Chapter 71: Travelling

Author's Note: A second surprise chapter for everyone. Enjoy!

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Spiky had packed his essentials, which included clothes, soap, several blank notebooks, large sheets of blank map parchment, and tons of ink. But what it didn’t include was much in the way of snacks or food. And although he’d be able to buy some later, he had almost nothing for the first leg of the trip, and hadn’t had the benefit of an Ella-cooked breakfast.

That’s where Arthur and Milo came in. Spiky was almost gifted one of Ella’s breakfast leftover sandwiches, followed by whatever snacks he wanted.

“This is a lot of food, guys.” Spiky took down another mouthful of nuts and dried fruit, then leaned back on his bench. “Too much. The sandwich should have been enough for days.”

“You’d be surprised, Spiky.” Talca turned in his seat to talk as Littal kept chewing up road. “It takes energy to ride. All those shocks and swaying you felt before are getting absorbed and compensated for by your muscles. That burns calories. You’ll see when we make our first stop. It’s not a small amount of exercise.”

“That’s something I’m wondering about actually,” Arthur said. “Why are there so many shocks? Does the demon world not have springs?”

“Sure we do.” Milo ripped off a piece of jerky with his teeth. “But I’m guessing those only do so much. There are springs under us, and they compress to keep the wheels on the ground, but then they uncompress just as hard. They aren’t magic.”

“Unless they are.” Talca said. “But even the enchanted ones only do so much, and my cart is much faster than most. The springs on this thing are meant to keep the axles from breaking in half. I’ve got about the best springs you can buy and the ride you’re getting is the end result.”

“What about…” Arthur searched his mind for a distant Earth memory. “Shock eaters? Bump consumers? I remember my dad complaining that his were broken, once. And that he’d have to replace them. Something more than just springs.”

“Ooh, otherworld tech.” Spiky leaned forward. “Explain this to me.”

“I don’t know much about them. Just that they made a ride smoother by working with the springs. And that the springs wouldn’t be as useful without them.”

“Any idea of how they worked? Even what they looked like?”

Arthur tried. He really did.

“Not much. I remember they were mounted inside the spring, somehow. That’s about it.”

“Well, that’s a disappointment.” Talca sighed. “I could have been the only guy in town with a wagon from a distant realm.”

“Well, yeah, sorry. The system explained it to me once, but I can’t exactly remember every aspect of my old life. Some things I can’t remember at all. Such as how war worked there.”

“Well, that’s good. We wouldn’t want you coming here and setting yourself up as a warlord,” Spiky said.

“Oh, I can just see it. Arthur the terrible.” Milo smirked as he chewed on his jerky. “His dread boba spreading across the land, subjecting the people to his will.”

“What in the name of the gods is a dread boba?” Talca asked. “Girlfriend’s name?”

“Oh, now you’ve done it. He has to show you now. It’s a drink, Talca. He makes them.”

Arthur sighed and got out his heating element. Milo wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t let someone stay without knowledge of what boba was for long. Thankfully, making boba while in a moving vehicle was less of a challenge than he thought it would be, thanks to his new anti-shaking skill.

Arthur held the heavy iron kettle to the heat source by the handle as it came to a boil and said a silent thanks for his traveling-slash-cooking gloves preventing several separate burns in the process. He made the boba in a small travel pot with a lid, keeping the hot water from splashing around too much as the pearls plumped up.

Soon enough, they had tea and pearls, which Arthur put into the older lidded glasses Rhodia had made him before she got better at her class and rendered them obsolete. He eyeballed Talca with Empathetic Host and got the impression that he was dealing with someone used to eating a lot of food in a single sitting. So he added a liberal amount of boba pearls and cream to the mix. All finished, he handed the drink over. Talca took a sip, then went stiff with surprise.

“This is tea.”

“Yeah, most bobas use some kind of tea as their base. Technically, what makes it boba as compared to regular tea are the little pearls at the bottom.”

“Chewy.”

“Yeah, that’s the appeal. If what you want is pure tea, there are better brewers.”

“For now,” Milo said. “If you keep leveling like you do, that won’t be true forever.”

“How much tea did you bring, Arthur?” Talca asked, sucking away at his drink.

“Plenty. I figured I’d introduce the concept to towns as we went if there was any interest.”

“Dammit.” Talca reached into his coin pouch and pulled out several coins. “Take these, Arthur.”

“What is this?”

“Part of your fare. Milo didn’t tell me I’d have a skilled cook along, and I drink tea.”

Arthur was confused. “But why are you giving me coins?”

“I live most of my life in this cart. And you’re paying for my time. When someone can contribute to making my life better on a trip, they can negotiate a better price. If you make me these the whole trip, that’s a significant improvement in my life for a week. And that costs something. I can’t cheat you out of that money just because you didn’t know that.”

The amount Talca had handed back wasn’t a small amount of money, but neither was the fare. The coins amounted to only a small fraction of what Arthur had paid overall, despite being a healthy handful of money. He tried to do the math on whether or not what Talca was paying was too much, failing so miserably that even Spiky caught on to what was happening and broke in.

“Just take it. For unlimited drinks at on-the-road rates, it’s close enough.”

“Well, fine then.” Arthur tucked the money into his pouch. “If that’s the case, you are going to have to tell me about what you like to drink, Talca. Because I brought a lot of variety with me, and I’m not going to mess up your orders if I can help it.”

