After speaking with the sub-commander of the 4th Knight's Order, Harvey Tennet, he explained their situation to me and the reason why they had come all the way from the capital to End Town. A trip that took them three full weeks.
Their orders came directly from the king of the Sephyr Kingdom. Apparently, the rumors of our little village's development had reached the king a long time ago, after the battle with the Goblin King.
The king had asked a man called Lord Wester to confirm if these rumors were true, and he reported back to the king, saying that they were false and that End Village was nothing but a poor village. When I asked who Lord Wester was, Harvey looked surprised.
Lord Wester was the man who owned this land this entire time. Of course, he had never been here, so I had no idea what his name was.
In fact, I could count with one hand how many people in town knew the Lord's name. So, I told him that not a single noble had strolled through our town for the past two years.
For whatever reason, Lord Wester not only refused to visit the land that he was given, but he also lied to the king in his report.
Honestly, it's not like I cared. He was staying out of our way, and it made me feel like I had the freedom to just develop the town however I saw fit.
I also believed that Jackson was the best person to hold the position of mayor. Even if he didn't like it, everyone in town trusted him and depended on him.
"But… If what the Lord told you was that this was just a poor village, why did the king send you guys?" I asked Harvey.
He told me the reason was that one of my "Holy Panacea" had reached his hands and was used to cure the blindness of the queen.
'What!? So my "Holy Panacea" can actually cure something like blindness? This is a great discovery!'
After the battle with the wyvern, the rumors of our town just kept growing between adventurers in the kingdom, and it became harder for the king to ignore them.
Once my name had been plastered as the man who killed the wyvern and the same name being signed as the creator of the potion that healed the queen, the king decided to send his own personnel to give him a real report.
Their orders were to report the status of what they first thought was a poor village and bring them food and supplies from the capital.
But the most important part of the mission was to invite me to meet with the king. I did find it kind of strange that the knights arrived with a wagon full of food, but honestly, anything that we produced here in town was way better and fresher than what they brought.
I also thought it was complete nonsense that they would bring all of these supplies now, literally years after the town needed them, so we declined them.
After he explained their situation to me, Harvey asked me once again to accompany them to the capital. I didn't want to leave the town alone for that long, but to be fair, everything was running quite smoothly without me having to do much. So, I agreed.
Since it was clear that the Lord had been lying in his reports, they also asked for a representative of the town to come with us.
Of course, the best option was Jackson, but just like me, he didn't want to leave the town alone for a long time. However, after his assistant reassured him that she could handle it, he reluctantly agreed.
That evening, we invited all of the knights to the hot spring. The two girls that we had saved from the goblin horde were now working there, and they seemed to have a great time, so that was a nice sight for me before getting ready to leave town.
All of the knights really enjoyed the bath, along with the smoothies that were sold at the reception.
The smoothies had been a creation of mine a few weeks after the hot spring opened. I was feeling like my body was burning, and I wanted something sweet and cold to refresh myself.
So, I mixed fruit juice and milk and came up with these pseudo-smoothies that were actually pretty good.
I placed some refrigerators I made at the reception and filled them up with bottles of them. Now, the employees prepared the smoothies themselves.
I would have personally preferred an iced coffee, but as far as I knew, coffee didn't exist in this world.
That night, I packed in my "Void Pocket" a little special device that I had created a few months ago.
I called it "Delivery Tablet," and it was a smoothened, flat, and hard piece of rock, about the size of a plate. In it, I used a magic enchantment that I invented myself using teleportation magic.
Basically, it would allow me to send items from my home in End Town to anywhere that had one of these tablets. I thought that now that I was going to visit new places I hadn't been before, it could come in handy.
The next morning, Jackson and I met up with the knights at the gates of town. To my surprise, all of the villagers had gathered there to say their goodbyes to us, which made me tear up a little.
'The town and the villagers all look so radiant compared to when I first met them.' I thought as I turned around and moved our horses forward.
We all traveled on our own horses. Well, mine was borrowed, but the point was that we had no wagons or cargo.
Since I could use my "Void Pocket" to store almost an infinite amount of stuff, I offered to carry all of their cargo, like food rations and stuff, to make our trip lighter and hopefully a little faster.
On our way to the capital, we would have two stops. The first one was the town of Speranza.
I had never been there, but I knew about it since our town was engaging in trade with them. Mr. Olliver also told me that there was supposed to be a pharmacist selling my potions there. Apparently, he would buy a few cases of potions every month from him and sell them at his drugstore at Speranza, so I was curious to see how his business was doing.
The second stop was a town called Glorya, supposedly the biggest city after the capital. I hadn't heard much about the place since it was so far from our town, but I heard that my potions had also been sold there.
I also heard that the Lord of the city was the Queen's brother, which I wasn't sure if it was important to know or not.
After our first day of travel, we stopped at the side of the dirt road as the sun started to set.
"Ichiro, could we get our tents and bedding from your Void Pocket?" asked Harvey, the sub-commander.
"Yeah sure, but ummm… I don't think we are going to need the tents." I said.
Harvey looked confused, but I had a plan.
I placed my hands on the ground and cast earth magic to raise four walls, a roof, and a fireplace.
It wasn't anything fancy, but it was big enough for at least 20 beds to fit inside. The knights said they were going to take turns during the night to guard the camp, so I raised a slightly higher tower made of rock and a ladder to climb to the top.
Now the people guarding would be able to have a much better view of the surroundings.
As soon as I was finished, I turned around, and all of the knights looked completely stupefied, even the commander. The only one who seemed to just accept the situation was Jackson, probably because he was used to it at this point.
Right after that, another knight approached me and asked me to bring out the food rations so we could have dinner. But then again, I had another plan.
I opened my "Void Pocket" and brought out a huge pot that I made some time ago, along with cooking utensils. Their food rations looked almost inedible, to be honest, so I was going to cook a nice meal for all these people.
I built a quick fire pit and began preparing my hot pot. I used beef stock that I bought from the inn at End Town, redback boar for the meat, and a variety of vegetables.
Simmered them for minutes, as the smell was making the knights salivate, and began serving all of them their improvised healthy bowl full of boar hot pot.
They all seemed to enjoy it, like, a lot. The pot that I had made was huge, and they ate the entire thing. Of course, I was glad that they liked it that much to ask for more, but it did worry me a little.
'Are these guys not getting fed or what?' I thought.
But from what Harvey told me, they just weren't used to eating good food outside of a city. Whenever they went out on a mission, they relied on water and beef jerky.
'That just sounds like pain…I guess knights do have their own struggles…'