The news of this event spread like a wildfire through the caravan and people didn’t stop discussing it till the evening when the caravan stopped for the night. When the same guard came over to invite Nick for a chat again, he saw how his new friend was massaging shoulders of the other youth who seemed to be humming in pleasure.

Nick finished his ‘duty’ and with a sigh came over to guard knowing that the others were already waiting for him.

Seeing guard’s questioning gaze, obviously about the shoulder massage, he said, “There was no other way, I lost the bet.”

The guard was even more confused – didn’t they win the bet?

Nick realized the misunderstanding and explained, “We made a bet yesterday on who will kill more attackers. Sigh, he killed thirty one and I managed only twenty nine. Even though he killed at least three by a falling tree on accident, a win is a win. His weapon is more suited for large skirmishes than mine anyway.”

The guard fell in even bigger shock. He saw the iron dagger on Nick’s waist. How the hell did they accomplish it?

Most of the guards received Nick with cheers and there were only few who mourned their former acquaintances in silence. After a short chat, Nick excused himself for being fatigued and went back to the others, when vice caravan leader Rushdi came over.

“You made quite a mess today.” He sounded upset.

“Sir, if you wanted to hire us so we could distribute the caravan’s cargo to random strangers, please say so.” Nick smiled back.

They looked at each other for few minutes without a word and surrounding people felt that a serious quarrel will start any second.

“Sigh, I would like to ask permission to give you a suggestion.” Nick said, “You are very experienced person whom I respect and I don’t intend to teach you in any way. It’s just that our Boss analyzed the situation and has an opinion as well.”

“Speak!” Rushdi said in a surprise. Just now he was trying to think of the best way to convince these people to stand out less.

“Ten gold bonus for the guard who will kill the most attackers till we reach Ulun, and bonus prizes for other achievements. Our group can’t take part in the competition.” Nick plainly said knowing how Rushdi liked to keep all conversations short.

“Hmpf.” Rushdi snorted and went away.

When the next morning new rules of competition were announced, it caused a great commotion throughout the caravan. Five gold for killing the most attackers! The winner could retire straight up! Everyone was pumped up and many even started to clean and sharpen their weapons.

“How did you know he will announce your idea?” YunYun curiously asked.

“It’s a simple, but very effective way to improve performance of the guards. I didn’t expect him to be this cheap though, but may be five gold is already enough. We still don’t know the real prices of living on the Nestri continent.” Nick explained.

It was really that simple. The guards were from all over the Golden triangle and most of them didn’t care about random hillbillies from Beliz’s region. When the time came and they got closer to their own home cities, they will try find to way to warn their acquaintances and then kill everyone else. Five gold was a fortune!

To the big disappointment of the caravan guards, but to a big relief of merchants and their servants, there were almost no attacks during the next five days. Every time some heroes showed up and tried to rob the caravan in their usual fashion, they got furiously slaughtered followed by loud cheers from merchants.

When the caravan settled down for a three day fair in the closest city, merchants were unusually spirited. Of course, they knew or at least had their suspicions about the way previous robberies were organized, but it was a different world now. When Nick accompanied Rushdi according to their prior agreement, every single merchant recognized and greeted him. They knew the ‘Southern mercenary group’ initiated the new order by killing over hundred attackers by themselves.

Nick didn’t mind the high profile at all. Few days ago he instructed his companions from time to time to occasionally show their ‘ugly’ faces on ‘accident’ to others and now there was not a single person in caravan who was not aware of the ugly, but fearsome ‘Southern mercenaries’. To his big surprise, Nick even got few visits from the Qi masters who were residing in the front, but these were nothing more than social calls from curious seniors.

During the fair guard duty was mostly to maintain general order and dealing with petty thieves was obligation of the servants and merchants themselves. The guard shifts were generally relaxed, except for Nick and YunYun who had to escort Rushdi around the fair, to and from the city and even when he went to take a walk. The old man felt that this was a small payback, but the two youths didn’t mind. Mainly because they could investigate surroundings without anyone getting suspicious and, of course, because they were the ones who gave this promise.

The other five had to be on their toes as well. They all decided that there won’t be any shifts, but all will stay on guard duty the whole day and only in the evening girls will have a rest earlier. Clearly Clayton and Steven had the most stressful job, but luckily people who came to the fair didn’t cause trouble, with some minor exceptions that were not worth mentioning.

Besides the usual provisions, there were few things ‘Southern mercenaries’ stacked up during the fair. Nick consumed beast cores in batches every time he ‘cooked’ them tea and he had almost emptied one of the chests they bought in the river town Susha. The refinement of the medicinal liquid was not only hard and time consuming, Nick also used up a ton of beast cores since the process required increased Qi inflow similar to other high quality alchemy recipes. In addition he was boiling large pots and not a potion or two.

