Chapter 24 - Traveling Through the Forest
"Are you a little confused by this decision?" Seeing me likely a little confused, Wendy began to offer an explanation.
"It is the hero's mission to save the innocent and defenseless. An experienced party like this is not defenseless and so is not under that rule." She said to me.
"I would have expected the role of hero to be more altruistic." I exclaim surprised.
"It's because of lessons from history and experience. There were former hero's that were restricted by moral boundaries like that, but those stories usually ended with the hero becoming evil and biting back at those morals. Bottling up all of their frustrations is not healthy especially since they were treated different from other strong men who were not as strong as they were. So their resentment exploded usually resulting in them becoming tyrants who ruled over kingdoms leaving them worse than even when the Demon Kings were around." Mellie explained to me.
The church being one the oldest factions around and being involved in this whole situation has made them quite experienced and well learned about the behaviors of many heroes over the ages.
I was actually rather happy with this decision. After all, I was a clone split off of Alice and with how she acts, she would actually simply watch the show without intervening to see what happens next.
Then the scouts returned with their information and like what the Hero had stated, they did not ask for us to intervene and simply had someone inform us of the attack without the intention to ask us to act.
Since we were disliked, I guess it would be best to comply and simply wait for them to either deal with the threat or actively ask for help. I watched as the fight progressed and found that there is a reason that this team was so trusted by the merchants we were guarding. In little time and with no combat injuries they were able to quite easily vanquish these wolves and the merchants were able to continue onward.
Using my perception, I was surprised to note that there was not much talk about our team. Even when there was it would soon be squashed and replaced with other topics in no time.
I would have thought that they would at least gossip about us but they are actually surprisingly clean. When I asked Wendy about it she looked at me in a little surprise.
"Have you learned all of your adventuring knowledge from those ancient novels? Stuff like face slapping and looking down on newbies has long been out of fashion." She said. To corroborate her point, she then started to teach me about the adventuring system that we have nowadays.
"Maybe human adventurers would be like that centuries ago, but the times have changed a lot. The Demon King was able to slay the hero from his generation 200 years ago and so the world fell into an unprecedented panic. Because of the changing situation, the Church and the Empire worked together and finally decided to split the original Adventurer's guild into the current Adventurer's guild and the Mercenary Guild. So what you would expect would probably be more prevalent there. In addition to that, there have been various magic organizations that have petitioned for education among all people. Depending on the ruler at the time, the process has been stopped and started countless times. But because of the changes it brought about the first time, public schools in even the smallest villages became almost a standard part of the foundation of a village. So most commoners have at least a basic level of reading and writing."
"That's a lot." I replied to her lecture.
During this time, the carriage had been moving steadily and so we finally reached a clearing for the horses to rest for a while. We all came out of the carriage and I looked at these adventurers with a whole new lens after that lesson.
Of course, in addition to that story there was an interesting tidbit that she had mentioned earlier about how the current Demon King had slain a hero before. I then remembered that that guy had also ran out and left him for my main body to deal with. If he already killed a hero, then why is he so afraid of one now? Especially when he looks like he is still growing on the outside.
And so I asked Wendy about it.
But she did not really have an answer herself. At that time, they had fought one of the demon generals before and they were feeling confident so when they found that they were close to the Demon King castle they decided to ambush him which resulted in the ambush and the clash that I know of today.
It was only when they faced Alice within the simulation that their pride and arrogance fell and they became more levelheaded that they focused on training now. To be honest, it is rather surprising that such a team would even fall completely into that state, but I am not a human and I did not experience all that they did.
So I wouldn't know if their thought process at the time was normal.
Looking around the clearing, I saw that the others were all packing up so I finished my quick meal of a nice roasted chicken leg and some bread that was in my storage. I also carefully isolated the smell from reaching the other adventurers by creating a barrier that specifically blocked out scents.
Hurrah to the research done by the other clones!
Although I want to keep a relatively low level of strength in magic to make many situations more fun, that does not stop me from learning more functional magic that does not progress my magic level further.
Packing up and heading back into the carriage, I suddenly notice with my senses active that there was one of the scouts who was secretly scribbling on the ground.
Taking note of this anomaly, I decided that the Hero should probably learn about this so he won't get caught by surprise should anything happen.
As I was planning on doing this, I suddenly received a message from one of the other clones that caught my attention.
