Karl looked over the wagon with satisfaction.
“What is the plan to get us there? Will you just open a portal at the edge of town? Or perhaps at the docks and pretend that we unloaded from one of the ships?” He asked.
“We were going to deliver you just outside of town. You can act as if you came down through the beast nation, or used the trade port at Hitchbird and then had your crew deliver you to the beach.
The docks at Hatbury are good for small fishing boats, but not for the sorts of large transport that could be moving a wagon. I would say that you could claim to have come from inland then south from Picheap, but there is no road south of Picheap and both are fishing villages, so a cross-country trek to gather fish makes no sense. You would have taken the goods back inland.
Picheap is a deepwater port, so you could have gotten the linen there, but the route still makes no sense, as Lutonade is right there.” The Dragon explained.
“So, we claim to have come ashore on the beach for the safety of the ladies, if we do have to answer questions, and then we get going?” Karl confirmed.
“Stop and grab dried fish in Hatbury. Having some of it visible at the top of your cargo will also make them less likely to attack as you pass Lutonade. They have plenty of fish of their own, even if the fish are cheaper in Hatbury.
Bandits are resourceful, so don’t try too hard to hide your team members. They will think that you have something valuable tucked away. I would have the ladies switch to their most tattered robes and get them dirty before leaving.
Nobody washes clothes during a journey, the dirt helps insulate against the cold night air.” The guard who brought the wagon insisted.
“That makes a lot of sense. We don’t want them to realize that it’s a pair of high priestesses. Two junior Priestesses with their guards, plus the wagon driver and the security Naga should be good enough.”
The guard nodded. “If you have more golems, have them run behind the wagon, to guard from the back. It’s standard practice.
Plus your curly one will likely be mistaken for a Spellsword anyhow. They dress like rogues, but they’re much more dangerous. It’s safer for bandits to assume that the rogues might be using magic.”
Karl smiled as he realized that it wasn’t just his team that had problems with the common tongue when it came to people as individuals.
“They wouldn’t be far from right. Dana did train with the Magic Knights so that she would have better close combat skills than the average mage.”
Of course, she also had received powerful blade skills as well. But the beasts had already seen a bit of that during training and there was no reason to tell them that it was a System gifted set of bonuses.
Orthos nodded in satisfaction. “That team composition works out perfectly. Two clerics, two pretend bodyguards, and the wagon team. That makes it much more believable than one cleric with an overpowered bodyguard team.
The church wouldn’t shell out the money to get a team that powerful, and they wouldn’t rely on a local trade wagon to be the guards for a travelling high cleric. More likely, they would open a portal close to the target and then deal with the response directly.
We’re trying to avoid that this time, so neither of our nations is linked to the Anomaly becoming stable.”
“Alright, then we have our plan and cover story. Two Dragon Clerics with a merchant team. That should be enough to not start any strange rumours. The massive Cerro pulling the wagon will draw some attention, but they do have Cerro herds in the region, so it’s not completely outlandish, other than the fact that you tamed one.” Orthos chuckled.
“Should we head out early for the extra distance. Or is it better to go there just after dawn and push through the day to get as far as possible?” Karl asked.
“I would go in the morning so that they don’t have time to send a runner to warn bandits and slavers that you’re coming. They might have magical communications, but you can’t prevent that. Staying overnight in hostile villages is dangerous.”
Staying in the wilderness was dangerous as well. But at least they had a chance that outsiders wouldn’t find their camp, and now they had multiple guards who could be up all night.
With the Golems and the Naga in place, the wagon should be safe enough for the evening, and Karl would have Rae remake the tarp cover for it so that they would have the luxury of arrow – resistant Royal Rank silk.
It might not make a fully armoured wagon, but it would make ambushes less deadly, which would give the team members inside more time to react.
There was one skill that Karl wished he had, and that was the ability to hide his active barriers.
He wasn’t certain that was possible, but if he could make it look like they had no active skills, they would be harder to detect from a distance. He wouldn’t risk a team member for a bit of extra stealth, though. If they couldn’t hide, it was better to seem like a target that shouldn’t be attacked.
From what he had managed to learn so far, the danger level here should be lower than it was during his trip to the past. If they had that many Monarch Rank monsters and that much territory, they could have taken over the continent.
So, it was more likely that they would come across Ascended and Commander Rank monsters in groups.
That should be something that they could handle.
Most monsters had limited magic, so there was little chance of them being ambushed with an area attack. But pure numbers could bring down even the mightiest.
“Bishop Misty, what are the chances that other groups will be sending teams toward the Anomaly based on visions from their Oracles?” Karl asked.
“Not until after it opens. That is why you must get there at just the right time. Anomalies are strange things, you can’t see them with predictive magic until they have already happened. So, as long as you arrive before anyone else discovers the exact location, or within the first few hours, you should be able to stabilize the anomaly without anyone seeing you do it.
If that fails, I suggest that you go in and stabilize it from the other side. You will be separated from the others, and while it will be a fight to get in, once you do, there will be no way to prove that you were responsible, even if they do suspect that you had something to do with it.
I suggest that you blame the strongest magic user in the area. That is my favourite way of passing the blame.”
The Temporal Dragon had a good point. Do what you could in secret, blame someone else for the rest. Karl could do that. In fact, the more people who showed up near the same time that he did, the easier it would be to deflect the blame when the Anomaly stabilized.
It was just a shame that they would all be fighting to be the first to get inside. The restrictions on portals into foreign nations clearly went on vacation when it came to dungeon type anomalies.
