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Chapter 154 - New Form of Travel
🕑 Added 2024-10-11 20:13:23 +0000 UTCChris
It took Sarah an inordinate amount of time to tame one of the horses and after seeing how long it took, I looked for a way to speed things up.
Someone came up with the idea of separating the horses so she only had to focus on one and that sped up things dramatically.
It was a mystery why I hadn't thought of it before but it was nice to have that idea early rather than after we were most of the way through the herd.
Separating them out was difficult but I left that to others. They had to work in groups and multiple people had to be around to put up walls quickly in case something went wrong, but they managed to wrangle them fine.
After that, things sped up for a different reason.
Sarah gained 2 levels from successfully taming her first horse. She was despondent about it taking so long at first, but after some encouragement, she went back at it with vigorous enthusiasm.
Her pace steadily picked up as she leveled and she even reached the threshold for an evolution and multiple skills. Sarah kept what she picked secret, but whatever it was worked wonders.
As Sarah raced through the levels and the number of tamed horses grew, we ran into a different issue.
We had no yokes pre-made for them.
Looking back, that was a planning failure on my part and I should have thought of that, but there wasn't anything I could do about it now.
Sam and Ashley got to work with the only other Leatherworker in our Caravan pumping them out with Vincent's help.
I pounded out a few rivets and clasps when I could but most of the metalwork was done by Vinny rather than myself.
The pace they could make the harnesses and yokes started out faster than Sarah could tame, but that shifted as Sarah leveled. It went from having more harnesses than horses to having more horses than harnesses.
It felt like by the end, we were chugging along at a blazing pace. Horses were being passed through the camp, fitted with harnesses, and then hooked up to the carts in record time.
By the time we ran out of carts to hook them up to we had the process down like a well-oiled machine.
The second problem we ran into was while the horses were tamed and wouldn't run off, that didn't mean they were trained. They did not like the harnesses and tried to buck out of them when they could.
They liked pulling the carts even less. It was worse when we tied multiple together to only one cart as they tried to fight each other as much as fight the harness.
Sarah had to be called away from the taming efforts to settle the fighting horses a few times because it got so bad.
The horses had to be eased into the process and we couldn't just slap a harness on them and expect them to be fine. While that took more time, it was necessary if we wanted anything close to functional work out of them.
We had to refine the process after that. People who didn't have anything to do, or people with professions that weren't accessible on the road, were tasked with breaking the horse in and getting them accustomed to the harness.
All told, it took Sarah several days to get through all the horses and she blew by the evolution at level 25 and made her way well past it. Sitting solidly in F-rank by the end of it, I had to take her aside and explain a few things before she kept on leveling. About the requirements and whatnot.
Plus, we advised her to wait until she chose a profession and leveled it up to match. She was young and there was no need for her to rush, evening her class out with a profession would be best. Especially now that she would live longer than a normal human. Based on her stats and if she managed to get a Body of Wood, I'd say she'd live till 130 or 140, maybe even 150 if she picked up a profession that was Vitality heavy.
Her evolution would be delayed anyway because she had neither a Law nor any of the other Paths to make the jump to E-rank. She had shot up through the levels faster than I thought possible but now she had time to slow down and touch on the parts she had left behind during her mad dash.
Both Jonathan and I spoke to her about the possible Paths of Power and she was still deciding which to do first. We didn't have a Nature attuned Body Refining technique for her but we had a few she could choose from if she wanted to branch out.
Mine wouldn't suit her well but some of the others would. Water wasn't that far away from nature and could be combined into something decent and we had a few different Water techniques.
The only person who would have needed a Nature attunement wasn't with us anymore to necessitate it.
Still, Hal had a Wind technique and Rachel and Vinny shared a Fire one. While I felt both were less compatible than Water, I wasn't going to tell her what to do. We even could go back to the unstructured Poison technique if she wanted. Poison and Nature would go perfect together, if that was what she wanted. The choice was hers, and hers alone and I wasn't going to make it for her.
While we had all of the techniques, most of them hadn't been used yet. Most bought them as their tutorial reward and we had yet to get a chance to break them open.
Most needed a specific environment we hadn't come across or hadn't had the opportunity to make yet. The fire one specifically was going to have to wait until we could build more permanent structures.
Both Jonathan and I cautioned against going for her Spirit Anchor first as that was the one that would take the longest. I advocated for getting a Law first and Jonathan agreed.
We didn't try to push her toward it, but laid out why we thought that way and gave her a few examples of the ones people had. Almost everyone in the caravan stepped on that Path of Power first and started with Laws.
As the days passed and the horses were trained and conditioned, I couldn't help but notice the dormant frustration. After Abigail opened my eyes to it, it was all I could see.
It hadn't even been two months, and people were already fed up with the caravan life. It made sense, and I couldn't blame people for it, but there also wasn't anything I could do about it.
