or you. Seem okay with mother.”
Yeah, my Dark Plate was probably causing some issues. It was apparently pretty scary-looking, if Erani was to be believed. I’d kept it on just to ensure we’d be safe in case of an ambush, but suddenly I was regretting that decision.
Or…no. No, maybe it was helping more than it hurt. The Demons had publicized my name and face around the Kingdom, and some of that information may have spread to neighboring countries. But Dark Plate covered my face. And, considering I’d only actually used it in front of Xhag’duul—who was now dead, and assumedly not in good standing with the Demons anymore—they almost certainly hadn’t spread any depiction of that armor. Light Plate showed my face, but Dark Plate didn’t.
So, as long as I didn’t lose the armor in front of anyone, I could probably appear in public as long as I had it on. And people like Erani and Ainash would probably have been spread around much less than me, since I was really the only one they were actually looking for. Plus, Ainash had also recently gone through an evolution that changed her appearance. Erani was really the only one who might have been recognized, but I doubted she’d be remembered as much as I was.
After a moment of the three guards talking among themselves, they turned back to us. “Listen! You are in the presence of three high-Level, trained guards of the Barinruth Empire. Do not try to attack, do not try to fight.”
High-Level, huh? Yeah, I probably didn’t want to get on these guys’ bad side. I furrowed my eyebrows at their sudden combativeness, calling back, “Uh…are we under arrest? What’s going on here?”
“We just want you to know, you should not try anything.”
“Yeah, we’re not going to,” I said, trying to both convince them we were safe and come up with some sort of story about our identities. “We’re hurt. We can’t fight anyway. Listen, just please get us some help. We were attacked earlier by a, uh, Demon.”
“Yes,” Erani cut in, “we’ve been fleeing from the Koinkar Kingdom because of the Demon invasion. Please, we’re desperate. We only barely fought off the Demon that chased us, but it’s dead now. Please let us pass.”
“Then what in flamin’ hell do you have a monster with you for?”
“She’s friendly,” Erani practically begged. I could tell she was desperate to just finally get to safety by now. I was too.
“Yeah. She’s like a…” I tried to figure out a way to explain things to them that’d just get us by as quickly as possible. ‘Surrogate daughter’ would probably do nothing but raise even more suspicion. “A pet. Or something.”
Since we were still mentally relaying all of the conversation to Ainash, she heard what I said, and sent a general feeling of annoyance to me afterward. But I knew she understood that I was just dumbing things down for them. Not that I assumed she was happy about it—I wouldn’t be either.
“Pet?” one of them asked. “What kind of monster even is that?”
“She’s a—” I stopped myself. “Listen, now isn’t the time. We’re standing in the middle of Kingdom’s Edge. Let’s get to safety, and we can talk.”
“You mean Empire’s Edge?”
“Sure,” I shook my head, exasperated. “You said you had Truth Stones back at your outpost, right? Let's just head there and you can test us on everything we say.”
The three soldiers shared a glance once again. “Fine. Come along. But can’t you take off that helmet? Your armor’s…creepy.”
“No. It’s Enchanted.”
“Ugh. Okay.”
“Thank you,” I sighed.
The guards walked alongside us as we moved through the tall stone walls of the mountain path. The three of them were obviously still on-guard, with them standing on the side opposite Ainash, so Erani and I were stationed between them. I supposed that made sense; her stature of being a full head taller than anyone present definitely made her cut an imposing figure. But I still felt like it was pretty rude. She was nice.
And that standoffish demeanor extended toward me and Erani, as well. During the long walk, they made no attempt to make conversation with us. Though I somewhat welcomed that, since I was constantly talking to both of my companions through Ainash’s mental link throughout the walk.
The one who looked most like a leader among them—at least, he was the one who’d done most of the talking—introduced himself as Bon. I deliberately responded with nothing more than a “nice to meet you,” not wanting to commit to any story regarding my name or who I was before we got to the interrogation stage with a full plan of what we were going to tell them.
