The next morning, the soldiers sure were surprised when we showed up, with some of them feeling like I’d obeyed their orders to not leave them behind. Boy were they in for a shock when we made our rendezvous.
We didn’t even need to play the he said, she said game. As soon as we arrived in the army camp, they made fools of themselves, talking down to me and berating me for having disobeyed and left them in the first place.
The commander was absolutely livid. He’d intended on subtly questioning them to examine the veracity of our reports, but there was no need for that now.
The soldiers were stripped of their possessions, including their shirts, and whipped. As this was still in the middle of the wilds, it was only a preliminary punishment, causing pain, but not drawing blood, but when they returned to civilization, there’d be a trial held where they’d end up court martialed and dishonorably discharged.
The army did not want those who couldn’t follow orders, especially one as simple as to be polite to a powerful mage. The fact that I hadn’t displayed my power had no bearing, but the offenders faces went pale when I did so.
We’d come only eighty miles, so I had plenty to spare, so I used two spells, ones that only a few advanced space mages were able to use. First I sliced up a tree. For a moment it appeared as if nothing had happened, then the thing started tilting and fell to the ground, with dozens of wheels made from the trunk. I’d done it at an angle so it’d fall away from us, but not so great a one to fall over immediately. There’s value in a good performance.
Which is where the second spell came in.
The next tree over disappeared in an instant. It hadn’t gone anywhere, but it was crushed to a pulp as it and the area around it were subjected to the force of my spell, creating a hole in the ground ten feet wide and perfectly circular. Gravity bomb.
I’d kept my eyes on the assholes as I pointed at the tree, and when it was gone, I turned and walked away.
I think they, and the others who saw the display, got the message. I’d been this close to doing to them what I had the tree.
I did come to regret it, as the commander tried to recruit me, either to the army or to apply to become a court mage, but I liked my freedom.
I also ended up with a title. Not one in my status, but a nickname. Powerful adventurers were often given these as a way of honoring their specialty.
Mine? It was Space Destroyer.
It spoke of my ability with spacial magic, as well as the fact that I could easily crush my enemies with it. I thought it was cringey, but it stuck. I’d have liked a cute moniker if I was going to be given one, not something a meathead would enjoy.
---
Us adventurers traveled back to the city with the army. We didn’t have to, but the commander requested that I do so and offered me a good bonus for doing so.
The reason? My portals.
We were a little under two hundred miles from the city, and the army was having trouble moving more than fifteen miles a day due to the size, two hundred people, and the rough terrain. He’d asked if there was some way I could speed things up with my portals.
I could, and did.
While I could hold a hundred mile portal for a minute, it was a lot easier to hold open portals for shorter distances for longer. Given the number of troops, I found the limit to be twenty miles. That distance along with the time I needed to hold it to get everyone through allowed us to shorted the return time drastically, while also leaving me enough mana in case of emergencies.
We were the last of the troops to return to the city, as the commander had taken his group the deepest in, while the other four had attacked closer targets.
This had been a training exercise to allow the troops experience in traversing rough terrain as well as dealing with situations that might arise in such locations, including combat with monsters. While adventurers were the ones who usually kept the monsters in check, there were situations that called for the army to defend targets from monster attack as well as go out and subjugate them.
On our arrival, I returned the gear I was holding, with the supplies having been used or distributed after we’d met up. They didn’t want the empty crates back, so I’d find a use for them in the future. Always useful having storage containers. Made collecting stuff easier.
I was also paid, very well, for my services. Not only did I get the bonus from the commander, I also got my pay, and the rank ups, from the guild. I hadn’t been paid for the map and notes I’d made while exploring till now, so I got that, as well as a nice reward for having discovered a dungeon.
I got some special marks added to my card, one indicating my feat, as well as another two for now being a guild certified transporter.
I hadn’t expected the marks, ones that would make new opportunities be opened to me. The first was more for prestige, though it did get me a slight discount at the guild bars.
The others allowed me to take special quests where my transportation skills were important. One of them was with regards to acting as a carrier on long term assignments, similar to what I’d just done, while the second was about my ability to get places using spacial magic.
