Chp.1: Out of the forest

Haku and his siblings had seen many different environments in their lives. In the Karbraland Great Forest, every tract of land was covered by a sea of ​​trees whose ends couldn't be seen, with only a few small clearings changing the homogeneity of the woodland. When they lived in their mother's territory, they had several small forests, small plains and a lake fed by numerous rivers, streams and streams, as well as numerous plateaus due to nearby mountains.

This time, waiting for them was yet another environment. When the dragons finally managed to get out of the forest after a couple of days of walking, they found themselves in front of a large and immense hilly plain, covered exclusively by grass and with only a few trees from time to time to change the landscape.

Haku observed that new landscape with interest. Everything on the plain was different: the sounds, the smells, the colors. The wind was blowing stronger thanks to the lack of obstacles and the bugs were much noisier. It was a decidedly more peaceful environment than the dark forest, from the thick of which a predator could emerge at any moment.

It was fortunate that he liked the environment, because that was the next destination of their journey.

"Let's try to figure out exactly where we are" Haku said pulling a parchment out of his dimensional bag. That was the map that Ethan had shown him long ago, which he obviously had kept.

Just as it had did the first time, the map quickly activated and showed them the surrounding territories. "According to our plan, we'll have to pass through here" Haku said pointing to the demarcation line that divided the Jurao Kingdom, ruled by humans, with the Baudonia Cities Alliance, which was instead ruled by beastmen.

The reason Haku planned to pass through was simple: according to Ethan, the two nations were currently at war. Therefore, bordering villages and towns would have been cleared of their inhabitants, just as the faeries and ogres had done at the beginning of their conflict. After all, they'd be easy targets. Therefore, the population in that territory was practically absent, which meant that the dragons would have had much more freedom to move without having to worry about the risk of being sighted.

Some fool would have thought that in this way there was a risk of meeting the soldiers, but Haku didn't fear too much that eventuality: according to Ethan, the humans had had the advantage right from the beginning of that war. Therefore, most of the battles should have taken place within Baudonia Cities Alliance territory, not along the border. Therefore, there shouldn't have been anyone in that area, except a few patrols for safety. Even if the war had come to an end during those months, surely the human army would have remained in the beastmen territory to be able to pacify it and avoid revolts, and to be safe they would have avoided repopulating the villages and towns on the border for a while. And even if the war had completely changed and the beastmen had managed to push the humans back to the border, the two armies would have been easily visible to the dragons and their noise could have been heard for several kilometers; with the invisibility rune, overcoming these obstacles would have been very easy.

"Since we have to pass along the border, we still have to move about eighty kilometers east" Haku said looking at the map. Currently, in fact, they weren't along the border, but directly in the Jurao Kingdom. "We will stay close to the forest and head to the right spot"

Some of his siblings seemed to want to say something, but none of them spoke. They hadn't been contradicting him for a few days now. Indeed, in truth, apart from some of them like Darbi, no one had ever spoken to him again. Haku believed that they were still angry with him for going behind their backs, and he could understand that; however, he had already stated his reasons and had no intention of apologizing. Sooner or later, everyone would have forgot about that affair and peace would have returned.

"I have an alternative proposition" Kotaru said suddenly stepping forward, drawing a line on the map. "Why don't we continue diagonally? This way we would do it sooner and we wouldn't waste time staying close to the forest"

Ever since Haku had carried out his plan to kill their mother, Kotaru had been looking at him reproachfully the whole time. Even now, even though she was speaking in a calm and quiet voice, Haku could see a little accusation against him in her eyes. He knew it was because he hadn't listened to her, and now Kotaru was angry with him.

He knew he should have tried to make peace with her, but he also knew he wasn't very good at understanding other people's feelings, and that by trying to talk to her he would have probably just made her angrier. He was sure that he would have had to face an argument with her one day, but for the moment he preferred to concentrate on the map. "I thought about it, but I don't think it's safe. Eighty kilometers is a lot, the villages in these parts haven't been cleared since they are very far from the border. If we won't be careful, there is a risk that someone will see us"

Haku knew that they absolutely had to avoid any contact with both the humans and the beastmen. If the ogres and the faeries were dangerous to them, the humans and the beastmen would have been their doom.

Haku remembered Ethan mentioning the existence of level adamantium warriors and mages, or even worse, the presence of some legendary level as far as the human nation was concerned. Since the Jurao Kingdom hadn't gone to war with the Baudonia Cities Alliance before taking many precautions, it was logical to think that the beastmen weren't inferior in strength. Compared to the level adamantium or even the legendary levels, the few ogres and fairies that Haku and his siblings battled and that barely reached the level gold were nothing. Still, Haku had ascertained that a level gold warrior could easily beat him or one of his siblings or even all of them, unless they studied a strategy first: he well remembered the strong sense of danger that the fairies had given him when they sabotaged their delegation. Therefore, the last thing he wanted was to confront higher-level mages or warriors.