—

The day passed without much else of note happening. They laughed and joked, with Talca occasionally joining in on the fun. He figured out that Arthur was the designated butt-of-jokes distressingly quickly, picking on him in the same good-natured way almost everyone eventually did. But along the way, Arthur was taking in a lot of knowledge, even just out in open country without a single building in sight.

“Our city is just weird like that, Arthur. It’s close to mountains, forest, and plains. That’s part of why it was even built. Diversity of resources.”

“But now there’s nothing. It’s just flat forever.”

“Well, that’s how it is when you live on the edge of a mountain that opens up into the plains region.” Spiky had the map open on his lap, and pointed to a big area empty of anything except place names and rivers. “The towns that exist out here are mostly farming towns, taking advantage of water sources to produce food. There’s a lot less class diversity in those.”

“Because it’s not worth it to do anything but farm there?”

“A little of that, plus a smaller population. They still have other classes, but nothing like the city. And we’re covering a small portion of the space out here. We’re essentially just cutting off a corner of a much larger region.”

“He’s right. If I can keep Littal moving, we should be to the great forest by midday tomorrow. If we had to cross the entire plains, we’d be a week at it. They aren’t small.”

“I’m guessing the forest isn’t small either.”

“It’s not, but you don’t need to worry about that for your trip. There’s an arm of the forest that sticks out, and we’re crossing that instead of the main body. We’ll still be in the forest for a while, but you won’t see anything like the entire forest. It’s a good trip for learning about the world, in that way.”

They did eventually come up on a town, but the wagon kept on moving. According to Talca, it wasn’t worth stopping that early in the trip, and there were still plenty of hours to travel. Eventually, conversations petered out. Spiky fell asleep, Milo went over some machine designs in his notebook, and Arthur kept staring at the world passing around him. And then as the sunlight finally started to fail, they stopped.

“Set up your tents, boys. I’ll get a fire going. Just beans and meat tonight, I’m afraid.”

“I brought some good bread with me, Talca.”

“Well, good. We’ll have something to round it out. And get that kettle going.”

It was the heart of the coldfall season, so setting up the tents meant a good deal of rooting around in the snow. By the time everyone had their temporary homes up, they were chilled. Arthur pumped some majicka into a warming tea while Talca got the food kicking, and they gathered around the fire to warm themselves.

“No pep in this, I hope?”

“No. You want some?”

“Not at all. A transport day relies on sunlight. The sooner we can get moving in the morning, the further and faster we go. You can’t sleep too late or wake up too early out here.”

They ate and drank tea, building up the fire with wood that Talca had packed under the wagon until they had a good-sized, long-lasting flame.

“That’s good planning. The wood, I mean.” Arthur was impressed, although it made sense that Talca would be prepared for the trip.

“I only brought enough for a day more. But we won’t need it after tomorrow. Plenty of trees and wood soon. We’ll have to chop it, but better that than the weight on the wagon.”

The dinner was fine. Arthur made a mental note to add spices to it next time, since apparently Talca didn’t have much skill in that area outside of tossing a bit of salt in and hoping for the best. Even if he wasn’t focused on food so much, Arthur was a cooking class. He was pretty sure he could get at least a bit of Ella’s effect in the food if he tried. In classic camp style, Talca made plenty of beans and meat, and they all ate until they were full.

“Well, I’m heading to bed. You all can sleep whenever you want, but it won’t change when we leave in the morning. We pull out at dawn.”

Talca went to his tent and dropped the heavy flap that separated him from the outside word. In less than a minute, he was snoring.

“That’s a talent. Being able to fall asleep like that? I’m jealous.”

“You sleep just fine, Milo. Don’t you?”

“Not on hard ground, in the cold. There's a book they read to kids about that. How sleeping is important to growing.”

“The Dream Levels,” Spiky said, yawning. “I can’t even think about it without getting tired. It’s about being well rested. It shows people doing all sorts of wondrous stuff, high-level stuff, all in front of a kid. So he tries to do those same things and can’t, and wears himself out, and finally falls asleep. Then when he dreams it’s about growing into those things, and when he wakes up, he finally gets some progress to awakening his class.”

“It’s a kid’s book,” Milo answered. “Moms use it to get little boys to think about sleep as a kind of training to raid dungeons better someday. And it works. I was sure going to bed early every night would help me kill monsters.”

“Wait, you wanted to be a combat class?” Arthur asked.

“Not just him. Me too,” Spiky said. “Remember, we were little kids. That’s what everyone assumes they will do at that age.”

“It was either that or explorer, for me,” Milo finished.

“Huh. And that dream just died?”

“Well, yeah. You eventually learn more about what dungeons are, what that job really means, and you get old enough to realize you like other things. It’s just how it is. You just stop wanting a combat job,” Milo said.

“Eito sort of showed me that. I didn’t like the way it felt, stabbing things,” Arthur said.

“Most people don’t. It’s a special kind of thing. I eventually realized I like swords but not the using them to hurt other things part of the equation, so now I make them,” Milo said.

“And I only liked reading about how dungeons worked. I was probably a hundred books into learning about dungeons, weapons, classes, and other things like that before I realized it was only the reading I liked,” Spiky said.

“Huh. Well, I guess I’ll check out that book at some point.”

“You probably won’t like it, Arthur. Mom stopped being able to use it to manipulate me when I was, I don’t know, ten or so. It’s very much little kid stuff,” Milo laughed.

“Well, at least I won’t have to guess at what people are remembering when they talk about it.” Arthur yawned. “And I think on that note I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”