1 The traveler

The year 1004, Abyssal Era.

It was almost noon, and during this time of year, the heat was harsh on the skin.

Under such intense heat, a man could be seen walking at a leisurely pace.

The man was dressed peculiarly. His eyes were hidden under a black fabric, his whole body was covered by a cloak made of grayish-colored beast skin, and a black wand of strange length was resting on top of his shoulder.

Hanging behind him was a sack attached firmly to the wand, swinging back and forth as he walked.

This mysterious traveler was sighted in several cities, moving from one village to another, and everywhere he went, he called himself Lucian.

"As expected, finding that kind of woman is not easy," Lucian muttered to himself.

So far, not a single woman he encountered possessed the potential he was looking for.

But that was only one of his objectives, and Lucian was traveling with a clear goal in mind. He just passed by those villages just in case. His actual destination was the city of Everlight, a place that was the new center of the world.

As he continued to walk along on a road that was surely made by humans, Lucian's golden hair was swayed by the dry and hot wind.

It was not a paved road, but various marks on the ground hinted that it was a path often frequented by travelers and carriages.

Lucian observed his surroundings as he always did throughout his journey. This allowed him to gather as much information as possible, not missing anything that could be useful later.

As far as his eyes could see, there was no sign of human settlement in the area, only weird-looking slopes that were similar to waves.

But on this landscape, there were also various things covered with black hardened minerals sticking out from the ground. Such as strange-looking towers that were decaying and falling apart or fossilized objects of different shapes, from rectangular to square, shaped like a giant bird, or connected like a giant snake.

"...…"

Lucian halted for a while when he spotted the upper half of a statue sticking from the ground far in the horizon. It was a gigantic figure of a woman holding something like a torch.

This scenery indicated that he was approaching the Abyss and his current destination, the city of Everlight.

Rattle! Rattle! Rattle!

Ahead of him, Lucian saw a horse-drawn carriage, but then it suddenly stopped. The reason was pretty obvious.

"Hehehe! What do we have here?!"

Six humans mounting giant wolves were surrounding the carriage, circling it like predators cornering their prey. They were bandits.

"What do you want?!" A red-haired man emerged from the back of the carriage, drawing his sword and standing in front of one of the bandits. Four people followed him.

Standing next to red-haired was a purple-haired man in his thirties. He was the only one wearing armor and the only one who seemed to have fighting experience. There was another blue-haired man wearing glasses but he didn't look like he could fight at all. Same with the two women behind them.

"Fil, b-be careful…" one of the women said worryingly, seeing the red-haired who became agitated. She had pink smooth long hair. A perfectly shaped face. Blue eyes. Long eyelashes. Glossy pink lips. Flawless translucent white skin. And a curvy body. "M-mister Dustin… What should we do?"

"Don't worry, Rita. Dustin will take care of them in no time. He is the strongest," the other woman said, showering Dustin with praise. "Right, Harry?"

"Indeed. Dustin has a relic and he is an adventurer. Considering the situation, there's only a five percent of chance that he will lose," the blue-haired man replied, adjusting his glasses with his fingers as if he had done some extremely complex mental analysis of the situation.

Lucian continued to observe the scene as he continued to walk, not stopping. This kind of situation happened often on these roads. A carriage ambushed by bandits, nothing surprising about it.

Because of the Emperor's declaration, a lot of people were heading to the city of Everlight. As such, a lot of trade was happening there, and the number of merchants, adventurers, farmers, and even tourists from other cities traveling on this kind of road increased dramatically during the last few months. Bandits wouldn't miss such an opportunity.

"Hand over everything!" The supposed leader of the bandits yelled, then, he saw Rita up close and said, "And that woman too! Hehehe!"

"Do you think I will let you do that?!" Fil became enraged and was about to rush at the bandit, but Dustin restrained him.

Fil's courage was commendable, but from the look of it, he and the other three couldn't properly assess the situation, Lucian thought. But why was that? Were they just too stupid and full of themselves? But that man called Dustin didn't look like someone stupid. So why wasn't he saying anything?

Lucian erased his presence as he approached, and no one noticed him, even the wolves.

"Hahahaha!" All of the bandits began to laugh when they saw Fil's reaction. The wolf would have devoured his head if he took one step forward.

