Their slow but steady pace brought them to the Outer Walls by the end of the day. They did have to pass through numerous checkpoints, but with a flash of the stone tablet, they were on their way. Nobody bothered to look closer; they had better things to do.
They passed by where the first Stone Memorial should have been and reached the area where the Outer Wall Battleground site of Grace would be. He recognized the lay of the land, though it had increased to immense proportions. The only exit of the Outerwall they were before was heavily guarded, but they passed by it pretty easily. Exiting the city was easy compared to the Herculean task of entering it. Luckily, he had no intention of coming back here unless he could go toe to toe with Morgott.
Their cart clopped slowly out of the City of Leyndell and into the Scadu Altus, passing numerous encampments. The road sloped downwards before flattening out, making it quite easy to defend. Godrick stopped the cart on the pretense of a bathroom break the moment they exited the Outerwall before scurrying off to the bushes to the side.
'It was somewhere here,' he thought while disappearing behind a few bushes. Sure enough, after walking a few feet to the right, he spotted a drooping lily emitting a pale gold light.
[Observe]
[Miquella's Lily: A delicate water lily of unalloyed gold that has started to fade and wilt. A flower signifying faith in the Haligtree. Thought to be beloved by the Empyrean Miquella in his youth. Exceedingly rare to find.]
Carefully plucking it and tucking it into his talisman pouch, he returned to a miffed Earnan, who was annoyed at being asked to halt right outside the Outerwalls. He muttered a small apology before ordering Earnan to take a path sloping to the left.
"Sire, the easiest path to take is to go straight. It even has a clear road into the forest," Earnan questioned.
"That would mean venturing deep into the forest," Godrick replied, making his soldiers shudder. He couldn't blame them. The wormfaces freaked him out too, and that was through a screen.
"I understand," Earnan nodded and turned the horses around, slowly clopping downward.
***
To pass the time, Godrick pulled out the basic Soldier Spellbook and flipped to the pages past the [Golden Vow] incantations and their history. He'd wanted to complete it in the past week but decided to focus more on his physical stats as he wouldn't get that time while travelling.
'Meditation,' he frowned as he read the last few pages that detailed recovering from a lack of Focus. Of course, the best method was to sleep. No matter how much Focus you had, a good few hours of sleep would bring that back up to the maximum.
The second fastest method, disregarding potions, was to Meditate. It was ranked below sleeping as you needed a tiny amount of Focus to meditate while sleeping didn't. The method was mostly personal and had many offshoots. The Dragon Knights meditated on lightning, many on the Erdtree, and some even used physical movement as meditation. All of them had the same result of increasing focus.
Godrick, on the other hand, went with the Elden Ring as his preferred visualization once again. You could never go wrong with the Elden Ring.
He closed his eyes and emptied his mind, something that he was more than used to, while using the bare minimum to carve an image of the Elden Ring in his mind. Those golden circles were further enhanced when he used the Great Rune in his soul as a reference.
Sure enough, the moment he finished carving it, a tiny ding went off in his head.
[Gained Order Meditation (Active) Level 1:
Use a visualization of the Elden Ring to greatly increase your FP regeneration (+1 FP/s). Later levels can turn this skill passive. Every level increases Mind and Intelligence by 0.5. Mind +0.5. Intelligence +0.5.]
(Character Sheet:
Godrick the Golden (Level 1)
Age: Twenty-three and three months old
EXP: 1/100
HP: 100 {Healthy}
FP: 51->56
Strength: 8.5
Dexterity: 5.8
Endurance: 10.7
Vigor: 10
Mind: 5.1->5.6
Intelligence: 5.1->5.6
Faith: 14
)
With a sharp intake of breath, Godrick opened his eyes, finally understanding the representation of the Mind and Intelligence stat. In crude terms, Mind upgraded the hardware while Intelligence did the same with the software.
More Mind meant the greater your Focus while Intelligence allowed for greater processing power. Mind you, this did not make somebody smarter. An idiot with 20 Intelligence would still be stupid. But he'd be stupid much faster than before.
It was no wonder that the Golden Order Incantations and sorceries required a high Intelligence. The sheer amount of computational power needed would be mindboggling. Even now, with not even a point greater than average, he felt he could think a tad bit faster.
He sighed and closed his book before noticing that his soldiers were staring at him with wide eyes. It must have looked a tad bit odd. Their lord opened a basic soldier spellbook, turned to the very last page, gasping before shutting it.
"Did...did you just now master Meditation, my Lord?" a soldier asked.
"Yes?"
"Congratulations, my Lord. But I must ask, how long have you been practicing? Many of us don't know much about that skill, you see. We don't need that much Focus."
"Oh, this was my first time looking it up."
"..."
"What?"
"'Tis nothing, my Lord," the soldiers hurriedly shook their heads, looking at him like he'd grown antlers.
Godrick ignored them, putting away the spellbook and closing his eyes.
"Wake me when we stop for the night."
"Yes, my Lord."
***
"Town ahead!" Earnan's shout woke up Godrick, who opened his eyes to a staggeringly beautiful night sky. A giant moon shoulder to shoulder with the equally large Erdtree. A dichotomy of gold and silver.
He sat up and looked over the cart to find themselves in a particularly woody area, approaching a settlement in the distance. The darkness seemed suffused between the trees and his soldiers looked nervous.