Haku had often wondered why beastmen and humans had to have such strong warriors and mages, while fairies and ogres didn't. He had reflected on the information he had of both peoples for a long time, information he had obtained thanks to Sarpa who had told him about what the wandering merchants told. Eventually, he came to a conclusion: if his hypothesis was correct, then fairies and ogres lacked two important building blocks for producing strong soldiers.

The first was the high fertility, and it was the biggest problem of the fairies. Based on Ethan's and Sarpa's words, not everyone could reach a high level of strength: it wasn't enough to train endlessly to be able to break through the bottleneck between each level. Haku had guessed this: after all, if everyone could reach great strength, why wouldn't the entire world be dominated by level adamantium mages and warriors? Apparently, to achieve a high level of strength it wasn't enough to just train, but also possess a great talent, a good constitution and above all a formidable luck. The odds of a person being born with these characteristics were low. Therefore a people like the fairies, who had a very slow birth rate, would hardly have produced a soldier with such skills. After all, over the thousands of years of their history, the fairies had scarcely reached a population of 100,000 and generally they generated no more than two or three children every five years. As a result, the fairies were remained stuck in the level of strength that everyone could achieve with training, meaning the level gold, and even just reaching the level diamond was considered an extraordinary achievement. In contrast, humans and beastmen had high fertility rates and populations of millions, and they produced thousands of children each year; while the stats to generate a level adamantium soldier were rare, with these assumptions it was easy to get a decent number.

The second was the knowledge, and that was the ogres' biggest problem. Even being born with all the necessary characteristics, in fact, a soldier wouldn't have reached the level adamantium without effort: it was necessary to learn certain techniques of using mana, know many spells and various kind of magic, learn combat and martial arts, and so on. Ogres had a high fertility rate, but were very ignorant and barely knew the basics of using mana. Furthermore, in a strict class society such as theirs, a person born with the right characteristics would hardly have had a chance to progress, since the old ogres who held the title of strongest would have eliminated him before he could become a danger to the their location. Ultimately, the ogres were by no means too primitive a people to ever discover the knowledge necessary to breed a level adamantium soldier. On the contrary, based on what Haku learned from Sarpa, both humans and beastmen placed great emphasis on mana usage research and while maintaining a rigid social system distributed that knowledge to ensure they had more high-level soldiers at their service. Thanks to things like the adventurer guild, they could convince a large number of people to take the path of combat and pass on information to progress quickly on the cheap. This, coupled with their high fecundity, had allowed them to obtain large numbers of level adamantium warriors and mages.

Basically, the fairies lacked high fertility, the ogres lacked brains. They had no chance of reaching high levels of strength unless they used tricks like runes or drinking dragon's blood. Conversely, humans and beastmen possessed both characteristics and could therefore produce large numbers of fearsome soldiers.

As for the legendary levels... Haku didn't have an answer right now. According to Ethan they were created through the blessing of the gods, and since he had established that the gods were real, it was logical to assume that method was too. However, Haku for now had still too little information to determine the right criteria by which the gods chose their champions.

After his answer, Kotaru shook her head. "Brother, you worry too much. We have the rune of invisibility and we know thanks to this map where the villages are. We will just have to pass away from them. At most we will be able to meet some wandering peasant or merchant, and it will be easy to hide from them"

"Well..." Haku had to admit that his sister had a point. Avoiding villages, even if they weren't depopulated, would have been easy, and by doing so they would also have avoided the majority of the population. By using the invisibility rune, it would have been easy to hide from any passers-by, and with their sense of smell they would have noticed the presence of a human at a great distance even with the headwind, thus managing to avoid it. And even if by some unfortunate event someone managed to see them, it wouldn't have been difficult to eliminate him and pass off the incident as an attack of a wolf or a bear. "Maybe you are right" he said in the end.

"Good. So let's do this" Kotaru said, and she traced a line on a map with her finger; a curved line that passed through less populous areas. "In this way we will pass away from all the villages and we will be able to reach the border in less than two days. We will stop here for the night" and she pointed to a point in the center of the route she had traced. "It is very far from any inhabited area, so we will be able to rest peacefully. It will be enough that we will take watch in turns to be completely sure that we won't be surprised in our sleep, an eventuality that is already very remote anyway"

Haku reflected. That proposal was quite satisfactory from his point of view. "Okay, we'll do it that way then. Any objections?"

He expected at least someone to be against it, but as soon as he asked everyone shook their heads. He found it a bit strange: they had never hit it off so quickly. However, he certainly wasn't going to complain. "Very good. Let's go then!"

After months passed by gathering supplies, their journey towards the Yuthia Desert had finally begun.