“Are you sure you will be splitting with us from here?” The dwarf in charge of the caravan security asked Tobias.

Presently the entire caravan was set up overnight at a town two days journey from the base of Stone-Eye mountain. This town – called Stone-Hand – used to be a trading hub for a city of miners and dwarves whose home was built within the mountain itself.

Over several hundreds of years though, the resources within the mountain had dried up. This led the dwarves abandoning the mountain for richer areas and leaving Stone-Hand without any proper export.

All of this occurred within the last hundred years, and so far the town of Stone-Hand had managed to hang on. However, it was clear to everyone present that the glory of the town was long passed. Now it merely acted as a buffer between the country of Cinapul and the southern rock-land of Montese.

Montese was a barren land similar to the area where Tobias’s party had found Noone. Endless expanses of stone and boulders with various small and large cave systems underground. Some formed naturally, and some formed by the hands of slave-miners or dark elves.

Yes, Montese was the land of the dark elves. Dark elves lived their whole life in the shadows and out of the sun. Their homes were built deep into the earth and for the most part they kept to themselves. Very rarely would one ever venture to the surface and into the common world, but when they did, they were always the source of much distrust.

“We are sure. I am sorry for any inconvenience this causes but we have our assignments.” Tobias gave a bow of his head in way of apology.

Novrada gave a rough sigh and merely shrugged her broad shoulders causing her chainmail to shake. “It’s fine. The rest of the way is relatively safe, and it won’t be too hard to pick up some more security leads at the next town en route to the capital… but losing two security leads in one day is certainly going to be a pinch on morale.”

Tobias’s eyebrows scrunched together slightly.

“Two security leads?” Tobias probed delicately. The dwarf gave Tobias a look.

“Yeah. The gnome – Alaviv – let me know earlier he was heading towards the mountain. He already packed up what little he came with and made his departure.” The woman said.

Tobias’s frown deepened even further. He couldn’t help but glance back at Noone. However, Noone’s face was completely devoid of expression as if the current conversation didn’t involve him.

After settling accounts with Novrada and the young nobleman, Noone and the party from the order set off on the road to Mount Stone-Eye. They wasted no time as they were supposed to meet the subjugation force from the country at the base of the moment as soon as possible.

The whole reason their party took this route was due to a teleportation circle within the mountain.

For centuries, Teleportation circles and any such transport were under the strict monopolization of the wizarding and magic counsel. However, due to the potential oncoming war with the epoch tribe and pressure put on them from the various free-trade countries and the adventurer’s guild, the magic counsel had agreed to start opening up the magic for use again.

Noone was quiet through most the first day as he organized his own thoughts. Right now – with the help of Alaviv – Noone had managed to purchase enough low-level enchanted artifacts to reach the peak of level six. However, he had quickly come to a plateau and was unable to break through to level seven despite wasting almost five enchanted weapons in the process. Despite taking care of various assignments for the adventurer’s guild in every town between Creekview and Stone-hand, Noone was currently back to being completely broke – having used all his money to purchase enchanted weapons which he would promptly absorb the magic from and then discard.

Noone had considered selling back the base weapon – however he quickly found out that once he stripped an item of its enchantment, the weapon became basically useless without a complete re-forging.

Noone wasn’t the only one working to settle their own thoughts.

Feylin looked back towards Stone-hand with an odd charm in his eyes. Specifically, his thoughts were on a curly haired blonde cleric who was still traveling with the caravan.

Over the past five months, the two had become incredibly close. They spent every morning and evening making food together for the caravan and chatting about their aspirations for the world.

Their stories were actually very similar, as was their goals. They each wanted adventure and marveled at how large the world was.

No one in Feylin’s or Annette’s party said anything about their closeness – and Anette’s party seemed to even welcome Feylin.

Sarah of course was not oblivious to this change in her old friend. She tried to joke with him about it on a number of occasions, but she couldn’t help and feel a little put off. However, over the past months she had managed to shut out that voice inside her. She was a vengeance paladin, a warrior. She couldn’t let something like this distract her anymore.

Since her last adventure with Clayton, she had only received one assignment from Hoar during prayer.

Alone, she managed to hunt down and dispatch a serial killer who had murdered three young acolytes in the night. The town itself had been too small and ill-equipped to handle the man who Sarah had found out was a fifth level rogue.

It was a hard fight that ended up in Sarah being struck by a poison knife and developing a large gash in her arm before she managed to behead the man with her usable hand.

She went back to the party and was quickly detoxed by Sally. The wound in her arm was also healed, but now there was a line of pale scarred flesh where the gash had been.

No one spoke much the day after.

Sally and Raelith didn’t have much on their minds except the desire to return to the capital.

Sally was focused on the promotions she would receive for this assignment assuming everything went well from here on out.

Raelith had her thoughts on a human man she had grown fond of back at the capital.

Tobias was probably the most on edge out of everyone in the group. After helping the countries subjugation force take back the town inside the mountain from the dark elves which had moved in, they would only be a single teleport away from the capital.

This assignment had been a multi-year endeavor, and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little tired of it. He just wanted to rest. Even though he was a paladin, he was getting old. Now he just wanted to live a cozy life and focus on healing, himself and others.

And also… Tobias’s mind flashed with the memories of two young students of the Burian. A student paladin and a student cleric that they had started this journey with.

Initially their journey had brought them south from the Capital to Stone-Eye. The plan was to pass through Stone-Eye - an abandoned town - and then make their way west along the border of Montese and Cinapul.

Everything had been going to plan… until they entered the city within the mountain. Their small party of five had been discovered by an equally small party of dark-elves who were part of the new residents of the abandoned mountain.

After being discovered… all hell had broken lose. They barely made it through the mountain alive, and indeed they had lost two students on the way… students Tobias felt personally responsible for.

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to helping take back Stone-Eye. Some part of him still prayed that those two would still be alive… but he knew better than that. This was going to become an irreparable stain on Tobias’s conscious.

It was like this that the party spent the next two days. Walking silently until the unmistakable noise of a country’s militia slowly began to fill the air around them.