Leaving the Region Capital was no issue after all. The Royal Capital Guards stationed at the city gates didn’t so much as give their shoddy carriage a second look before waving them through, and judging by how quiet the fungi forests around them were, Zora was quite confident nobody was following them. They were heading towards a highly tumultuous region in the northwest nobody else wanted to travel to, merchant and mercenary alike—they had the entire dirt road to themselves, and he didn’t have to look out for any assassins.

  Not on the first day at least.

  True to Kita’s words, the Giant-Class silver ant pulling the carriage was a fleet-footed creature. He may have taken extended breaks here and there on his way down from the northeastern edge of the empire, but it’d still taken him two years to reach the Salaqa Region on foot. He wasn’t the best navigator in the world—and he certainly couldn’t read the maps Machi had on hand—but he could tell they were making fast progress towards the northwest. In just ten more days, they’d reach the northwestern Nohoch Region and meet the Salaqa Lord’s younger brother.

  They could technically reach the Nohoch Region in five or six days if the silver ant ran without any pause, but on the first night, an hour past sundown, the driver pulled their carriage to a halt by the side of the beaten road. Zora knew why they were stopping, but Machi still explained it to him as all three of them climbed out of the carriage to help with the overnight preparations.

  “Giant-Class ants in the northwest are more active during the night. It is dangerous to ride and move quickly at night, so it is better not to ride at all,” she said plainly, helping Kita out as she smiled at him dryly. “I will assist the driver with the unfolding of the carriage. Please entertain my lady while we prepare tonight’s feast.”

  Zora wasn’t going to do that, of course. The colossal fungi forest they were travelling through was dark and full of chirping, screeching terrors—he stood on watch with his hand inside his cloak, listening for any potential ambushes while the head servant and the driver got to work behind him. They pulled out the walls, removed the wheels, and turned the shoddy carriage into a tiny hut complete with stools, mattresses, and wide beaded nets that served as doors, walls, and anti-bug curtains, allowing them to sleep outdoors without getting stung by a dozen Critter-Class bugs throughout the night. He’d never had anything like this during his long march. He’d always carved out a small hollow in a tree or a boulder and slept in it, occasionally using a giant mushroom cap as a rolling door to protect him from the creepy crawlies. This carriage was fancy stuff.

  Kita, of course, tried to help with the carriage unfolding, but the driver and the head servant were far too fast. Within minutes, they’d set up the entire hut and were collecting stones and twigs around the forest to set up the fire pit, telling Kita to rest on one of the stools. Once the anti-bug nets were unfurled and covering every inch of their little campsite, Zora stepped in and attempted to whisper a quiet ‘fire’ onto the twigs, but the driver beat him to it. The young man in the tattered cloak sparked two kitchen knives together and immediately lit the twigs aflame, warmth crackling and burning the shadows of the forest away.

  Impressive.

  The driver may be an outside driver, but you don’t get in the business of running lanes through fungi forests by being a civilian, either.

  “... There is complimentary dinner service,” the man said, taking out a rugged leather book from inside his cloak as three of them sat around the bonfire, shifting on their stools. Machi was still walking around, pulling boxes of fresh ingredients out from hidden compartments. “I am Ifas, hailing from the Sharaji Desert, and I can cook anything you want from this cookbook of mine. I have the ingredients. Simply ask and I shall deliver.”

  Kita widened her eyes, accepting the cookbook with both hands. As she flipped through the pages and grew increasingly surprised—probably at the sheer variety of dishes the driver could whip up—Zora let go of his wand under his cloak and smiled, looking straight ahead at Ifas.

  “Do you know any dishes from the Mori Masif Front?” he asked in the Sharaji tongue. The man raised his brows for a short moment, evidently surprised, before his lips twisted into a delighted grin.

  “Would all of you be up for some spiced serpent skewers for appetisers, and then the chef’s selection for the rest of tonight’s feast?” Ifas said in the local tongue, looking to Kita for acknowledgement as well. “The menu’s for people who can read, but most folks don’t bother with it. I can do food from the Mori Masif Front… unless the little miss isn’t comfortable with food for commoners?”