Once I’d gotten a closer look, I took basic note of our “escorts.” They wore some basic chain armor with leather and layered cloth beneath, and each had melee weapons that gave me a decent idea of their Classes. Two of them, including Bon, had swords—so probably Swordsmen—and the other had a two-handed warhammer strapped to his back—so probably a high Strength or Endurance build, most likely Berserker, or maybe Paladin. Though generally that particular weapon could pair with a decent number of Classes.
The moment I mentioned the possibility of Paladin to Erani, she began mentally spiraling down the rabbit hole of what Spell builds he might be going with. Paladin was a Hybrid-Type Class, so it was one of the very few that got both Mana and access to manmade weapons with specialized Talents and Martial Arts for them. Though, Erani’s speculation of his different Spells lost a lot of its meaning going through Ainash, where we had a lot of trouble trying to translate names and specific wording to and from her.
In the time that passed, I managed to squeeze in another activation of Regenerate while keeping my Stamina at a decent level, which helped my confidence in our contingencies in case a fight broke out, and it also did a bit more to heal my broken limbs. Still, no matter how much I examined them, I couldn’t really get a read on their exact Levels. They were apparently pretty strong, as Bon had said, but I wouldn’t have thought so at first glance. As they were guards, I wouldn’t have imagined they were very high-Level, spending their time standing around on watch rather than hunting down monsters for XP. But then, they were guards for a place as dangerous as Kingdom’s Edge—or Empire’s Edge, as they apparently knew it—so maybe they’d be a lot stronger to fend off such powerful monsters.
Needless to say, neither our side nor the side of the guards displayed much friendliness during the walk.
But we got to our destination all the same, the full hour passing in relative uneventfulness. They probably kept this whole area clear of monsters, so luckily we hadn’t had to deal with any Shadow Panther attacks. Though, forcing the guards to tip their hands in terms of how strong they were would probably be good for us.
The outpost we arrived at was small. I’d seen it from afar, up in the wild mountains, but not up-close from below. And it seemed like I’d overestimated how large it was at the time. It only seemed big enough to house a few rooms, and was made of simple, rough stone. Seemed like the stone they used was magically-sourced; I could tell by comparing it to the magically-cut stone that made up the Demons’ barricade. It didn’t seem very high-quality or high-protection, really.
“So, do you guys have any Clerics that can heal me?” I asked as we approached the stone hut.
“No, we don’t. But Jannin here,” Bon replied, tilting his head back at the one with the warhammer, “is a Paladin. He’s got a basic heal that can help you out. You got some scratches or something?”
“Little more,” I said. “Right arm and left leg both have their bones shattered. Health has regenerated a bit, but it’s mainly the bodily harm.”
His eyes widened. “What in hell…? You’ve been walking on a broken leg?”
“I’ve got a decent level of Endurance, so the pain isn’t as bad as it should be. Besides, she’s helped me this whole way, didn’t you notice?” I said, gesturing at Ainash, who had, as I’d said, been helping me walk the entire way here.
“W-well, I didn’t…listen, get in and sit down. We’ll help as much as we can. But I don’t know if…”
The Paladin—Jannin—stepped forward. “I’m not going to be able to fix a flamin’ broken limb. Much less two. But I can at least top out your Health.”
“Good enough for me,” I nodded.
“Okay. Let’s get inside.”
We walked through the creaky wooden front door. Inside was a small common room with little in it to decorate the bleak stone walls.
“Make yourselves at home,” Bon said. “Uh, armor guy, take a seat in one of these chairs. Woman, monster…I don’t know. We’ve got some food rations you can munch on if you’re hungry. Don’t expect anything fancy, though. Just check those cabinets in the kitchen. Oh, and don’t touch that book.”
In the room containing a few chairs and a small kitchen, the man gestured to a full notebook of what I recognized to be Message Paper sitting on a table. Seemed like the entire budget of this outpost went toward that single Enchanted item. Or, rather, tome of dozens of Enchanted items. It certainly looked out of place, that was for sure.
