At that age, I had seen monstrous abominations and had known trauma but I hadn't witnessed the sight of death, which was supposed to be the darkest thing a human could ever witness.
It wasn't as fearful though, nor as traumatizing. Perhaps because the wound inflicted on that man by that dangerous lady was just that clean, or perhaps I had expected 'death' to look much worse, but the only lesson that that incident gave me was an urge to increase my power.
I didn't want to take that man's place, helpless and pleading for life from someone that probably didn't consider them anything more than an annoying bug.
Once the wheels of our carriage started rolling, they didn't stop until the horses were both about to pass out from exhaustion. For the first two hours after leaving Tafilat city, I kept looking outside the netted window, my ears alert for the sound of any troops chasing us and my eyes warily absorbing the darkening sights around for any supposed ambush or patrolling troops.
Of course, I shouldn't have been that worried as Uncle Albert was already taking sufficient precautions but my anxious adventurous mind couldn't help but think of everything that could possibly go wrong. Regardless, when pitch-black darkness replaced the sights outside and the only sound I could hear was the sound of the carriage wheels treading through the uneven landscape, I put my fears to rest and leaned back comfortably on my side of the carriage.
Unlike the darkness outside, the inside of the carriage was lit by a moonstone mounted on its ceiling. It gave off a warm orange light that proved powerful enough to allow us to read comfortably. This feature originally wasn't present in the carriage. Instead, it was added by Uncle Albert when the carriage was hired by him. Anyway, despite the presence of the moonstone, I closed my eyes and thought back to the events I had gone through that day, including all the shocking secrets, all the new and muddling information, all the things I needed to keep in mind, and all kinds of people to look out for. All of it drained my half-awakened spirit and helped me drift off to sleep.
The next time I opened my eyes, we were already far away from Tafilat city, far from where any ordinary guard or mercenary could keep on trailing us.
The place where we had halted was a beautiful village. Due to working in the sun all day tending to their crops in the open field and fighting the blistering sun, the villagers there had darker and coarser skins.
As our carriage stopped there, a few of those eager villagers came nearby, offering us food and lodging. Perhaps because the village appeared on the route of people traveling to and from the capital, the people had a profession similar to that of the guides of Silvermore there, one that focused on providing rich tourists with good food and lodging.
Anyway, Uncle Albert seemed to know how to deal with them as he offered a fixed price and allowed them to negotiate with each other until one of them agreed on his terms.
Soon, I came to know that villages and people like that were quite common. Some of these villages shouldn't even be called villages but settlements of like-minded people seeking an opportunity to earn money.
The sense of awe and adventure that I had been associating with a long journey was also gradually worn off. All that was left was a need to take so much rest that rest itself began to tire me.
At first, I was intrigued by each new tree and each new flower that I saw on the side of the road. The miles upon miles of open green space, seemingly as if a perfect painting had come alive, covered by a clear blue sheet of sky sprinkled with bubbly clouds, slowly calmed and cleansed my heart.
But when that sense of novelty wore off, I recognized how most of the trees and flowers that I was gawking at probably grew around Silvermore too. It was just that I hadn't associated them with the image of the town and was, therefore, intrigued by each new sight.
Gradually, I followed Rowan in reading books and blankly staring at space, two of my favorite things to do.
After leaving Tafilat City, we only reached the next city after two weeks of journey, and that too only because we had been going much faster than most other travelers in a bid to outrun any investigative authority that might be after us.
When Uncle Albert had told me that the first death that I witnessed wasn't even that of a human being, I wondered if that was the reason why I wasn't feeling as disgusted as I should have been but I quickly cast that assumption aside.
Even if that 'individual' wasn't a human, his disguise wasn't something the likes of me could've seen through. Even Uncle Albert needed to touch him to find out.
It was also my first time meeting one of the werewolves, creatures whose plight could be considered only a little better than that of the humans before the discovery of totems and magical weapons.
They were a humanoid species with a half-awakened spirit and half-awakened essence, which meant that all of them were individually stronger than unawakened humans, but a little weaker than even the Initium Class Hunters due to the limits set on their bodies. However, this was true for them only in their human form. In their wolf form, they were much more domineering as the human limits didn't hold them back anymore.
Their ability to fake a disguise to mix in the settlement of humans made them a dangerous threat, but cities with the presence of Hunters could be rest assured that even if there was a pack of werewolves, they wouldn't reveal themselves and choose to remain in hiding.
That was all the information that I was able to prod out of Uncle Albert's mouth during the last two weeks of my journey.
Even Rowan had been more active during that time, occasionally asking to cook the food for the group when we stopped to take rests and set camps on the outskirts.
Those instances were rare though since the number of settlements of people providing lodging on our route was truly staggering.
It was still heartwarming to see my brother opening up, even though it was only in my and his teacher, Uncle Albert's presence.
Unlike the villages and settlements where we received lodging, which was nothing more than a couple of beds in a tent, the city in front of us was as big as Silvermore.
But my hometown was special due to it being quite isolated. The number of adventurers, tourists, merchants, refugees, and travelers queuing up to enter the city in front of us was at least ten times more than in my hometown.
However, before I could even enjoy the sight of the city and think of the yummy food I could get in the city, Uncle Albert informed us that we wouldn't be taking a rest there since it was still afternoon.
I pouted silently, but other than Rowan, who turned his face away at that, no one saw that.
And so, our journey continued, as anticlimactic and boring as possible, disillusioning me.
Though one good thing about that was the stories. Unlike Uncle Albert and Rowan, the father and son duo of the coachman and footman were quite adorable and talkative.
They told me a lot of stories about people from Tafilat city and of the things that they encountered on their journeys, like the folk legends, myths, and interesting clients that they had.
This also made me aware of quite a few myths about werewolves, vampires, and elves around these parts. Unsurprisingly, vampires were the root and personification of pure evil in each of them.
Elves were the mysterious group that appeared to save the epic heroes whenever they needed allies, while the legends regarding werewolves were mixed.
In some of those legends, they were painted as bloodthirsty animals that wouldn't stop at anything during the nights of the full moon when their half-awakened essence would temporarily awaken, while in some of them, they were miserable and broken allies of humans during the dark times.
Those myths and stories were interesting to hear, but I couldn't use them to base my beliefs on another humanoid species. The last thing I wanted to be was a 'specist' due to my ignorance, a bigger and better type of racism.
Specism was very common across all sentient humanoid species. It was when individuals of any humanoid species other than their own were treated and thought of like animals.
In fact, the Tribuston Carnival that we were supposed to attend had an event where caught and enslaved werewolves indeed performed like animals for a paying crowd.
While I listened to those stories that helped me retain my hope that adventure could indeed be exciting, Uncle Albert took that time to teach my elder brother. Their attentive expressions told me that both of them were interested in and satisfied with each other.
I didn't know how potioneering worked, nor did I want to know. If my brother could become a great and famed potioneer in the capital though, I wouldn't hesitate to ask for his help whenever I needed that.
Anyway, three more weeks passed when we reached the next big city on our journey. It was a city that I knew of and a city where we were supposed to take an extended period of rest, the Tensempore City.