  Kita frowned and opened her mouth as though to protest, but Zora smiled, plucking the menu out of her hands and returning it to the man before she could say anything. “We’ll have what you want to serve. I am looking forward to a taste of home, though.”

  Ifas whistled, tossing the menu onto the driver’s seat as Machi handed him a box of ingredients labelled ‘southeastern’ in messy handwriting. “I see there’ll be a tough judge among us. In that case, I’ll be sure not to disappoint.”

  With that said, the driver got to cooking around the fire. While Kita called Machi over to sit with them—and the diligent head servant was reluctant to leave her post until Zora nodded as well, tapping his earlobes to say he had everyone covered—Ifas pulled out an iron skillet, metal sticks, and a chopping board from out of nowhere. The moment the man popped open the box of fresh ingredients was the moment Zora stopped paying close attention as well. Ifas was a fast worker. He diced garlic into fine pieces, tossed fern shoots on the skillet over the fire, and steamed rice on the side with a smaller fire in a tiny pot.

  So much was going on so quickly, and the man only had two hands. Zora looked at Machi pointedly, who looked at Kita accusingly, but Kita gave them both puzzled shakes of her head. The Salaqa Lord was the one who’d hired Ifas, then, and Zora had simply never seen a chef of his caliber.

  “... So, where are y’all headed?” Ifas asked, adding pinches of golden lotus nectar to the rice without looking at them. “The northwest’s a dangerous place right now, so imagine my surprise when a request came through from an anonymous employer, asking me to drive a young man all the way to Nohoch Ik’Balam.” He glanced up for a moment to grin at Zora, and Zora wished he could see if the man had pearly white or rotten teeth. “But you don’t seem a wealthy man on a hush-hush tryst. You’re not carrying weapons on you, either, but the young miss and her servant are. Am I correct to assume they’re the bodyguards to your mercantile expertise?”

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  Zora gave a curt smile. “Something like that.”

  “An interesting fellow, I see,” Ifas hummed, stirring the pot of rice, “I get the sense I shouldn’t pry and prod lest the stern servant over there severs my head, but you still best be worried: apart from the Mutant-Class ants running rampant across the northwest, I hear the Capital hasn’t been doing particularly well these things. Everything’s crumbling down, isn’t it?”

  Kita sat up straight, and Zora had half a mind to tell her to act more disinterested. “How so?” she asked. “What do you think of the Capital, Mister Ifas?”

  “What’s there to think about?” Ifas shrugged. “The Divine Fungus Trees are weakening, the empire's uniqueness is getting absorbed by its neighbouring fronts with its 'railways' and 'gentle nobles' and overreliance on foreign trades, the Royal Capital Guards aren’t moving to save anyone’s asses outside of the regions next to the Capital, and they’re demanding more and more annual harvests from folks like me and my boys back in the northeast. I hear the Four Families have even upped the bounties for that Worm Mage and Thousand Tongue’s head recently—they’ve even shelled out months’ worth of Capital income to call in some of the continent’s best assassins.” He shook his head, sighing in dismay. “If they’ve got that kind of money to throw around, they should be tossing a few bones back at us common folk. My boys can barely afford to eat back home.”

  “The continent’s best assassins?” Zora asked, his ears perking a little as he clasped his hands in his lap. “I’ve not heard about those bounties. When did the Four Families up the reward on those warlords’ heads?”

  Machi and Kita both shot him a scowl, and he felt inclined to shoot them both a wry smile back, but Ifas didn’t seem to notice either way. “Just a few days ago, I think,” the man said. “Lots of shady talk about it where I lived, eastern Salaqa Ik’Balam. Word on the street is, a few notorious assassins have already answered the call. A couple of Blackwing Couriers from the Mori Masif Front. A few exiled Mortifera from the Plagueplain Front. One or two Pioneers from the Rampaging Hinterland Front. Even a few from that City of Feasts, I hear.” Ifas looked up from his stirring pot again, grinning at Kita this time. “All specialists in subterfuge, infiltration, and making bloody slaughters appear like simple bug extermination missions gone wrong. They're the very best assassins humanity has to offer.”

  Zora wouldn’t have noticed it if he weren’t blind, but there was just the slightest twitch of facial muscles on Kita’s end at the man’s final comment. Machi dipped her head as well and reached behind her skirt discreetly for her knife, but Kita took a deep breath and shook her head just as discreetly, warning her attendant not to touch a hair on the man’s body.

