While walking through the forest by myself was already an unfunny experience, doing so with the baggage of over three hundred people, could only be called excruciating. Not only I had to make sure that the wild beasts wouldn"t do harm to even a single one of them unless I wanted to be branded with a useless protector name, but I also need to be at the front to the formation to pave the way, in the middle of it to make sure no one is slowing the entire group down and at its very back to check out for potentially lost kids from Overlord"s village that have a wish for a very peculiar and unusual suicide from my hands.Thankfully, maybe because of my bulls.h.i.+tery bait or maybe because of the need to keep as much of his men still alive for the moment of the local"s attack that will only come in the Overlord"s wet dream, despite how clumsy this entire group was, it looked like we didn"t have any tail.
After covering half of the distance in triple the time that took me to finish it by myself, I could finally rest, since not even single of my scans revealed any signs of followers who wished to get their a.s.s handed back to them. While I couldn"t prevent the hunters to track the way we used and follow it later, just by occasionally breaking the trees and blocking the cleared out route we were taking would slow down the advance of any potential army that would dare to use our trail to find the encampment of the real rebels.
With how I arrived on the island right before the sun would set, took my sweet time finding the ancestral grounds of the locals and enjoying the talk with some tea with the golem, I ended up in the Overlord"s mansion a bit later than the morning. Spending some quality time with his family, meeting the envoy and showing him that the upper part of the walls was pained haphazardly as compared to the layer at the very bottom and enjoying the party threw up by the Overlord in order to keep me active and fit, gave enough time for the sun to travel most of its usual daily route before I even managed to finally get on a trip with those poor people!
With four hours pa.s.sing and only half of the distance covered, I had the urge to just bolt forward and check out the progress of boat making on the sh.o.r.e where the people I brough from the ancestral lands would work, but if even a single slave were to lose his life to a beast or some stupid accident, the way those people would perceive me would dramatically change. Stuck with this group of malnourished victims of the Overlord"s ambitions, I could only grit my teeth and keep my vigilance up.
Thankfully, as soon as we reached the vicinity of where the separate dimension of that golem was, once dense forest turned to ruins, with endless paths created between the trees. What I thought to be the worst part of the journey, gifted me with one way to save time!
The most time-consuming part of this march was actually clearing the way for those weak people to pa.s.s in at a steady speed. If I were to just task them with doing so without any tools, the entire process would take a lot longer, especially with how I had to keep them all grouped together if I didn"t want at least half of them to run out to the forest, taking sure death from the claws of the beasts as a better way to go than whatever I had prepared for them!
With the pathway already cleared, the marching speed suddenly spiked to an unimaginable degree. Initially, I attributed it only to the fact that I didn"t need to waste time on slowly clearing the way, but after seeing enough elated expressions on the faces of those former slaves, I realised the real implications of what they actually saw in this fact.
If the path opened up as soon as they reached the vicinity of their ancestral grounds, then that path would most likely lead to wherever their clansmen went!
It wasn"t the physical trouble that most likely plagued those people and made their marching speed as slow as your typical snail. Seeing how their faces changed just from this simple realisation, I understood what they were all lacking.
A hope to strive for!
In less than an hour from this moment, people at the lead reported that they could hear some kind of noise as if a huge amount of people was busying themselves with cutting the trees. Soon, my entire group was enveloped by this sound, before I noticed people approaching us from the sides.
While I could stop them without even exerting myself, it was actually a good sign!
"MAT!"
It was the only name that I could recognise from the sudden shout before the entire area turned into one, big mess.
The moment the people that were stealthy approaching my group realised what kind of people I was leading, instead of keeping themselves hidden, they suddenly jumped out from between the bushes and dashed towards the group.
In a flash, countless primitives grabbed members of their families in to a hug, enjoying their reunion and not paying any attention to anything that was happening around them! While at first, I enjoyed this sight, when it showed the tendency to swiftly turn into a stampede of people looking for their relatives, I was forced to act.
"Everyone, calm the f.u.c.k down! Let them get into the open first!"
Starting with a shockwave thrown to one of the empty spots of the forest where I didn"t detect any energy signatures, I somehow managed to force everyone to pay attention to my words. Only after hearing them, did they start looking around, just in time to realise how squeezed the centre of my group became, almost making the people in the middle of the crowd suffocate!
"So you have come."
As if this was some sort of fated meeting of two leaders, the princess I met in the ancestral ground, appeared at the end of the path on which I was leading all the former slaves. With her attire now proper, as several layers of thin clothes formed a beautiful yet light and frilly dress, that despite the materials it was made from, actually managed to cover most of her allures, leaving just enough hints for one to think he could make out her curves.
After all the nudity that was served to me on a silver platter, seeing someone actually capable of using her charms without flas.h.i.+ng naked skin was quite a nice change of pace!
"Yes, I did. And I hope that you didn"t slack while I was busy saving everyone!"
While I could hear the sounds of people working around the wood coming from further down the road, where the beach presumably was, I had no way to gauge how much s.h.i.+ps did they managed to finish. One hundred? Two hundred? Thousand? It was this factor that I had completely no control over that made me worried, since the time I would need to spend transporting everyone to my island, was directly connected to how many s.h.i.+ps there was!