7 On the way

"I want three scouts about kilometer ahead of the main group. Look for any possible danger and if you find any, come back and report it. I want two at the sides and one at the rear doing the same thing. Warriors shall escort the craftsmen. I will go at the front with the mages."

Everyone did as I said and we set forth to the mountain range.

From the position of the sun I could guess that it was around noon. The weather was very nice. No clouds and temperature just fine for clothing I was wearing, but since the place we were in were wilds, there weren't any pathways for us to take and our advance was rather slow.

By the time we went I talked with the yuzzems who claimed to be most talented in magic. My hopes for having mages capable of frying beasts alive were immediately destroyed because yuzzems told me that they don't know any spells and that they were hoping that I know some.

I didn't want to disappoint them and loose their loyality but since they swore soul oath to me I could be honest to them as I wished. I told them that didn't know any spells either.

I asked what power do they use for it and they answered that it is called mana which made me happy since it was name I knew.

I got idea for spell and asked them if they can control their mana to form fireball but they said that this is not the way magic works. Most of creatures had to chant something to cast certain spell. Stronger the spell the longer the incantation is. Some summoning spells and enchanting techniques also require magic materials to work.

But there are some exceptions. From what I discovered there are some individuals who at their birth got an ability to control the elements freely and cast spells without chanting and invent new spells which they may later write down and develop formula for them.

Sadly none of my yuzzems was this type of mage.

About the elements. There are supposed to be many elements but the main and strongest ones are fire, water, air, earth, lightning, nature, light, darkness, demonfire and artificial element called arcane. They also named many others but said that they are not important to remember since strong mages don't use them or they are derivated from the basic for example: ice, lava, decay etc.

About the elements I also discovered that every person has to have affinity to elements to be able to cast spells containing them. The stronger affinity one has the stronger spells he can cast. Only exception was arcane which could cast anyone who had sufficient mana supply. Affinity could be expressed in percents. If one had 100% affinity in earth he could cast any spells he wished involving earth but could also create new spells just by instinct and had high chance to gain ability to cast earth spell without chanting just like the rare non-chanting mages.

Problem is that one person can have maximally 100% of all his affinities in total so if he has 50% in one element and 50% in another, he is on his maximum. Another thing was that mage can't gain new affinity. Only way of change is increase of already possesed affinity and to do so he needs special and very rare potion so most of the mages has around 60% of their affinity used and could do nothing about it because potions increasing it were super expensive and even royal families could afford to buy only one or two in a generation.

That conversation made my mood little bit worse because I hoped I'd become master of magic maybe even the God of magic. Sadly these restrictions made it impossible.

After this conversation I was few hours quiet and watched the road.

I completely forgot about inspecting my backpack and new system till the evening.

At that time we camped under group of trees. This one in particular had few big boulders which made natural barrier against wind and unwanted eyes.

It was getting darker and I thought about sleeping more comfortably and I remembered my backpack.

I inspected it and found out that it was quite big and spacious so I had high expectations.

I opened it and took out its content. Inside I found about 5 kg of dried meat, some water flasks, rope, blanket, one set of reserve clothes, about 5 bandages and lighter.

"Well that is better than I expected. I thought I'd get only some water and food."

I was going to share some of it with yuzzem but they already found pond full of fish and some edible wild berries.

Once they caught enough fish I was going to borrow them my machette but they just leasurerly usheathed their claws and gut the fish without much of an effort.

I was going to make a fire so they could cook it but scouts had warned me that they had found many tracks while they were scouting ahead of the group. Not all of them belonged to harmless animals. There was even seen a footprint of undead or humanoids.

I wasn't suprised that we didn't encouncer any of the owners of these tracks because on the way we encoucered areas where grass was high enough to hide standing yuzzem. All scouts needed to do is crouch a little bit and noone could see them till he came at reach of hand.

This information about scouts is unpleasant. Expected but still unpleasant. If we have met any of them today, we could have been dead already. Even though scouts aren't actual army they are still force to be reconed with. Especially the ones from undead fraction.

It was crystal clear that undead attacks living whenever they have a chance. Hate between undead and the living is legendary even in video games.

"We have to become stronger. If this was a novel now would be the time for me to cone up with geniue plan how to not be spotted or get some overpowered ability to deal with enemies."

Sadly none of these happened. But then I remembered that I have yet system to check.

I completely forgot about it since when I did not thought about it the icon disappeared from field of my vision.

I opened the "app" and felt big disappointment because all that system showed was:

[ Name: Grimm

Faith points(Fp): 0

Faith point (Fp) needed for upgrade of system: 50 ]

"How the hell am I supposed to get these Faith points?" I sligthly errupted.

"Grimm, we have been gifted with this knowledge." spoke the big black yuzzem.

"Faith points are measure of your stired power gained mostly from prayers. It was said to us that you were already told the rest by the god Mafl."

"So the way I gain the Fp is when you guys pray to me?"

"Yes, but proper prayer can be done only once a day because it drains part of ones soul and it will fully recover after 23 hours so please choose part of day in which we will regulary pray to you."

"Fine, I think the best one is evening. Maybe after dinner."

"We will do as you command." the black yuzzem bowed and headed back to inform others about this.

As I watched his back I thought "I should give him a proper name. But not now, first we must survive the road then we can care about something like names."

Soon I got 42 Fp and must have ended thoughts about upgrading system this evening.

I just checked my equipment once more so I knew I did not loose anything, took my blanked and went asleep among the yuzzem. But before that I instructed warriors and scouts how to properly divide guard duty so noone would lack too much sleep and gave myself one at around 4 o'clock.

Through night nothing much happened and then my watch came.

First hour nothing much happened but as the dawn was coming I got feeling like something was watching me. I was nervously watching. my surroundings but I couldn't find anything or anybody around.

If someone was about kilometer from camp in right place, he could see red eyes sinisterly watching the camp and then slowly sneaking away.