Mushoku Tensei: Reincarnated as the weakest Sword God

It's been two months since I started to have contact with Ariel, I didn't do much more than start planning our route, although I didn't do much since Rudeus was the one who gave the ideas, but the news that the king had fallen ill arrived a month earlier than planned, so Ariel and her entourage had to rush things.

There is nothing to highlight at home, unfortunately none of my wives got pregnant from that crazy night.

The only change is that Isolte was finally able to make a long sword of light which made her a saint of the sword, with this it was her moment to return to Asura, it was an emotional farewell between her, Eris and Nina, but nothing more.

The trip from Ranoa to the Kingdom of Asura used to last several months, but fortunately, we had access to the teleportation circles.

Our first stop was Peragius' floating fortress, where we were able to teleport with our carriage to a point just north of the Asura border, from there we would travel in a more conventional manner to our destination

Today we stopped mainly to pay our respects to Peragius, Ariel took an elegant step forward, and began to deliver a formal speech.

Peragius listened to her, leaning on his throne with a haughty expression and his loyal spirits at his side.

A little later, after Ariel gave her greeting, we followed Sylvaril back to the hall, the teleportation circle we would use was located a little further back from the one we had passed through, we found it at the back of a large empty room, which glowed faintly in the dim light.

Sylvaril took the trouble to give us a lecture on the history of the room itself, but I'll skip all that, the most important thing was that this particular teleportation circle would take us to a forest near the Asurian border, Peragius had other circles in his fortress, but this was the one that would take us closest to our destination.

All the manual and automatic teleportation circles throughout the country had been recently destroyed by Darius.

The only one who knew where to find them was Hitogami and the only person with the power to destroy them all was High Minister Darius, who could call upon private forces spread throughout the kingdom, that was my guess and it seems Rudeus accepted it.

Unless you had a suitable place, appropriate tools, and extensive knowledge of magic circles, you had no hope of making a teleportation circle yourself, in other words, we couldn't make one ourselves inside Asura, we were going to have to take a somewhat longer route to reach our destination.

The way Peragius would arrive in Asura was unknown to everyone but me, Ariel seemed to be aware of the details, at least, they were planning a surprise and dramatic appearance.

...

We entered the teleportation circle and soon found ourselves in a ruin, its design and construction were very similar to the desert ruin I had teleported to on the Begaritt continent.

From what Orsted told me, there used to be many such structures all over the world, but since the Laplace War they were almost entirely destroyed.

We exited the ruin and found ourselves in a thick, vibrant forest, according to the map we had studied beforehand, we were a little northwest of the narrow valley known as the Red Wyrm's Upper Jaw.

Unfortunately, we encountered a small problem right from the start.

We had gotten our carriage into the teleportation circle without any problems, but now we couldn't get it out of the ruin, however before I could complain about this, Ariel's two assistants began to disassemble the carriage, little by little, they took it apart and carried it out the door, the thing had seemed unusually small to me, but apparently it was a model that could be disassembled

We tied the carriage parts to our horses and slowly made our way to the main road, where the thing was quickly put back together, the sun was already setting so we decided to camp nearby and spend the night there.

...

As we were surrounded by a lush forest, it was fairly easy to get food and firewood, we hunted some monsters for their meat, collected some wild plants for seasoning and killed some treants for their wood.

Ariel and Sylphiette's assistants took care of cooking that night, I decided to keep an eye on the surroundings, we were a small group so it wasn't that difficult, Rudeus on the other hand sat near the campfire doing nothing.

My job was also to identify Hitogami's apostles with Rudeus, his first candidate was Luke but I already knew that it would only be a moment of stupidity from him, his devotion to Ariel is stronger, but if he tried something he wouldn't even be able to blink before his head was blown off.

I looked at Luke with these thoughts in my mind, he was standing at attention next to Ariel, clad in his impressive and shiny armor, from the looks of it, he was ready and eager to defend her from any unexpected danger.

In other words, Hitogami's disciples were usually his victims, even good and honest people could be fooled by his lies.

"Rudy! Dinner is ready! Gino come get your food!" Sylphiette said snapping me out of my thoughts.

I guess it's just a matter of staying alert, you never know

...

Ariel retreated to her tent at dusk, the rest of us would camp outside, watching the area in alternating shifts.

There were five of us in the group, not counting the princess, one of us was enough to keep watch, but I would have a shift with someone else, I decided that I would have a wider margin to watch the forest, looking for anything unusual.

"Okay, I'll take a look" I said.

I nodded to the others and walked away from the light of our campfire and into the depths of the forest, soon I was surrounded by a gloomy darkness, with nothing but a torch to light my way, I could sense that there were no enemies in the immediate area.

...

After about five minutes of walking steadily, I had covered a good distance from our campsite

It was then that someone suddenly stepped out of the darkness.

A moment before, there had been nothing in front of me, and now I was staring at a silver-haired man with yellow eyes and a truly terrifying face.