"From research in the books within the Forbidden Library of the Demon King Castle, there is a report from a previous demon king. He called himself the Snail Lord and used magic to make him like that and have a near impenetrable defense. Through his research, he found that for every hero that the demon king faced and killed, the next resulting one would become more targeted for himself and usually become even more talented and have better circumstances if needed. Thus it would actually be for the best to simply outlive the hero. Only then would the cycles of the Demon King and Hero be delayed."
How interesting.
I had asked the clones if they knew the answer to my earlier question and they indeed delivered. If that is the case, then it is no wonder that he ran when he met the hero. Maybe he is also planning a similar plan as that Snail lord? Maybe he wants that extra time in order to learn more knowledge about something? Or maybe it is just a perverse desire to survive.
Eh, it's not my place to worry about that. I will just leave the worrying to the Hero party.
Of course, such info should be kept from him since I want to just follow his story naturally. Spoiling like this is no fun at all! All this thinking had made me forget about informing the Hero about the more pressing concern though so maybe I should have written it down to remind myself?
Anyways, I headed back into the carriage when I noticed that the team was quite solemn looking. I wonder what they are all thinking about?
Looking towards the one I was closest to, I tilted my head and asked her a question.
"Why are you all so serious all of a sudden?"
"Oh, it's nothing. It is just that Luke's instinct triggered again." His instinct? I wanted to ask further, but I noticed that the carriage was on the move and since she did not explain further maybe they did not feel like explaining it to me.
Well, either way if something happens it is not on me.
Since the horses are quite well rested, we have quite a ways to go before we finally rest. In addition, due to the existence of magic it is also possible to travel a bit into the night as building tents and finding water sources or even generating water to drink is actually quite simple. Thus this trip will likely be even shorter than expected with this efficiency.
Traveling on the dirt road through the forest was quite nice as it was a fresh breath of scenery from the previous plains. Due to the variations in tree formations and the activity of the various critters on the road it was quite a sight to see.
There were a few plants that I needed to collect for my mission in this area so I bid my farewells to do so.
When I left, I noticed the hero party whispering to each other within the carriage. I wonder what they want to talk about? But overall I am not that curious.
Quietly traversing through the forest and carefully picking various plants like this violet bell shaped flower was quite fun. Maybe I should do missions like this more often?
For anyone else, they would need to worry about poisonous plants brushing upon them or aggressive critters sneak attacking them, but due to the noise and size of our convoy many of these lone ambushers are being more patient and waiting. In addition, I have chosen to become invisible so they can only really trace me from scent since I am floating on my blanket now.
Many of the plants that I harvested ended up being false signals as some of them ended up being poisonous copycats that mimic the actual plants looks. I learned this the hard way with my hand turning purple and loosing feeling in it. Thankfully, there were remedies for this situation in the Mirror storage that I quickly got into to find.
From in the dimension I found a storage space for medicines of all kinds. These were actually bought by some of the other clones in order to test the ingredients and methods of creating medicine. Something about alchemy and plant magic along with herbal studies blended together to create this profession.
There were labels for all of the medicines and even testers made by one of the clones that sorted and handed out the right medicine for the right occasion. It was actually something like a scanning machine inside a large cabinet like structure that looked over and scanned the malady before assigning the right medicine for the job. Thankfully it was made to be fully autonomous and that the poison that I took happened to be quite common to deal with.
Although I did get nagged a little later for being careless and getting myself poisoned on the field. In exchange for allowing me to use the medicine here, I was then ordered to both restock for the medicines that are missing from the Beastmen territory, but also to look for new medicinal plants and medicines that may have popped up in recent times.
After all, many years have passed since the library under the castle has been updated. Maybe some common plants in the past have gone extinct outside while some newer plants may have sprung up.
Because of what happened, I learned to be quite a bit more cautious while handling these plants. First of all, using gloves which is what I maybe should have done from the very beginning. Then I started sensing the plants with my space magic. Eyes can be deceived rather easily so only if I test it with my magic would I know for certain the effects that they hold.
In addition, I was forced to memorize the plant encyclopedia written by the clone. I tried resisting at first but it was to no avail. In order to have the medicines to use for my clumsy self, I had to fully memorize the book which was simply just a download away.
Shaking my dizzy head, I then was able to recognize many of the plants that I found in the forest and found that a lot of them were actually takeouts with little medicinal properties.
Is my luck really that bad?
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