DMS Chapter 50
DMS Chapter 50
The first thing Flinx did upon waking up the next day was purchase five of pack of 35, 17 fluid ounces of bottled purified water for 50 dollars from his System Shopping Site. He also purchased the cantrip spell Ray of Frost for 1 mana stone. He planned to use the cantrip spell to freeze his bottled water so it would be cold.
Next, he made sure to hook his solar lantern outside his window so that the sunlight would charge it.
Since the caravan still had not moved, Flinx went outside, walked a bit further away to avoid any collateral damage since he was planning to cast Ray of Frost, then put all the bottled water that he purchased on the ground.
Camry and Oliman noticed what he was doing and thankfully just watched and did not bother him. They continued eating their breakfast porridge while watching him.
First, Flinx cast his Ray of Frost Cantrip on a nearby tree, and the trunk froze immediately. Based on the result of his testing, if he aimed his spell directly at the packs of bottled water, they would probably shatter.
The best solution that he thought was to cast a couple of Ray of Frost to the ground, then immediately put the bottled water on top of it, and that was what he did. Soon, ice formed inside the bottled water. When half of the liquid had frozen, Flinx immediately stored them in his 4th tab space. Now he had 280 half-frozen purified bottled waters.
“What are you doing?” Oliman asked.
“They were the remaining drinking water I have, and I wanted them cold, so I cast a spell on them to make sure that they’re half frozen,” Flinx replied.
Camryn immediately rushed to his wagon and brought out the barrel where they put their drinking water and placed it on top of the frozen ground that was the result of Flinx’s Ray of Frost cantrip spell.
They waited until all of the water was frozen and immediately took them out of the frozen ground. Camryn and Oliman were horrified when they saw their hand that was holding the barrel of water still on the frozen ground turning blue. Thankfully, it stopped the moment they removed the barrel from the ground. Even Flinx was amazed at the remaining power of his cantrip spell.
“Your barrel of water would probably just remain frozen for several hours,” Flinx told them.
“At least we’ll have cold drinking water today,” Oliman replied.
They heard the call that the caravan would start moving, so they all returned to their wagon. According to Oliman, they would reach the next town, called Oatwheel Town, the next day and would stay there for two days.
Flinx felt guilty for taking his time traveling to Ilioven. He knew that he should have been rushing to the capital city so he could start leveling up, but he knew that doing it the slow way would allow him to learn more about this world. He knew that ignorance was a crime, and if he remained uninformed about the societies in this world, sooner or later, he would stumble into a situation that would further delay his goal of leveling up. Basically, he was justifying to himself that the slow travel was a form of investment necessary for his survival.
The caravan started moving. Since Flinx had not eaten breakfast yet, he retrieved a plastic container containing grilled cheese sandwiches and drank one of his cold purified bottled waters.
He was a little curious about the surrounding area, so he cast the Familiar spell and summoned his Owl familiar. He then commanded the owl he named Pip to fly around the area near the caravan. Then Flinx used his familiar eyes to check everything out himself.
Flinx was not expecting to see anything important. He just wanted to examine the surrounding area, but was hugely surprised when he saw men gathering inside the forest near the road about an hour away from the caravan. There were around 40 of them, and based on their appearance, they looked like bandits. He was surprised since a lot of the merchants and the caravan guards kept telling him that bandits were rare in these locations.
He commanded Pip to fly closer so he could see clearly and hear them talk. The bandits did not look malnourished. They looked like ordinary villagers, and based on the talk that he had heard, they were young folks from the surrounding villages wanting to receive some quick coins by robbing the caravan.
Flinx realized that some of them were even teenagers. If they proceeded on their plan to rob the caravan, he knew that the young bandits would fail, since the caravan guards were experienced warriors, and more than likely, a lot of them would die.
At first, Flinx wanted to fly there and used his magic to show away the young bandits. At least they would remain alive to return to their family farms, but on second thought, if he did that, then his goal of not letting himself get too involved with the locals would be just that. A goal, and if he kept doing it, it would delay his leveling-up process a lot.
Still, while watching the young bandits, he could not let himself not care. He decided to warn Barthos and tell the caravan master that the bandits were not really bandits but just young farmers who were probably poisoned by some adventure story.
Flinx cast his 3rd-level Sending spell and sent a message to Barthos. Since there was a limit of 25 words, he kept the message brief. After a couple of minutes, the caravan stopped then heard a knock on his door. When he opened it, he saw that it was Barthos and Ludur.
He joined them outside and described to them what he saw. He then told Barthos and Ludur that the men were extremely young and looked to be just farmers from the surrounding villages.
Barthos and Ludur smiled.
“You don’t need to worry too much, young Flinx. We have decades of experience on the road and know what to do. We will not kill those stupid youngsters,” Barthos said.
Flinx felt silly. He had forgotten that the caravan people were experienced people and had probably experienced the same thing a lot of times. They were probably not cruel enough to kill off some delusional youngsters.
The caravan continued its journey, and before reaching the ambush place, the caravan guards were the ones who ambushed the would-be bandits. Unfortunately, a couple of the youngsters were killed, and the rest were tied by the guards. They were going to be herded until they reached the town of Oatwheel the next day.
When the sun had set, and everyone was prepared to camp, Flinx was stupidly worrying about the bandits. Thankfully, Barthos provided bread and water to them. At least, they would not be hungry that night.
Flinx wondered about himself. For the last few years, he had personally experienced cruelty and torture from the wizards as a dungeon miner slave. He wondered why he still clung to the moral tendencies that he had when he was back on Earth. Based on what he had read, he should have been a hardened, cruel man by now, but instead, he felt like he had become a little cowardly man, afraid of curtains since they resembled the wizards’ robes and some minor lightning attack from monsters, and he still tended to be merciful to others.
He just shrugged and pushed everything to the back of his mind, as he had been doing ever since he was kidnapped by the wizards. He decided that he would just focus on his goals and try not to psychoanalyze himself.