Chapter 1581: Finally Done~
The Golds were instructed to wait near Mount Rushless a while back. They actually escorted Rin and the others there, to assist as well as to deliver some of the goods to the mission takers.
However, it was a fact that City forces could not be underestimated so they couldn’t stay so close either lest they get hunted down.
Instead, they found a nice camping site near the mountains—Obi knew a lot of places like this due to his former job in the City—and stayed there for the following day while they waited for the signal.
In that time, though, they took turns hunting around. They had understandably been stagnant, after all, considering their levels and the fact that they only dealt with town-level monsters for a while.
Further, this was also their way to help them out. After all, their job here was to handle strong monsters that the beast repellent couldn’t push away. What was wrong with doing things in advance?
And they were still hunting even on the scheduled day of rescue, in fact.
Anyway, because the targets were moving, they naturally weren’t able to track them in real time. They could only determine the paths where they would meet and get an approximate time.
Calculating, there should still be plenty of Beast Repelling Potions left by the time the car reached where they were. They dealt with a record number of monsters above level 30 during the past few days, and Gregor was with them, so they didn’t worry too much.
At the time, they thought, there were only so many high-level monsters in a zone. They should not be encountering trouble they couldn’t handle...right?
Then the scheduled time arrived (they all had clocks synced with the large clock in Alterra to facilitate their time), and the Golds went out to meet them halfway.
However, Oslo was an idiot. He was the fastest among them without sprinting (something about being bullied by Obi a lot as a kid), so he ended up going ahead of them. Since he was so confident, the rest of them followed.
They ended up diverging from the actual pathways!
One had to know that paths between territories tended to be worn out through time, creating an actual line of dirt where little vegetation grew. In time, this created pathways that grew increasingly wide.
It wasn’t a formal road—not like what Alterra had—particularly as they went farther from the City, but they were there, and people tended to follow those paths when they were encountered. They had to move out and move parallel whenever they sensed other people in the road, however.
Although they were wearing robes and changed hair colours, their faces were well known here, so it could get troublesome if they encountered pursuers on the way.
It was just that Bleulle was a popular city to visit, so there were a lot of diverging and intersecting paths, and Oslo idiotically took the wrong one.
They only had an idea of the direction the carriages were heading since it was established they wouldn’t be taking a straight route to confuse enemies. Sadly, it could get confusing for them, too.
"What if we missed them? You idiot!" Obi yelled, smacking the back of Otto’s head.
"Huh?! Did you know the right way, then? Didn’t you follow after me?!" he yelled back, summoning a random rock in Obi’s path, causing him to nearly trip on his face.
"You—"
"You—"
"Calm down, we’ll just follow the paths, but we should go beyond the mountain," Olga said, calming the brothers down.
Fortunately, their targets activated a flare a couple hundred meters away from where they were, so they knew where to go before it was too late.
And so was the current scene.
That said, they did not expect so many strong monsters in this zone after they cleared, so for a while it’d be a mystery.
Combined with several deaths of relative powerhouses during the mobs, quite a few monsters were attracted. They were weaker monsters, of course, but in time, they also lured in a few more powerful ones lurking around in different zones around the city.
So, technically speaking, this situation was partly of their own doing.
Anyway, the Golds killed the high-level monsters together after about a quarter of an hour.
They did sustain a few wounds and used up a few mana potions, but overall, there were no serious injuries. Fortunately, they had a lot because they couldn’t afford to hold back in the current situation.
At some point, Gregor had also caught up with them, and everyone heaved a breath of relief to see no one had been seriously hurt despite the bad luck.
While there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the vicinity and the flare was designed to be a short-lived one, they wouldn’t risk staying here for too long.
"Let’s go," Orion said, not allowing a reunion to happen. There was a different time and place for that.
They ran in another direction—they even had to drag/carry Menzon— to where another cart was waiting.
It was not too big, though, and there were so many of them, so they’d have to squeeze in, but it would have to do. The guards like the Obi trio, Rin, and the rest squeezed in the front and back benches, while Gregor sat leisurely at the top of its roof.
Everyone’s hearts were beating loudly, and no one allowed themselves to relax and slow down, even after the carriage lunged forward.
No one spoke for some time after that, with everyone just absorbing what had happened, while the guards were watching the surroundings in case there were more powerful beasts around. All they could hear and feel was the carriage moving and the rustling of the forest it passed through.
Eventually, when they felt that they had finally left the scope of the City, their shoulders slumped, as if they started breathing again.
The people inside looked at each other, looked over each other’s states, and then let out relieved sighs, smiles, and a few chuckles.
Finally done.