Chapter 113 - 112 Road To The Capital

After exiting the town of River Landing Marcus and Lilia were heading southwest towards the kingdom's capital.

Marcus was currently handling the reins connected to Blitz, and Lilia was sitting next to him with a rough map of Borealia.

This was one of the items Marcus had purchased for their journey across the kingdom and while it was not the most detailed map, it did have major cities and landmarks, and at least gave Marcus a general direction of where to go.

Soon they came to a split in the road and after consulting the map for a few minutes Marcus decided to head to the left, which while would take a bit longer, circumvented passing through a mountain range which Marcus figured would be wrought with danger.

'We will be going through the Marquessate of Gralden and then the Dutchy of Scriven before making it to the territory of the royal family. Hm, judging by this map if we go at full speed and make minimal stops, we could probably arrive in a five days. Unfortunately, this carriage can only go so fast before it starts to rattle and bump like crazy and even as strong as Blitz is, he cannot go indefinitely. I would guess it will take us anywhere from nine days to two weeks.'

Once Marcus had finished planning out the route they would take, he handed the map back to Lilia and told her to keep it handy.

Lilia nodded her head and went right back to practicing, she was trying her best to circulate the mana inside her so she could get the magic circulation skill.

The three of them continued traveling for hours and it was not long before the sun began to set, the three of them having traveled for most of the day.

During their time traveling they had passed plenty of other carriages and carts causing all of them to turn their heads when they saw Blitz rush by.

Most of the carts and carriages were being pulled by horses or the occasional common grade magical beast which at best could keep up a pace of about four to seven miles per hour.

Blitz however, was moving at a pace of around twenty miles per hour which while for Earth would not be very fast was quite the speed on Mirrion.

'The sun is going to be gone soon, so where is a good place to set up camp.'

Marcus kept his eyes out, looking for a spot where to hunker down for the night, and he soon saw a patch of trees that were surrounding a small stream and thought that it would be a nice spot.

Pulling off the side of the road Marcus found a nice flat spot and parked the carriage before untying Blitz.

Once Blitz was untethered from the carriage he immediately shot towards the stream where he began drinking water and then eating some of the grass.

Lilia on the other hand got off the carriage and wobbled her way over to one of the trees and laid against it since she had gotten a bit motion sick from the travel.

'I suppose we will need to take more breaks tomorrow; Lilia is fine for a couple hours but after fourteen hours of travel she is not doing too well.'

Of course, Marcus was perfectly fine since being a ghost meant that unless his soul or mind were heavily damaged, he had no need to rest.

Seeing that Lilia and Blitz were doing their own things at the moment Marcus quickly took out his tent and got it set up.

When that was finished, he headed over to the stream and found that it was actually full of a number of fish.

Seeing as how they had just had a long day of travel Marcus figured that some fresh fish might help to raise Lilia's spirt.

Marcus using this as a good opportunity to use the expensive rod he bought back in Loursend cast his line out and waited.

However, after sitting there for twenty minutes Marcus got impatient and stored his fishing rod away and instead used his iron thread spell to ensnare the fish and pull them out of the water.

'Well, there was no sport in it, but I cannot argue with the effectiveness.'

Within just under ten minutes Marcus had caught a dozen of the plumpest fish he could find and brought them back to Lilia.

Now that she had had nearly an hour to rest Lilia was back to training since she felt she was really close to a breakthrough on achieving the magic circulation skill.

Seeing her concentrating so hard Marcus did not have the heart to disturb her and went ahead and cut and gutted the fish himself.

Once he had all twelve of them fillet, he pulled out a metal grill he had bought and put his floating lantern spell under the grill as a cooking fire.

'I know that this spell is actually intended to be used as a light source, but its use as a heat source for cooking has been a godsend for me. I do not know what I would do if I had to collect wood for a fire every time I wanted to cook something.'

Marcus continued to grill up the fish fillets along with some vegetables using some spices like salt and pepper that he had bought in river landing.

It was not long before the food was ready, and Marcus called Lilia over for dinner.

"I managed to catch some fresh fish from the stream nearby and we have an assortment of vegetables to eat. Make sure to get what you want and we have plenty of food so no need to hold back."

Seeing and smelling the food Lilia's mouth started to water a bit and she quickly through two of the fish fillets as well as a three of each vegetable onto her plate and she began scarfing down her dinner.