"Calm down Fil. You can't win against them for now, and this is not the place for you to die," Dustin said, in a tone similar to a master addressing his disciple. It seemed like he was the leader of this party after all.

But, were they really adventurers?

From Lucian's point of view, there was something suspicious about Dustin.

However, Dustin and his party aside, Lucian observed the bandits, and even though he didn't frown at the sight of them, he was clearly disappointed.

Humans had dropped in quality, he thought. How could they be so ugly? Apart from their huge body, their appearances were of wild gorillas. But Lucian was also a little bit interested in the method they used to tame the wolves.

"I will not hand over Rita, and we will not give you anything!" Dustin shouted. The fact that he mentioned Rita's name specifically in that situation and ignored the other woman showed that he was trying to make a good impression in front of her, Lucian observed. Why?

Was it related to the fact that Rita added honorifics when she talked to him?

Once he noticed certain things, it didn't take Lucian too long to understand everything. So that was it, the reason for these five people to travel together, he deduced. It was rather pitiful.

"HAHAHAHA! Then, we will just take it by force!" The bandits were having fun, seeing Dustin and Fil's resistance.

Right after hearing the bandit's threat, Dustin activated his relic and his skin turned into steel. Then he took a battle stance and readied himself to fight.

Dustin appeared to be pretty confident in his ability, he didn't look worried even after seeing the wolves. It must be because he possessed a relic.

But his relic was a low-level one, how did he intend to protect everyone while fighting, Lucian wondered? Apart from the leader, the other bandits were circling the carriage so they could attack from any direction.

Dustin's physical strength might have been enhanced as well as his toughness, but his mobility would be greatly reduced because of the weight. This would put him at disadvantage against opponents that could move fast like the wolves. Or, did he not think that far?

No, he wasn't that stupid. From the look of it, it was possible that he just didn't intend to save anyone but himself from the beginning.

Regardless, Lucian didn't really care, and he didn't intend to help. He was more curious about the bandits and the wolves that they had tamed.

Dustin and his friends were just unlucky, like a lot of other people. If they didn't die now, they would suffer a fate worse than death after they became adventurers. The Abyss was more unforgiving than these bandits.

At least that was what Lucian thought until he noticed something about Rita. "Interesting..."

Suddenly, Lucian walked over to the bandits' leader and said, "How did you tame the wolves?"

Everyone was shocked by Lucian's sudden appearance. After all, it was hard to not notice someone who was dressed like that, yet no one present there saw him coming.

"Who are you?" Dustin asked, but then he saw the black fabric covering Lucian's eyes and thought that Lucian was blind. "Stand back! It's dangerous!"

Of course, Lucian didn't care about Dustin's existence and even less about his words. Lucian knew that he didn't mean what he said. His voice was no more than background noise.

"What?! Who are you?" The bandits' leader looked at Lucian, not understanding why Lucian would ask such a question in that kind of situation. And, how did Lucian get past the other bandits?

But this bandit leader didn't particularly care about the little details. He didn't like Lucian's attitude. It pissed him off to see that Lucian wasn't in the least afraid of him. That was enough reason for him to kill Lucian, but...

'Huh? Why is the wolf not moving?' the bandit leader thought, seeing that the wolf he was riding on didn't devour Lucian. But he just concluded that he might have not issued a clear command to the beast. 'Well, whatever. Things like this happen. I need to retrain this one properly later.'

And the bandits had weapons, such as big sabers, axes, and spears, so the leader could finish Lucian off by planting his spear on his head. This would also scare the others to submission, or so he thought.

With that decided, the leader of the bandits held his spear in a throwing position and grinned.

"Run...!" Seeing this, Rita's complexion turned pale as she told Lucian to run. Even Harry and Fil had shocked expressions on their face.

But then, without anything visible happening, the bandit's leader stopped moving.

"….." He couldn't even utter a word. And he finally understood why the wolf didn't listen to his command.

'What is this?' The bandit leader began to tremble, and everything that appeared in his field of view began to distort into weird shapes, almost as if the world had begun to turn upside down. "Huuu.. uuuuh..."

"Boss? W—" The other bandits noticed that something was weird, but then the same thing happened to them. "Guuhh..."

These bandits didn't know. They didn't know that this was an advanced form of fear. Pure instinctual fear. They were feeling terrorized to an extreme degree and their body responded by trying to kill them painlessly.

