A Long Journey Together

The journey took a while to begin, approximately three years, and that was extremely boring for Damian, who had been moving around the south to eliminate as many demons as possible.

Things would have gone better if Frieren were a normal person, but she slept more than a cat and spent her time reading the magical books Damian had collected from different parts of the world.

The good thing about this is that after three years, she seemed interested in leaving, and Damian took advantage of this time to create a cabin on the giant pig, which solved certain aspects of their lives.

During this time, Damian created three more puppets: Agitó, an incredible warrior over three meters tall who was on par with the General of the Eight Divergent Leaves; Rika, who was mostly present in his shadow and served to carry his weapons; and last but not least, a stone giant, who certainly was his model but didn't fully convince him.

"With this transude, I summon..."

Boom!

When Damian murmured these words, it was as if the magic in his body was unleashed; the ring that hid much more magic in his body than it should have was released, and his Divine General appeared behind him.

"The function of hiding my magic from others is mostly due to my ring; I never thought that this was the reason why even more magic is hidden from others." Damian watched as his Divine General went berserk against the magical beasts in the distance.

The difference in his abilities now compared to when he was younger was very noticeable; not only was he improving his mana, but he had also learned most of the attack spells to kill demons.

But along the way, he had discovered something, and that was bad humans, who only sought their own benefits without realizing they were at war with demons.

To those men or women, Damian had a one-way path to the cemetery as soon as he saw them; they were worse than scum and didn't deserve to live. "That's enough; gather the meat because we don't waste food."

For someone else, it would be incredible to see Damian's puppets dragging the bodies of those huge magical creatures killed with a clean cut to the throat, but for him, this was more than normal.

"We'll need food rations and thousands of liters of water if we're going into those dungeons; we could get trapped for years in those places, so it's better to be prepared." Damian thought as he spent the next two hours preparing the meat to be used moments before cooking it.

Frieren loved Damian's food very much; perhaps that's why she hadn't completely pushed him away in the last three years.

During this time, Damian also wondered what had happened to Adda, Syndra, and his master, who by now should have died of old age.

"Adda, by now you should be an old woman." Damian murmured with a smile that faded gradually. About forty years had passed; that means he had been living in this world for the past fifty years.

Time was becoming more and more insignificant in Damian's eyes; this, in a way, terrified him. "This is the last..."

After finishing cutting the meat, Damian returned to the cabin after cleaning all the blood from his body.

Frieren was sitting under a tree that had tangerines; she was passing the time as she knew how while waiting for the planted crops to be ready for harvesting.

"You smell like blood..."

Damian approached Frieren and said, "I went to get enough food for the journey; by the way, will you follow me wherever I go and help me along the way?"

Frieren looked at Damian and said, "Let's not get involved in unnecessary, useless matters that will only bring us problems. You may want to be a hero, but sometimes people need to be strong in the face of things they can handle themselves."

As for people, Damian was very clear about this; nobles who were not warriors were normally poorly viewed by him for not having their priorities clear and sitting among luxuries while their people were massacred by demons.

It's true that not everyone deserves this fate; that's why Damian had developed a plan to create a unique army interconnected among the most prominent nobles of the time and thus, in a hundred years, have total control of the future.

If now, by chance, he killed the Demon King, would people benefit from it? Maybe the nobles, but the commoners who had been doing the impossible to survive would continue with their same lives as if nothing had happened.

Damian didn't seek the benefit of others but of those who had lived amid war and deserved a little peace; this would give value to his actions.

"Let's first visit a nearby village that was recently attacked by demons; my puppets have been in that place for some time, so just to help them recover, we could stay there for a while." Damian explained this to Frieren, but he knew she didn't care much.

Wherever they went, it would be fine; who said they couldn't visit the whole world at some point in their lives?

"Well..." Frieren replied as she immersed herself in reading.

Damian couldn't believe it; this was like traveling partly alone.

But now that the journey had begun, he knew things would change a bit, at least a bit given the circumstances of the past years.

Still, without Damian knowing it, and Frieren herself, she had also become very dependent on him given the current circumstances.

"At what speed are we going?"