It wasn't long before the caravan was fully prepped and Brant made the order for them to leave the city. Not wanting to miss the mogrants in action, the three of them walked alongside the caravan to start, watching the large beasts start lumbering forward, dragging the trains of wagons behind them as if they weren't even there. Brant was right that they weren't all that fast, but Asher couldn't believe the sheer amount of strength they had to have to be able to move so much weight so effortlessly.

If he does have a Mogrant element, I bet he's strong as hell…

Fighting back the urge to ask the caravan leader to spar with him at some point, Asher looked around at their fellow travelers. It seemed most had chosen to start the journey outside of their wagons as well, and there had to be a good thirty or forty people making the trek with them. According to Identify, most were rather standard civilians with only their origin element to their name, but he picked out one or two here and there who had a second element and looked like they knew how to handle themselves in a fight.

Brian immediately spotted another kid his age, a girl with a crossbow sitting on her hip who was walking with presumably her parents, and he frowned. "A crossbow? Why would anyone want to learn how to fight with a crossbow compared to a real bow?"

"Why don't you go ask her," Samantha offered, gently nudging him in her direction. "Maybe you can save her from the error of her ways."

"Good idea!" He nodded, quickly making his way over to her and introducing himself. Asher couldn't hear just what he was saying, but based on the giant frown on the girl's face, she probably wasn't happy with Brian introducing himself by trying to convert her from her weapon of choice.

"I have to say, it's still a bit strange for me to see kids running around with weapons at the hip," he admitted, checking out the rest of the travelers. "Hell, there's a boy who can't be more than seven or eight a few wagons back who has a dagger attached to his belt! He could cut his fingers off with that thing!"

"Or use it to save himself from a surprise monster attack," Samantha said, bumping her hip into him as they walked. "Don't forget, our world is a little more dangerous than yours."

"I know, it's just weird to see," he grumbled. "Uh oh, I think Brian might have just made himself a new rival." He pointed at the two kids as they began heatedly arguing, each one repeatedly gesturing at their weapon as they did so. For their part, the girl's parents merely smiled at the angry display, patting their daughter on the head before heading back into their wagon.

"I'm just glad Brian has another kid his age to distract him a bit," Samantha said, letting out a weary sigh. "I already had a bit of a talk with him when it was just the two of us last night, but he's taking the loss of Logan pretty hard. Obviously, we don't know for sure what happened, but I can't imagine he and his family made it out in one piece…"

They walked in silence for a bit after that, listening to the steady but quiet footsteps of the large mogrants as they traveled down the road. Most wagons they passed knew to pull to the side and let the caravan move on through first, and the few that didn't seem to have gotten the memo were nearly crushed as the mogrants didn't slow down in the slightest.

That was not a game of chicken any horse was going to win.

"Once I finish healing up and get a new weapon to replace my lost mithral dagger, I might very well try bringing the fight to The Council," he admitted, imagining the bored look on the greater demon's face as it toyed with him. "It won't be easy, but they can't just get away with sacking all those villages like that!"

"The High Prince will send a team of elite slayers to handle the demons," Samantha argued, taking his hand and squeezing it as if she were afraid he'd run off to his death if she let go. "We should leave something like this to the professionals."

"They might take care of the greater demon, but I doubt they'll go after The Council," Asher growled, remembering the wording from the High Prince's letter. He'd specifically mentioned avoiding the direct notice of the 'roaming powers that be.' "I think the High Prince is too scared about The Council of Death to directly move against them."

"For good reason I'd say," Samantha muttered, frowning at him. "Asher, I know you're angry. Trust me, I am too. But we're just two people. Even with your fighting skills and my enchanted bow, I don't think we're ready to take on a group of millennia old liches that even the leader of our kingdom is afraid to tick off."

"Then we'll just have to grow stronger," he said, glancing down at his wounded left arm that still had at least another two or three days of regenerating before it was back to normal. "One way or another, I'm taking those liches down."

The days spent on the road ended up going by in the blink of an eye. Traveling via a continuously moving caravan was far more relaxing than Asher's usual start-stop method of sprinting down the road with Distortion only to pause every few minutes to recover his energy. At night, they let the shifting wagons lull them to sleep, eventually passing out just from sheer exhaustion despite the less-than-comfortable cots they'd been provided.

One of the wagons was actually designed to function like a food truck, and the chef manning it handed out meals three times a day. They were either welcome to walk as they ate, or temporarily bring the plates and utensils back to their wagons before returning them. They could even ask for seconds, provided they didn't mind ponying up a few extra shards, and Asher spotted one heavier set passenger request thirds at one point, much to the annoyance of the chef in the middle of packing up breakfast.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

By the end of the second day on the road, Asher's arms were finally back to normal, and he'd officially recovered from his back-to-back near-death experiences.

Which meant he could finally get back to training.

He spent most of the third day simply making sure there was nothing weird about his newly regenerated limbs, going through simple exercises and working to ensure his new fingers were just as nimble as his old ones. He even gave crocheting a shot at Samantha's suggestion, only to discover that wielding those tiny needles was far trickier than he'd given her credit for.

