Ch 36: Into the Mountains

(AN: My spring allergies turned into covid. Currently on the upswing, so regular chapter updates are coming soon.)

During the night Baldeur slipped out of the room he was sharing with Piaras and Sigurd. Down stairs he found an empty private dining room to take care of some business.

After he warded the room to prevent spying, he pulled an Infernius Stone from his secret Dimensional Pocket. Once his Source energy was full, he began to reconstruct the anti charm spell within his subconscious.

This time he added the minor condition that he'd be alone unless the charms instruction was going to activate. If it happened again, he wouldn't have to explain anything like he did with Piaras.

He then inspected the golden disc that he had been given and found no spells that would allow anyone to track him.

After he was done he pondered what he had learned from his interaction with Veneris.

During that kiss, he felt a curse coming for him. He recognized it as one that kept the bearer from becoming intimate with others. For someone to have that much control over Lust without being able to become intimate was terrifying.

He also remembered what she said after that kiss, implying that she had already set a secret charm on the other prophesied heroes. Were they all headed to the same place or were they given different missions?

The last thing he was trying to figure out was if she was suffering from Source Degradation.

One of the ways that occurred, was when you relied on Source Stones to refill your energy over a very long period of time, such as a few decades or a century.

Knowing if she was suffering from it, would give him an idea of how old she was. It would also let him know if she had a weakness.

Those that suffer from Source Degradation can't hold as much Source energy overtime. So even if she is powerful, she'd only be able to use her abilities a few times before becoming fatigued.

Unfortunately, he didn't sense any strong degradation. He was charmed for most of the encounter with her, which limited his senses. So, if she was suffering from Source Degradation, it wasn't too strong.

In the morning the group gathered and headed into the mountains. Piaras was able to follow the missing groups path using the information gathered by their company through rumors and tracking spells from his Wild Hunt aspect. The fact that they had been missing for months and his tracking spells still worked, pointed to how powerful he is with Anodular.

The outer valleys held few risks for the group and they progressed smoothly through them.

Any competent bandits saw the group as dangerous, so avoided them. The towns and villages along the way had decent inns with roads that their horses could travel easily. The people were used to travelers and merchants and were ranchers, farmers, and miners.

Monsters and beasts were limited in strength since the outer valleys had support from the kingdom.

It was in the inner passes that their journey began to change. Bandits didn't frequent them because travelers and merchants were rarer.

Towns and villages were much smaller and the roads that connect them together weren't well maintained and could easily be destroyed by the weather.

Monsters and beasts were more common. They had to fight a few between the different villages.

Those traveling through the inner passes were less common, so it became more often that people remember their missing group passing by. It made confirming that they were on the right track easier.

In between villages they had to rely more on Piaras' tracking magic. The paths between the different mountains leading to the next villages became more maze-like. For those that weren't skilled in magical tracking, the locals had markers in place to guide people.

Carvings in rocks, twigs twisted into certain shapes, and the like, were used as markers to help travelers from village to village.

As they made their way through the inner passes, Baldeur noticed the path markers through the mountains started to have some familiar extra marks next to them.

They weren't exactly the same and his head was already filled with oddities so maybe he was reaching. But they started to have the look of characters from the writing system used in his last life, when he was a demon on Tartarus.

What was making him more unhappy about the situation, was that some of them looked like a name.

Sathanas.

It could be a coincidence, but that was the name of a fallen king from a few hundred years before he was born in that world. At least that was what he was hoping.

Then they came to a small village near the area where the Blue Rooted Elms were rumored to be growing.

The village wasn't the easiest to get to as the main trail down the mountain had been washed out a while ago and no one had repaired it.

The boys watching the sheep near the valley's entrance were excited to see them. Those in the small houses they passed on the way to the village center came out to greet them.

They said they hadn't had visitors for a long time and were happy to hear of news from elsewhere.

There was no inn but the tavern keeper was going to allow them to sleep in his store room, so they wouldn't have to sleep outside.

From the moment they entered the village, Baldeur's Psychic senses were telling him that the people they interacted with were being extremely fake.

Sure they were excited to see all of them, but not for the reasons they were stating.