Emperor Amn says “No, there are no kingdoms allied with the northern empire. To be honest, my empire isn’t as strong as the northern empire. It is my allies that make us equal in power. The kingdom to the north is part of an alliance of kingdoms that isn’t allied with either empire.”

  “They allied to prevent either empire from conquering them?”

  Emperor Amn says “Yes, but that is the limit of their alliance. They bicker amongst themselves constantly.”

  “Isn’t that going to make our trip north a little difficult?”

  Emperor Amn says “It makes it more complicated. Normally we would just pay a few bribes to get through, but the situation has become more complicated recently. I had planned to wait and discuss it with you once we met with King Vex. He will have more recent information about it than I do.”

  “Alright, we can talk about it later. For now, is it okay to plan on giving King Vex the island?”

  Emperor Amn says “Yes, I believe it will be fine.”

  “Okay, then that will be the plan.”

  I chat with Amn for a few more minutes before returning to my carriage, but I find a problem. Mercy has invited the other women to ride with her and chat over tea, not my idea of fun. If I were to try and join them, I would become the target for all of them to tease me.

  So instead I climb up to the driver’s seat to ride with Leylisha, a much safer place to be. Chatting with her and Lizzy helps to pass the time until lunch and when we stop for lunch Mercy’s guests leave. Mercy joins us for lunch, but there is no sign of Koko, I haven’t seen her since before the capital.

  I’m not worried about her, she is probably off doing her own thing, whatever that might be. She isn’t really a part of our group, more like she is just along for the ride. I am sure that she will show up when she needs something, or when she wants to take a nap.

  She is certainly a strange one and I think she was even before she was summoned. I should really take some time to figure out how she appears and disappears whenever she wants. More importantly, I really need to figure out how she manages to avoid my senses.

  She isn’t a problem, but if someone else has the same ability it could be a serious problem. I could probably survive an assassination attempt, but my wives are a different story. Most of them don’t have the ability to survive an attack from an undetectable assassin.

  They all have defensive items that will protect them from at least the first attack or two. However, once the items run out of power, they would have serious trouble defending themselves. If I can figure out how to detect Koko, then I could make items for my wives to do the same.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Giving them the ability to detect anyone trying to sneak around would make them safer. I will have to wait until Koko shows up again and then see if she will cooperate. We finish lunch and then the caravan gets moving again, this time I ride in the carriage with Mercy.

  Mercy tells me that she hopes we are stopping for the night in the wild rather than a city. She really wants to put the new decorations in the cabin and finish redecorating. I can’t understand her desire, but I am not about to stop her from doing what she enjoys.

  I end up promising that we can use the cabin even if the caravan stops in a city. That makes Mercy happy and she makes the rest of the ride quite interesting in return. It turns out that I didn’t need to worry about it, we pass the city over an hour before the caravan stops.

  As soon as we are stopped, I set up the cabin and empty my pouch of furniture and decorations. I leave Mercy to play and only call her to stop to join the rest of us for dinner. After we eat, she goes right back to it and she only stops when it is time for us to have some fun.

  We end up breaking in a lot of the new furniture as our fun moves throughout the cabin. Mercy is all sorts of excited to be the first one to be with me in the cabin and it shows. I think that as the last one to join the group she feels that she is somehow behind the others.

  Hopefully, this trip and my actions during it, will help to dispel that feeling for her. If not, then I certainly don’t know what to do to help with it, maybe the others will. I will just continue to be affectionate and if that doesn’t work I will consult the others.

  It might just be something that will settle itself given time, or they might not be any problem. It could just as easily be my overactive imagination that worries about everything, real or not. The only way to know for sure would be to ask, but that could cause a problem where there isn’t one.

  I am probably overthinking things as usual, I will just keep my mouth shut and be patient. Mercy keeps things going until she is completely worn out, but she falls asleep with a grin on her face. I am starting to think this might be why she was so excited to redecorate the cabin.

  Whatever the case may be, I will not be doing anything about it tonight. I will just have to wait and see how things go over the next few days. She hasn’t shown any signs of being unhappy while she is with me, so I should just keep doing what I have been doing.

  With that settled, at least for now, I open a soulscape and invite everyone to play for a while. After that, I open a second to spend some time with the goddesses, then I enter the hallway. I immediately enter the battlefield and start walking in a different direction from last time.

  Now that it is not a surprise, the instant transition to the battlefield is kind of nice. I am hoping to find a more active area that I can switch my arrival point to so I don’t have to waste as much time. Of course, that is assuming that there are more active areas and it is not all like what I have seen.

  Thinking of building a body, I finally notice how thin the mana is in this area. Building a body would take quite a while and if I cast any spells my mana recovery will be slowed. More importantly, I can sense that the mana is slightly thicker to the south of me, so I turn that way.

  As I travel, the mana keeps getting thicker making me hope that I am about to find something different. If there are busier areas, it would make sense that they would be the areas richer in mana. I soon come across another pack of beasts, these resemble buffalo, just with teeth and tusks.