Chapter 343

All of the other groups struck out in their hunt for suitable dinosaurs, so Neffie is overjoyed to see Cain and Mary return with a bag full of eggs. 

“Eggs? So I have to wait for them to actually become dinosaurs and then even more for them to grow up enough to ride?” Neffie complains, but she’s giving the bag a look of pure longing. 

“We could return them if you prefer?” Cain teases, making the Demon Queen jump forward to shield them with her body. 

“No this is fine. Don’t take them away.”

Cid smiles and steps forward to talk to his daughter, who is back in her Ashen skinned, white haired natural form with the fluffy cat ears. It’s one of the few four armed forms she knows that isn’t too large to protect the bag of eggs properly in the confines of this room. 

“Raising and training them from the very beginning will give better results. Plus, don’t you think it would be a great way to prove to your parents that you are skilled and mature enough to be given additional responsibilities? Plus you will be training your very own dinosaur mounts.” Cain suggests, and Neffie’s eyes light up in motivation. 

Literally, in her default form, her golden eyes glow when she gets excited. It is a little thing that makes Cixelcid happy. He’s a vampire, and their eyes also glow when excited or hungry, only a Vampire’s eyes glow red. 

Neffie gives the egg raising proposal a bit more thought, but everyone can see she’s seen the logic. Raised from eggs is best, that way they will only know their training and won’t have been around wild versions of their species.

Neffie doesn’t like delays in any form, but she knows she’s got to convince her father that she is responsible and makes good decisions if she’s going to convince him to let her lead the Port City.

“You’re right. I’m going to make a nest for them in the stables, that way they can be easily watched and they’ll hatch in the same spot they’re going to grow up in. The book I read said that will make it feel more like home.”

With her piece said, Neffie darts out the door with the eggs, stopping only to grab a straw bale from outside the stable. They’ve gathered a lot of those lately. The ships use it as packing material for the foods they bring from the Western Continent, but they don’t need it for the gear and other commodities they bring back, so the dock staff bundles it and the merchant wagons use it as bedding for their carriage animals. 

Nobody knows how far the eggs are from hatching, but Neffie is checking up on them every hour during the day to see if anything changes, and she’s got the stall they’re in safely blocked off and clearly marked as an incubation pen, with a warming magic powered lantern hung above the clutch of eggs. 

Over the next few days the Trader assigned to their city by the Wave Riders begins to get busy, with more and more forms of legal goods being traded. Enough that the merchant caravans that have arrived to pick them up are starting to make a proper road through the jungle. 

There was a path to the Port before, roughly following the shoreline between villages, but the merchants are mostly coming from an inland city to the northwest.

Kone and her group came across it during their Dino hunt, reporting to the Guild that it was a mix of species with large stone walls that Kone deemed pointless against anything that could climb trees, since the jungle had regrown almost to the perimeter. 

The city had an unusual, but effective farming method, their staple foods were a form of vegetable that grows on climbing vines, which they planted to wrap around the giant trees.

Done this way, most of the growth was vertical, so they didn’t need to clear land to grow foods, an idea that can intends to poach for the Port. They import and export plenty of food, but that comes at a price and a few local specialities would help the growing number of residents out a lot. 

Cid has already bought a lot of the plants from the trade caravans, and asked the hemp farmers if they could assist in the project to see if they’d grow well in the trees closest to the wall.

That project is just starting, but the first hemp crop is already harvested and drying, thanks to the druids magic. 

Cain is about to motivate a group to go back to Munan for a dungeon when an even better idea occurs to him. There are dungeons in the jungle. The locals have made a map, but thanks to the low population near here, most of them aren’t inside a city or guarded in any way. 

They’re higher level than the ones that Cain has already visited, so they should be even faster leveling. Plus, now that his Echoes have finished their mission in Niman Territory and the Skyview Army has been mobilized to start conquering the region, he has his full military might available. 

King James remains in seclusion, but he’s at least still giving orders to his Commanders and defense ministers. The plan is for them to take the closest half of Niman Territory, which will break the Niman border with The Nyanko Confederacy and only require taking one major city.

If that goes well, they might expand towards the mountains and push the remnants of the Nimans into the Steppes, but that is a decision King James will make later. 

The one city they want to take is the blue walled one that the Ancients and nomads already sacked, so Cain knows they’ll be in for an easier than expected time of things, even if the Nimans manage to get some new defense forces before the Skyview army arrives. 

Cain decides that for this exploration of the jungle, it’s best if he sets out alone. The map says that there are two interesting nearby dungeons, one that is labeled as monsters at level 320, and one that says Dark Fae at level 340.

Both sound very promising to Cain, but he’s truly intrigued by the one labeled monsters. Are they chimera type creatures that shouldn’t exist? Magical Beasts much more powerful than they should be? Or something entirely unexpected like a cult of cannibals that the locals deemed monstrous? 

Not wanting to be followed, Cain uses the Dark Phoenix to make record time to the dungeon full of monsters. It’s exactly where the locals said it would be, surrounded by some plinths with a warding spell to keep wildlife away for their own good.

Neither Cain or the Phoenix detect any sort of observers or guards, so Cain has the beast stop right at the portal, dismissing it the same second that he steps inside.