The Start of a Journey

Placing the map on my back so as not to damage it I picked up Decoration in my mouth and started walking in the general direction of the first place on the map. The Forbidden Forest. The name is a bit over the top if I do say so myself.

While walking the cool dirt under my feet as I walked had a..how do I put it? Soothing feeling to it? Yea, a soothing feeling. As a human, I wouldn't have understood that something so simple could be so calming, the local wildlife and the such only really added to the beauty.

Now that I have all this time I should probably start catching up on a few things while I can, can't afford to start procrastinating in the wild. That's on my big "No no" list. Yes, I made it up on the spot, but the time it was made is irrelevant to the over-arching point.

Let's see, naming Decoration should be at the top of the list. Calling him/her Decoration is just going to be inconvenient in the long term. Referring to Decor as 'it" is also going to get annoying quiet fast as well. Hm. That's going to be tricky. I wasn't good at names as a human either. How about I keep it simple. Decor-ite. Decorite. Perfect. As for gender, I'll keep it male. I don't feel comfortable having a girl in my mouth for an extended period, or for any amount of time. Even if Decorite ends up being a girl she can't talk, you know being stone and all so I'll never know. A foolproof plan if I do say so myself.

Well, that's all I actually needed to do. Cultivating, and evolving can all be done along the way. It's going to turn dark soon so I'll just stop here. It'll also give me time to tell Decorite about his new name and gender. Hopefully, it won't take to long to reach the forest, I'll just finish up the rabbits I caught along the way before cultivating.

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Human Frontier Town of Catilca

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"Be careful Rose, the horned rabbits have been breeding like crazy recently. Also, don't forget to tell the people in the village I said hi!"

"I will!" I hope she'd heard my response. Without the kind old lady giving out food at a discounted price every time I visit, the village might not have had enough for everybody to get a reasonable amount of food.

This year's harvest definitely wasn't the best, and with the bandits getting cockier they've started extorting more and more food from us. I just hope nothing gets too out of hand. If we could just start saving up more cash we could start hiring adventurers to keep watch. Rick can't always keep the village in check, and I feel bad for him. He just wanted to retire in a small village but with the bandits threatening the peace, he's been forced into the position of a sort of guard. I just hope this is enough for everybody to last the week if we live frugally enough.

Heading out the front gate I make sure the slightly nod my head at the guards as I pass by.

They both return the nod not wanting to be rude.

They risk their lives on a daily bases so the people in the town can live peacefully. Although some of the guards might take bribes and turn a blind eye to illegal merchants theirs nothing to be done. Every field has it's fair share of corrupted officials or greedy workers. We can only hope that they get weeded out before they cause much harm.

Handing over a silver coin to the driver I managed to cram into a carriage that passes by the village, its only a 5-minute walk afterwards.

Putting the basket on my lap I look at the people I'll be with for the next hour and a half. Most of the people crammed inside are people who live in the more remote areas of the kingdom or those running from the authorities. I sometimes play a game where I try to find out who's an innocent getting by and who's the criminal. Though it's quite easy as all you have to do is see who's covering their face the most.

As the carriage starts picking up speed I relax, but still making sure to keep watch of the hands around me. Stealing vegetables isn't a rare occurrence considering the type of people around me.

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Random Forest

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Thinking back, I wonder if anybody was out of the village when I attacked it. The bandits did surround it but a few people escaping is to be expected right? Hopefully, nothing bad comes of it, they'll probably just chalk it up to the bandits anyways. I'm probably just being paranoid.