Chapter 441: The Modest Arrival

The knight smirked.

"And on top of that... Adrian, or should I say Emperor Adrian, is the direct son of the first wife. You are the son of the fourth wife. I just wonder how you even managed to become a Duke in the first place. I can only imagine what might have happened. Considering all this, I’d say that he’s the true sterling while you’re just the son of a slut who your father randomly fancied. I heard she was a woman from a brothel hahahaha!"

"Shut up, you imbecile!" Anderson yelled.

The knight, in fact, did shut up. But even though he kept his mouth shut, he intentionally slowed down just a little. As Anderson watched him, the knight smirked, shook his head, and silently mouthed the words: Such a disappointment.

Of course, Anderson couldn’t hear it since the knight didn’t exactly say it out loud, but he could easily see what the man wanted to say. He just gritted his teeth in silence.

Anderson glared at him but didn’t say anything else. He knew this wasn’t Crestwall. This was a completely different continent where his political position as a Duke held little to no value. The faster he adapted to this concept, the better it would be.

And Anderson was no idiot. He kept his mouth shut because the brutal reality was that he was weaker than every single one of those S-rank knights. And on top of that, wasn’t a mage like his brother.

The group ran for almost an entire hour before they finally stopped.

The one A-rank knight that had gotten himself trapped had successfully managed to follow behind them and regroup. Anderson looked at the five remaining elite knights and just looked away without saying anything about the ones who split apart.

"So what do we do now?" Anderson asked. "Do you think it is a better idea to set up a camp here? Of course, without fire, since we might get tracked if we start a fire here. Or should we try and find a safer place or a settlement?"

The knight who spoke up was the one who had gotten trapped.

"I think it is better to set up a hidden camp here, and one of us can quietly walk out and look for a place."

"Yes, we can do that," Anderson agreed. "We also need to keep in mind that there is a high chance we might not actually be the first to arrive here. And we also have to keep in mind that the group we saw might not be the only ones who got here first too. On top of that, even if we were the second to arrive, we lost our advantage due to the events that just happened. It is better to take a safer route instead of trying to blindly rush and take risks."

The knights nodded. "Yes. Let’s do that."

The group spent an entire night at that same spot in the jungle.

It wasn’t exactly too cold initially, luckily, because the sun had just set. But as time passed, the temperature dropped lower and lower. It got to a point where even Anderson, who was an A-rank knight, couldn’t help but shiver.

He rubbed his finger over his spatial ring, brought out a bunch of thick, woolly clothes, and quickly put them on. The others did the same and Anderson watched as everyone put on a thick set of winter clothes and waited the night out, taking turns sleeping for a few hours just to stay safe.

The next morning, Anderson woke up. He looked around to see that everyone was already awake and packing their gear.

"Let’s head out and find another group," Anderson said. "We need someone who might want to fight, but who aren’t this extreme. We cannot live alongside such an extreme group of cannibals. It would be even better if we can just wipe them out entirely later. But that is only if they get in our way again. If I have the option, I would rather avoid them for the rest of my life."

A few hours later, a small group appeared on the continent a few kilometers away.

It was none other than Draven, Sigrid, Zara, and Kaelen.

They looked at each other the exact moment they materialized on ground and once they realised that whatever had happened, was in fact true, they couldn’t help but let out a massive, frustrated sigh.

The first one to speak was none other than Draven.

"That damn kid!"

No one really said anything else to defend Vance’s sneeze.

But luckily for Draven, thanks to his B-rank knight vision, he immediately spotted three small kids standing quite a bit far away in the brush.

He turned to look at Sigrid and the other two knights.

"I see three kids in that direction. Should we see if we should join a group, or is it better to do something else?"

Sigrid frowned thoughtfully.

"I don’t know what Adrian would have done, but I think it is a much better idea to move independently and act as a neutral group that trades with these native tribes."

Zara crossed her arms. "What should we even trade with them? It’s not like we have anything. I bought most of my essentials like clothes, armor, weapons, and a bunch of food from home, but I don’t have anything that I would actually want to trade with others."

"Well, that is also true," Sigrid nodded. "Even I didn’t bring anything that I plan on trading with others."

"Why don’t we just go and meet this group of kids first, and then we can decide?" Draven suggested. "If they are dangerous, we can just run away. If they are kind-hearted, we can learn more about this place."

The others nodded and the four of them started walking carefully towards the kids.

Just a few minutes later, once again, far, far away. Multiple kilometers from Draven’s location, another group appeared out of thin air.