I've been two days on the caravan.

While I'm thinking about useless stuff, the caravan suddenly stops, it seems we've encountered more monsters.

Me, most of the people who can fight, including Antonia and Makoto, and the half a dozen mercenaries prepare to fight the monsters.

It's only 4 wild slimes, they're not very dangerous.

I fire a <Steam cannon> with my left hand towards a slime, though its size is closer to a pebble than an actual cannonball, stunning the slime for a moment, allowing another passenger with a very long sword to cut it, killing it.

This is not something I planned or anything like that, I’m the weakest person who can fight here, so I'm just following orders.

A similar scene plays with the other slimes, with people making teams of two to kill them.

Wild slimes are dangerous, their whole body is acidic, and they can also spit it some of it, but they're also very slow. Most of them are also as big as Maria.

However, the sounds of fighting attract 3 white birds that were hiding in the clouds. Their wings are bigger than a man and they are also strong enough to lift a cow with ease.

“Nimbus eagles!” Anton yells “Shoot!” Makoto and I prepare our ranged attacks, I shoot a <Steam cannon> and hit one of the eagles, it only hits the wing, but it’s enough to make it flinch from pain, and it decides to flee.

“<Chain lightning>!” Makoto shoots a thunderbolt that hits the other two eagles, and they die very quickly.

A big problem with this caravan is that there’s not many people who can attack at range, only me and Makoto, there was a mercenary who used a long bow too, and he would easily deal with nimbus eagles, but he got injured really badly, and cannot fight anymore.

And while we were dealing with the eagles, Antonia and some of the other mercenaries are dealing with a root tortoise, those things are about as big a goat, but have an extremely hard shell and shoot an energy beam from their mouth, Antonia is approaching it as fast as she can while zigzagging to avoid it's laser, and when she’s close enough, she jumps on top of the tortoise’s shell, and quickly kicks it’s head before it can react, knocking it out.

… It seems no more monsters are coming “Is everyone ok?!” Anton looks around and yells, but just as everyone is lowering their guard, a big black and yellow silhouette jumps from the trees, and bites a goat before anyone can react, and leaving just as fast as it came, still with the goat on its mouth.

“The thunder tiger…” One of the mercenaries is the first to react. “It’s the third time today, and the fifth goat in total...” Anton retorts, it seems the loss of so many goats is hurting him.

I was really lucky when I decided it was a good idea to join a caravan, if I had tried to go anywhere else on my own I would have definitely died.

Of the almost 20 people that we started with 3 are injured to the point they can't fight anymore, and everyone is injured in some way except for Makoto, even I have some injuries, though they're not major, I sprained my leg on the first day and my right arm hurts like hell from all the <Steam cannon>s I've fired, I'm now using my left arm to fire.

On better news, I managed to condense again, and now I have 6 condensations.

Honestly, these two days have been very rough, I've never had to face such rough conditions before, I can now see why Master called the outside a "world of death".

But weirdly enough, I find this incredibly satisfying, the high of a battle only falls slightly short to that of sex, in my opinion.

Of course, just like I don't want to have sex all the time, I'd be completely fine if the rest of the journey was completely peaceful. I don't want to die, that thunder tiger is terrifying.

* * *

Right now, it's nighttime, the caravan has stopped, and we are camping right now, I'm eating turtle soup.

Those of us who can still fight are divided into 3 groups, and we take turns guarding the camp while the others recover.

I'm resting right now. In these two days I have learnt a lot, especially about fighting.

Firstly, I'm much more familiar with the <Steam cannon>, and I can use it in just a second now.

I'm also starting to recognize the rhythm of battle, and the most important of all, I understand how weak I am!

For example, the nimbus eagles, Makoto and Robert can kill the damn things without much trouble, but the best I can do is to scare one off.

And of course, there’s the thunder tiger, that thing can just kill me before I even notice.

It makes me giddy; it seems I can only go up from here, I just have to be careful to not get too injured. I look at my side and see Maria, she's sleeping, the poor thing must be quite tired, it's been walking all day and a few monsters almost got to her.

I have to reward it on some way, unlike me it didn't consent to go into this journey, so I'll have to make it up to it.

While I'm pondering what happened today, Antonia comes and sits in front of me.

"So how are you holding up?" "I'm fine, just tired." She seems pleased with my answer "you tell me! Monsters just kept coming and coming! I could sleep for a week straight at this point!"

Wait a second... "Is this number of monsters not normal?" She looks a little annoyed "Normal?! As if! Last year we only had to worry about some slimes and one root tortoise!"

"...Really?" "Yeah! if we knew it was going to be this dangerous we wouldn't have tried buying cattle! With all the goats we've lost we're not going to make a profit anymore!"

I look at the sky... did I lose all my luck when I found the <midsummer desire>? can I give it back?

"I noticed you're really good at fighting those turtles, have you fought them before?”

“That’s right! Well not root tortoises, but in my hometown we have snapping tortoises, they’re very similar, they just don’t have lasers.” Antonia then looks slightly proud “I started to hunt those when I was 15!”

“Impressive” “And what about you? I heard from Makoto you were some sort of young master, and with your cool and calm attitude I thought you’d be super strong, but it turns out you’re surprisingly ordinary.” She then seemed to realize something “Nothing wrong with that! I’m not picking a fight with you!” she says apologetically.

Cool and calm? “Don’t worry about it, I’m a blacksmith at the journeyman stage.” This is technically true if you take the word journeyman literally. “Journeyman?” “Journeymen have to go into the world and learn, then bring those experiences back into the clan.” “Sounds cool! I think I have seen some of those guys around.”

“So how is basil?” I don't anything about it, and asking her cannot hurt “It’s a very interesting place! Very profitable too! The land there is not very fertile, so there’s always a demand for food, especially meat!” she then seems to remember something “their cooking is generally not great, but they have a big art scene, I’ve only gone there 4 times, but every time we go there’s always a lot of new paintings, books and a lot of bards with new songs!”

We keep talking for a while, she’s very pleasant to talk to, nothing like I imagined her when I first saw her.

“It’s your turn to guard!” one of the mercenaries yells at us.

“Let’s go!” Antonia stands up and goes to her post, and I do the same.

* * *

Antonia and I are talking our duty seriously, so we aren’t talking. Besides us there’s two other people guarding the camp, a woman with and oversized sword that’s just as big as she is, and wearing nothing but a chainmail bikini, her muscles are clearly visible yet very compact, giving her a very lithe figure, she also has pink hair and is a head taller than Antonia.

And a very big and muscular man, he's at least 3 heads taller than me, he’s bald but has a thick black moustache, and he’s carrying a spear, he’s also not wearing a shirt… I notice the woman and Antonia stealing glances at him from time to time! What so good about being so big anyway! Any armor or clothes are exponentially more expensive and harder to find, and you’d hit your head everywhere!

Should I also take my shirt off?! My muscles are also quite noticeable, you know!

While I’m thinking some useless stuff, I notice some movement in the distance, it seems everyone else noticed it too, we look at each other and the buff man starts walking towards the movement, and he finds an extremely injured man, he looks young, not much older than me, he has blonde hair, and a metal bronze jaw, his brown suit is just as damaged as him.

"The hog! The hog of hydragyrum is here!"

While yelling like a madman, he takes out a sphere, immediately something that sounds like all the keys on a piano are being played at once, and the voice of a woman singing every syllable all at once, I immediately lose consciousness after hearing it.