Following her example Marcus filled his plate up and savored the taste of his own cooking.

When they had finished eating Lilia offered to clean up the dishes since Marcus had cooked the meal and in all honesty with her cleaning skill, she could get it done much quicker.

Once Lilia had finished cleaning up the dishes Marcus sent her to bed and stayed up on watch.

During his watch to pass the time Marcus was creating a study plan for Lilia since he intended to teach her how to read and write.

'If I want her to get into a good school, she is at least going to need to be able to read at a decent level, hopefully I can get her to recognize the alphabet and maybe read a few easy line from a children's book by the time we make it to the royal capital.'

Marcus continued to come up with different approaches to teaching Lilia when he saw a few dim lights coming down the road.

Marcus wondered who it could be since without head lights it was quite dangerous to continue traveling at night when visibility was poor.

Of course, this did not matter to Marcus because of his darkvision but not everyone could see perfectly in the dark.

Marcus observed as the lights got closer, but they suddenly stopped when they were not far from Marcus' camp.

Getting a bit curious Marcus stored his materials into his item box and went back into his ghost form.

He then sent a mental command to Blitz to watch over Lilia and floated on over towards the dim lights that had all gone out save for one.

As he approached Marcus could see around a dozen men dressed in dark cloaks huddled together talking to each other in hushed tones.

Marcus immediately got suspicious and floated right above the group of men and listened to their conversation.

"The two of them should be asleep right now, it has been over three hours since the last light of their fire went out."

"I think we should wait a bit longer, that magical beast looked strong and if it is still awake, we could be in trouble."

"You idiot that is why we have the darts coated with the poison of the vergif salamander, even the strongest of beast will fall into a deep sleep with one of these."

"Are you sure we should be messing with them; their carriage is quite nice they could be nobles of the kingdom."

"Are you daft, if they were nobles, they would at least have a guard or two."

Marcus continued to watch the more than a dozen men bicker about plans of attack and what they were going to do with him and Lilia.

Some of them wanted to kill them and take their riches, others said that they should sell both of them to slave traders since they would both fetch a high price, and the ones that really ticked Marcus off were the two that wanted to tie them up at their hideout and use them as "a comfort station."

A big grin appeared on Marcus' face as he thought of how he was going to kill these men who he considered to be complete and utter scum.

Marcus waited until the men had finished discussing their strategy and when they were about to move out, he appeared behind them and said, "Well, that would have been a good plan if I did not hear everything."

All of the men immediately froze and turned around except nothing was there. Then one of the men convulsed briefly before stabbing his dagger into the nearest bandit.

Everyone looked at him in disbelief, they had no idea where that voice had come from or why one of their allies was attacking them.

Of course, by the time they had begun to retaliate, Marcus had already moved out from that man's body and into another one.

He then repeated this process until they were all fighting each other and soon there was only one bandit left standing, and to Marcus' surprise it was one of the ones that made the comment about tying him and Lilia up.

The man was haggard and injured and as he limped away Marcus appeared in front of him and said, "You know if you had not made that comment about me and my little sister, I would have just killed you all painlessly."

Seeing Marcus suddenly appear in front of him the bandit's face twisted in fear. He had heard of horror stories of monsters possessing people and using them as puppets, but to see it in person was truly terrifying.

He then tried to run away but soon found that his body was immobilized, and in the starlight, he could see the faint shimmer of threads attached to his limbs.

His body then involuntarily moved towards Marcus like a marionette doll, and he was quickly right in front of Marcus who was seething with anger.

"So, you want to, and I quote "Tie them up and pound them until they squeal like pigs." So, let me ask you, how does it feel to be tied up and completely helpless. Do you think that people would actually enjoy this? Here how about you try to squeal for me and if you do a good enough job maybe I will let you go."

The man in absolute terror tried to do his best impression of a pig squealing hoping that by some miracle he might get out of this alive.

However, Marcus never had any intention of letting him live, and after a few seconds he said, "Enough, I would only give that an eight out of ten which is not nearly enough for you to live. Although maybe you can use this as a learning experience and not be such scum in you next life."

Marcus then tighten one of his iron threads around the man's throat until it dug into his flesh and then slowly sliced through his throat until it decapitated his head.

With his eradication of the bandits that threatened him and Lilia complete, Marcus used his spectral arm to gather up all the bodies and then set them ablaze.