“Yeah, man, I know I’m late. I’m sorry. We had to go grab a few things and then ended up speaking with a farmer who lost his scarecrow to a god,” I explained to the caravan master. Me and Niku showed up, and this short, frumpy guy with mutton chops started berating me, yelling about schedules. Me not being able to shy away from a dispatcher who’s giving me grief, I gave his attitude back to him.

  Peter the caravan master had scoffed and was starting to call me a liar when Kio spoke up and broke the fight.

  “Maikeru, Peter, stop. This is pointless. Berating Maikeru for being late will not make him unlate. I told you he would be along when he was able,” Kio said as she walked over to us.

  We were standing a few feet away from a large wooden gate. This sect had big walls, and there were even some guard towers over the wall. When I first approached, I saw an archer up there waiting at the ready to defend the walls. He didn’t pay much attention to me because, well, I’m obviously not a threat. Or well, there was a large group out front already, and it had seemed like everyone was waiting for me anyway.

  Down the path away from the sect, there was a line of wagons and people all milling around waiting. It looked to be about a dozen wagons of varying states of niceness with plenty of people milling around outside. They all seemed like regular merchants, and there were some militant-looking people who wore leather breastplates and such. They were likely the guards, and someone probably outsourced them. The men and women had much paler skin than the natives of the empire.

  As soon as I pulled up, some people ran up and detached the second wagon and pulled it away to load it up. Betsy watched the three younger cultivators pull the slightly longer wagon away from her train with narrowed eyes. She gave them a bellow, and I got the impression she was warning them about stealing the wagon.

  “It’ll be alright, girl, don’t worry. They’ll bring it back loaded up and ready to go,” I assured her with a pat on the side. Personally, I was just grateful I had kept the gun in my bunk wagon. I didn’t need them to find it. Although Niku was still in the front seat, she was still playing with the weapon. She was currently trying to put it back together.

  “Maikeru will be loaded up shortly, and you can get on your way. In fact, I’m sure that if you show him the route you’re planning on taking, you can leave now. I’m sure he and his spirit beast will be more than capable of catching up,” Kio took control of the argument, and both of us looked at her.

  Kio looked at me with her emotionless expression. The woman stared me right in the eyes and kind of unnerved me. She reached into her robes and grabbed a small pouch and handed it to me. “The caravan is going to be set up in a courtyard in the city. When you arrive with the caravan we’ll have someone there to take the cargo to sell, and he’s the one who will pay you the rest of the money. He might need a couple of days, the man might try and make some sales since he’ll pay you a percent. But he should be good enough to know what it’s worth and pay you once you get there. Either way I ask you to give him time with your second wagon to offload and set up. He should be noticeable and in our colors, or something close since he isn’t actually a sect member. His name is Kanzan Juro.”

  I nodded along and didn’t make the mistake of opening the pouch to see how much she had given me. Instead I just put the pouch in my pocket and looked at her. “That’s fine. We need to figure out our meeting with the emperor and everything anyway.”

  The only thing that stole my attention was Niku when she spoke up and asked.

  “Why do I have extra parts?” She was holding up a small metal piece, and I couldn’t help but smirk at her.

  Kio just looked up at her coldly before she looked back at me and Peter. Peter looked at the water cultivator and gulped while I just smiled at her.

  “Alright then, give me your map,” Peter demanded.

  I nodded and went over to my bench. Niku went back to her tinkering after going wide-eyed from the glare she got from Kio.

  “Sorry I got you in trouble,” she whispered to me while I shuffled around for my map.

  I shrugged. “Don’t even worry about it. She’s just always angry.”

  Niku nodded and looked me in the eye. “Is everything all right?”

  “We’re waiting!” Peter called in what sounded like a whine.

  I looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. “Seriously man? Hang on a second.”

  Niku giggled, and I looked at her. “Everything is fine. We’ll just have to hurry once we’re done here. I have a feeling we might not be part of this caravan for very long.”

  This seemed to worry Niku, and her eyes went wide, and she reached and grabbed my hand. “No, we have to stay. They’re going through the desolation.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her and raised a hand at her once Peter started to sigh obnoxiously. “We’ll figure it out, don’t worry.”

  I smiled and winked at her, and she squeezed my hand. In my other hand, I had the map that Nakayasu had given me and walked over to Peter and Kio. He was sighing and making noises like a dramatic little girl while I worked on unfolding the leather.

  “Oh, of course you don’t have a good map to show you our initial route. We don’t need the entire continent,” Peter griped.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Kio made a noise and shook her head before she looked at me. Her eyes were wide, and she was dangerously close to showing emotion. One I didn’t think I’d expect from her: surprise. “No, you can. Maikeru, this is a nice map. Where did you get this?”

  I cocked my brow and shrugged. “Is it that nice? Just seemed like a regular map to me. Imai Nakayasu gave it to me.”

  Peter drew in his breath at the name, and Kio nodded her head. “Makes sense then. Besides the enchanted leather to keep everything dry..”

  Instead of explaining more the map could do, she reached down with two fingers towards the region of the map we were currently in. I couldn’t believe what the cultivator did next. The woman used two fingers and zoomed in. I blinked and gaped before I looked between her and the map. Kio just grinned and nodded her head.

