By the time morning came, Gavin and Bellamort still hadn’t come to a conclusion of what they would be doing. I suspected as much, which is why I was already at work distributing tasks. I had all of the slimes already turn into a human form, and they all looked exactly the same. There were no variations between any of them, but I wasn’t too worried about that for now. We were going to continue moving in two groups and avoiding people for the most part, anyways. But I needed them to be humanoid in order for manual labor. There were plenty of rucksacks we were graced with from the slave trader and his band of thugs, so they would be carrying some supplies for us.

“We have four tents, but we only used two yesterday. I already compressed the other two as much as possible and put them with the amus,” Eliquis said, going over what supplies we currently had. “As for food, if we were to split it between the four of us, we have enough to last for another two days. Those are divided between the slimes. As for currency, we found a lot of coins, but I’m unsure of anything more than bronze coins, sorry.”

“It’s fine. Not everyone gets a chance to live in luxury. So there’s two types of bronze coins?”

“There’s two types of every coin. From the bottom, you have a bronze penny. One hundred of these would make a bronze coin. From there it's a silver penny, silver coin, and I’m not sure how the gold ones work but there apparently are four types of them.”

I glanced at Eliquis and then at the money that was laid out for me to see on the ground. It’s been just about ten days and she’s a hell of a lot more talkative than she used to be. And was that a smile I just saw? Guess I should be happy for her?

“Well, let’s divide these. I’ll keep a mixture of silver and copper on me, and you do the same. We’ll have the gold stay with one of the amus. Do we have anything worth selling?”

“We have four bounds of rope about three meters each. Not that it would go for much. The blankets are pretty old, and I doubt anyone would buy the boots or clothes we have. Oh, there’s a few spare swords and daggers though. They’re not in the best shape, but-”

“Don’t sell our weapons. We never know when we will need them,” I said as I created another mana blade out of CMP. There, hopefully twelve will be enough.

I let the mana blade vanish into my CMP jacket and checked one last time. Most of our supplies would be carried by my newly acquired amus, the ‘Devil’s Peak Amu’. They weren’t the airborne scouts I was hoping for, but they were plenty useful, seeing how just three of them carried sixty percent of our current supplies- basically each one was holding onto an individual camping set. I split the other set between myself, Eliquis, Bellamort and Gavin. Then had three of the slimes split up the rest of the supplies amongst themselves. I didn’t think about any of the monsters when it came to food or necessities since they could go hunting on their own during our downtime. And besides, we would be at the town soon enough.

“This guy… uh, I’ll call him K, will be with me, Eliquis, the dryad and you two. Oh, and that amu without gear will be with us. Everyone else will be moving as the rearguard until we reach our destination. It’s only a fifteen minute walk, but let’s make sure that no monsters actually made a home out of it, just yet.”

And with that we set off to the carriages I had abandoned yesterday. I was just going to leave them and continue on foot to the village, which was about a full day's walk away, but then I realized that carriages could be used for more than just traveling. If we sleep outside, I don’t have to sleep on the ground anymore.

We arrived at where I killed the thugs yesterday, and began our search of the immediate area. It looks like some monsters came through here last night, but just passed through. Good. Nothing in or around the carriages either. I motioned for Bellamort and Gavin to move into the carriage, while I hooked up the amu to it. Then I had Eliquis get in it as well. At first she protested, then I reminded her that her nightmare would be in the back of the other carriage, and she immediately clambered inside.

Once the rest of our monsters came up, we got to work loading up the supplies into the carts, starting with the spider to stop Eliquis from fainting. I quickly hitched the amus up to the carts, then had three slimes get into the back of the first carriage, that had the spider, and another to sit on the coachman’s seat. I got onto the coachman’s seat of the second carriage, while K got into the back with Eliquis and we took off down the road towards the village.

How did I get good at steering? I didn’t. I just had the amus take us where I wanted to go and enjoyed the ride. I chuckled to myself at the thought of automatic carriage rides. The trip wasn’t long at all. We had left our campsite at just after dawn, and it was just before noon when the village came into sight, so we pulled over on the side of the road and began talking about our plans.

“Do we know anything about this village?” I asked.

“I heard that they’re not good with demi humans. It’s why my parents moved into the forest,” Gavin replied.

“So leaving you two here is a no go?”

“Well, Bellamort should be fine but..”

