My trip to the capital wasn't the fastest trip I've been on, as this is a considerably large caravan of several dozen students going to the capital with a large number of guards, but not a family and only two teachers who were Balder and Book This seems an unusual formation as only one strong fighter and mage in this caravan and a handful of gray core fighters and mages being both the caravan guards and the transported passengers obviously neither a thief or noble would attack this caravan for any reason. selfish, but the real threat the wards were here to protect us was an attack by cultists.
Obviously the really strong figures among cultists already have their own problems than attacking a handful of kids who aren't a threat to them, but that wouldn't stop us from getting attacked by a few dozen cultists who might make a profit by killing our group. I'm afraid we'll be attacked by a group led by a necromancer, the high-quality young bodies like ours are great for necromancers to create hordes of undead that would have slightly less power than a late-stage gray core fighter.
The younger the corpse is, the more likely it is to be able to evolve after being undead for a long period of time, so dozens of students are a great resource for them and I wouldn't be surprised if young corpses had even more advantages or functions. for them I don't know. My source of information is books written by adventurers and not necromancers.
I find myself in a reasonably large carriage, it would easily fit six people without the need to stand shoulder to shoulder, but now there are only four people so there's plenty of room to move around during the trip, as not many students the teachers decided to give enough comfort for the students as they believe this will be the last moments of comfort we will have and I think they are absolutely right.
Unfortunately for me I'm not in the same carriage as Hilda, I missed a great opportunity to spend time with her, but I'm not in a carriage with three strangers either. Ingredi is here to keep me company, but she's not the only familiar face, she's just the only friend here.
In front of me is Caliban and the life element elf mage, I made a mistake in the past a funny mistake, but during the test I thought she was a man, but now that I'm close to her I realized how wrong I was. But I won't admit that this is my fault, she doesn't wear feminine clothes but neutral, loose-fitting clothes, which is a little unusual for an elf or elf who tends to wear clothes that are the exact size of her body, so it's usually fine. It's easy to distinguish the sex of an elf, even when the body of an elf male and an elf woman are not so different in their visual characteristics, both are tall and with a very thin body, and effeminate faces, but this last characteristic is more mine in our opinion, you will never see an elf say that his face is feminine because for them his face is a reflection of the elves' idea of masculinity.
Needless to say, the mood in the carriage was quite silent and heavy as Ingredi and I faced our former opponents, I didn't fight Caliban directly, but from the scowl he's making he must know my identity pretty well or he has a clear aversion to Ingredi who is one of the main mages who were responsible for the big problems for the elves during the last test.
Finding myself in this uncomfortable situation, I would even suspect that this is a punitive joke that the master decided to play with me, but considering that I chose this carriage at random because I didn't want time to choose between the carriages or gather her friends before getting into one of the carriages. But for some reason I couldn't completely dismiss the idea that the mistress is involved with choosing my permanent traveling companions, as we can't change carriages during the journey, Ingredi and I will be stuck with our new companions for the next few days.
As there is no escape and being silent for the next few days is something very silly, so I will choose to be direct and solve whatever problems we have since the beginning of the trip, who knows when we arrive in the capital our relationship will be better. It's always nice to have more friends and I can't believe the event that happened during the audition is so serious that it formed a permanent hatred between the four of us.
"Hi, how was your last month? What do you think about the latest events that have taken place in the kingdom?"
Not only were Caliban and the elf surprised by my casual tone, even Ingredi was shocked at my boldness. I basically treated the two elves like old acquaintances, it took a while for the three of them to recover from the shock and Caliban was the one who answered me, the elf next to him seems pretty shy or does she just prefer to keep staring at me with eyes that seem to want to rip me apart. in very small pieces.
"We're fine, the defeat we suffered wasn't a shame for me, but it won't happen again in the future, Ulric. I will defeat you next time."
Interesting, he's actually targeting me, but why is he doing this? I didn't fight him during the last test.
"I'm glad you guys are okay, but I have to admit I didn't understand the second half, we didn't fight during the Caliban test. It's that fight involving a lot of people and I'm just one of them, I don't understand where this one comes from, 'I will beat you next time', we didn't fight during the test and if we had fought, I have full confidence that I would have lost to you Caliban, I don't believe I can defeat you alone."
I even put my finger quotes during my speech to emphasize my point, which ended up defusing every hostile rivalry Caliban directed at me, brutal truth and a great weapon for resolving disputes over petty things like that. In the end we can end up in the same group during training camp and it's always nice to have more ally than enemy in that kind of place.
"Didn't you lead your alliance?"
"Me? No! This is nonsense, how can I lead the alliance if I arrived at the last moment and at an opportune time during the conflict between the alliance led by Sindri and his group. You might think we ambushed you like a big elaborate plan, but it was pure luck, you don't hear a single contact between my team and the other teams, when I attacked your team, it was the first time I came into contact with other teams."
"He is lying!
Finally, the elf who doesn't really like me joined the conversation, but it seems like talking to her can be a little difficult.
"I am not lying. And why do you think I would be lying about that?"
Before Caliban could intervene, the elf healer almost rose from her seat to attack me.
"You were obviously fighting alongside the group of dwarves and humans to ambush Caliban's team! And after that you built that fort full of traps for the final fight and convinced the other students to break the rules just to lure us into the trap!"
It seems to a lot of student's gossip, and I'm an idiot for finding this a surprise. I'm friends with Erick who loves to gossip about everything, I should have hoped the elves would have figured out what I was involved with in the final battle strategy.
But before I could ask the elf's name, Caliban pulled her to his side rebuking her.
"Leaf, don't accuse people like that. We lost the test because we underestimated our opponent, it was our mistake. You shouldn't try to blame our opponents because they took advantage of our weaknesses."
Caliban is a nicer guy than I imagined, but considering that he's not negatively affected at all because of his aura weaponry, I should have expected him to have a very calm and virtuous penalty. It seems that he blames his own team a lot more than the alliance that defeated them during the test, this is a demonstration of how mature he is for his age, in the end we are all hot-blooded teenagers who will attack each other for any reason beast.
"Amazing, I was really suspicious, but I admit I'm very surprised at your temper. You really seem to have complete control over his temper, I don't think I'm even close to being as calm as you are."
"But Leaf isn't completely wrong, I actually aimed straight at your group when I found you guys fighting. I did this because I was warned before the test started that the elves would be interested in making the test difficult for me."
I could see that Ingredi and the elf named Leaf won't understand my compliment any different or the fact that I admitted that I attacked them strenuously when I first met them, but Caliban turned slightly paler and looked at me quite seriously, trying to see if my compliment was simple. weird compliment or was this my subtle way of pointing out the possible problem with your aura weaponry, it seems your mate doesn't know about the characteristics of Caliban's golden shield.
"You are very weird."
I cannot disagree with Leaf's statement.
"You seem to know a great deal about me, Ulric. How about you tell me more about you and your friends, I would feel more comfortable after knowing your secrets."
I guess I'm not the only one who believes that being direct is very helpful in this type of conversation, maybe this trip will be a lot more fun than I expected before.