When Akira’s eyes readjusted to the flash of bright blue light he was already outside of the dungeon.
The rare sound of chirping birds reached his ears before he could look around and see that he was now fully above ground outside of both the dungeon and the tunnels of the cavern system below. The morning sun was rising high in the sky, allowing him to see a decent-sized dirt road that they were standing on with a dark grassy plane on one side and a light cluster of stone trees on the other.
“Yap!” said Fluffball with a large yawn as he shrank back to his small form and the ice armor around him slowly melted back into his body. Fluffball ignored the many eyes of the Minos warriors all staring at him as he jumped up onto Akira’s shoulder to rest while letting out a long yawn.
“Where are we?” asked Akira as he looked around.
Spearia seemed to guess what he was asking and answered in gibberish causing his head to hurt more until Zundar translated for him.
“We are not in enemy territory, but we are still quite a ways away from the settlement.”
“How far?”
“About a day and a half if we walk. Could be two days.”
Akira knew that they were worn out from the fight in the dungeon and needed to rest if they continued to go on as they were then some accident might happen.
“Have some people scout the woods and see if there is anything inside, if not, then we can make camp inside and recover,” said Akira.
Zundar nodded and walked over to two of the young Minos and ordered them to scout the woods.
While they were doing that Akira was taking his time looking down both ends of the dirt road and something caught his eye.
A leather-bound book was lying in the middle of the road.
‘Odd.’ thought Akira as he walked over to it and squatted down to pick it up.
It did not look to be worn out by weather meaning it had not been there for a long time.
He flipped it open and saw something unexpected, the words written inside were in common not the ancient language.
He closed the book, walked over to Spearia, and asked as he pointed at the book and then to her, “Did any of you drop this book?”
Spearia looked at it but shook her head when she saw unfamiliar words written inside.
Akira shrugged and decided he could read a bit of it later to see who it belonged to.
Around that time the two scouts came back and motioned for everyone to follow them into the cluster of dead trees. The group followed them until they reached a small clearing at the center of the cluster of woods that was well hidden from the road and anyone traveling the road.
Akira watched as the young Minos warriors all gathered around Zundar like little ducklings. They viewed Zundar as a great hero warrior, but one with a fierce temper and so they listened to him go over the good and bad aspects of their fighting in the dungeon. They did not mind that Zundar would absentmindedly slip back and forth speaking both common and the ancient language in the same sentence.
“Although you are nowhere near elite warriors. You are not the green untested youths that entered the tunnels days ago. If you continue to work on the basic things that I have taught you, you will be able to keep those bad habits away and be a step above everyone else your age.”
The young Minos warriors nodded even though they understood only half of what he said.
Zundar placed his thick hand on his chin and walked up to one of the young warriors staring at the nervous warrior as he was deep in thought for a few seconds.
The problem that Zundar saw with most of the young warriors was that they all used normal small spears or short swords which did not allow them to use their bodies full strength to their advantage.
Zundar went over the fighting style he had seen this young warrior use and then made a decision.
“Two-handed swords would fit you more than that spear. You should try it out and see if you like it,” said Zundar.
Seeing that Zundar was giving advice, the other young warriors all hopped on one foot and shouted with hands raised to be picked next.
And so Zundar spent several minutes going from each young person looking at their body and thinking of their fighting style and habits before deciding on what suited them best.
Most of the young warriors were told to go with 2h swords, large warhammers, and large clubs. There were only a few who were told they were fit to use spears or archery.
“With such large weapons, it is even more important to watch what you are doing otherwise you will either end up seriously harming your allies or exhausting yourself without landing any meaningful hits. Then there is the fact that your bodies need to be trained until you have enough muscles to be able to use the weapons properly and show the Minos races’ true strength!”
The young Minos warriors let out a raucous roar of approval at the last part even though it meant they would have to go through even more hardships to achieve such a lofty goal.
Zundar had a short conversation on the side with Spearia while the young warriors all got together.
Several of the young Minos were writing down everything that they had remembered from the training in the dungeon and everything that Zundar was saying to them outside. They were all discussing and comparing their notes with each other.
To Akira’s untrained eyes, it seemed they were working on compiling a training manual from everything that they had learned. Such a thing would greatly help them and their allies if they decided to give such information out to them.
Zundar, now finished with his speech and advice-giving, walked over to Akira.
“What are they talking about?” asked Akira.
“Many of them have decided that this experience has opened their eyes to new things. They are now planning on how to bulk up and become more like me,” said Zundar. “Although I gave them advice on what type of weapons best suits them. Spearia told me with their situation they would have to use a large portion of their monthly income to get materials to make such weapons which would cause issues. Plus it is easier to buy and keep the cheap spears and short swords repaired.”
Akira thought for a moment and then looked into his bag only to nod his head to himself. There were many oldish used weapons he had gathered from the long drawn-out stalemate battles with the demigods.
“Bring them over here. Tell them I have a reward for their help in the dungeon,” said Akira.
Zundar raised an eyebrow but did as Akira asked and brought the skeptical Minos over to the wolf man who did not speak their language.
Akira paid their looks no attention and grabbed several of the weapons from his bag and handed them to Zundar.
“Give those to the warriors that are best suited to use them.”
“Well, that solves a major problem for them! Nice!” said Zundar, slapping Akira hard on the back.
Akira continued to pull out weapons and had Zundar give them to the best candidate. He felt a little ashamed at seeing the young Minos warriors with their big eyes full of joy at wielding their new weapons.
In reality, they were just old junk taking up space in his bag because no one wanted to buy them and the blacksmiths did not want to waste time extracting the common ores from them.
‘Well, at least I can clear a lot of space with this,’ thought Akira.
One of the young warriors was so happy at getting his new weapon that he wanted to hug Akira but was stopped by Zundar. Instead, the young warrior bowed to Akira and said something in gibberish.
Akira looked to Zundar who explained, “He said if you even get into a situation with anyone in the village or other nearby villages just tell your name is Mehart… although knowing his personality that might get you in even more trouble…”
When everyone received a new(old) weapon they all were happily swinging the weapons around wildly causing Zundar to rush over and thump several of them on the head and smack the youth into a formation where he gave them another lecture.
While Zundar was ranting, Akira pulled out the piece of map and the book he had found on the road. The map was incomplete and he had a hard time trying to figure out what it was depicting. He guessed that it would become clear if he was able to find more pieces and so he gave up trying to discover any clues and just put it back in his bag and began to read through several pages of the leather book.
Upon reading a short passage he had a feeling the content was rather familiar to him…
Ding
-
Bad gut feeling +1
…the farther he read the more he grew sure about what the contents were about him!
He had a stalker!