“No, I’ll follow you guys. Much better than being surrounded by them.”

There was a silence as I thought of how to proceed from here, while watching closely at the hunters making their way into the forest. It seemed like they were trying to ascertain whether or not we were merchants.

“We’ll need to go into that village to get some supplies, but it doesn’t have to be right away. Somewhere past the village is another forest that’s supposedly more dangerous. We need to scout out an actual area before them. Villagers shouldn’t travel in that direction, but depending on how long we stay in that area…”

“So, find a way to make a temporary base?” I nodded at Eliquis’s question.

“If we’re looking for a permanent base, I doubt we’ll find an area in this country. There’s a lot of problems going on right now.”

“So we need to get information. From the town?”

Bellamorts point was sound when I thought about it. Mag and her troup of terrifying ‘people’ were definitely going to be causing a ruckus here and there. I didn’t want to run into them as an enemy. And I guess our only source of information would be the town, which meant that only myself and Bellamort could enter. Oh wait. I turned to look at K once more. Yeah, he definitely looks human enough and can pull off that whole guardian look.

“Ok, here’s the plan. We’re going to follow that road down there and pass the town. Then circle back around once we’re out of site. Tomorrow, myself, Bellamort and K will go into the town and procure some supplies.”

“What should we be doing?”

“We’ll be making the area more livable and staying out of that spider's way…” Eliquis answered Gavin with a whine.

With our plans laid out, we set off towards our destination in a roundabout way. I wanted to take every precaution necessary when dealing with the unknown. Once we got to our destination, it was almost dusk, so we set to work quickly on finding an area to set up camp, but the area was impossible.

It was just a rocky hell with hills here and there. Nothing to fully impair our site, but nothing to fully keep us out of site from people approaching either. We needed to figure something out quickly. I jumped out of the carriage and started looking around. Eventually everyone copied me, except the spider who seemed to have a different idea. She went to the closest hill to us, and began digging into it.

Woah, she’s making a cave? I was in shock and awe. However, this moment of glory for the spider was ruined by Eliquis who ran to hide behind me, bawling her eyes out. When are you going to stop crying over my adorable pet? It’s cute and it’s staying. Get used to it. It took the spider a mere thirty minutes to carve enough of a cave for the four of us to fit in, before it moved to another area and started digging around. Is it trying to reshape the area to make it easier to lay traps? No, by reshaping the area at the base of where our camp will be, she’s preparing for further expanding the area. She’s trying to make room for all of us in this area. Plus, it's lower and fully hidden by that hill, so by covering it with some of these boulders, we can make a makeshift underground trench to hide in. Holy shit, this spider is smart.

I had the amus and slimes help by moving some of the smaller boulders to look somewhat natural, but help keep the area more hidden, as the spider dug more areas for us to relax at. Eventually, she looked at her finished work and seemed happy with herself. She had lowered the ground at the base of the hill by a half a meter, carved a cave into the hill that was ten meters in diameter, with a small hole at the roof to allow smoke out of it when we have a fire. Although, the hole had to be above the entrance, since that’s the only way the spider could make it- it was still nice. The cave itself was a good three meters tall, so the carriages fit in there nicely. On top of that, the boulders around the cave folded inwards, so it was like you had to go through a tent in order to get into the cave, and since it looks like they were placed naturally, nobody would suspect a thing. But the biggest part that surprised me was about three meters from the entrance of the cave was a ditch she started burrowing in. I took a peek inside and it looked to be about half the size of our cave. I get that you’re trying to make yourself your own private home, but we won’t be here when you lay eggs. You don’t have to get that comfortable.

Just over an hour passed when she finished our cave, so the slimes and Eliquis got to taking out some of the camping supplies and passed them over to Bellamort and Gavin who set up their own area on one side of the cave. I decided I was taking over one of the carriages, and set up a few blankets as a makeshift mattress and pillow and got comfortable. Ah, this is heaven. The amus weren’t into the whole living inside of a cave thing, and opted to sleep just outside of it, hiding themselves under rocks they moved nearby. The slimes were...interesting. Only K stayed near me, while three of them left to patrol the area and one stood on guard just outside of the actual cave, but inside the little walkway we made via boulders. I didn’t tell them to do any of this, but apparently K had been paying attention as I was teaching Eliquis all I knew and somehow formed his own squad out of the other slimes. What the actual hell did I create? Monsters forming their own army on their own? What’s next? The amus forming a monarchy of some sort?

