Ch. 46: First Obstacle
"Alright. I believe that may be for the best." Rosy agreed to follow the Fraeguards.
This actually surprised Adrian. He'd expected her to give the Fraeguards some nonsense excuse for why they couldn't go with them before going their own way. Having Fraeguards come along with them would only cause trouble in both the short and long terms, after all.
"Hey." Adrian grabbed Rosy's wrist and looked into her eyes, asking the question with his eyes. Surprisingly, her instincts that would normally cause her to end up breaking Adrian's arm didn't activate in the slightest. Not a twitch, despite the fact that he'd grabbed her wrist without any notice at all. That must have been their bond at work.
'...?' He asked.
'...' She answered. Somehow, that unintelligible answer through their bond explained her entire thought process.
The reason behind taking the Fraeguards with them was a pretty obvious one. Rosy was a girl.
These Fraeguards were just as corrupt as other Fraeguards. In other words, they weren't going to focus on searching the mountain, but rather on Rosy. They were going to follow them either way, and the duo couldn't dare deal with them so close to the base of the mountain. Once they followed the group a little way in, they'd surely show their true colors and attempt to get rid of Adrian somehow. By that time, it'd be easy to make it seem like they went missing on the mountain like so many others.
"Do you two need to speak in private, sir?" The Fraeguards' leader seemed to barely be able to choke out the 'sir' while addressing Adrian.
"No. My wife's right. We can't be too careful here. The mountain here has already claimed quite the number of lives. We'll graciously accept your help." Adrian almost had to grind his teeth as he said the words. He hated dealing with people like this. The entire country of Noctus made him sick, and the longer he stayed her, the worse the feeling got.
...
"We should stop here for now." Rosy decided after roughly six hours of walking. Despite the fact that the Fraeguards coming with them had offered to show us the way, Rosy'd subtly influenced every single decision that they'd made when it came to direction. As a result, Adrian was absolutely certain that she knew exactly where they were, and had chosen this spot for the Fraeguards to take their last breaths.
The Fraeguard leader took the bait. "Yes, I agree. My men are beginning to get hungry too, right men?" He glanced at the four Fraeguards accompanying him. The lust was clear on their faces, despite how they attempted to hide it.
Rosy had a small smile underneath her cloak, but she didn't give herself away just yet. Instead, she gathered a bunch of leaves and twigs, then gestured to Adrian. Realizing that she didn't want to ruin her 'weak girl' facade, Adrian shot a ball of magic into the pile, igniting it. Adrian's nature made him pretty bad with magic overall, and his magic power had only dropped since he connected to Rosy, but even he had enough skill and power to start a basic campfire.
"Go ahead." She told Adrian once the fire was started. Adrian understood her intent immediately.
"Alright. If you would be so kind as to guard my wife, I will go hunt something for us to eat." Adrian told the Fraeguard leader, stoking his lust. It was pretty obvious what was going to happen while Adrian was gone.
...
Though the bond with Rosy didn't do anything to Adrian's actual physiology, it still provided his body extra energy. This energy went to everything that Rosy's vampirism enhanced: His muscles and his senses alike. He also technically gained magic energy from the bond, but it didn't actually increase his magic power, since some of his own magic potential went to Rosy, in order to balance out her bloodlust.
As a result of this extra power, Adrian's hearing, eyesight, and smell especially were slightly stronger than they'd been before the bond came into effect. Not as strong as Rosy's, since he didn't have the vampire's body, but maybe comparable to a common vampire's boons.
In other words, Adrian was a far better hunter than he'd been back in Uriah, hunting with his friend Jasper as a way to cool off while still training something. It didn't take him much time to bag a rabbit and come back to the campsite.
When Adrian made it back to the site of their camp, he wasn't surprised to find Rosy alone with the smell of incinerated corpses hanging in the air.
"Took you long enough." She complained.
"Sorry." He apologized, giving her the rabbit that he'd bagged as a consolation prize. Since he'd never needed to camp in the woods by himself, Adrian had no idea how to skin or prepare an animal for consumption.
Luckily, Rosy had extensive experience with it, and pretty soon, there was meat cooking on a makeshift spit right above the fire. Rosy had given him the job of spinning it to ensure that it was cooked evenly while she watched, her hood down, having completed its job of keeping her identity concealed from all of the Mountain Corps Fraeguards crawling around all over the mountain.
...
They didn't make much more progress that day. Unfortunately, the Fraeguard thing, despite the fact that they'd managed to lead them down the correct paths, had set them back quite a bit. The original plan had not forced them to stop for lunch along the way, but they couldn't waste an entire day traveling with those idiots.
After Rosy took care of the Fraeguards, they stopped for a few hours to eat before heading a little further. After camping for the night, they walked on for most of the next day. Rosy led Adrian through a crumbling pass, a cave so small that they'd needed to crawl through it, and finally up a rocky cliffside that they'd needed to free climb nearly fifty feet. Finally, they got to what Rosy considered to be the 'first obstacle.'