By the end of their third day, he laid in his cot, listening to the soothing sounds of Samantha and Brian sleeping nearby as he pulled up his interface.

Name: Asher Holden

Class: Assassin

Unique classes available: Demon Slayer, Awakened Beast Hunter, Assassin, Librarian

Element: Spatial

Ability: Astral Dip - Lvl 25

Ability: Distortion - Lvl 25

Ability: Personal Rift - Lvl 21

Ability: Spatial Lock - Lvl 15

Ability: Recall - Lvl 11

Element: Knowledge

Ability: Identify - Lvl 24

Ability: Comprehend - Lvl 24

Ability: Incorporate - Lvl 18

Ability: Secret Seeker - Lvl 21

Ability: Judgement - Lvl 9

Element: Eternity

Ability: Eternal Regeneration - Lvl 29

Ability: Complete Resilience - Lvl 24

Ability: Eternal Mark - Lvl 19

Ability: Permanence - Lvl 12

Ability: Sever the Thread - lvl 6

Resistance: Darkness - Tier 2, Truth - Tier 2

Shards: 319,087

Even after giving Samantha the remaining shards she needed for her fourth skill, Asher still had more than enough needed to evolve Eternal Mark and Incorporate when they finally tipped over into level 20. He had no idea how much a mithral dagger would end up costing him, but he was confident he'd be able to find a way to make more shards quickly if the need arose. It seemed like there were always monsters to hunt, or criminals to take care of. While Dormaul was a different city, he couldn't imagine it was that much different from Whikoga.

If they had their own version of Loratta, Asher would take care of that for them, free of charge.

As he laid there, unable to fall asleep, Asher contemplated finally picking up his next set of resistances. Buying a third one and evolving it would cost him a total of 110,000 shards, which meant it would almost certainly be the last one he'd grab for some time. He'd been hesitant about filling out that slot, what with the sheer number of different elements that existed in the world he might end up fighting, but there was one resistance he just kept coming back to.

During his brief visit to the library to Incorporate texts on Dormaul and traveling between cities, Asher had looked into one other topic as well.

Scrying. And more importantly, how to protect oneself from it.

From Eight pinpointing his location at Samantha's cabin, to The Council of Death finally getting around to trying to reclaim their missing element, scrying was one bit of magic he'd finally come to realize he desperately needed to protect himself from. While there wasn't any one perfect solution, his research had provided him with a few different potential avenues one could explore if they were worried about being scried from afar.

In the end, so long as one didn't have a skill that made them immune to scrying, there were really only three viable options. Obtain an artifact enchanted with a skill that did work against scrying, commission a structure built from materials that would interfere with scrying, or pick up a resistance to scrying. The tricky thing that the book mentioned was that, as with all skills, the defenses needed to keep oneself safe from a scrying skill were dependent entirely upon how powerful the scrying skill was in question. For example, whereas a weak tier 1 scrying skill might only require a resistance to counter, a stronger tier 2 skill might require an evolved resistance and an artifact.

In theory, Asher's Complete Resilience should have protected him against scrying to some degree. And his tier 2 Concealing Shroud that he was still utilizing with the power of Permanence should have assisted him as well. The fact that those two methods combined didn't seem to stop the Guild from finding him or The Council from sending their greater demon to where he'd been living proved that even combined, they weren't enough.

With so many powerful players having taken an interest in him, Asher needed to triple down on his defenses if he wanted to remain out of sight.

Bemoaning all the cool resistances he was giving up just for the sake of keeping his location a secret, Asher made his selection.

Spend 10,000 shards to unlock scrying resistance?

Shards: 309,087

Resistance: Scrying - Gain an innate resistance to scrying.

Spend 100,000 shards to evolve scrying resistance?

Shards: 209,087

Making his purchase and immediately evolving it, Asher grinned at the bonus effect that came with it. It was just as the book from the library had promised.

Resistance: Scrying - Tier 2 - Gain superior innate resistance to scrying. Know when someone is remotely viewing your location or attempting to do so.

Just what I needed. Now, even if the Head or The Council of Death have some insane method of bypassing all three of my defenses, at least I'll know when I'm being watched.

As if the universe wanted to confirm he'd made the right choice, barely a split second after he evolved his resistance, he gasped as he felt some invisible pane of energy drifting overhead shatter and dissipate. Immediately, it tried to reform, but it was as though there was a turbulent wind blowing the pieces around, preventing them from coming together again. After another few seconds of this, the effect finally faded.

During this whole time, Asher had stared up at the ceiling of their wagon with wide eyes, his breath held as he prayed for the skill to vanish. Once it was gone, he let his breath out in a rush, his heart racing. The knowledge that someone had been watching his every move without him even knowing up until that point was horrifying. He couldn't fight an opponent he didn't even know existed, or one located potentially hundreds of miles away!

Even now, someone was watching me… I don't know who it was behind the skill or how long they've been watching me for, but one thing's for certain.

Best 110,000 shards I've ever spent!

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