Damion’s talk with his parents was not as difficult as he thought it would be. Evidently, the road between Saung and Bufort was traveled enough that his mother was comfortable with the mission, even though he would be away from home for the first time.
What Damion did not know, was that as soon as he walked out the door in the morning to travel to the meeting place for the mission, his mother broke down crying. Damion’s father and Ms. Teft had been preparing Sharon for this day ever since Damion passed his licensing test. Now that the day had finally come, Sharon was only able to hold her tears back long enough to see Damion out the door.
The night before the mission, Sharon had comforted herself by packing Damion’s backpack with supplies her son would need. A change of clothes, a canteen of water, three apples and a sandwich. She had wanted to pack something for every eventuality, but Caleb had stopped her from going overboard. Damion could only carry with him one bag after all, and if it was so overflowing with supplies it might very well get it in the way and do Damion more harm than good.
For himself, Damion had grabbed the little bit of pocket money he had, which only amounted to 40 copper coins. His sword was strapped to his left hip, which he thought made him look dashing, and on his right hip had a knife that was about 15 centimeters long.
When Damion arrived at the east gate he saw the trade caravan. Ten large trucks with enclosed trailers that had what appeared to be a set of chairs on top of the cap all lined up near the gate. In this life, Damion had never seen anything like them. The trucks reminded him of the few times, in his first life, he stopped at a truck stop, but each of these trucks were easily twice the size of the big rigs from Earth.
Damion spotted the check-in station, which was just a simple table with a middle-aged man sitting behind it. Making his way over, Damion presented his knight license to the man and waited while the man searched for Damion’s name on his list.
“This is your first mission?” the man asked Damion.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m pairing you with Ethan, you’ll be on truck two with him. He’ll brief you on what is expected of you.”
The man handed Damion his license back and Damion took this as a sign that he needed to find truck two and Ethan on his own. Luckily, it was not hard to find truck two as each truck had numbers painted on their cabs. As Damion approached his assigned truck, a voice called out to him from above.
“You Damion?”
Damion looked up to see a young man with blonde hair gazing down at him from atop the cab.
“Yes, that is me,” Damion answered.
“I’m Ethan. Climb on up.”
Damion looked and saw on the back of the cab, a narrow ladder leading up to the roof. Doing as he was told, Damion climbed up to the roof finding Ethan sitting in one of the chairs, a pair of long daggers strapped to his hips. To Damion’s surprise, the chairs were actually bolted to the roof of the cab. This hinted to Damion the chairs were for more than just waiting around for the mission to start.
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“Mr. Hoyt asked me to show you the ropes for the mission. We still have some time till the caravan starts moving, but don’t get too comfortable. The escorts, that’s us, ride on the top of the trucks the whole way, be glad we have good weather today, these missions suck when it’s raining.
“Your job is to protect the truck you are on. The front and the rear trucks, being the most vulnerable, usually have more than one escort, while the rest usually just have one.”
“I’m guessing we aren’t supposed to go chasing any random beasts.”
“You’ve got that right. Unless something is attacking your truck leave it alone. The convoy doesn’t stop unless it has to and stopping to let you back on is not likely.”
Damion made a mental note to not fall off his truck. If the convoy did not stop for him, Damion did not think he would be able to run and get back on his truck.
“Do you have a ranged attack,” Ethan said looking at Damion’s sword. “Or are you going to be completely useless, ‘cause if the convoy is forced to stop an F Rank like you is not going to be much help.”
“I can send a fire attack out of my blade,” Damion answered.
“Good. Anything that tries to attack your truck, hit them with that. The trip usually takes 5 to 6 hours. The front car usually takes care of most beasts we’ll encounter. That is to say the ones not smart enough to get out of the way of a speeding truck.”
“So long? I thought it was only 2 hours by ground car?”
“By ground car sure, but these trucks don’t go that fast, if they did escorts wouldn’t be needed since they would just blow past beasts before the beasts even realized we were there.”
“Any idea what is in the trailers?” Damion asked curiously.
“Mostly food. A fair amount of other trade goods, but at least half the trucks are just food. Bufort is a distribution point for its Yellow Zone. Most of the towns out there haven’t fully rebuilt from the recent beast wave. Bufort is fortified since the Sentinel Order has a base there, so it’s the best place to store food for the region.”
“Why don’t they use spatial artifacts to move the food faster, if it is so critical?”
Ethan let out a laugh at that suggestion. “Have you ever even seen a spatial artifact? I personally haven’t.”
“My teacher has one, but she’s an A Rank mage,” Damion said hastily. He probably should not have mentioned Ms. Teft’s spatial artifact, but Damion figured if he dropped that his teacher was an A Rank mage it would dissuade anyone that overheard from thinking of doing anything stupid.
“Damn kid, an A Rank mage as a teacher. And here I thought you were a simple newbie. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to tell my kids that I was with the Great Damion on his very first mission.” Ethan said as he laughed and slapped Damion on the back.
Damion flushed, embarrassed by Ethan’s mockery. Every young child dreamt of one day being a hero, but Damion knew he had the chance to achieve that, especially with the Magic System. It was not going to happen overnight, but Damion secretly promised that, one day, Ethan would really be able to tell his kids he knew the Great Damion.
“Load up everyone,” Damion heard Mr. Hoyt shout. “We rollout in five minutes.”
Damion looked to Ethan for any last-minute instructions, but the young man was just sitting in his chair seemingly without a care in the world. Damion slipped the straps of his bag around the back of the chair and sat down next to Ethan.
When Damion set his bag down Ethan looked over and asked, “Got any snacks in there?”
In response, Damion pulled his bag around and pulled out an apple for each of them. The two of them could be seen sitting there, on top of the number two cab, eating apples as if they did not have a care in the world. Once the caravan started moving and Damion’s truck passed through the City gates Damion looked out across the rolling plains and felt a renewed excitement for his first real adventure in two lifetimes.