At that point, Lucian already lost interest in the bandits and the wolves. The leader looked like he wanted to throw his spear at him, but he didn't want such a dirty-looking thing to get close to him, so he decided to get rid of them.

But when he was about to wipe the human trash out of his sight…

"GUH!"

A pitch-black battle axe stroke the bandit's leader in the head, sending him crashing to the ground. Thud!

"GROAAR!" Then, the roar of a beast, even terrifying that the wolves came from behind. It was a powerful roar that sent shivers down the spine of the like of Dustin and the bandits.

Everyone turned back and saw a woman on top of a huge white tiger, accompanied by other women that were also riding huge tigers.

The way they rushed toward the carriage was intimidating, enough for the other bandits who saw their leaders bathing in his own blood to start running away immediately.

These mysterious women approached the carriage. They didn't appear hostile but they were not friendly either, and the tiger that they were riding was more terrifying than the wolves from the point of view of Dustin and the others.

The tigers that they were riding were a few times bigger and more muscular than the wolves, and pieces of armor made of a rare metal called Stellarium were covering their body. Lucian recognized the metal at first glance.

Obviously, the riders were by no means ordinary women. They all looked like trained warriors, as their light and revealing outfits exposed their trained and curvy bodies.

One woman stood out from the rest, the one riding on a white tiger that was even bigger than the others. She was as beautiful as Rita, but her beauty was also different from Rita's. She had long curly scarlet hair, with a part of it braided. Her eyes were thinner than Rita's but her long eyelashes made it look perfect on her oval-shaped face. As for her outfit, she was wearing a tank top and a chest plate made of Stellarium, and a beautiful beast fur was attached to her hip, covering the pretty light garment on her lower body.

Apart from that, there were mysterious silver symbols engraved on her abdomen and arms, and all of the other women too had something similar on a different part of their bodies.

This woman reached her hand, then the axe stuck on the bandit's head was pulled off by an invisible force, returning to her hand as if it was a metal attracted by a magnet.

No one said a word. The presence of these women was just too overwhelming for anyone else other than Lucian. He was the only one looking the woman in the eyes, and the woman was also looking at him. Since Lucian's eyes were hidden under the fabric, it was hard to read his expression, and the woman's face was completely unchanging. They looked at each other for a few seconds, then the woman left along with all of their companions without saying anything.

Rita and the others breathed a sigh of relief when the women disappeared from the scenery.

After that, Lucian didn't say anything and just continued to walk. There was no reason for him to say anything in that situation. Of course, if his intuition was spot on, something would happen...

And as he expected, after a few minutes...

"Ah... Wait..." Rita called out to him nervously. She looked like she was also a little bit confused by her own action. "W-would you like to travel with us?"

It seemed like she had finished talking with her friends and they decided to let Lucian travel with them. It looked like Rita was the one who brought up the idea. Why?

"I will do so," Lucian replied curtly and proceeded to walk to the rear carriage.

"Climb behind lad," the farmer who was quiet all of this time seemed to agree with Rita. "The sight of a blind man walking alone under this heat is really something I can't ignore."

"Oh, he is really blind," a female voice exclaimed at the sight of Lucian. She was a plain-looking woman with a round face and brown hair.

"T-hat's rude, Vicky," another woman reprimanded her friend. "S-sorry about that," she added. In contrast to the plain-looking woman, this one was the ideal portrayal of a beautiful female human.

They were both fairly young women, but the difference was striking even for Lucian who didn't really care about humans in general.

"…" Lucian didn't show any reaction and began to evaluate the situation.

Inside the carriage, five humans sat diagonally across from each other. Two females on the left side, and three males on the right side.

They were examining his face as if he was some kind of rare animal, probably because of his primitive-looking outfit.

The only remaining spot to sit inside the carriage was anywhere in the middle, but without hesitation, Lucian boldly made his way to the front, passing by the five individuals.

"Aight, let's continue our journey, youngsters," the farmer said after seeing that Lucian had embarked inside the carriage.

Now, Lucian was facing the five individuals, but he didn't feel any discomfort. He sat with his back straight and began his observation.

Among these five humans, one woman took his interest. Rita. 'Finally, an interesting specimen.'