Yearning for the Moon

Chapter Twenty-One

Leaving the outpost wasn't quite what I expected, we had taken a few days to finished gathering the supplies we needed, I sold my residence here, that I had never once used for some rarer herbs I didn't have in my collection, the vast property was worth quite the number of herbs, and the face of that herbalist had still looked like he got the better end of the deal. The spatial world enabled me to have fields of fresh growing fruits and vegetables, meaning our food wasn't in any jeopardy of running out, but none of the Silvstron's had believed me, so most of the next few days were spent gathering food rations.

While also allowing the tradesmen we had hired to pack up their lives, the six carriages Andreas had made didn't allows us to bring a lot of people, I had a carriage to myself, Orpheus wouldn't allow anything else, Andreas and his cousins had their own carriage, with his Aunt and Uncle having their own, though they had insisted it wasn't necessary, after all these carriages could fit six quite comfortably.

That left three carriages for the tradesmen, Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Stone Masons, and Farmers, each one was allowed to bring one to two assistants if they chose, resulting in two mostly full carriages, and though I had thought there was no use for the last carriage, the Silvstron's staff that wasn't already driving the carriages decided to join us, resulting in Darius and his wife choosing to move into Andreas carriage to give their servants more room, there were ten of them after all.

After arriving in this empire only a little under a year ago alone, to leaving with almost six carriages full of people loyal to me, felt strange, nice, but strange. Orpheus thought they were dead weights slowing us down, continuously muttering over the days everyone packed up that we would already be half way there if they weren't holding us up. I ignored him of course, as one tended to do to annoyances, though he didn't yet realize that I viewed most of what he said as annoyances that could and would be ignored.

The fit he would throw when he found out, he did not like to feel his opinion wasn't being valued. But after a few days, despite his complaints, we began our journey through the tainted lands, Andreas had tried to get a few herbalists to join us, but I refused, I was more than capable of treating any illness anyone got, though he seemed to think that treating a common cold was a little beneath my skills, but he came to my side in the end, more like I refused to let him do anything else, but that was besides the point.

It was strange to see the outpost disappear into the distance, it had been such a journey to get there in the first place and now I was leaving it, to go towards my hard won prize, which on the map seemed to be quite the distance away, for anyone else, they may very well take a month to travel there from the outpost, even longer from the border, and it was extremely dangerous, for us with my improvements to the lodestones and carriages, we would arrive in a week and a half.

Even still that was quite the journey by carriage, especially because we intended to only do small stops, with the ability to have the shield around us constantly, there was no point in stopping longer than we had to. The tradesmen had been hesitant to come at first because of the dangers, but I had offered them quite the incentive, money was of little consequence to me, so I simply asked their price and agreed to it even when it was clearly outrageous.

Once we had established I could back up my words with the promised gold, they were only too eager to come along, no doubt wracking their brains about ways to ask for more money from me, their greed I could work with, but if they tried to sabotage my city, betrayals would not be taken lightly. Though I think they knew that after hearing what I had done to the city lord, rumors ran rampant throughout the outpost after I killed the city lord, some of them sounding mostly true while others were clearly overexaggerated lies, but I didn't care, let them fear me, maybe it might make them less likely to betray me.