"Go with caution," Godrick frowned. He did not remember a settlement on this path, only a ruin. "Every man carries a sleep pot."
Murmurs of "Yes, my Lord" among their group as they moved to the second cart. It wasn't too far removed from his expectations that a settlement may be here. After all, the game truly began a few decades or centuries from now. Time was odd in the game.
Their carts slowly moved up the dirt road, and the town became clearer. At first glance, it looked like any other village, with wooden huts and the occasional brick house. A large town hall stood in the distance. At second glance, the town looked to be deserted, with not a soul in sight. At a third glance, it was evident that there was something very, very wrong.
"Is that...a body?" a soldier pointed at a figure lying face down at the entrance, the atmosphere growing more eerie by the minute.
As they drew closer, the horror of what was before them truly came to light. Tens of men, women, and children lay strewn across the ground in pools of their own blood. Some were torn up by what seemed to be claws, some decapitated, and most cut up by what seemed to be a blade.
"Raiders?" Earnan asked, almost gagging at the smell, stopping the carts and looking back at the group that seemed to go dead silent.
"No. They haven't been stripped of their valuables," Godrick jumped down from the cart, grabbing his Greataxe and a sleep pot. "And raiders wouldn't kill the children. They'd take them in."
"All the more reason we should leave, my Lord," Earnan muttered as his soldiers dismounted and readied their weapons. "I don't have a good feeling about this. This doesn't seem to be the work of a human."
"No. We could leave, but whatever did this could just as easily come after us. Moreover, I wish to investigate. If I'm right, there's something valuable here," Godrick shook his head. This was the very reason why he'd crafted the sleep pots. He turned back to the cart and quickly changed his footsoldier uniform to his Godrick soldier armour that fit snugly owing to his recent increase in muscle - green and red, embroidered with gold and with a double-bladed axe as its crest.
He then turned to his small force of eighteen soldiers and one Commander, who'd also finished switching out their uniforms.
"We're going to investigate the town in groups of six. Take any valuables you can find; the dead cannot use them - we can," he spoke firmly, tucking in his long golden hair under his new helmet. "Throw sleep pots on anything that moves. Whether it's monsters or survivors."
"Even survivors?" the soldiers and Earnan looked to him in confusion.
Godrick nodded. "If I'm right, whatever did this can take the form of even the most helpless creatures, duping its victims."
The men looked at each other in slight trepidation before nodding back at him.
"If you do end up sleep potting a survivor, call for me. Got it?"
"Yes, my Lord!" Earnan saluted him and chanted Godrick's vow. "To Glory and Eternal Dominion!"
"To Glory and Eternal Dominion," he smiled and his Knight Commander went about organizing teams.
***
"Should we too search for valuables, my Lord?" Earnan questioned, taking the lead while stepping over the body of a child, so mutilated that it was unrecognizable.
"No, head for the town hall, and keep ready. Pot anything that moves," Godrick shook his head, wrapping his mouth with a piece of cloth that did next to nothing for the smell.
They slowly made their way through the bloodied town, with Godrick in the centre of a circle of soldiers and Earnan at the lead. The wooden homes were nearly ground to dust while the brick walls sported large blade cuts as well as giant claw marks.
"Pawprints," Earnan whispered, pointing at a patch of muddy ground.
Sure enough, a pawprint of an unusually large cat lay before their eyes. If its paw could cover the head of an average human, then how big would its body even be?
Just then, Godrick caught a blur of movement on his right side and a gasp of pain. He instantly swivelled around to help his fallen soldier, but Earnan was faster. With a single swing of his sword, he decapitated the emaciated dog that latched onto the soldier's neck.
Godrick knelt and cast [Heal] as fast as he could, sealing the wound; what would've been a fatal blow. Golden light washed over the man, stopping his flailing arms.
"Marika's Tits!" one of his soldiers swore while getting into formation around Godrick and the fallen man, but no further attacks came.
"All clear!" his Knight Commander announced after a few minutes while Godrick helped up the man who coughed up the blood accumulated in his throat.
"You're fine," Godrick patted the man's shoulder, not forgetting that a thin stream of gold exited the starved dog and entered Earnan. "It'll scar but you'll live."
"I owe you my life, my Lord," the soldier bowed with tears in his eyes from the pain.
"Didn't you already?" Godrick smiled and the rest of the soldiers chuckled.
"You've given him a chance to cook up some heroic tale with that scar, my Lord," a soldier laughed. "Madadh the Dog-bitten!"
"Shut up," Madadh grumbled while picking his spear and getting back into position, accompanied by chuckles from his colleagues.
"Alright, that's enou-"
"Milords! Thank Marika you're here!" a wizened old voice interrupted Earnan's warning.
Every soldier gripped their weapons tighter as a greying aristocrat stumbled out of the town hall, his clothes dirtied but his fading eyes ablaze with hope. Unfortunately, instead of help, he received numerous pots to the face.
"It was a horrible mon-ack!!!" three sleeping pots crashed into the poor man, covering him in purple paste from head to toe.
"You! Raggh!"
Just as the soldiers believed they'd made a mistake, a shout from the man transformed into a bestial growl as his flesh began to melt into a silvery puddle, reforming into a giant grey lion with a white mane and large blades grafted onto its arms.
'There you are,' Godrick internally smiled as the last three pots of his group flew toward the monstrosity.
***