I was expected to make periodic reports to Orsted during our journey, the others might get suspicious if I disappeared on my own too often, so the plan was to meet up once every few days, whenever it was my turn to explore the area.

"How are things going so far?" he asked

"Luke hasn't done anything suspicious, and the trip is going smoothly at the moment" I replied

These were the two things I had been tasked with overseeing, but it was only the first day, so there wasn't much to say, Orsted clearly hadn't expected anything more.

"That makes sense, I wouldn't expect anything to happen too quickly" he said with a nod.

"True," I replied.

"However, be on your guard when you pass through the upper maw, though I believe it won't be too difficult for you to break through even if Reida were to appear before you," he said.

"I understand," I replied.

"It will proceed as planned, then?" I asked

"Yes" he replied curtly

If there was an attack, I could use it as evidence to discourage any further travel on the main roads, once I convinced them that heading straight to the capital would be too risky, our search for alternative routes should lead us directly to hiring Triss and her group of bandits

If there was no attack, Orsted planned to go into action himself, which meant a false flag operation, basically, Orsted had brought several summoning scrolls and magic crystals to activate them, the monsters they would summon were not native to this area, so he could convincingly argue that someone had sent them after us

In any case, things should work out according to our plans.

"Take this with you just in case" he said

Orsted pulled out some papers from inside his coat, they were scrolls covered in complex magic circles.

"They're King-level healing magic scrolls," Orsted explained.

"You're only advanced in that school right? Use these if the need arises on yourself or others in your group," he said.

"Thank you very much," I said as I put them away in my own robe.

"Hey... it's said that you're able to use basically all kinds of magic, can you cast gravity magic?" I asked.

"Yes I can, but they're not particularly useful for my purposes," he replied.

Hmm, makes sense, it's Orsted after all.

"Just one thing Orsted, if Luke turns out to be a disciple of Hitogami, will you let Rudeus decide whether to spare his life or not?" I asked

"yes" he replied

"very well" he replied

So, until this power struggle was completely resolved, Hitogami's apostles were not going to change, and once this was all over they would naturally be freed from his control...although it was possible that he would turn to them again later to use them in some other plan.

On another note, it seemed that no matter what happened, Hitogami wouldn't be able to take a new apostle until he reached a tipping point, which meant that killing one of them would reduce the number of pawns at his disposal for now.

Definitely, the smartest option was to finish them off, if possible

"Well... I should go back now, they might get suspicious if I'm gone too long" I said

"Very well" he replied

I stood up and the first of our usual meetings got up. The next one to come would be Rudeus. I hurried back to the bonfire and reported that I hadn't seen anything strange. The next shift didn't take long to take my place and I got under my blanket.

The first day of our journey had passed without incident

...

The same upper mouth was the only path that took us through a narrow valley. The path wasn't as straight as the holy sword road, but it was just as easy.

There were no back roads or forks to worry about.

This place was basically a borderland, unclaimed by any nation.

...

"Uhm, Rudy? Could you stop touching my butt, I'm driving the horse..." Sylphiette muttered from my side.

Currently me, Sylphiette and Rudeus were escorting Ariel's carriage.

But at this comment I lost all my concentration and looked at him.

The guy seemed to get the message and shrugged while Sylphiette just laughed lightly.

I'm not calling you a pedophile because I'd bite my tongue but at least I know how to control myself!!

...

At the end of the Red Wyrm's upper jaw, we had a panoramic view of the forest that stretched out before us. The entrance to the valley was high enough that we could see all the way to the fortress walls on the other side. However, the trees are tall and dense, making it impossible to follow the path past the point where it entered the forest. There was no chance of spotting anything that might be waiting for us in the depths, and it was pretty clear that nothing that happened in there would be visible from the outside.

The fortress walls were high enough that the soldiers on that side could easily keep an eye on the entrance to the valley we were in. In other words, they could control who entered the forest and who left it.

"Well... I guess we're finally back," Sylphiette muttered quietly, stopping her horse at the entrance to the forest. Luke had also stopped, along with the carriage.

Ariel's two attendants stepped out of the carriage's driver's seat without a word. Sylphiette and Luke stepped out, and a moment later, the princess herself stepped out from inside the carriage, carrying a small bouquet of flowers with her.

The five of them headed together towards a stone that stood at the side of the road. It was a perfectly normal looking stone for the most part, but someone had carved an X into its surface.

Ariel stepped in front of the group and placed the flowers on top of the stone, then clasped her hands together in Millis' prayer style.

This was the resting place of all the knights, wizards, and attendants who had fallen fighting for Ariel in this forest. They had been attacked numerous times on their journey north, but many had died in an ambush here.

"There's a much higher risk of ambush here, we'll camp on the outskirts of the forest for today, and then traverse it in a single day tomorrow," Ariel said quietly.

With that Sylphiette and the others returned to their horses, looking much more serious than before.

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