Although to be honest, sometimes it is on purpose because getting in trouble can be fun. Or at least, getting myself out of trouble can be fun, not that there is much difference. Luckily, the caravan is now ready to get moving and my time to think is interrupted.

  Mercy and I climb into the new carriage and she gasps when she sees the inside. Once you pass through the door, the room inside is five times the size of the carriage’s outside. There are large windows all the way around, even where the view should be blocked by Lizzy.

  The outside is lined with comfy couches and the middle has another round couch facing the outside. This will allow for groups to sit facing each other, not that I expect too many people to ride with me. In one corner, I spot Koko curled up and already fast asleep, I don’t even know when she got back.

  Mercy and I sit in the opposite corner from her so that we don’t disturb Koko’s sleep. We cuddle and watch the sands go by, but that soon gets boring and we start making out. We are acting like a pair of highschool kids hiding out in the back of a car and it is really fun.

  We take breaks from kissing and fill those with talking about all sorts of random things. Everything to our childhoods to what our hopes and dreams are, but that last one proves tough. Mercy describes all her hopes and dreams as being about her people, but that isn’t what I want.

  “Enough about your people. What are your hopes and dreams for yourself?!”

  Mercy hugs my arm and says “We don’t need to talk about those, I have already achieved them.”

  Admittedly, I am a little dense and it takes me a minute or so to understand what she means. Unfortunately, I am still in my human form so my blush is extremely apparent. Luckily, Mercy finds it cute and things start getting heavier, but then the call to stop for lunch comes.

  That wakes up Koko and she, Lizzy, and Leylisha join us for lunch. After lunch Koko vanishes, leaving me and Mercy alone in the carriage. We pick up where we left off and end up having a round of fun together.

  By the time we are done and have caught our breath, the scenery outside has started to change. At first it is just small patches of green among the sand, but it quickly increases as the desert ends. Within an hour there are no more patches of sand, just grass as far as the eye can see.

  Not long after there is no more sand we reach a small fort with a tiny town beyond it. The fort marks the actual border of the kingdom and we are stopping here for the night. About half of the remaining humans that I freed are leaving us here, this is their home.

  The rest will go to the capital and hope that the king helps them out, they don’t have homes to return to. If their king doesn’t help them, I plan to, even if it means taking them to the peninsula. According to Amn, we should reach the capital of the kingdom in two days.

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  As has become his habit, he sends a rider ahead of us to warn of the time of our arrival. The rider also carries a letter to the king explaining the humans with us and their situation. Hopefully, the king will do right by his people without any further interference from us.

  We are camping outside the town, it isn’t big enough to accommodate all of us. Tomorrow will be different, we should end the day at one of the kingdom’s cities. Mercy and I should get our first chance to do some shopping for stuff for the cabin.

  It should be fun, but it is still a day away and I need to find something to keep me busy. Once we are stopped I give Leylisha and Lizzy their food and then Mercy and I join the rulers for dinner. They are still excited about possible peace with the desert and what it will mean for their kingdoms.

  I didn’t really understand how much a simple idea of mine was going to cause changes. I hope that things will indeed change for the better, but I will not be sticking around to find out. Maybe at some point I will be able to ask Amn about it to satisfy my curiosity.

  That won’t be until after we return from the Magic Kingdom, which will be a while. I can’t help worrying about how this trip is going to end, I just wish we were there already. The longer the trip takes the longer I have to worry about what’s going to happen.

  Mercy is doing a fairly good job of keeping me distracted, but only when she is awake. Once dinner is over, we return to camp, I set up the cabin, and we head to bed. We have a couple of rounds of fun and once she is asleep I open a soulscape as usual.

  After closing the soulscape, I slip out of bed without disturbing her and head outside. I check on Lizzy, but she is asleep, so I drop shapeshift and take to the air. I head west until I reach the edge of the desert and then start following it north.

  I am hoping to find something worth hunting, but even if I don’t, the hunt should keep me distracted. A night spent just flying around will be far more productive than a night spent worrying. If nothing else, I will at least learn more of the topography of the main continent.

  I spot a few things on my way north, but none of them are really worth hunting. That changes once I reach the foothills of the mountains that mark the beginning of the central area. However, as I am looking around for something to hunt, something ends up hunting me.

  I am flying along, scanning the ground, when something drops onto my back and I feel a sharp pain. It is soon followed by three more things hitting my back and more sharp pains. Luckily, my neck is long enough now that I can crane my head around to look at my back.

  What I find when I look is four large bats that are currently clinging to me and biting me. The fact that I can crane my head around enough to look at them also means I can breathe on them. Not only does the lightning fry the four bats, it heals me of the damage they have done.

  4 Venomous Bats defeated! 800,000 Exp gained!

  Level: 19 Exp: 51,840,000/52,428,800

  My next level is so close that I can almost taste it! If I can just find four more of those bats, that would be enough. Speaking of the bats, my lightning blasted them clean off of me, so I circle back to land. The first thing I do when I reach the corpses is crack their cores and stick the essences in a jar.

  The essences are weaker than I was expecting, I am surprised that the bats attacked me. Then again, since the system named them venomous, they might depend on their poison. That would explain why they were brave enough to attack me when I am much larger than them.