With our arrival in the emerald village we can finally make our way back home, but before heading out onto the road again we spend the night in the village. Our stay is short because a village like this is only visited by high level nobles, this village is not only for the production of the acclaimed green wheat but also a small resort for nobles who spend hundreds of gold on a meal here. Our presence doesn't match the level of the place as a bunch of low-ranking and dirty adventurers shouldn't be seen by the nobles who are on vacation here.
Only Ingredi and Hilda could attend this type of place, but there is a funny fact that they do not attend this ressorti because as granddaughters of the matriarch of the Menfis family they would attend a higher level resort than this one. I'm surprised Vania actually took a bunch of refugees here, I know they might have vacancies on the staff who work here, but it's still weird that she thinks they'll be welcome here.
To my surprise they were welcome here, it was us who weren't welcome at the end of the day. From what I understand from what happened, the villagers were accepted because rescuing them means having a new group of manual workers who will be loyal to the Yates family as they saved their lives and are giving them a good and comfortable place to live and this makes them loyal and the younger ones will be trained and indoctrinated to work.
I somewhat understand the logic of doing this, but I still feel that the reason this happened was because of Vania maybe she must be from the core of the Yates family. And to reinforce my hypothesis Vania will no longer accompany us back but will stay here. Rafaela will lead the group on the way back do not have much confidence that it will work, not that Rafaela is incompetent but because as far as I could see on the functioning of their group she has only gets along with Vania, James and Jason the rest of the group doesn't like her and combined with their low morale and unstable combination maybe their group won't be in one piece when Vania returns.
But that's not my problem since they solve the problem between them and don't fuck up the four day trip with everyone with kills of level one our travel speed is much faster than before. During our brief stay at the ressorti's service aria we were able to enjoy their cuisine not that the dishes were very sophisticated, but they were made with quality ingredients.
I finally tasted a bread made from green wheat and to my surprise it is really good compared to the bread I used to eat in my past life it is normal, but compared to the hard dry bread I have been eating for the last few years it is a very surprise. Good. It appears that foods made with green wheat are much softer than regular wheat even though they are prepared using the same rustic methods.
I looked at the bread in my hand and saw that it contained not only mana but a very small portion of the life element must have some powerful source of the life element buried here to affect the earth which in turn affects the wheat. I wonder how no one thinks he is yet he must be buried too deep or does he have some property that makes it difficult to detect his presence.
The next time I go through the plantations I'll see if I can find him so I can steal him. But it would be nice to know where it is in the future I might end up taking it for myself it must be worth a lot the element life is not an easy element to find in large quantities in nature. Generally they attract powerful magical beasts that end up becoming guardians of the source of the life element this time attracted the Yates family.
After a night of sleep in a comfortable bed I help relieve the stress accumulated in the last few days sleeping on the floor and close to a handful of people who do not shower some days is not pleasant. The next morning we were asked to leave after eating quickly.
As we passed the green wheat fields I looked for the source of the life element, but I didn't have much success I saw a very small amount of the life element traveling at a very low speed through the earth, but as it came from the bottom up so how did I suspect before the source must be buried hundreds of meters below the surface as I could only see the very small fragments of the element of life within the range of my vision.
This makes it even harder to get to the life element source, but on second thought it's so deep in the ground I can wait for Ingredi to advance to the gray core and maybe get two more earth element mages and tunnel deep away from the ressorti and travel underground to find the source of the element of life.
It's going to be complicated, time-consuming and dangerous but with my eyesight it won't be hard to find her the problem and keep Torris from finding out I doubt he'll support stealing his own family. And I have to be very careful that I don't want my life to end up being buried when I try to retrieve the source of the element of life.
As we travel I work on the plan of my journey through the underground. Should I build a well reinforced tunnel it should take a few days to make a long safe path through the land I hope I don't even find a magical beast near the source of the life element the last thing I need is to fight a beast underground.
The first few days of the trip were calm, I could think of several security measures that I'll have to implement when I convince Ingredi to help me, but the smooth trip ended when I realized we were being watched, it didn't take even ten minutes for us to be ambushed by bandits. I tried to warn Rafaela, but she didn't listen and because of that I changed my rating of her from a maybe competent leader to an incompetent one.
The bandit group was formed by black and gray core warriors their number and slightly higher than ours a small difference of five people so I deduce that we have the advantage since only five of them have an elemental seed. There are three elements fire, a wind and an earth.
To my dismay Rafaela didn't even try to think of a strategy like retreating for higher ground or running towards the trees to take advantage of their cover. She shouted her attack command and we were forced to run towards the group of bandits surrounding us she was too confident to do so she aimed her charge directly at the center of the bandit formation.
I don't agree at all as she just decides to attack the packs directly, but I have to admit it worked very well they were taken by surprise by their open formation I believe they thought we'll try to run away or make a defensive formation against them, the leader of them was not ready for the offensive led by Rafaela.
Rafaela led the tip of the arrow attack formation against the line formed by the bandits she brandished her axes on both sides while running over the bandit leader who was overwhelmed by the sheer brute force of Rafaela's axes he tried to defend himself with his sword, but he ended up being decapitated by Rafaela's ax until the bandit who was on his side had his horse killed by the second axe.
First contact with the bandits ended with the death of several of them, the three spearmen easily impaling their targets. Raziel, Erick and Sten managed to injure their targets and knock them off their mounts. The rest got better results than them I cut my target in half my sword has too much attack power for a bad guy with low quality equipment to stop me even though he has a gray core his weapon and shield was cut to mine like he by mine sword.
Not a single member was hurt in Rafaela's crazy charge as the bandits caught off guard only eight of them were armed with a bow and not one of them managed to hurt our group the idiots aimed at min Rafaela and James who were forming the center of the arrow.
The digressed arrows for min and James were deflected with our wind element that we used to cover us and Rafaela simply protects him with her armband and ax the arrows that hit her only scratched her armband her aura was concentrated on her arms and equipment, the arrows didn't even have a chance to hurt us.
With their formation broken it wasn't difficult to kill the ones that were left Ingredi nor did she have to use her magic much she just fired some earth projects against the horses of the bandits who tried to flee. This fight was really quick, it was the fastest and easiest group fight I've ever participated in, if I had been leading I would have chosen a safer strategy that would have dragged the fight and gave more chance for the group to be injured. I admit I was wrong before Rafaela's strategy was the best choice, but I still think it's risky to attack enemies that way she didn't know their strength level if we had been unlucky we could have ended up dead if we had found stronger bandits.
As we collected the spoils of the battle I thought the danger and trouble had ended with the bandits' deaths, but I was very wrong he was just getting started.