  “This is a valuable treasure for anyone, let alone someone in your line of work,” Kio explained as she shifted the map around like it was a cell phone screen. Finally, she found the Toyo village at the base of the mountains, which had a small dot for it. Then she went up to the sect, which was another dot though; the dot for the sect was an emerald green.

  How the hell did I not know this map did this? I’ve had this thing for how long now? I actually tried to think about how long I had been in this world now at this point. A couple of months? One season anyway. It seemed like I was here all summer, and now the cooler weather told me we were in fall.

  I didn’t realize someone else had walked until I heard him. He spoke in a deep, resonant voice, almost soothing, but the man sounded tired.

  “I’m curious which way we’re planning on going too,” the bear of a cultivator said. He honestly looked more like a buffer sumo wrestler from back home. Barrel-chested and muscular with somebody fat but when you looked at him, you did not think of him as fat. This man was swole and bald, which was a new hairstyle for me on this continent. He dragged an anime-sized war hammer behind him, and I grinned a little.

  It was Peter’s turn to play with the map now, and following Kio’s lead, he played with the map to get us to where the route would take us. “It’s quite simple. We’re just heading along through here. We don’t expect to make the Desolation till the morning, and I am going to set up camp just before crossing into the desert here,” he said and pointed to a spot.

  “It shouldn’t take me and Betsy too long to catch up, just depends on how long it takes them to load up the wagon and then how rough the terrain is. She doesn’t do well in heavy forests or woods. Can’t just steamroll through them,” I explained and looked where Peter was dragging his finger.

  It was an easy route north, where we stayed along the bottom of some mountains for a while before finally separating and going inland and northwest to the capital. The Desolation everyone seemed so scared of was a desert area along the base of the mountains in a smallish region. The other border of the desert was a single gigantic mountain. It seemed kind of out of place, and when I asked the others about it, it was the bearish man who answered me.

  “Don’t go around there if you can help it. It’s a volcano, and odd things happen around it,” he explained.

  “Silas is right. If you can, keep away from it,” Kio agreed.

  I just nodded. I guess I didn’t want to go near a volcano, anyway. “Alright then. It shouldn’t be a problem to catch up.”

  “Very good, we’re counting on you to catch up since you’ll be part of security as a cultivator. I’m counting on you and your spirit beast to help us from the cults,” Peter said with a hand outstretched.

  I nodded and waved him off. “Yeah, yeah. No worries.”

  He nodded and looked at Silas. “Alright then, I’m told you’re with William, yes?”

  I blinked. Well, there’s another name I’m used to hearing from home.

  Silas looked at Kio, who just nodded her head, and then Silas gave the caravan leader the affirmative.

  “Good, he’s in the last cart in the line. You two and Maikeru will be our secret weapons,” Peter explained.

  Silas gave a heavy sigh and nodded his head before he walked off to climb into the last wagon in line. I watched him walk away, and drag his hammer behind him, as the head seemed to stay floating just above the ground so it didn’t drag in the dirt. I figured it must have been enchanted. Peter looked over at me and at Kio before giving her a bow and running off yelling instructions to mount up and get rolling.

  “Kio is uh, is he gonna be alright?” I asked, still watching Silas.

  She looked at me and followed my gaze before she gave a sigh herself. “I’m not sure. He was the survivor I found the imprint of in the sand by the water. Silas lived down there in that village, and he’s the only one still around. He’s a cultivator but..” She trailed off, unsure of what to say.

  I just nodded my head. I didn’t try to feel the man’s spirit or anything. Just the way the man carried himself and spoke, you could tell there was something wrong with him. “Yeah.”

  “It’s of no matter. I’m going to go check on your wagon. You have everything you need to go?” Kio put a hand on my chest, and I could feel Niku stare at us.

  I nodded to her. “Yup, I have plenty of everything me and Niku could need. She has money to stay at an inn every night, so…” I shrugged.

  Kio nodded and walked off to check on my wagon. “Good.”

  I smiled and turned back to Niku, who smiled at me as I walked back over to the bench and rolled the map up under my arm. I grunted as I climbed up and sat next to her, then looked over the musket. She had the gun leaning up against the front footrest, and it seemed like everything was put back.

  “No more extra pieces?” I asked curiously.

  “Nope. Maikeru, I’m serious.” She looked at me now, worried once more.

  I lifted a brow.

  “We can’t go through the Desolation alone. The sect, or cult, or whatever you want to call them, can be dangerous. The Veil of the Silver Night are illusionists and bandits. They follow dragons around and try to leech their power. They can be extremely dangerous,” Niku explained.

  I nodded. “I understand. We’re probably going to stay with the caravan, anyway. That Peter guy seems like a twat, but he was probably just annoyed cause we were running late. Since you know someone had to try shooting the gun.”

  She grinned. “It was an experience.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure.”

  “It was very powerful. I could see why these guns would be a bad thing. Especially if you made the balls with obsidian or put runes in them,” she looked out and sighed.

  I nodded.

  Patreon

  Which is usually 15ish chapters ahead.

  Discord and start a conversation.

  What stood out to you most in this chapter?