That reminded me to actually start paying attention to our numbers. We had five slimes, one spider four amus and Eliquis with the bran. A total of ten. I was already at a third of the maximum, so I had to start being picky about who and what else I brought into my makeshift army. Well, that’s what I was calling it, as it felt right. Should I give Bellamort and Gavin the bran as well? Eh, I guess I should see how things go tomorrow before I decide on something heavy like that.

I heard gunshots off in the distance as I pushed myself off the ground. What the hell just happened? I thought to myself. My ears were ringing, and my vision blurred. I quickly looked around and saw a severed arm in front of me. Quickly I patted myself down. Yup, all parts are still attached. Body armor is still on, three mags left. Oh where is she? I quickly looked around my surroundings and checked. I spotted eight corpses, and under some debris was my beautiful girl- my most beloved partner. My M4 carbine.

“Hey sexy. Looks like we got all of our targets,” I whispered to my rifle as I picked it up. I checked to make sure that it was still functioning properly, then ejected the magazine, putting it in my left cargo pocket, and popping in a fresh one.

I exited the mostly collapsed building I was in and checked my surroundings carefully, ducking behind debris here and there as I ran towards where our mission site was supposed to be. Gradually the shots that echoed into the now ghost town subsided, and the final explosion off into the distance echoed into the silence for a minute. Eventually, I met up with someone from my platoon.

“What are you doing doc?!” I asked.

It was obvious. Our medic was trying to keep a soldier alive. I knew the soldier all too well. We had spent a lot of time together during downtime, but now he looked like a complete mess. His left leg was missing just below his knee, his right foot was gone, his left arm was bent in a horrible direction and his throat was gashed open. The medic had put tourniquets in various places to stop the bleeding while focusing on stopping the bleeding from the soldiers throat.

“I’ll save him!” the medic said.

I yanked the medic up from the ground by the back of his IOTV and pulled him towards me, turning him around. His eyes looked wide in shock as he attempted to protest what I was doing, but I didn’t give him the time of day. I punched him in the face, then looked at the soldier. He was coughing up blood and struggling to breathe, but I could faintly see a smile on his face when he realized my intentions. I made it swift, firing a bullet into his skull.

“Why-?”

“Don’t make him suffer any more than he needs to! Now get your gear and let’s go,” I would be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t furious, but we didn’t really have time to go into thoughts.

If the medic was here by himself, that meant our platoon sergeant, and docs team leader was already dead. I quickly reached into the soldiers left shoulder pocket and pulled out his dog tags. I snapped the chain, shoving one into the mouth of the corpse, and putting the other in my pocket. Then I grabbed his weapons, ammunition and map and strapped them to the medics pack, then threw it at him. The medic looked at the corpse one last time, clearly feeling regrets. I knew the feeling all too well, but this is the reality of our lives. We’re nothing more than numbers that can be compensated with chump change.

“Keep that regret in the front of your mind and push on. He won’t be the last person you’re unable to save,” I gave my words of wisdom as we continued looking for other survivors of our platoon.

I awoke by almost jumping out of my makeshift bed, into the roof of the carriage I was sleeping in. I was sweating profusely and couldn’t calm my heart rate or breathing. What the hell was that? Why can’t I calm down after seeing that? I thought to myself. I had completely lost myself in my thoughts and didn’t realize Eliquis was in the same carriage as me and jumped when she touched my back.

“What the hell?”

“Are you… Will you be okay?” Eliquis was studying me carefully as she asked me.

Fuck. Gotta compose myself. Breathe. Confirm your surroundings. Why can’t I calm down?! What the hell is this?

In the end, I didn’t answer Eliquis. Instead, I just left the cave altogether and walked outside. The sun was just rising in the horizon, to the left of me. The cool breeze felt comforting on my sweat drenched body. Eventually, I managed to relax just enough to where the slimes felt it was okay to approach me. Well, K did anyways. He studied my face for a while before nodding and went back into the cave. Two of the other slimes that were outside with me kept their distance at two meters away, but kept looking over to make sure I was alright.

Damn, is it that bad? I need to find answers quickly, this shit is gonna be the death of me one day. I let my thoughts trail on as I trembled from an unknown source of fear and anger.

“What a shitty way to start a day,” I said to myself.