Chapter 34
(Aug 27)
"William. I'm leaving."
This is my answer.
"Eh?"
William seemed surprised at my answer, he probably wasn't expecting this to be my answer.
"W-wait! Are you sure you want to leave? Have you thought about it?!?!"
William looked panicked and tried his best to convince me to stay.
This made me feel a little mischievous to see the usually very composed William to get flustered.
William must have expected me to answer that I would stay and fight, and he was mostly bluffing.
But William misunderstood me, when I say I'm leaving, I don't mean I'm leaving permanently.
"I want to go home temporarily. I miss my family."
William looked at me for a while and seemed to understand slightly what I meant and let out a quiet sigh of relief.
"Anthony, I thought you already understood how serious this situation this is. Many lives are on the line and you're risking it to simply go home and visit your family?"
"Yes, I am aware. And I am aware how important my existence is to this city. But so, what? If I can't even be happy with my own life, then so what? I will do my best to save as many people as possible but I'm not going to throw my life away.
Plus, what can you do about it? It's not like you can refuse and stop me from going home, because if you do than I just won't help you guys and I'll leave permanently.
I am well aware of my situation and it's like you said, I should respect myself more. This is exactly what you said I should do; I am respecting my wishes."
William stared at me with a surprised look.
To be honest, I'm kind of surprised at myself too. This took a quite a bit of confidence to say and decide.
"So, when do you plan on heading home? For how long?"
"I was thinking about it, and I think I'll take about a week to say goodbye to my friends, and then head home for around a month or so."
William reluctantly agreed, well technically he had no other choice.
And with that I was allowed to head home to see my family.
(Sep 2)
Early morning today I set off to head to my hometown, Briggs and Brian said goodbye as I left the city and saw me off.
I had said goodbye to all the people I know including Cornelia and Kevin and other people I also know.
I was walking home and not going in a carriage because I want to enjoy myself, enjoy the nature and have time to think to myself and reflect on what's been going on.
By walking, it will probably take me a couple days to get home but I plan on taking a shortcut home.
It's faster if I go straight home through a dense forest by a day or two.
Back when I first traveled from home to the city with Brian for the first time, we went around the forest because we were on carriage and going through a forest with carriage is quite difficult.
The forest should be relatively safe though, the monster should be F or E ranked on average and D ranked at highest.
So, I probably won't be in any danger.
Hopefully I find some boars, or piglets, they taste fantastic when cooked with salt and pepper.
In my backpack I did bring along some snacks, but I figured I could catch my own food, so I mostly brought cooking utensils and seasonings/ spices.
The forest was somewhat dense with thick trees but there was plenty of sunlight, so I headed straight in.
I could sense lifeforms all around me, from small critters to large animals.
It truly felt different from being in a city.
The smell of the forest had a fresh scent, and I noticed the trees were actually emitting magical energy!
When a tree grows old enough, it will accumulate enough energy and magic in its lifetime to be able to develop its own magic pool. That's also why some ancient millennial aged trees sometimes even grow sentients.
The magically energy that was being released from the trees were refilling me with power! Man, nature is great.
As I continued to walk through the forest, I sensed a group of people heading in my direction.
From the trees, emerged a group of rough big men wearing leather armor and holding weapons.
They were bandits.
One of the bandits raised his hand and all the other men stopped.
He called out to me asked what my business was.
I walked up to him with a couple meters in between us and replied that I just wanted to head through the forest to head home.
The man demanded I hand over some of my gold, but I smirked.
Instead of taking out money to hand to him, I pulled out a piece of paper. It was a paper signed directly by the king himself to excuse myself from all bandits.
The bandit, who looked like the leader of the group, seemed surprised and ordered his men to lower their weapon.
Seeing this I felt a little nostalgic.
In some other countries, bandits are illegal brutes who rob people but in certain kings and cities like this country, bandits are legalized.
Bandits are granted a territory by the king of a kingdom, and the bandits are then allowed to tax people who pass by. However, they need a bandit license and go through a test.
They are not allowed to kill or commit other illegal acts; they would be arrested if they were caught but they were allowed full control of that territory. They were allowed to block access from people entering or exiting at will.
In exchange, they are to conquer the entire area and eliminate all monsters thus making the area safe for travelers and merchant to pass by without being attacked by monsters.
One time I met a devil foreigner from another country who freaked out because we met a group of bandits until I had to explain to him, we were safe.
So, meeting bandits is a lucky thing, as you trade a little money in exchange for a near guaranteed safe trip.
With this, bandits are allowed free roam under the control of the kings and kill monster, so things monster don't overpopulate and become too much of a threat.
And since I have permission from the king himself (I asked William to request the king for this so I could travel safe), bandits are not allowed to lay a hand on me.
The bandits offered me to come to their camp, but I refused as I wanted to travel.
They waved me off and they were quite friendly in fact, seemed like a nice group of bros.
It soon became night, and I used my dragon fire to make a small campfire and made a cozy campsite.
I set up a tent and after everything was done, I headed out to look for some animals and monsters to hunt for dinner.
I concealed my magic and sensed for magic nearby which I found a family of deer in the distance, a couple birds and a sleeping wild adult boar.
Perfect.
I'm having a wild feast tonight; a wild boar is relatively easy to kill and at the same time very plentiful of meat and is delicious. I ignored all the other animals around and focused on the sleeping boar.
I refrained from using fire magic because I might burn the meat (and the forest…), so I had to think of another way to kill it.
I didn't have a spear or a bow, but I did have sword which wasn't good for throwing.
I need to think of a way to quickly kill it before it can run and kill it without ruining its meat.
Killing a monster is quite simple but killing it quickly and without ruining it using no weapons or tools is harder than one would think.
I could build a trap but if I'm too loud it might wake up and run away which would make things trickier to kill it without ruining it's meat…
After a short while, I came up with a simple plan and acted it out.
First, I found a moderately big rock and infused my magic and dragon essence into it.
I focused and tossed the rock as accurately as possible on the other side of the boar opposite to me.
The noise of the rock woke up the boar but since it had just woken up it was still confused.
Since I had infused my dragon essence into the rock earlier, I was able to remotely blow it up surprising the boar and causing it to run in fear away from the explosion.
The explosion was simply a burst of magic, and there was no fire involved. It's like blowing up a balloon full of air so it didn't cause too much damage but it was very loud.
As I had thrown the rock on the opposite side of boar from where I was, when it exploded the boar ran towards me and when it got close enough, I slashed at its head from behind a tree I was hiding behind.
With that my dinner was caught!
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