I just hoped that public sentiment would pick up after we started moving again and if the initial trials with the horses were anything to go by, we would be making record time.
Nearly triple our average speed and that was with untrained horses.
Another good thing that came out of taming the herd was we could now be a lot more liberal with the things we packed away. Before, when manual power was used to pull the carts, things too heavy or unneeded were thrown away or left behind.
Now that we had beasts of burden, the things we could take with us grew tremendously.
I had to crack down on a few people that took that a little too far but most were just happy to bring along more possessions. It brightened people up a bit and warded off the travel fatigue.
Our new massive traveling companions helped as well. It made me wonder if there were therapeutic horses like there were dogs before because after getting tamed and used to human interaction, they certainly raised people's moods.
While the entire taming process went mostly smoothly, there were a few off-key notes along the way. The harnesses and training were one, but the other one was obstinent horses.
Some, no matter how hard Sarah tried, refused to be tamed. Even when she leveraged all her skills and newfound levels, they wouldn't cooperate.
The former leader of the pack, the Stallion, was the worst of them. Sarah described it as a rippling loathing at the attempt to be tamed by something weaker than it.
It kicked bucked and tried to trample her anytime she got close and all her skills slid off to no effect. There were a few other horses, particularly the stronger ones, that were in a similar boat.
They would not come under her control no matter how hard she tried.
For those... they required a personal touch from me. I sat outside their pen with a few of my skills at the ready while Sarah went inside. They felt the potential weight on them and knew I was done playing around.
Even still, the Stallion refused. With me standing outside and bearing my metaphysical weight down on him, he refused to be tamed.
I still remembered the look on Sarah's face at what I did next.
~~
"Sarah, why don't you step out for a second," I said slowly. If the horse wanted to play, I would oblige it.
She looked back and forth between me and the horse with a tired and worried expression. She had been working nonstop for nearly a week getting all of the horses under control and her sleep was falling behind.
After spending days and days, hours constantly with the creatures, she had grown overly attached. Well, maybe not overly but she quickly came to care for them and did not want to see them hurt.
She even ridiculed one person who was treating one wrong for 5 minutes, berating them about doing it the right way. How she knew the right way was beyond me, but she somehow did after spending time with them and figuring out what hurt and didn't hurt, what was uncomfortable and what wasn't.
"Come on Sarah, I don't want you to get hit on accident," I prompted a bit more forcefully.
Her face scrunched up in confliction at my prodding and she looked back at the last horse she still had to tame. It was the only one remaining, all the others were tamed already.
I opened the gate into the pen, walking through without arms or armor toward the snickering horse.
Sarah finally caved as the beast puffed up at my entrance and scurried out of the way, but not before saying, "Just don't hurt him. He's just a little strong-willed is all."
After saying that, she retreated outside the pen leaving me alone with the creature.
The horse snorted and prodded at the ground, seemingly trying to assert dominance but it only made me smile.
"Strong-willed is good. I can appreciate strong-willed, but obstinate... less so. You've had your chance to do this the nice way. Now, you get to deal with me. And let me tell you, my words aren't as soothing." I said as I drew closer to the horse.
I wasn't sure if it was intelligent enough to understand my words, but it didn't matter if he didn't. He would soon come to understand my meaning even if the words failed.
The beast fought and strained, kicked and charged, but in the end, it didn't win. Even without my hammer and skills, my pure stats were enough to cow it into submission.
It only took a little elbow grease for it to finally come around. Putting it in its place and bringing it down a few pegs.
That was fine enough to deal with. I finally found a suitable replacement to pull my cart and this one seemed like a fine specimen. It would soon learn the weight of what I was tasking it with.
~~
After our bout, it finally allowed Sarah to tame it and cooperated with her through the process. Even if it still held on to some of its previous convictions.
For whatever reason, it refused to travel anywhere but the head of the procession. It would fight against everything if it had to follow behind anyone else.
Even though it took a touch longer than anticipated, we were on the road again and traveling at record speeds.
We had a new form of travel and it was great.
Comments
ItWasIDIO!!
Yup forgot about that so more that less of "but Vinny was better"
Akkido
He put runes of durability on the wagon wheels.
Demonlord
Thanks for the nice chapter π The boss get to tame the boss horse
ItWasIDIO!!
I get it but he doesn't have to go all in just something help traveling that also helps him instead of "I smithed but I'm not as good as Vinny"
Mercury313
I'd guess limited resources for enchanting
ItWasIDIO!!
He's a runesmith why is he only smithing can't he try for small things with runes while traveling
Makarios Rolle Jr
tyftc!
Maxime Cusson
Thanks for the chapter by the way! I wanted to say after reading it and not before. π
Maxime Cusson
Think*
Maxime Cusson
For the title, I ghink you meany "New Form of Travel" instead of From. π
