Silva Laverna POV

“Your highness, it’s time.”- Auda said as she opened the door after a knock.

It had taken them an entire day to finish loading 2 puny ships.

Buying and sending them 100 tons of grains and metals had been the easy part. As always, in the first sign of the trouble merchants and nobles had started to horde the resources, leading to shortages in the market. And they were more than happy to sell some of it, at high price, for a favor from me. The idiots couldn’t see that their fates were not good. They were either going to be forced to surrender their goods if the war dragged on, or simply hanged if war turned out to be a short one, unless they had connections in the Duchy. Still, it was due to these idiots that I managed to get my ticket out for so cheap.

“We shall go then, Auda.”

This was the hard part, sneaking out of the castle. Castle had dozen or so guards, while they could be taken care of easily, it would not be so if the town guards were to be summoned.

It didn’t take even 3 minutes for something to awry. A random servant that was returning from attending her nightly duties managed to come across us in one of the corridors. Auda didn’t need my orders to charge ahead, knocking her out with a single punch.

“Curses! Horst is waiting us at the gates, right? Change of plans, we are going to stables.”

Now that there was evidence of our escape, we were bound to be stopped on our way to the docks. Only other way was to go faster, instead of sneaking around.

We managed to mount the saddles to the 3 of the horses. It was my ever-so-loyal guard who did the work, though.

Horst didn’t make a comment when he saw us galloping towards the gates, and jumped to the back of the 3^rd horse. I think it has been more than a week since I heard a word from the man. He never opened his mouth if he didn’t have to, leading many to mistake it for a disability.

It wasn’t even 5 minutes after we cleared the gates that the castle bells begun to ring, but it was already too late for them, as the docks were already in sight.

Another 2 minutes, and we were boarding the ships belonging to the naïve young man.

“Mr. Galdwin, shall we leave? It may be a little early to depart, but I think both of us will find it most advantageous if we were to leave now.”

As I said, he was easy to manipulate. He didn’t push back at me during the meeting, and he wouldn’t be able to do so now.

. . . . .

I was standing on the bow of the ship, with Horst a step behind me, when the man I asked for arrived with Auda.

“Ah, Mr. Galdwin. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything vital that you were doing?”

We had cleared the sight of the last burnt village 3 hours ago, and were sandwiched between the Green forest and the marshes. On one side, inhospitable land full of goblins, orcs and trolls, and impassable bogs, dense growth and rotting vegetation on the other.

“You see, Mister, I have been hearing about some ‘short-ear’ from your crew. This made me realize that I know very little about your village. Would you be kind enough to fill me in on the details?”

I hated this manner of speech. I was asking as if there was a possibility of him denying me. Many times in my youth, I wished to speak like a normal person, without the convoluted words. Yet, it had been engraved in me by the overpaid instructors. Theatrics. Nonsense of the nobles. It was rotten and disgusting.

He gave me a resigned smile, as he started:

“The village is about 150 heads. At the moment, we are getting ready for the winter, so things are hectic. Almost everyone able is working for lumber or in construction, as we need solid walls to endure the next season, as even through water never freezes here, it still gets too cold. Oh, we settled near a mana tree, which was a lucky find.”

Now, that was good news. My plans were to settle somewhere away from the reach of that pig, till I managed to reach Tier 4 as a mage. After that, I was going to be able to use the face change spell, which would enable me to escape to Narcissa or Atalanta. Maybe, I could even join the Mage Union if I was lucky. With a mana tree, my cultivation speed would increase, hastening my plans.

“What about politics? Do you have an alderman or a chief?

“No, we didn’t have the time to decide. Everyone is already so busy with handling their part. But you could say we have a council of sort in place.”

“Oh? That’s not rare in such small communions, isn’t it, Mr. Galdwin? Who would be the members of your council?”

He didn’t manage to answer, as Horst gave an uncharacteristic grunt, while pulling his sword from its sheath.

