Chapter 395: Beyond Evergreen [ 1 ]

The first several days after leaving Greyvale were surprisingly uneventful.

Sage had expected himself to feel something different the moment the city disappeared behind them, but for most of the journey through Evergreen, very little actually changed.

The carriage followed the main regional roads toward the eastern border, occasionally joining merchant caravans traveling in the same direction before separating again at crossroads.

They passed through towns Sage had visited during the Guild’s expansion and stopped twice at cities where Adventurer Guild branches had already become part of everyday life.

Guild signs hung over large buildings near busy streets, adventurers carrying identification plates moved between inns and mission halls, and standardized notices were posted where travelers could easily see them.

At one town, a large board near the western entrance warned travelers about a recently manifested D-Rank Dungeon twelve miles north of the road and listed the surrounding monster activity beneath it.

Another settlement had a Guild mission station beside the local market where farmers could report dangerous beasts without traveling all the way to the nearest city branch. None of those things seemed particularly remarkable to Sage anymore.

They were simply how Evergreen worked.

That changed when they reached the regional border.

There wasn’t some enormous wall separating Evergreen from the neighboring region. The border followed an old river for several miles before cutting across farmland and wooded hills, while the main road passed through a fortified checkpoint built beside a stone bridge.

A line of wagons had already formed ahead of them by the time Sage’s carriage arrived, forcing the driver to slow behind a merchant caravan carrying barrels of wine and dried grain.

Two squat watchtowers stood on opposite sides of the bridge, and armed soldiers wearing the colors of the local lord inspected cargo while clerks collected tolls beneath a wooden shelter.

Merchants complained about delays, horses stamped impatiently against the road, and several travelers had climbed down from their wagons to stretch their legs while waiting.

Boren leaned halfway out of the carriage window, stared at the queue and immediately looked offended. "They’re charging every wagon separately? Even the ones traveling together? I can already tell I’m not going to like this region."

Sage glanced at him. "We’ve been outside Greyvale for less than a week and you’ve already judged an entire region because of a toll."

"It’s an expensive toll."

"You don’t even know how much it costs."

"Exactly. That makes it suspicious."

Mina, sitting across from them with one of the sweets Lyana had failed to confiscate before their departure, looked toward the checkpoint.

"Can’t we just tell them you’re the Guildmaster? Maybe they’ll let us through."

"That only works where people care that I’m the Guildmaster," Sage replied, and the answer made him pause for a moment.

He looked through the window again as their carriage gradually approached the bridge. That was the difference, wasn’t it? For months, he had traveled through Evergreen as the head of an organization whose branches now touched almost every important city and town.

Local officials knew the Guild. Merchants knew it.

Adventurers certainly knew it. Even nobles who hated Sage understood exactly what the Adventurer Guild represented. Here, the emblem on their carriage meant almost nothing.

When their turn finally came, a bored clerk asked where they were traveling, recorded the number of passengers and horses, inspected their documents and demanded the road toll without recognizing Sage at all.

Boren paid while muttering under his breath, and several minutes later their carriage rolled across the bridge.

Sage watched the river pass beneath them before turning his attention toward the opposite bank.

There was no dramatic change in the landscape.

The same road continued through fields and distant woodland, while farms and scattered villages occupied the countryside ahead.

Yet when the carriage reached the first settlement several hours later, Sage began noticing small differences that became increasingly obvious the farther they traveled.

The settlement itself was large enough to have a proper market, several inns, two blacksmiths and a tavern crowded with armed men despite the afternoon hour.

Sage initially assumed the warriors gathered outside were an adventuring party until he noticed there was no Guild identification among them.

Several were mercenaries looking for work, while others appeared to be independent warriors who had heard that merchants passing through occasionally needed escorts.

A trader stood near the tavern entrance arguing with six armed men over the price of protecting three wagons through a forest farther east.

There was no standardized mission contract, no posted reward, no recorded threat classification and nobody responsible for determining whether either side was being reasonable.

The merchant insisted the route was safe except for occasional wolves. One mercenary claimed a caravan had been attacked there three days earlier by something considerably larger. Neither could prove anything.

Sage watched the argument for several moments before Boren came to stand beside him.

For once, there was no joke waiting on his face. "This feels familiar."

Sage looked at him. "How?"

"Like Greyvale before the Guild became what it is now." Boren nodded toward the merchant, who was still trying to negotiate the escort fee downward. "If that merchant were in Evergreen, he’d walk into a branch, register an escort mission and receive an appropriate recommended adventurer rank based on the route. Here he’s standing outside a tavern hoping six strangers aren’t lying about what they’re capable of."

"Or hoping he isn’t lying to them about what’s waiting on the road," Sage added.

Boren gave a short laugh. "That too."

They didn’t remain long enough to interfere. Sage had no authority here, and he wasn’t traveling through the Kingdom to solve every problem he encountered.

Still, the scene stayed in his mind after they returned to the carriage. During the following two days, similar examples appeared everywhere.

Merchant caravans hired mercenary companies directly and negotiated contracts through handshakes, private agreements or whatever paperwork the two sides trusted.

Villages suffering attacks from monsters sent requests to the nearest lord, who might dispatch soldiers if the threat was serious enough or simply tell the villagers to hire warriors themselves.

Independent fighters gathered around taverns, inns and market squares because those were the easiest places to hear rumors about paid work.

There were organizations and mercenary companies that provided more structure, but nothing connected them together.

A warrior could have a good reputation in one city and be completely unknown fifty miles away.