Chapter 890

*Travel Log. Day One

The journey is more tedious then anything else. Navigating my way through the trees while Xiang looks smug and Yang, despite the previous friendly conversation, mocks me for my efforts. It is not a huge deal, but it doesn’t bode well for the start of the journey.

Travel Log. Day Two

Nothing interesting happened. Lily tried to teach me how to play mental chess but I just don’t get it. Perhaps once we’re better at communicating mentally Lily can fashion a mental chess set to play. I still do not care for chess, and even hearing Lily’s thoughts and moves during the process doesn’t help me beat her. She was able to disguise them somewhat by just swamping me with potential moves. It’s neat, and I play along even if the ones she wants to pick a pretty clear.

Travel Log. Day Three

Still trying the chess thing whenever Lily is awake mostly just to hear her talk. I’m not sure if she realises that’s all I’m after, but I think the chances are high because she’s been giving more explanations and making them rather long winded. I hope that last part of the comment didn’t come across as negative. I adore her explanations.

Travel Log. Day Five

.....

Chess is dead long live checkers. Apparently even Lily’s saintly patience for me could not last when teaching me to play mental chess. This is still difficult, but I can see myself enjoying it one day. Granted, that’s largely due to our own joined and obscenely long lifespans... but one day!

Travel Log. Day Seven

I saw some people I think were bandits today but they didn’t attack. A large part of me wanted to go bother them for being bandits but Xiang and Yang vetoed me... and I wasn’t entirely sure they were bandits anyway.

Travel Log. Day Fifteen

Haven’t seen any water recently and the others are feeling it. Perhaps I can figure something out with me demonic fire? I can definitely make ice with it... but I wouldn’t count on it being safe for Xiang and Yang. Lily would probably be fine though.

Travel Log. Day Twenty-Seven

We should have reached the city by now. Perhaps we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way? Xiang insists we did not and he is in charge presumably so we’re listening to him... but my doubts grow.

Travel Log. Day Fifty-Three

My worries were well founded. No sign of anything nearby and we have missed the city by a quite some time certainly. I still carry around the damned head and the fact it hasn’t decayed yet is a miracle.

Travel Log. Day Two Hundred and Seven

It has been so long. Will we ever get home? I’ve seen strange things on this journey. Plant that pretend to be grass and then swallow prey whole. A mushroom that makes things shrink when they eat part of it. A dancing mariachi band. How Mexican music got here is beyond me. Maybe another translation gimmick? Food was a bit scarce recently as well so we had to go on another hunting trip lead by myself and the awesome Lily!

Travel Log. Day-*

[Ok Kat, you’ve had your fun. I feel like things are getting a bit out of hand at this point. It’s only been a week.]

*Lily! You’re awake!* Lily was indeed awake, and telling the truth. It had only been a week since they’d left. While most the things Kat had said, at least at the start, were quite true, she’d started messing around from day five onwards. The mental construct thing was actually something they’d been practicing when Lily was awake while travelling. It wasn’t going all that well, but it was something to do when they weren’t chatting.

Kat was also quite wrong about the bandits, thinking she’d only seen one lot. There were quite a lot more bandits on these well used roads then they’d seen. Quite a few thought she was just a strange carriage for a wealthy merchant, only to realise upon closer inspection it was a woman carrying a giant snake head. That shut down many plans of looting right then and there.

See, here, banditry was an art. You needed to rob enough people to get worthwhile amounts of money even just to keep people fed. Bonuses was nice, but for weaker bandits’ food was what mattered. For the stronger ones, they needed more and more to fund their arms and armour as well as greasing the palms of nearby town bureaucracy to ensure nobody all that threatening actually got called in to look for them.

On the other side of things, no money was worth dying. The needed to try and determine who looked like a cultivator and who did not. The smarter ones that stuck around quickly realised the less people in a group the more likely they were to be cultivators. A group of three that was also carrying a GIANT SKULL might as well have had a neon sign pointing at the group that said ‘Powerful Cultivators Here’ so they stayed well out of sight. Not every cultivator would bother bandits like them... normally being a waste of time...

But some were desperate for their own coin, and killing bandits was a great way to justify taking the ill-gotten gains afterwards. Most bandits were not ignorant to this fact, nor the fact that some truly gullible fools really did go around hunting bandits ‘for the good of the people’. Now it was an ongoing argument amongst bandits as to if they really did it for the started reason, for the praise and adulation of random towns people, for the ladies, or men, they’d snag that way, or perhaps it was to take out their own sadistic urges on ‘acceptable’ targets. No true consensus had ever been reached.

On the more legal side, Kat and the gang had run past quite a few other travellers. It normally wasn’t too hard for Kat to get out of the way. The trees, if there even were any, didn’t tend to grow too close to the road and so stepping off of it for a bit was perfectly fine. Oh that was actually another thing, these roads were a lot sturdier then the first one she’d been on and could handle her weight plus that of the carriages. Perhaps it was the carriages that warranted the tougher stuff in the first place.

When they passed, it was pretty regular to get a few stares. It’s not every day you see a young woman carrying a snake head the size of a large shack. A few wondered how someone like Kat could kill such a thing. The rest would smack those few in the back of their heads and point out the small spiderweb cracks that appeared under Kat’s feet when she stepped on a weak bit of stone, revealing just how heaving something like that was, and then further explaining Kat was able to outrun many of their horses. That was how.

There was only one more thing of any note during their trip, it was on the fourth day late at night after they had set up for the night. Lily had taken to spending as much of the night awake as she could to practice her paper magic. The reason for this, was because she could always sleep during the day but practicing magic needed her not to be moving quite so much, and the extra concentration didn’t hurt to much either.

It was when Lily was about to sleep that something new finally happened. She’d tried to summon up paper so many times that it was practically burned into her mind. She didn’t even consider changing her summoning method, this one called to her in a way only two others did, and even then it wasn’t even close to as strongly. She was about to call it a night and she could already feel her eyes drooping...

But then her spell ‘failed’ and she felt a piece of paper slap her in the face. Lily was about to just throw it to the side, not even thinking much of it in her sleepy space when Kat sped into her and swung her around in a circle. “LILY YOU DID IT!”

“I did?” said Lily confused and rather unconvinced.

“YOU DID. Lily your spell worked!” said Kat cheerily.

Then it all clicked in Lily’s tired mind. “I... I did it. Wait... I did IT! Hahahahahahaha” As soon as Lily finished laughing Kat pulled her into a toe-curling kiss, mostly for Lily’s benefit but it had the desired effect. Lily’s emotions practically exploded with joy. The combination of Kat’s kiss and her success buoying her emotions to knew heights.

Then Kat got hit in the back of her head with a stick and they both paused and turned. “Look I get you’re bother happy, Lily did something cool or whatever... but it’s the middle of the NIGHT. Now SHUT UP” growled Yang before leaving them to their own devices.