I had no intention of advertising my skills, but unfortunately the commander’s soldiers hadn’t been able to keep their lips shut, talking about how I’d been able to cut the return time to under half as well as my insane carrying capacity.
I was suddenly barraged with requests, ones to join parties, to take certain jobs, to quit the guild and join various businesses.
It was frustrating!
It was also my fault. I could have laid low, but noooo, I had to go and show off. At least they only knew about my space magic, not all the rest. Everyone who’d seen more than simple cantrips were oath-bound to not speak on them without permission.
I had been considering traveling with Karl’s group to the capital, but they were taking a week off, and then would be acting as escorts to a merchant caravan. While they’d invited me to join them, I declined. I wanted to escape this city, and all the attention I’d garnered.
And so I did.
It’d take Karl and his group around a month to get to the capital, between their vacation as well as taking an escort request, so we made plans to meet up when they arrived. I didn’t know the first thing about the Auction Houses, so while I was carrying the stuff we’d be selling, since Teryll’s item box was much more limited, I’d have to wait for them to arrive to sell the stuff.
I did give him some advice on how to increase his capacity, using the ocean to overfill and stretch his item box. Since he’d be taking a break, now was a good time to do so. He didn’t have my bonuses, so it wouldn’t be as effective or quick as it’d been for me, but it’d help him in the future.
However, before I left, and they took their vacation, there was a very important issue we needed to take care of. All of the corpses in my item box. Hundreds of lizardmen, as well as all the other stuff we’d hunted along the way.
It took us two days to get through them all. The seven of us essentially occupied the guild’s public dismantling room, ripping apart corpse after corpse. We sold a bunch of the normal lizardmen or monsters to the guild or other adventurers so they could use them to learn how to take them apart, but the variants and advanced species, we kept those.
They’d been wary about my skills, but after taking apart something in half the time it took Teryll, whose techniques were similar, if not as good as the ones I’d been taught, they had no more complaints.
We didn’t sell everything to the local guild, since we’d flood the market and reduce the price of the goods, instead much of it ended up back in my inventory to be sold in the capital or the nearby dungeon city. Raiden would get his portion via guild transfer.
Once all of the adventuring tasks in the city were done, I disappeared.
Most people would have assumed that I probably had already left the city. IDs get checked entering, not exiting, except under unusual circumstances. That being the case, I could leave and no one would have a record of it unless they caught me doing so.
Of course, I didn’t do that just yet.
Finding a new inn, I shifted to a new form and rested for a few days, while also preparing for the trip to the capital. Sure, I didn’t actually need anything to make the trip, my storage already being filled with various things, but so what? There’s no harm in stocking up some more. Especially on things that were a local specialty.
Like fish.
I didn’t care too much for fish, preferring my meat to come from land animals, but there were others who’d pay a good price for fresh fish. Not older ones kept frozen to prevent rotting, since there were a few companies dealing in that, but truly fresh, like they’d just been caught.
Why did I do this, when I already had a fortune?
Fuck if I know. It’d become habit at some point to play merchant, at least to a small degree.
Two mornings in a row I visited the fish market and picked up large orders of fish to haul inland. If I just bought straight from the vendors, I wouldn’t have been able to get as many as I did, as well as doing so would inconvenience the locals wanting to buy fish for their meals. So I’d made a deal with a captain for everything he’d fish up those days.
I may have also snuck a spell onto him to attract fish, so the catches for not just those days, but for a week would be phenomenal. It was designed to attract normal fish, so unless monsters were chasing the school, it was pretty safe to use.
Since I only had to visit the docks to pick up my goods, I spent the rest of the time on a final round of shopping. I’d been in the city for months, so I’d been all over the place, but the street markets changed frequently with merchants from other countries coming to sell their wares, so there was usually something new to see.
I picked up a few things, some seasonings that I hadn’t seen before as well as a few other random items, and on the second day, once I’d collected my pre-ordered fish, I was good to go. I headed out the gate and down the road towards the capital.
