The guards were surprised but nodded internally at such a show of power.
They were soldiers, after all, they respected power.
The captain didn't seem to care too much as he was used to that kind of events being among soldiers all his life.
"Since everything is settled, the meeting is over. See you tomorrow at dawn, I will take care of renting the carriage but remember to take some provisions with you. Clearing that nest might take more time than we imagine."
The group got dismissed, and everyone went their way, yet Balor took a bit more to get up since his legs still had no strength.
'That fat idiot, I really hope he won't cause problems to me in this mission. At least, the other guards should trust my abilities a bit now.'
Noah was still irritated by Balor's previous act.
He didn't know if it was the mocking of his mother, his daringness even though he was weak, or simply his aspect.
'On the bright side, I'm finally going to fight rank 2 beasts, I was getting bored of only sparring with Master.'
He went back to his room and packed things for travel. He ordered the servant to make some portions and checked that everything was ready.
He only had one doubt.
'Should I take the Kesier rune with me? I can't train in it since I would be exhausted after every session, and I can't allow myself to be weak while in a mission.'
He was about to hide the sheet under the bed when he thought of something, and happily put the rune in his suit.
'If I train for only a couple of hours, it should be fine, right?'
If his Master were to listen to him saying something like that, he would probably beat him up.
Two hours were nothing for Noah as the second treatment made his mind even firmer.
.
.
.
The following day he was the first to arrive at the courtyard.
As the other members of the group got there, they would nod at Noah and wait for everyone to gather.
The only exception was Balor, who did not even try to hide his resentment and hate for Noah.
Noah didn't care enough to pay attention to him, and when the last man arrived, they moved together toward the main gate to pick their carriage.
When they were on the road, Mason, from inside the carriage, cleared his throat to get everyone's attention.
"To have better teamwork, we should introduce ourselves and our weapon of choice."
The guards of the outer ring were a group of soldiers that amounted to a bit more than one hundred people, so it was safe to say that they knew each other at least superficially.
'Is he doing this for me? He wants to get on William's good side?'
As Noah thought, Mason was trying to do him a favor because of his relationship with the vice-captain.
"I'm Mason, one of the eldest in the group of the outer ring, I use a big ax."
The other guards didn't seem to hate the idea and answered shortly.
"Luke, bow and knife."
"Robert, longsword, you can call me Rob."
"Eddy, longsword."
Balor only snorted, but two heavy hammers were placed to his side as a self-explanatory answer.
"Noah, sabers."
Silence fell inside the carriage, which was particularly awkward.
Robert took out some dice from his backpack smiling radiantly.
"I brought these with me, someone wants to play even and odd?"
It was a simple game where you had to bet on either odd or even, and the result of the rolling dice would decide the winner.
The soldiers quickly agreed to kill their boredom, with only Noah and the captain remaining on their seats.
A carriage was slower than a horse, so the other six days of travel passed like that, setting campfires every night and playing games during the day.
Noah would manage to sneak up some hours of training in the rune when everyone was asleep but never forced himself over the two hours limit since that would affect his condition too much, and he wanted to be ready for any incoming threat.
On the evening of their sixth day of travel, the shape of a village appeared to their sight.
There was smoke coming from it, and the light of torches was creating a red halo in the darkness.
"Something is wrong."
Mason said.
"Get out of the carriage, we run there and check the situation as soon as possible."
The group of six got out and ran at full speed toward the village.
Noah was the fastest, even though he didn't have the most powerful body of the group, he was smaller and had a lighter weapon, so he sped like a bolt leaving the other soldiers behind.
'Finally, a battle!'
He really got bored during those six days since he could not train or spar with anyone.
The village was getting closer in his eyes as screams and vague orders were becoming more clear to Noah's ears.
When he was about to enter the perimeter of the village, he unsheathed his sabers ready to fight.
Inside Lilun village, the scene was terrible.
Big spiders with dark gray bodies were freely killing the powerless commoners and carrying their corpses away.
The men of the village were trying to set up a line of defense to allow the women and children to escape, but they weren't more than a meat shield that could only stop the spiders' tide for some moments.
Blood flowed continuously on the ground as the villagers were stabbed to death by the sturdy legs of the beasts and then carried away on their back, the brown ground was transformed into dark mud by the battle.
An ironclad spider managed to pass the human wall and reached for a screaming woman holding a child in her embrace, trying to block the imminent blow with her body.
SHRIIIIII!
The sound of metal sliding against metal sounded as the woman mustered her courage to look at the scene behind her.
A little kid, no older than twelve, was staring at the spider corpse at his feet.
Half its head got severed by a deep cut and green blood was flowing from it.
The spider body was one and a half meters long, and its head made only thirty centimeters of it.
She was about to ask if it was him who saved her and her son but stopped seeing the frowning expression on his face.
'I didn't use that much "Breath", but the results were way less than I anticipated. A rank 2 body sure is amazing, if I didn't go through the second treatment, I'm afraid I could be able to kill only six or seven of them before having to rest.'
The ironclad spiders had an incredibly tough body, as their name suggested, their defenses were top tier in the range of rank 2 magical beasts.
The other soldiers caught up with Noah and were surprised to see that he got rid of one spider in that short amount of time.
An eleven-year-old kid able to take down a rank 2 beast was quite a rare sight!
****
Edited by: Alessandro Sica