"To be protected by the Lord of Darkness and the Lady of Hellfire in person is a boon beyond any I could have hoped to receive." The merchant gushed.

Isaac waved him off. "We will be protecting your caravan, but that is not our main purpose. We are here to ambush the drow raiders, protecting you is an added bonus." Isaac explained as directly as he possibly could. They were still to be accompanied by a small group of six guardsmen, instead of the twelve to sixteen that the rest of the groups received, so there would still be someone to watch over the caravan while Isaac and Lenna were busy. Hopefully, only one threat would arise at a time so Isaac and Lenna could bring their full power to bear on each one. If not, the small group of guardsmen would have their work cut out for them.

"I-I see." The merchant looked like he had just been denied a date by the prettiest girl in the world. He knew that his original hopes had been a bit of a long shot, a pair of double platinum level adventurers did not just protect a caravan together without something else going on, but he had still been hopeful.

"We will still endeavor to keep the caravan as safe as possible at all times." Lenna assured the man which brought some of the life and excitement back into his face. "The supplies you are hauling are extremely important to Ben's End and Outpost Charles after all." She finished and his face fell a bit again. Isaac and Lenna had made it very clear that their missions, to kill the drow raiders and to get the supplies to Ben's End, were more important than the rest of the caravan. The duo would still try to keep everyone alive and the wagons intact, but not everyone needed to make it, nor did every wagon need to arrive, in order for the supplies to get there.

The merchant knew that what the duo had made clear to him made sense, it was just that the caravan and hired hands made up the majority of his life's savings, and he was one of the people that he hoped would survive the trip there and back. He knew that his life was not integral to the mission, so he would make sure that he was always the safest out of all of the non-combatants, but he would have liked it if Isaac and Lenna had been personally hired by him so that they would make his life a top priority.

"Well, if you ever need anything, don't hesitate to let me know. I may be a small merchant but sometimes we have the most lucrative of connections simply by happenstance." The merchant told Isaac and Lenna.

"If everyone survives this, then you are lucky and then I'll bother to remember your name." Isaac told the merchant. His words may have seemed demeaning but his tone was just matter-of-fact. At least the merchant seemed to understand that Isaac wasn't specifically being rude for no reason. There was some pragmatism and self-protection in not learning the names of those that had a greater than zero chance of not surviving their first trip together. It was hard to feel the pang of loss if you never knew the person in the first place.

If the trip was so risky, many might wonder why merchants were still willing to do it. One reason was that a decent amount of their goods were perishable and had been ordered by the inhabitants directly. This meant that if the goods didn't make it there, it was on the merchants to pay their clients back for the money that had been wasted. Another reason was that all of the prices that people were willing to pay in Ben's End, and especially Outpost Charles, had gone through the roof. The final reason was that it was one of the few routes in all of Altia where the merchant did not have to pay for the escort. The city, and thus the ducal family, and even the crown itself, if the duke ran out of money, would be the ones footing the bill. It was the singular route with the highest profit margin in the country and it even rivalled some of the multi-national delivery routes despite it taking a tenth of the time.

Edward yawned as he walked into the staging grounds. The last horse, a specifically temperamental sort, was still being hooked up but otherwise everyone was ready to go. "All set?" Edward asked and eyed the caravan.

"More or less." Isaac replied and nodded towards the temperamental horse.

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"Here." Edward said and handed Lenna an iron cube covered in enchantments.

"What's this?" Lenna questioned as she took it.

"It's Alexander's new tracking cube. If for some reason you need assistance, like to protect the caravan while you two handle larger problems, just give it some mana or slam a quartz crystal into it." Edward explained.

The act of slamming a quartz crystal into something would cause the mana inside the crystal to attempt to exit in that direction. It wasn't a lot of mana, not nearly enough to power any kind of spell effect, but if there was a sufficiently sensitive, to incoming mana, trigger, it would be enough to set off the device. Lenna nodded and moved to put it inside of her Bottomless Bag.

"Oh, don't do that. It'll mess with the location tracking or something. Alexander made that part specifically clear. No storing it in any unknown or magical way." Edward shut down the notion of easy storage. Luckily it was only the size of Lenna's gauntleted fist.