He tried to experiment and used multiple different compositions of beneficial materials every time while asking for feedback from Clayton and YunYun. The other two were not happy to work as his ‘lab rats’, but until now the effects were incredible and when Nick at some point casually named few ingredients he was using, his friends didn’t know should they praise or scold him.

Turns out he ‘boiled tea’ without holding back any rare herbs that could be sold for a house or even a large estate. But Nick’s thinking was simple – when exactly should he use these things if not now? Over the years, while practicing alchemy, he never used any of the rare ingredients he got from the grand elder, not to speak about the ones recently acquired from master Sten, king Black and even emperor Osman.

Of course, he was mostly using more common herbs, since he didn’t have as much rare ones as he wished. In addition, even the common herbs were not in unlimited amount, therefore during the time YunYun was escorting Rushdi, Nick ran around the town and purchased ingredients and cores in bulk. Since he was from the visiting caravan, it didn’t raise any suspicions and he hoped to be able to continue this way till they got to the west coast.

For the next twenty five days things proceeded in a similar fashion. When the wide road of the Golden triangle turned more towards south west, jungle at the sides suddenly disappeared and wide plains of savanna stretched down to horizon. The nights became a bit colder as well, but the temperature was still very pleasant. There were two days of heavy rain delaying their movement, but luckily at that time they were at some medium sized town and just prolonged their stay there till the rain ended. The road for the next day and a half was muddy and hard to walk on, but there were only few complains since most of the travelers had expected such weather often enough. Some merchants even laughed about it, because at this time of the year in some southern mountain paths they would have had glittering ice floor instead.

Caravan stopped in few towns, had shorter or longer fairs and then continued on its way. The bandit attacks happened from time to time, but the further they went in to savanna, the rarer they became. As a compensation for that more and more ferocious beasts started attacking trying to steal their horses and mules during the night, but the caravan leaders were experienced and as soon as the first stop was in a wild field, the caravan would rest in a circle formation for much more effective defense.

Guards made bonfires around the perimeter to scare beasts away and it worked quite well. In addition, bonfires made the rest feel more cozy and people gathered around those to chat and drink till late night.

From ‘Southern mercenaries’ group only Nick joined these events, but when his friends complained, he argued back that he would rather practice with them than sit with smelly drunkards. This idea instantly ‘won’ the support of the girls and from then on he was only allowed to join other mercenaries every other evening and no longer than for two hours. Although Nick felt that something was wrong with the whole situation, he wasn’t really against it and happily meditated side by side with YunYun.

The group hoped this simple routine would continue till they reached Ulum, but the leisure time was interrupted when Clayton was invited to Rushdi’s tent during a larger fair. Unfortunately this was not a happy occasion and it could be easily read from the faces of the gathered people.

Nick recognized the few older Qi masters and the guy who sat next to Rushdi – it was the leader of this whole enterprise – master Solomon. In contrast to Rushdi, he was a real Qi master, albeit not very strong. Still, he could hold his ground, but judging from his ugly look, the situation was not as simple as Nick hoped.

Nick and Clayton were asked to take seats and after a couple more notable guards arrived, vice caravan leader brought up the bad news.

“Since everyone finally is gathered, I want to share the intelligence report I just received.” Rushdi said.

He passed a small slip of paper around that had only few lines of text written on it. Then he continued.

“There is a large group of savanna bandits who are targeting this caravan and specifically master Solomon. Looks like we will be attacked two or may be three days after leaving this place – it means we will be exactly between two cities and there is a very small chance of anyone helping us, even if we try to hire someone from the city guard.”

“Do we have any clue about the power of the enemy forces and the tactics they use? Weapons, attack formations or at least the preferred time of attack – during the day or night?” One of the elder Qi masters named Zaki asked.

“Unfortunately, no. We only have this report and can try to make some speculations.” Rushdi replied.

At this point the small paper slip got to Nick’s hands.

‘Big attack after you leave the city. Personal revenge against Solomon.’

Two short sentences that didn’t explain anything.

“Desert?” Clayton whispered so only Nick could hear, but the latter shrugged. If only the attack timing and revenge factor were considered, then there were similarities between the upcoming attack and the one they experienced in the desert while following Mustafa’s caravan, but there was not enough information to even compare. The scale of this caravan was incomparable to the other one and currently they were thousands of kilometers away from the desert as well.

“Since we basically don’t know anything, we can only make general preparations.” Qi master Zaki said, “May be the report is fake and someone tried to cheat some money from you.”

“The governor was the one who passed me this.” Vice caravan leader Rushdi sternly said and the mood of participants of this meeting plummeted to the lowest possible.

People tried to exchange ideas, but couldn’t find any reasonable ways to solve this situation. Robber attacks on caravans were common, but a large scale with intent to destroy was something new. It was almost the same as attacking a small, well guarded city – the attackers always will have huge losses even if they conquer it.