“An enemy, milady. A flyer is approaching us.” It was Auda that answered my question, which I hadn’t vocalized.

It took me another 30 second for the tiny black dot in the sky to grow to a recognizable mass.

“A lesser wyvern..? This far down south?”

They usually lived in the northern part of the forest. It was rare to see one here, and with our rotten luck, it had to be us that it wanted to target. The ships had a crew full of Tier 1s and 2s, which would be totally ineffective against it. Also there was Horst and Auda, who was a level 3. With their armor and swords, they would be deadly to the monster, as long as it landed. But it didn’t have to, as the wyvern could swoop in and drag someone away, before returning. At least we were going downstream, even if it decided to target the sails, we would manage to reach the village.

There was still time till it reached us, so I decided to give it an injury or two, maybe kill it if I was lucky.

I closed my eyes, concentrating. With Horst near me, there was nothing to worry about. Handful of seconds later, I managed to construct a targeting rune, pushing it out of my core. When I opened my eyes, there was a hazy blue circle in front of me, drawing attention. It took almost half of my mana with it, but it was worth it. Without the rune helping me, it would be almost impossible to hit the fast flying vermin. I immediately fired a mana bolt through the circle, which forced the gathered mass of mana to bend towards the wyvern. The bolt flew towards the wyvern, hitting it. But besides a small roar and momentary confusion, nothing happened. This was the problem with wyverns. I had two more destructive spells, fire bolt and wind arrow, but they would do even less damage to it. Since all wyverns had a dragon linage, their hides were resistant to fire to a degree, and they had natural immunity towards air mana. I couldn’t use earth mana, but even If I could, there was no way it would reach that altitude. Only saving grace of these monsters were that they had no ranged attacks, such as the fire breath of lesser dragons, if they had one, they could simply fly overhead and bombard everything below to oblivion.

I fired 3 more bolt at it, at no effect, beside draining most of my mana. This was going to be a bloody struggle before we managed to kill it. I had no doubts we could, as I had seen what my guards were capable of doing.

In the end, it decided to target the other ship, but it didn’t manage to reach it. All I heard was a small boom. Next second 2 thing happened which disturbed me. One, somehow, 4 meter wide lesser wyvern fell to the deck of the ship with a thunk. Second thing were the sounds. I heard a loud whistle sound, which hurt my ears.

When the poor ears of mine stopped ringing, I managed to gather myself. The now dead flyer had a small hole on one side of its head, yet other side had to be devastated, as it was gushing blood like a fountain. Then, I heard a comment, a horrifying one, as I would find out in a minute.

“Huh, I didn’t know it could reach all the way here.”

I looked around. Everyone, including me and my bodyguards were staring, shocked and disturbed. Only one man didn’t look disturbed. Granted, he was still shocked, and fearful, as his sword was yet to return to its sheath, and his legs were wobbly

“What do you mean by that? What manner of spell did this?!”

He turned towards me, his face looked as if my tone and face was more troubling than this scene.

“Hm? My Lady, you said that you had heard about the short ear, right? I have seen it once, it was his weapon that killed the monster, even though I didn’t know he could do it this far. It should be almost 40 km away.”

40 km!? It would take a level 8 mage to do such a thing, and the entire world didn’t have one alive!

Monk_Origins

Aaaaalright lads! Finally we have the heroine introduced!

Following has major spoilers!

Spoiler

You see, unlike some other novels in the genre, I am planning to bring a small part of democracy into the novel. After all, the one thing the industrial revolution did was to bring the power from nobles to the hands of the citizens. In the faaaar future, I plan for it to be an elected monarchy, with local representatives attending the parliament. There will be a need for a charismatic leader to stand at the front. And regrettably, our mc won’t be the god emperor of this world. Instead the one to lead, give boring speeches, deal with the shitty nobles of this world, attend long and stifling parties will be his girlfriend. All this while, MC will lead the world from the shadows with technological improvements, insemination of ideas and ideals and creation of new businesses.

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