Chapter 61 – Impromptu Party 2

On the way, the new party visited the crash site, or what remained from it. Roland was hoping that they might find some provisions.

To his dismay the only thing he found there was scrap metal and wood, along with more goblins that they luckily cleared out without that much of a problem.

While here, Roland looked up to the mountain above them. He could not see the path from which they fell down. There was also a thick fog right in the middle of the mountain range that limited his vision.

His new party members explained that they were the only survivors that remained. They had buried some of the other slaves that didn’t survive the fall along with some dead guards.

Roland could still see some blood and gory bits scattered around. Most of it was gone, probably down in the goblin bellies. There was nothing else to do here so they continued on their merry way.

The place where they were in was deep down inside a gorge. The rocky walls were quite smooth and would be hard to climb. The further up you went the more you had to contend with that blasted fog. Going up was out of the question.

Luckily there was a path next to a river down here that they could follow. The biggest downside of this path was that there were a lot of monsters living here. It was also a path that stretched around the mountain and would take them a lot more time to cross.

This was also the reason why the caravan owners decided on going over the mountain as it cut the travel time down by a couple of days.

The scenery down here was composed mostly of trees and bushes. It was over a kilometer in width and the river in the middle was the cause of many monsters living here. Just like any other animals, monsters flocked to areas with a water source. The humanoid mountain goat-like monsters were just one of the many types that roamed this landscape.

The hastily put together quartet of people had now traversed a couple of kilometers through this monster-filled land. Roland was now looking at one of his wands that had run out of charges after a couple of encounters.

He looked at the male moon elf swordsman examining the lady elf. The man was like a nanny that somehow wasn’t able to take more than one step away from her. He was like a tick that wouldn’t go away.

The other major fighting force that was the half-orc always ran into battle with a smile on his face. He constantly broke formation and caused Roland to overuse his spells. He was running on a limited budget of charges and was afraid that he would run out of juice soon.

He didn’t say anything at first, thinking that they would get a grip on the situation. Instead, they just continued with this strategy, maybe they thought that he would pick up the slack with his spell-slinging. They might have not realized that his mana pool and gear usage were limited.

“Hey… are you being serious now?”

Roland’s face twitched as he looked at Logon examining Aredhel for the hundredth time. Golgrim was right next to them getting healed by the acolyte. He had, even more bite and claw marks on his body than usual.

“What do you mean?”

Logon replied while Aredhel scooted to the side, the woman looked a bit fed up with how he was treating her as well.

“Do you two want to get us all killed or something?”

Roland crossed his arms over one another while glaring at the moon elf and green skin.

“Will she go up in flames if you leave her alone for a second?”

Logon turned around to face Roland, the youth was squinting his eyes in his direction and certainly looked annoyed.

“With all due respect Mr. Carmine. I am thankful for your help but I can not abandon lady Aredhel. What if some creature sneaks up on the defenseless lady! I could not live with myself if anything happened to her! I promised to protect her with my life! I need to return her safely to her family!”

Roland flinched slightly as the man started unloading a monologue towards him. His eyes were bloodshot and it looked like he was close to blowing a fuse. Maybe the shock of not being able to protect this elven lady had been too much for this guy. It looked like he was getting paranoid.

“Oh, will you be quiet!”

Before Roland could think about a good retort to stop this babbling idiot of a swordsman. Aredhel moved in from behind and gave Logon an open hand smack to the back of the head.

“M…M’lady?”

The man was stunned while also stopping with his rambling shouts. He slowly turned around to see Aredhel with both her hands on her hips. She had her face slightly raised and her eyebrows were furrowed.

“Stop causing trouble for Mr. Carmine. He was caring enough to rid us of those slave collars and even saved us twice!”

Roland just took a step back while the silver-haired elven woman was now the one shouting. She started reprimanding her bodyguard while mostly bringing up Roland’s previous deeds. Mostly implying that the three of them would be already dead if he didn’t intervene.

The first time being where he threw mana shields out when he was falling. The other one when he took care of the hobgoblin when Logon got wounded.

“I… I’m sorry… This was a severe and continuous lapse in my judgment. Please accept my sincere apology, Mr. Carmine.”

The man did a quick 180 and started to apologize. He took his lady’s words to heart almost instantly. Roland realized that it would probably be better to just talk to Aredhel instead if he wanted to get things done. The woman apparently had this man wrapped around her finger, she was even the one that could control that half-orc.

Roland wasn’t sure but he had an idea why this was the case. When he was removing the slave color he did analyze Aredhel’s stats. She had a high charisma stat above twenty points.

Charisma was counted differently than other stats. It didn’t reach that high of a number compared to it. Ten to fourteen was the average number a person’s charisma would reach. Anything above that indicated someone with some type of charm. This woman’s Charisma rating was 24 and even he noticed its effects.

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It might have been some kind of trait but he found the elven lady quite bewitching. Luckily Roland had a high willpower stat to counteract this. He had read up that a person with really high charisma could affect people in strange ways. It was as if they were casting a mind control spell, if the person was susceptible to it they would perform tasks that they wouldn’t normally do.

There were also some classes that used this to their advantage. Bards were one type of class that relied on it, some could even enchant people with their voices. There were also monsters like an Incubus or a Succubus that led adventurers astray. Someone with a high enough charm could topple kingdoms and empires. They could affect people in power to the point of mad devotion.

The girl here wasn’t quite at that level though, at most she could slightly affect these two.

“It’s fine if you understand but I’ll need you to take a more active part in the coming fights. You don’t need to stick to your friend so closely. I’ll protect her if something happens, that’s why I’m back here.”

Roland was mostly ticked off by Logon letting too many monsters into the party formation. Aredhel could easily back away on her own while he contended with the monsters in battle. He would then support him from the back with some magical attacks.

He was a person with a lot of firepower but his fighting style was limited to his magical items. Without them, he would be weaker than a regular mage or a regular warrior. The only thing above those was his high mana pool. He also suffered from a limited array of spells.

The regular mana versions of spells showed a decline against tier 2 monsters. They also traveled at a slower speed then the more advanced spells and were easier to doge by enemies with high agility.

“But how can I trus…”