  Machi clenched her jaw and looked a little miffed, but she was a loyal attendant after all. She wouldn’t dare defy her lady’s wishes, even if it was quite obvious Ifas had already figured out, at the very least, who Kita and Machi were. If not Machi, Kita alone was a public figure in Salaqa Ik’Balam. Of course a local from the city would recognise her at a glance.

  That meant he also knew bringing up the word ‘assassins’ would trouble Kita and members of the Salaqa Household, and deliberately provoked her for some reason.

  Why?

  Testing his client’s boundaries to see how far he can go with his jokes?

  I suppose we will be spending many days and meals together, so it’s all fine and normal for a driver to figure out which lines he’s allowed to cross, but… a tease like that requires extraordinary bravery.

  I see the Salaqa Lord has hired quite the unusual driver.

  Ifas sighed aloud, pulling out a handful of dried nuts and mangosteel slices and scattering them across the steaming skillet. “It’s a big humiliation for the nobles of the empire, having to hire assassins outside of the empire just to take down two men, but if you ask me? It just about serves them right. For all their strength, the nobles hardly fight on the frontlines against the Swarm anymore, especially those… what were they called again? The Five Princesses of the Royal Ayapucha Military Academy? So much money and resources invested in them, and I guarantee they’ll come out of school only to screw the rest of us common folk over with their 'gentle nobleness'. If they’re so strong, they should be fighting and bleeding for the empire in our stead—like the old nobles used to, over a decade ago before they spoiled you and stopped sending you younglings to war,” He stole another glance at Kita, amused at her trembling expression. “Ain’t that right, little miss—”

  “That’s not true,” she snapped, and Machi immediately reached for the knife behind her skirt again. Zora grabbed the head servant’s hand, stopping her with a slow dip of his head.

  While he was glad to finally see the young noble princess crack a little—breaking etiquette and that facade of someone acting older than they really were—the fact was, she put her hand over her mouth almost immediately after snapping at Ifas and composed herself again, forcing herself to simmer down.

  If nothing else, that self-control was admirable, and Zora had a few words he wanted to say to the man.

  “... Expecting the fruit to rot before its season of ripening is an odd way to tend a garden,” he said, smiling straight at Ifas. “Blaming the rain for the flood doesn’t do much to stop the water, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Ifas clicked his tongue, humming nonchalantly as he continued flipping his skillet. “I guess so. In any case, I’m sure there’s nothing those two warlords have to worry about. The Capital just dumped months’ worth of income on a bunch of severed heads that’ll never make it to the warlords, after all?”

  Zora narrowed his eyes. “How so?”

  “When they called in the continent’s best assassins, they also called in the Death God.” Ifas shrugged. “If they were going to call in everyone, they should’ve just called in the Death God, because it’s been… what? Five, six days since that call went out? If any other assassins accepted the call, they’re already dead. I hear the Death God hates sharing their target with other assassins.”

  Neither Zora nor Kita reacted to the name, but Machi raised a brow. Evidently, the head servant knew a little something about this ‘Death God’, but Zora had never heard of them before.

  Were they an assassin powerful enough to actually sneak up on him with his hyper-enhanced hearing?

  Perhaps I should be a little wary, then, if even Machi looks a bit worried for my head.

  There was no doubt about it now, though. The Royal Capital Guards may not pursue him all the way to the northwest, but there’d be assassins, Mutant-Classes, and perhaps even another warlord for him to contest with. He wasn’t excited to fight by any means—and he especially didn’t want to drag Kita into anything too dangerous—but he might have to whip out his book of peculiar tactics if he wanted to regain control of the northwest for the Salaqa Lord.

  It was going to be a long, long three months.

  And there was no better way to start the journey with a plate of steaming hot serpent skewers.

  “... Tastes just like home,” he said, smiling softly as he chewed on his skewer. “You have my regards, Ifas. And do tell me more about the northwest while we continue onwards.”

  Ifas dipped his head as he served Kita and Machi their plates as well. “Happy to be of service, sir.”

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  See you guys next Wednesday!