The next few groups of Trollish farmers and merchants were similarly eager to get any news that they could, but when Karl got to a group of Ogres using oxen to pull large carts, things began to take a turn for the worse.
At first, it was just the same sort of posturing as the last hostile merchant group. But these ones didn’t look like successful merchants. They were filthier than usual, even for Ogres, and looked half starved.
When the wind shifted and blew from Karl’s wagon to theirs, bringing the scent of humans to them, they snapped and began to charge.
“Rae, Golems.” Karl called as he jumped down to meet the charge.
Both bodyguards joined him, as well as Dana’s Golems. That should be enough to deal with the threat, and that was their plan to not blow their cover as merchants. However, that plan was entirely too boring for Cara, and the Void Badger was headed for combat before Karl could even tell her off.
“Meat!” The Ogres roared as they charged toward Karl’s wagon, not even focused on him.
The other merchants nearby, groups that had been waiting for the signal that the danger had passed, began to scatter. They didn’t want to be implicated in the fight between the Ogres and Karl’s group. Karl took out his blade and hacked the first Ascended Rank Ogre clean in half, from the shoulder across the chest. But even as the two halves fell to the ground, the others didn’t stop. They were fully focused on the smell of humans, and running blindly into the blades and forelimbs of the defenders.
The battle was over in under thirty seconds, nothing more than a flurry of steel and blood. In fact, the last one fighting was Cara, who had taken offence to the existence of their cart oxen.
“They’re dead, you can stop now.” Karl reminded her.
Cara paused and looked around. [So they are. I thought that we were going to fight?]
Karl patted the badger on the head after she landed on the Ogres’ wagon. “Not a real fight, just defending the wagon against attack. You got too excited.”
Cara sighed, then vanished into her space to get clean before coming back out to sit with the ladies in the wagon.
[Disappointing. One out of Ten, do not recommend.]
Rae did grab one of the oxen, though. Just in case it tasted good.
Karl got back on the wagon and started to move again, which startled the other merchants who could see him. His team only had a few members, the fight should not have been over that quickly, but his wagon was moving again, and nothing else was.
Just to be safe, the next one in line continued to make their detour well around the incident as Karl rolled past them.
The merchants who were parked behind them were unconcerned. Fights between groups of monsters were a common occurrence, and if you started a fight that you couldn’t win, that was your own fault.
Groups of Ogres seemed to be rare in the region, but trolls of various sorts, as well as lizardmen and something that looked like a featherless bird walking upright, were plentiful.
The last one gave Hawk the creeps because they had grown weird fingers out of what used to be wing bones, unnaturally long for hands. Between that and the beaked heads with no feathers, Hawk was glad that no such thing existed at home. He might have to reconsider water as his greatest enemy if someone compared him to one of those things.
Remi had a very different opinion. They looked like pre plucked chickens, and she was pretty sure they didn’t need any prep at all to eat. Thor walked past the line of merchant wagons, which were starting to move now, following the lead of those in front of them. Karl wondered how long they would have been sitting there if he hadn’t been the first one to move through. Would they have sat there all day, waiting to see who went first? Or was there some sort of estimate on how long it would take the Orcs to move past?
Karl didn’t see any scouts, and neither did Hawk. But even with the delays, they were going to make it to the next town before dinner.
They weren’t anywhere near the city of Oakhamping, but this appeared to be the layover point, as the town had large amounts of parking for merchant caravans, as well as taverns, motels and blacksmiths advertising wagon repairs.
“We will camp here for the evening. They have guards on patrol, and there are others around to help keep watch, so we won’t have to worry as much about opportunistic thieves as we might alongside the road.” Karl explained.
“That makes sense. We might be going the opposite way to everyone else, but there is safety in numbers.” Dana agreed.
That didn’t actually make much sense when everything around you could be considered an enemy, but nothing recognized Karl as a human, and they had the Naga Warriors on guard to blend in with the other Monsters.
Most of the wagons weren’t setting up much of a camp. At best, it was a small fire for the guards to sleep around, while one of them kept watch. That was about what Karl’s team would do as well, with most of the team sleeping in the wagon, and the summons on guard. Lotus grew a small collection of firewood from the boards of the wagon using her magic, and they prepared to heat dinner. The new arrivals and their fire caught some attention from the farmers in the next group, who were sitting in the rapidly fading twilight, leaned against their wagon.
“Would you like to join us? The heat is free, but the dinner needs a good story.” Karl offered.
The troll smiled and brought two boys over with him.
“I think that we can come up with a story or two. Good evening, everyone. Might you ladies by Dragon Clerics? You don’t smell like beast clerics, and you’re certainly not Giants.”
The troll gave them a toothy smile as the firelight flickered off the silver band on his lone remaining lower tusk. The other had been broken at some point, leaving a jagged stump a quarter of its full length that hadn’t regrown yet.
Trolls normally regenerated quickly, but the tusks needed to be pulled to regrow, much like hair, which grew at a normal rate unless it was pulled out.
That led to a strange phenomenon that Karl could see at another camp. One of the older trolls was actually growing a beard by shaving with a dull razor that pulled the hair out.
Then he trimmed it to shape with a pair of scissors, except for a portion in the centre, which he braided. It was one of the strangest grooming routines that Karl had ever seen, and it made him think of the [Trollish Regeneration] skill in his skill tree.
He could afford to get it now, or he could keep saving for some of the offensive abilities. He hadn’t been able to see them until Skill Master evolved to Rank 2. It seemed to be an oddity of the skill tree, he had to finish a tier of his core abilities before he could use more advanced secondary skills.
He might have done better in the short term by picking the offensive tree, as he would have all those abilities by now. However, that would have left him without access to Evolution and Skill Master.
Those two skills were going to be essential to his team very soon.