CHAPTER 42: ON THE ROAD (2)

After our round of haggling the awkward atmosphere between us had mostly dissipated thankfully, Dawn even uncurled and gave Derek a curious sniff before returning to my neck and falling back asleep. "Ha it would appear the little one has a favourite place already! I think you may be spoiling her." He states with a lighthearted chuckle.

Laughing aswell I couldn’t help but agree. "Well I don’t deny that but how can I not pamper her she is just too adorable! And it is supprisingly comfortable, plus if I know where she is it is easier to keep her safe." Nodding at that statement we continue on until the suns pass their highest point. At that time we stop to have a light lunch and let the beasts of burden rest. I learnt that they were called Oken and were a mainstay for long distance waggon travel due to their ability to pull heavy loads at a constant speed for prolonged periods of time.

After a light lunch we continued on with our journey, this time I was in the back and Kana went up front. We had decided that it would mostly be myself and Kana that went up front thanks to our ability to use long distant attacks and Amanda would stay in the back as she lacked that capability.

Entering the back I greeted the two girls there with Dawn surprisingly leaving my neck and dashing over to Amanda to revive some pampering. "Traitor." I mutter to her, this only receives some laughter from Amanda.

Our journey continued on like this with myself and Kana rotating who was up front each time we stopped, I tended to take the mornings and she took the afternoons. When the suns began to set on the first night we turned off the road slightly and after unhitching the Oken and letting them wander with a weather attached we began to set up for dinner.

I pulled out some of the already portioned Raptor meat, I love my flower chocker as it separated and stores carcasses automatically. I decide to go for a fried raptor dish tonight. Pulling out a pot a fill it with oil and set it above the fire then using some breading and eggs begin to coat the fillets whilst the oil heats up. After it is heated I begin to cook the meat making sure to slowly inject my mana into the food as it rapidly cooks.

One of the perks iv found with mana cooking is that when you inject your mana into a dish you are able to feel the state that it is in, this is extreemally useful for telling when something is cooked correctly, even when using unfamiliar ingredients like right now it’s almost as if the mana or the skill itself has a life of its own and it lets me know the appropriate timings and sensations a item of food should have when properly cooked.

Honestly it is almost a cheat for cooking but given that I’m still trying to get a handle on all the new ingredients I’m not going to complain!

As the filets are cooking and then cooking down I put together a basic salad as a side and before long I have the meal ready. I make enough for both Derek and Shara to have some aswell. "Oh this is amazing! I didn’t know you were a mama chef!?" Shara blurts out after taking the first bite.

I smile at her glad that she had somewhat dropped the stoic facade around us and it appeared that my cooking had shattered the rest of it. "Well I wouldn’t say I’m amazing but I did just recently upgrade it from Basic Mana Cooking to Apprentice Mana cooking. After I told that her eyes widened in supprise.

"That’s still really good! Iv heard it can take years for some chefs to advance to apprentice level! You must truly love to cook to have put so much effort into it!" She gushes. At this point I was feeling slightly awkward as in reality it had only taken me around a week of effort to actually advance the skill. Not that I would tell her that though!

"Well Iv always enjoyed cooking so might as well put some work into the skill that will let me make better food." I reply wilts internally feeling quite bad for any hard working chefs that would probably want to strangle me at how easily I had advanced my skill.

Regardless of my ability to advance skill rapidly. After we have finished eating I set up the tent with the girls help. We set up our tent on the opposite side of the fire from the waggon and after placing the bed down I head out to take first watch. Sitting down I pull out a log to sit on and spend some time practicing with nature moulding to help refine the log into a perfectly fitting chair for me, allowing it to easily fit to my body.

I do keep an eye on our surroundings despite it being dark I use pulses of nature mana every now and then to sense the surroundings making sure to allow my mana to avoid the waggon so as not to alarm the two merchants. Time passes quickly with Dawn happily napping around my neck and before long my watch is over and I return to the tent to wake Kana up for her watch. As she begrudgingly gets up I give her a quick kiss and get into the bed and snuggle up with Amanda after placing Dawn in her own little nest.

Morning comes and after a quick breakfast where I make raptor sandwiches for us all we get back on the road just as the suns are rising.

Like this the days slowly pass, we are attacked most days by a monster of some kind. There was a close call on the third day where just as myself and Kana were swapping over Shara had left the waggon to stretch her legs and a giant bird or prey swooped down and managed to grab her. Thankfully Amanda was on point and dashed out before either me or Kana could react.

Amanda dove into the back of the bird and made swift work of it, rushing over I pumped healing mana into the sobbing girl who had a couple nasty looking holes in her shoulder and arms from the birds talons. Thankfully with my Touch of life

and my Aura of Life it didn’t take long for her to be back in tip top shape. Well physically at least she was a bit shaken for the rest of the day but Derek was thankful for our quick reaction stating that he’d seen a few friends be taken in a similar manner.

Just that thought alone made me shiver, it must be a terrifying way to go, getting picked up and carried off somewhere knowing your end is coming soon with no way to escape without falling to your death.

Thankfully after some aftercare by me I manage to get Shara to relax somewhat, it would appear that my life aura also has some minor metal relaxation effects! That is good to know and will allow me to help people in more ways than purely physical healing.

Past that excitement we did get ambushed in the night by a large cat type monster. Well I say ambushed but it would be more accurate to say I ambushed it whilst it was trying to ambush us. I detected it whilst sending out my pulses of mana. The way my detection worked was by interacting with the plant life around me, I could send out a wave of my Nature Moulding up to around 100m away with decent precision. I would in turn get a sense of the condition of the plant life that my mana passed over, from this I could tell if any of it was ’injured’ or in other words if something or someone was standing on it.

It’s hard to describe exactly what the sensations are like but think of it as a radar picks up on anything that is standing on any nearby plant life. Now this would be quite useless in say a desert, but in open grasslands or a forest it is a invaluable ability!

So back to the ambush, once I noticed that something was stalking us I focused my pulse there and discovered that is was a 4 legged creature and it was slowly and silently making its was around the campsite, it was around 10m away me and even though I know its location I couldn’t hear a thing!

Thankfully I didn’t really need to hear anything to be able to fight it. I tried to not look in its direction wanting it to feel at ease and waited till it stopped moving , as soon as it paused I used root spear to summon 5 roots one around each imprint on the grasses and one in the centre point of them all. A short cry of pain was all it could manage before loosing consciousness and passing away.

As I went to collect its corpse I wondered when I became so lacksidsical about killing? And looking back I realised that ever since comming to this world I have never really given much thought to the act of killing. I briefly wonder if I should be concerned at that fact but after thinking it over I come to a potentially worrying conclusion. The reason that I don’t seem to care about killing is that I just consider it apart of nature, the strong prey on the week and that is how nature just works.

As I realise that I begin to think over some of my past actions and come to the realisation that both my nature affinity and my class are truly effecting my mental state somewhat. The changes are mostly subtle but looking back I can only realise instances of this change from what I likely would have done before arriving here. My most blatant moment of change I realise is my attachment to Dawn when she was just in her egg. It would appear that due to her strong nature affinity and my own strong nature affinity I instinctively felt a desire to protect it.

This couple with the aspect of lust that I no doubt have an affinity with seems to have morphed that lust into a form of motherly affection. I sit there and ponder what my life is becoming thanks to this world but I have a feeling that I will come to no conclusion any time soon but make a promise to myself that I will always remember where I came from and will try to never loose myself in the magic around me.

———-

So magic seems to do some weird stuff to ya, is Lilly becoming a bit callus to life and death? Or is she in her right mind to only view it as a part of the natural life?