The increase in traffic and resultant danger along the road caused the towns to send out their guards to patrol the main road that day. They were patrolling in groups of three, all heavily armed and armoured, but compared to what the average merchant caravan had with them, it wasn’t much security.
For one, most of the merchants had strong Commanders on guard, and for two, this was a nation full of monster species. Even the average farmer was Ascended Rank.
The threat of bandit groups wasn’t the only danger along the road. The merchants fought with the farmers, the farmers fought the merchants, the guards extorted the weak, and everyone was on edge from the moment that Thor pulled the wagon out of town after breakfast.
“Compared to yesterday, this is a mess.” Ophelia muttered as they moved to avoid a fight between farmers who were both hauling the same root vegetables.
“I wonder what changed? Are they afraid that the price is going to go down, and that they’re being ordered to bring crops to the city at a massive discount?” Karl pondered.
“That might be it. I think that some of it is just an excuse to air old grievances and take out their frustrations on people that they didn’t like to begin with. They’re not attacking everyone, it’s targeted.” Ophelia noted as she took a seat beside Karl on the front bench of the wagon.
Dana was watching the back with her Golems while the two clerics rested and played cards.
There wasn’t much else to do when you were in a wagon all day.
With the traffic and the rough roads, they were unlikely to cover more than a hundred kilometres a day. It was faster than walking, but not by as much as they had hoped.
However, heading off into the wilderness would blow their cover, so they just had to bear with it until they got to the open roads.
They could see the next village in sight when a group of locals in ill-fitting guard uniforms stepped out in front of them and motioned for Karl to pull off the road.
“There’s a road tax to pay. Twenty percent of cargo if you want to pass.” The leader of the group demanded.
Karl smiled back. “How about you turn over the contents of your money pouch there, and I let you live?”
The fake guards nervously gripped their weapons, and Karl nudged the reins.
“Thor, Earthquake please.”
The ground trembled, causing the farmer who was closest to their group to pull his wagon to a stop as the guards lost their balance and fell to the ground.
“Keep it moving, Thor. I don’t think that they’re dumb enough to try anything.”
The farmer laughed as Thor simply trampled the fake guards and kept walking.
“Well. That’s one way to deal with them. How did you know they weren’t real town guards?” The next wagon driver along the road asked.
“Mostly by the fact their uniforms didn’t fit. Even a village should be able to come up with clothes that fit. But mostly, I just wasn’t going to give them twenty percent of my cargo. This village is like thirty people, including the children. I can give them a discount, but it would take titan sized brass cojones to demand my freight.”
The merchant laughed, and his whiplike tail thumped the seat beside him in amusement.
“Have a safe trip north. There isn’t much behind me but more farmers. The number that they called to the city is insane. It’s good that you got out when you did. If I didn’t have a purchase contract for this load, I wouldn’t even consider going there this week, or perhaps for the rest of this year.”
Karl gave him a sloppy salute, fingers to forehead, not the fist to chest Golden Dragon Nation military salute.
The driver nodded and made a hand gesture meant to resemble the head of the Fox God, one of the Demon Gods of trickery and merchants.
They continued on past the village, after which the traffic began to slow. With a day of warning, most of those who were going to travel were already on the road, and those closer to Oakhamping wouldn’t have come south at all, as it was a major city and presumably also preparing for whatever was going on, including the dungeon opening.
If the issue was the dungeon, or more correctly, all the new arrivals that were coming to check it out, they would also be in danger.
Once there was no more traffic coming south, Thor picked up the pace a little. They would still not cover much more than a hundred kilometres in a day, but the wagon ride was too bumpy to be travelling much faster.
The only real advantage was that they didn’t have to be worried about being bogged down in the mud if it started to rain. Even if they were dragging the belly of the wagon like a sled, Thor would still be able to keep up the same walking pace.
Most of the farmers used oxen to pull the wagon, and while they were powerful beasts, they were a quarter of Thor’s size. The Cerro was nearly as large as the wagon he was pulling, and that was without combat buffs.
But the roads were dry, even if they were heavily rutted from the traffic last time it had rained.
The area around the road was slowly changing as they went north, Karl could feel it, even if it didn’t look any different.
There was a scent in the air, a feeling that wasn’t the same as it was further south.
It wasn’t something that could easily be placed, but as they continued to travel, Karl began to understand what was happening.
Monsters left a scent on their territory, a lingering something that marked the land as theirs.
Beasts could sense another beast’s territory by the scent of its patrol routes, but this was different, more of a lingering feeling of magic similar to what a Temple or Cathedral had, but primal and somewhat sinister.
The lizardmen became more scarce as the day wore on, replaced by an increase in the trolls and the presence of Minotaurs, which had been nearly nonexistent to the south.
That change helped Karl understand the change. It was not so much a physical thing, but a change in the population.
Even more than the territories of the beasts, the territories of the monsters had a feel to them, and Karl could tell that he wasn’t the only one that had noticed so far. Dana and the clerics hadn’t, but Thor had, and Ophelia might have, as she looked a bit more uneasy than the situation called for.
But as unwelcoming as the territory itself felt, the Minotaur locals that they passed were no more hostile than the trolls, and mostly just watched the merchant caravan to ensure that Karl’s team didn’t intend to attack them or swerve in front of their carts.
However, with the change in species, the power level of the region was growing as well, and it wasn’t uncommon to see Commanders among the common workers.
That could turn out to be a problem later because Commander Rank farmers meant they would most likely have Monarch Rank Guard Captains and enforcers in the next city.