“Those two doors lead to the bedrooms and the toilet. If you need to go, feel free.”
And that concluded the tour. Ainash helped me sit down in a creaky wooden chair—though “collapse” would probably be a better word for what I did—and then she wandered off, apparently deciding to explore this new, man-made environment she’d never seen before. Erani grabbed a chair of her own, one that was up against a wall. Yeah, we may have been hungry, but I wasn’t eating their food. At least if the Paladin tried to cast a damaging Spell on me, I could react quickly and fight back. Eating poison wouldn’t leave me nearly as much wiggle room.
Once I sat, the Paladin—Jannin—sat down next to me and reached out to grab my leg. “Oh, you may want to remove the armor. I need direct touch.”
“You’ll be able to grab right through it,” I grunted. The soreness and pain seemed to flood into my body the moment I sat down.
With a curious look on his face, he did so, and looked surprised when, as I’d said, he reached right through the plate armor and touched my leg. We’d been aware of this property of Ethereal Armor ever since I’d taken it and had that unfortunate run-in with the Ghouls, but since then, with some experimentation from Erani, we’d found that an outside being could effectively choose whether they wanted to touch the armor, or touch me. From how Erani had described it, it wasn’t as much of a conscious choice and more of a measurement of subconscious intent. If someone actively wanted to touch the armor, their hands would stop on its exterior. Otherwise, they’d pass through as though it were an illusion.
With his hand on my leg, Jannin closed his eyes and muttered what sounded like a prayer. After he was done, he kept his eyes shut, and after about thirty seconds, I got a notification.
You have been blessed by the mercy of god. 10 Health restored.
Your Health is 119.
Seemed like it worked. But not much healing. This would probably take a while. Still, it was certainly better than my natural Health/Minute, which was still less than 0.2.
Now that I saw that the guards didn’t seem to mean us any harm—yet—I relaxed a little. “So, how far are we from the nearest settlement?”
“Nearest?” Bon asked. “Not too far. In fact, you should just barely be able to see it from here if it’s bright enough.”
He turned and walked over to a slice of the stone wall that I realized was actually on a metal track, so it could slide away to reveal a window inlaid in the wall. He slid it open, and a ray of sunlight blinded me in the dim room, where my sight had already adjusted to the darkness. I squinted as I got used to the sudden light, before fully opening them to gaze out. Ainash walked over to the window, and Erani stood to look through, as well.
Through the hole in the wall, we could, indeed, see it from here. Out across the rolling hills, opposite the direction of the mountains, there were the tiny protrusions in the ground that I recognized as buildings. And not just one or two, but a whole swarm of them. It was farmhouses and barns on green fields. And further out than that, I could just barely make out the sight of walls. Walls! Society was there. In our sight. Not guarded by Demons, or destroyed by an invasion, or swarming with hostiles. Just plain old people.
Good food, a warm bed, Spell Crystals, a fucking break from the constant fear of monsters. We were here. The promised land.
You have been blessed by the mercy of god. 10 Health restored.
Your Health is 129.
Another trigger of healing went off from Jannin, who was still casting his Spells. Blessed by the mercy of god, huh? Yeah, sure felt like we were.
The Demons would be plotting to start a war, but we still had the first move here. And with the innate safety and resources given to us by society, the ability to work and purchase some gear of our own, the ability to make allies—maybe even work alongside the Barinruth Empire to repel the Demons? It seemed like we may just be able to shift our strategy from reactive to proactive. Defensive to offensive.
We were safe now, so we could finally focus on procuring the power to end these Demons, and maybe give them a taste of what it was like to live in fear. With that, plus two more Level-ups waiting on me to make my Talent and Time Loop Upgrade choices, there was a chance here that we may be able to do more than just survive.
We finally had the tools to get stronger, and eventually take the fight to them.