princess Zena of Zendor

Waking up with a start is not fun, even when looking around the room reveals nothing. At this point I might as well get out of bed since my heart is racing. The dark room is only lit by the faint light of the morning sky which I can see through the window.

I stretch my slightly nervous body before getting out of bed. The mirror reveals that my gently glowing wings flap nervously behind me as I try to figure out the reason for this feeling.

Since I can’t shake this feeling, I decide to get dressed in my most defensive clothing, which after a quick search through my inventory, turns out to be an orange battle dress robe thing. It has black armor plates sewn into it and doesn’t restrict my movement, despite being heavier than anything else I have worn so far. I didn’t use it a lot in the game since it sort of clashes with my green hair and doesn’t buff my magic as much as other outfits.

After getting dressed, I take out the accompanying staff which is made of the same black metal as the armor plates, and has an accompanying red gem at the head. 

Looking out the window reveals that the sun is yet to peek above the horizon, but I decide to pack up my stuff anyway, though that only applies to the mirrors and the water in the tub, which I cleanse.

Having prepared for the day, I pace around the room for a bit contemplating whether to wake the others or not. On one hand we can get out of the city earlier, on the other, they’ll be more tired and less focused. Hang on, can’t I fix the focus problem with magic? But should I?

As I continue to contemplate my next actions, I hear a knock on the door which startles me enough to create a mana barrier between me and it. After taking a deep breath to calm down, I shatter the barrier and walk over to the door.

Once I open the door,  I see James standing there with a sword in his hand, looking serious. Before I can say anything he speaks up.

“You look ready for war. You got that bad premonition as well?”

I simply nod before he continues

“We should leave the city as early as we can. Can you pack away the stuff I left in my room while I wake up Jo?”

“Yeah, we should and I can.”

Since we both wanted to get out fast, I simply walk down to his room and pack away his stuff, which there were more off than I anticipated. Seems like he bought quite a few quality of life things, like soap and a razor.

After that, I go over to Jo’s room, finding James waiting outside.

“Has she answered the knocking?” I ask and he shakes his head.

I channel a short range teleport and two seconds later, I stand on the other side of the door. Jo is still sleeping heavily in the bed, so I walk over to her and gently shake her awake.

She looks up groggily at me for a moment before her mind kicks into gear.

“Zena, why are you in my room?”

I inform her that we are leaving earlier than planned and that she should get ready now. Seemingly understanding my serious tone and armored appearance, she wastes no time getting ready.

A couple minutes later, we left the keys with the proprietor which was in the process of preparing the breakfast menu at the restaurant.

The streets of the city are still mostly empty so our silent travel to the eastern gate is unimpeded. The guards at the gate question why we want to leave so early, but let us through when we tell them that we want an early start on our travels.

The bad premonition slowly faded away as we walked on the road away from the city and by the time the sun crested the horizon, we decided to stop for breakfast. 

A grouping of boulders in the pine forest next to the road makes for a good stopping point and has a decent view thanks to the farmland on the other side of the road.

As we eat our food, we explain to Jo why we left earlier than planned and further speculated on why we both felt it necessary. It’s not the first time I have awoken with a start, but this might be the first time where the nervousness has persisted. We don’t come to any conclusion besides that listening to the feeling was probably the right choice.

The discussion continues with our plan for the next week as we pack up and resume our travels. We have two goals, the first is to fetch the gem and the second is to help Jo become stronger by defeating golems. Finding the gem should be relatively easy since the quest pointer points at it and stone golems should just exist in the vicinity of the mines.

According to the atlas, the mines should be a little over a day's travel away from Aeshraton, which means that we will probably be able to reach it today with our early start, at least if we keep a decent pace.

Traveling on the well maintained gravel road is easy and the day goes by quickly until sometime in the afternoon, when I spot the first golem. It’s a collection of rocks with a quadrupedal body plan. I can sense about three times more mana in its core than Jo has, making it a decent first opponent, given that she has our support.

I pointed it out to the others as it lumbered through the forest. Jo became nervous as I gave her a mana regen buff and told her to try to take it down. She became more confident as I further cast my buffs on her, and by the time I started to walk towards it, she might have gotten a little overconfident.

When we get close, it notices us and starts walking towards us while channeling some mana into the ground. I can sense that the mana is heading towards Jo and she senses it as well, and in her haste to avoid it, she activates her mana thruster and flies straight into a tree. A second later a sharp rock emerges from the ground where she stood.

To prevent the golem from attacking her while she is stunned, I fire a mana bullet at it. The chipping some small pieces of its rocky torso and the moss covering it flies off, but otherwise it’s mostly unharmed.

This distracts it enough for Jo to gather her bearings whilst I heal her. It seems that she did take some damage from crashing into the tree.

After regaining her composure, she fires off a lightning bolt which hits it center mass. It flinches, but beside the scorch mark is apparently unharmed.

Seeing that her attack was fruitless, she switches to a fireball. It does even less and even ignites the nearby trees. Luckily both me and James are paying attention and start extinguishing it. Kinda sad to sacrifice our drinking water for this, so I tell her to hold off on the fire magic, at least while we are in the forest.

After that the fight sort of fell into a rhythm, with Jo swapping between lightning bolts and basic mana bullets and dodging the golem’s slow charge and single ranged attack, with me and James just staying nearby, but out of the way.

Realizing that this was going to take a while, I started to debuff the golem. It then started to miss its attack and its charges no longer headed towards anyone. Jo’s attack started to show some effect after that and even more when she started to aim for the joints.

It probably took her around another hour and crashing into several more trees before she finally managed to defeat the golem, and by the end of it she was absolutely exhausted and wet with sweat. Both me and James interfered at a few points to prevent the golem from defeating her, but for the most part she did it on her own.

Once she sensed that the golem was dead, she simply collapsed from exhaustion. I guess we won’t be able to travel all the way today, so we just decided to set up camp on the battleground. James got out a pickaxe from his inventory after I helped him access it, and started digging out the golem core.

We then made dinner and took an early night to let Jo recover.

 

 

“My Lord” the butler reported to the lord during his breakfast. “The S rank adventurer seems to have left the city during the night. The guards confirmed that she headed eastwards along the mountains.”

“That is unfortunate.” the lord acknowledged in between bites of food.

“The good news is that the messaging guild confirmed that she is expecting a response from the royal family and thus will be back around seven days from when she sent the letter. And given the direction she left, it is likely that she will clear out at least some of the golems that are infesting the area, making it easier to clear out the mines in the future. I have already told the guards to keep an eye out for her return and to notify us.”

“That is better than nothing, and here I thought our problems would be solved when I heard of an S rank adventurer coming to our city.”

 

Kamba

Hey! Didn't take a week this time :)

please tell me if something in this chapter feels off.