"Geyron, have you ever thought about offering your magic as a service for trade?" Lucius asked as he used Elmando to begin moving the carts.
Moving two extremely heavy carts simultaneously was quite the exercise, however, it would only help to increase the mastery he had over Elmando, so he wasn't complaining.
"Who would pay for such a thing?" Geyron snorted, already walking back towards his cottage.
"I would. Name a price," Lucius replied. This prompted Geyron to pause for a moment, before turning around to look at Lucius.
"Geyron heard that you were able to defeat Wise, but that means nothing. Geyron does not know you, or where you came from. Even if you were to give Geyron 3000 mana stones, Geyron would never help you," Geyron spat, before marching off into the cottage.
~Those Gargans must've meant a lot to him,~ Lucius thought to himself as the warriors next to him cowered behind him. Even though they couldn't understand what Geyron had just said, they could sense the obvious hostility behind it.
~But its no matter. I still have 6 days, and enchantments will have to come last anyway. I'll find a way to get him to enchant them. If not him, then his sons,~ Lucius thought to himself, before heading back towards the Zeldrave den.
*
On the way back, Lucius interchanged between pushing the carts using Elmando and using his own strength, as the strain proved to be way more than his Elmando could handle for elongated periods of time. Even with 'solar cleanse' resetting some of the strain, they were delayed by at least an extra 3 hours due to this.
However, he wasn't solely to blame for this delay, as the warriors themselves begged for rest stops just as often. Lucius had ordered them to put even more materials into the cart, and there was only so much energy they could recover from 'solar cleanse' and the short rests they were taking.
When they had gotten a little closer to the dark forest, Lucius decided to take an even longer pit stop than usual. They were about to go back into enemy territory, so having a sluggish crew was a big no.
Whilst they were taking this break he got about an hour of photosynthesis in.
All in all, he managed to accumulate 10.3 million helios, all of which he allocated towards evolution. In addition to that, he allocated all the helios he had saved up thus far -which amounted to about 24 million helios.
His body glowed slightly for a moment, as his height increased from 1.4 meters to nearly 1.5 meters.
His tail grew thicker and was now 4 meters long. His claws turned a few shades darker than they had been before, now nearly jet black.
His horns began to form even more branches, with the longest branch now extending to 0.6 meters. Its once buck-like structure now seemed more alien, demonic almost.
And something odd was beginning to happen with his skin. Where it was once just plain green, with a few areas turning brown, it now seemed like there were patterns immerging. However, even with his hyper senses, he could just barely notice the difference in tint, much less make out what the patterns were.
However, the biggest difference of all was the tighter pull he felt coming from the ground. It felt as if gravity had been doubled, however, that clearly wasn't the case as his movements did not seem hindered.
In fact, this wasn't a bad feeling at all. For some reason the tighter pull made him feel safer, like he knew the earth was protecting him somehow. And although it was only slight, he could almost hear something whispering to him from the ground, though it very well could've been due to his now more enhanced senses picking up something in the distance.
"Y-You grew," one of the warriors shouted in shock. All the other warriors were too stunned to even speak.
Usually, Lucius would've been worried about them seeing this, however, he was Havon. Anything was possible.
"The Sky spirits have blessed me," Lucius lied, before ordering the group to proceed.
This was more than enough to fool everyone else, however, Zhayen gave him a skeptical look. Though Lucius didn't want to question him about it in front of the others. If they perceived Zhayen's skepticism as an insult to their savior, then there was a chance he would be alienated even in the new den.
*
In order for them to pass such a massive cargo through the now corrupted dark forest unnoticed, Lucius had to employ a number of tactics.
For one, he had to divide one of the larger carts into several smaller carts, each of them carrying a specific resource.
Unfortunately, this wouldn't be possible for the larger cart carrying the Gargans, so he would have to find some other way to get it through.
Luckily for them, the undead seemed to be way less active during the day, so after clearing out what few undead were wandering about -and burying their pulped remains- Lucius ordered the warriors to begin pulling the smaller carts towards the den.
Due to the weight each of the carts carried, it took all four of the warriors to push a single cart at a time. And Lucius couldn't help much either as he had to stay with the large cart to ensure that nothing happened to it.
So this little excursion took them around 2 hours to complete, at which point only the large cart was left.
"What are we going to do with that one?" Zhayen asked.
The child had been patiently sitting with Lucius whilst all this had been happening. Lucius had told him he was allowed to go back to the den with the warriors and rest, though it didn't come as a surprise when he declined the offer.
Lucius was the only person he knew now, and his history of being alienated didn't give him much hope in the hospitality of the patrons of his new home.
