We rode south back in the rough direction from which I had come. We rode all day before resting just as the sun had started to set. The knights all slept in one place and I slept far away wrapped up in the clothes. I hoped that because of the clothes I was wrapped up in the wouldn't notice my transformation. And that worked fine for the first night.
Then we continued for another day we ate bread and had water and the knights also had a small portion of wine. Then just on the horizon to our left, we could see a village.
"Are you sure you don't want to go back to your village? It's right over there."
"No, I'd rather go to the capital. That way I can get working and maybe start a life."
"At your age? You'd be lucky to be paid enough for bread."
"You'll be better off where the locals know you. Yeah, we'll stop you off there. It's not a problem for us. It's only a 10-minute detour as a whole."
"Yeah, you're lucky your village was right between us and the capital."
"And it will save you 2 days of travel.
"Well let's rest now and you should have made your decision by the morning"
I went to sleep and transformed back. I knew it would take too long to reach the capital on foot so I had to try and hitch a ride with them even though it was very risky. Every single night I had to deactivate my transformation. So it would be very easy for them to find me like that. So if I continued with them to the capital I'd be sleeping around them for 2 more nights before arriving making the chances of discovery pretty high.
So I slept
"Have you made your decision?... hold on what the fuck!.. Everybody wake up There's a monster in the girl's bed!"
"What is it?"
"I don't know it's hairy and has pointy ears"
I had been rudely awakened and discovered. It was clear that my cover was blown.
"How big is it?"
"It's pretty small"
"You idiot that's a monada. Don't wake us up for something like that again."
"Why?"
"Monadas are the weakest monsters that exist. The only way a monada could ever kill anybody is if they were an unarmed child... Oh shit!"
"Did you hear anything last night? Maybe she ran off, she wasn't necessarily eaten"
"Maybe she was a monada that whole time"
"No that's impossible Monadas are non-magical and not intelligent enough to mimic a human, like that."
"We can only hope that she ran away instead of got eaten"
"Let's kill the monada just for good measure"
"Agreed"
Then dread welled up inside me. They were going to try and kill me. 3 fully suited up men trained in combat with swords against me. The weakest monster that exists. Just one and completely unharmed, well I supposed that was what the grinding was for.
But it seemed that they were going to be cocky. Only one of them approached me.
"Don't worry I'll handle it"
He grabbed his sword and swung it at me. The sword struck me and left a shallow wound in my tough hide.
"What the hell! I just swung my sword at the thing with all my strength and I only cut it"
"Ok let me have a go then, Afterall I am stronger than you"
I wanted to show off that I wasn't as weak as I appeared to be so let the other knight have a swing before I retaliated. I knew it would hurt but I couldn't help it. Afterall everybody loves wiping the smirk off somebody who's cocky and overconfident.
He swung and it had the same effect. The cit was pretty sizeable bit nowhere near lethal. The cut was about 5cm deep and fairly long and narrow. It hurt a lot but it was nowhere near what you'd expect.
It wouldn't have surprised me if at base stats that would have cleanly cut through me. But I had an HP stat of 21, not 5. And that was despite not having invested in HP since I stopped biting things.
So then I decided I would attack.
"Fire Nova!"
The tendrils exploded from the ground and grabbed all 3 of the knights.
"The monada isn't alone! They have a powerful magician with them!"
"Show yourself, coward"
"Transform human... It was me the whole time! Surprise!"
"Put some clothes on! Child."
"Silence I will kill you now"
Then one of the knights managed to cut the tendril and fell onto the ground.
"Ha is that all you can do witch!"
"Not quite"
"Acid flame!"
I fired the purple flame balls at all 3 of the now freed knights and the flames burnt through their armour. It seemed that those flames were perfect for destroying metal. They were extremely hot and very corrosive too.
"Acid flame" I then fired them at their swords and the swords melted until there was nothing useful left of them.
"Fire nova"
This time they couldn't cut themselves loose and they weren't protected by their armour. So they were boiled by the flames of the fungal tendrils.
Then I dropped them from my spell. I felt terrible. It was the first time I had killed a human. In fact, not just 1 human I had killed 3 humans. I was in self-defense but I didn't have to kill them. I could have just tied them up or something. But no I had to fight back. It just felt too much like a game. The situations and fantasy world were all so game-like, that I found it hard to make decisions as if these were real people. But I preferred to think that they weren't real people. But if there was an upside it was that I had gained 2 levels from the whole ordeal. I had never expected them to have so much XP. I had never gained that much XP from only 3 individuals before. Each one was worth about half a level! They must have been very strong. I mean they were the only individuals I had had to use multiple spells to defeat so far but it still seemed overly generous.
I hopped onto the horse in my human form and continued in our original direction. Hopefully, the path they were taking towards the capital was fairly straight or maybe the capital would at least be big enough to see. I rode for 2 days before reaching a village. It clearly wasn't the capital as I had thought when I first approached it. At roughly the same time that I had expected to be coming across the capital, so it wasn't surprising that I would have my hopes brought up but in the end, it was a fake. I get off the horse and entered the village.
The village was full of people and I decided to go around asking about the capital. But I wasn't completely sure if I was even still in Sinmar. So asking about the capital might give me misleading information.
But I asked around anyway. It turned out I was still in Sinmar but I was near the border with the monster nation of Muyseco. And if I had continued in the rough direction I was heading I would have eventually ended up in the monster nation.
Which bearing in mind I was a monster I decided against going to the capital of Sinmar and instead decided to head to Muyseco.
After only a couple of hours of riding, I came across another village. But this village was far more primitive than the other villages I had been in the human nations. So I got off my horse and transformed into my true form.
Then I waddled towards the village.
The village was very primitive it was essentially just 20 small huts made from mud with the tops of each hut covered in dead grass. It wasn't proper thatching at all and instead, the grass looked more like it had just been plastered on while the mid was still wet. The grass was clearly there to prevent them from getting wet in the rain. But I wasn't sure it was actually thick enough to do its job.
And I was right it wasn't a human village. Instead of people wandering around there were groups of goblins. They stood about 1 and a half of me tall. And had dark green skin and somewhat human-looking faces but their mouths were wider and they had very small foreheads. Their lips were very thin and their noses short but wide. They had very long pointed ears and a skinny figure. With very thin arms and legs.
They did have hair however unlike most depictions of goblins. They had greasy black straight hair. Generally, it was about shoulder length for both males and females.
I walked in.