Chapter 44: Meeting

"Princess! What are you saying? The general was just being concerned with the clan's interest! Please do not fault him! I will follow the general to the war tent just as you instructed. I trust that the General will treat me well. Do not worry about me and please be on your way, Princess." Putting on a concerned expression on his face, Venn acted as best as he could.

"If Lord Venn said so, then Ysera will take your advice to heart."

"General Brugvun, I will be leaving Lord Venn in your care. Make sure to see it personally that Lord Venn safely arrives at the war tent."

Without giving General Brugvun a chance to react, Princess Ysera left the guest room with her guards after demurely walking to their sides to help them recover from the ground, leaving only Brugvun and Venn in the room.

Seeing that Ysera had left the guest room to have a change of outfit, General Brugvun had no choice but to obey her instruction, and swiftly led Venn out of the room before signaling Venn to follow him. 

Now that Venn was acting as an advisor to Ysera and the Shuten family behind her, he had no more legitimate excuse to stop Venn from attending the war meeting. Though he doubted that a weak outsider like Venn could do anything to help.

"Follow me closely by my side, and keep any words you have in your mouth." 

Silence ensued while they were on their way to the war tent. Along the way, there were many twists and turns among several intersections that Venn gave up on memorizing. He had a good grasp on spatial cognition, but even he was confused by the number of variations in the route.

If only he had the skill [cartography] that was dropped as a monster core by the Iron-beaked eagle, then there would be no need for him to make a mental map of places. While the skill is active, all explored areas by the user would show up as virtual maps in the user's interface. Oftentimes, such maps could be sold for several thousands of gold to guilds and individual players alike. But since he did not have the skill, Venn felt that there was no point in mulling over it.

Focusing his energy on information gathering instead of memorising the layout of Kersaru, Venn decided to break the ice between the two of them.

The silence did not last long with Venn smiling warmly at General Brugvun as if General Brugvun was his long-lost friend. As an outsider to the Oni clan, it would be wise for him to adopt a humble attitude to the General if he wanted to uncover more crucial information about the quest ahead. 

Behaving otherwise would shut down the possibility of having a conversation with the NPCs. As a former library rat, he knew the importance of information in Heaven Descent. Although he knew that Brugvun was rather cold towards him, it did not affect his mood. It would be incredibly childish of him if he was to get angry at some game characters.

Afterall, it was all a game to him.

Or was it? 

When Venn thought of Lilith and Ysera's actions, this doubt of his, surfaced to his mind.

"Venn, you can call me that or Night Raid. But, seriously it sure is tough to work under the princess, eh?" Showing an amiable smile, Venn extended his hand towards General Brugvun, and was rejected. Despite receiving a cold shoulder from Brugvun, he kept on talking to keep the conversation alive.

"Wow. You must have trained hard to achieve that body. Your muscles are so well-defined, especially your biceps. Care to share your secret in achieving those powerful guns of yours?"

"Where are we heading? Is the war tent far from here? Are we there yet? Other than you, how many other generals exist in the clan? Can you share how many elders are there in the war tent?"

"To tell you the truth, I am extremely broke. Do you have some spare change that you can spare? Come on, help a brotha out."

Along the way, Venn fired questions after questions at General Brugvun like an annoying house fly buzzing around his ears. The more he was ignored, the more ridiculous the questions he would ask him.

"Shut the hell up! I swear I'm going to bash your head in if you continue to blabber on!" Frustrated by the non-stop talking of Venn, Brugvun finally snapped at Venn. But after seeing that Venn was fearless towards him, he seemed to have relented to Venn's constant harassment.

With a resigned tone, he warned Venn. "Anyway, with the war tent just in front of us, let me warn you, keep your mouth shut inside. Or else, you will face the consequences. Even though we can't offend the Blood Serpents that backs you, we will still make sure you sufficiently suffer."

After saying his piece, their figure soon arrived at a large ivory white tent consisting of unknown animal skins and bones. The tent seemed similar to an ancient Mongolian tent to Venn and it occupied an area of approximately a basketball court.

A total of 12 soldiers holding spears were guarding the entrance of the tent. After having a small conversation with Brugvun, they finally allowed Venn to enter alongside him.

Watching Brugvun's figure disappear into the tent, Venn followed suit and nervously lifted the curtain of the tent with his foreman with a heavy heart. Uncertain of what the quest holds, his heart began to palpitate.

He had no idea what the quest entailed, but he had a feeling that it would be the one of the hardest quests that he would experience. 

Since he had teleported to this unknown land, he discovered that he could not access the messaging and friend functions in the game. 

Furthermore, he was able to determine that he was currently in an unknown continent from the small conversations that he held with the Onis guards during his travel to Kersaru.

"A totally unknown place where a misstep will spell the end of me and my knowledge is my only advantage in this, eh? Even though the situation is so dire, why is my body feeling so excited right now?"

"Huah."

"Ysera?"