"That's not ideal but still definitely worth taking along." Isaac said with a nod. "If too many raiders show up, and they scatter, we'd have to either let them go or leave the caravan unprotected."

Edward nodded in agreement. "Alexander and I had the same thought. All of the other adventuring parties have been specifically forbidden from chasing the raiders but you two are a different story. Just, don't get in too deep, alright?"

"I'm angry, not suicidal." Isaac replied with a flat look. "Though, if Aria hadn't specifically warned me of the dangers, I would probably be gearing up to raze Contantis at the moment, and not waiting for an unruly horse."

"Boss, we might just need a different horse, this one is too smart for its own good and won't let anyone buckle 'im in." One of the wagon drivers said as he approached the lead merchant who had transitioned from the focus to awkward man on the sideline.

"Too smart?" Isaac wondered. "Does it understand verbal commands to a decent degree?"

The wagon driver tilted his hand side to side. "A bit, but getting 'im to follow them is somethin' else entirely." He replied.

Isaac nodded and vanished. He appeared directly in front of the unruly horse and it jumped backwards. Its rear slammed into the bar that was attached to the front of the wagon but it had enough understanding and self control that it didn't freak out when it hit the bar. It knew that it had just been startled and that Isaac wasn't trying to harm it.

Isaac sighed and stared directly into the eyes of the horse. "Listen, I need you to do your job, which is to pull that wagon." Isaac spoke to the horse. "If you don't," Isaac pulsed his death flames in his eyes for the barest of moments. "then I'll have to eat you."

The horse froze in terror, and the other wagon driver who had been trying to buckle the horse, quickly worked to securely fasten the horse to the wagon. As soon as it was done, the horse seemed to realize what had just happened and did not look too thrilled about it. "Thank you, m'lord." The second wagon driver said with a short and brief bow. "He was bein' ornery and there was nothin' we could do 'bout it."

Isaac nodded. "It's fine. Just get ready to leave. We are wasting time." He told the wagon driver and appeared next to Lenna, Edward, and the lead merchant.

"If anything strange happens, keep me informed." Edward instructed Isaac and Lenna. "We need every bit of information you can get. Duke Arbencroft is getting a file and plan of action together so he can request reinforcements from the Altian Guard. If we can get a few hundred soldiers from central to help out, we should be able to set up temporary safe zones along the route, so we'll need any insights you can glean from their actions and raiding patterns."

"Understood." Lenna replied.

"Will do." Isaac agreed.

The V'Nova Wexler duo and the lead merchant soon joined the rest of the caravan and headed out of Safeharbor towards Ben's End. The first two days were driving Isaac crazy almost the entire time. It was around the end of the second day, just after the wagons had all stopped for the night, when Shamesh finally made it to Safeharbor and Isaac could release his protective shadow-cloak.

Shamesh's first order of business was to check in with Margaret. Immediately after that, he found the Guild Master passed out at his desk, drooling on a pile of papers. Isaac had informed him to just let Edward rest and so Shamesh did. While waiting for the Guild Master to regain consciousness, Shamesh made himself useful cleaning the Guild Hall. That act, along with his casual conversations with Alice, led many of those who came and went around that time much less wary of him, even if they still had a long ingrained fear of creatures similar to him.

Back to Isaac and Lenna, it was around that time when Isaac first felt someone enter his detection range. He wasn't quite sure how far away they were yet, but it was clear that they were strong. As Isaac abruptly stopped engaging in the game of poker and his gaze drifted towards where the new dark mortals were coming from, he felt the presence of another join it, and then another, and another, and another. He shared a brief look with Lenna and then went back to playing their game. They weren't sure how the drow knew where they were but simply knowing was not going to be enough to save them. It just irritated Isaac that they would have to wait for the drow to begin their ambush for the trap to be sprung. He would have much preferred to just go hunting but they did still have a caravan to protect. Isaac just hoped that the drow wouldn't run as soon as they realized who he was. It was never any fun when they didn't at least try to kill him back.

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