Little Moon took Luna back into the kitchen to ask her some questions about her situation here in this world. She had heard that Luna didn't intend to enter another world with her Father and that they couldn't go home on their own, so she was concerned about the girl's preparations.
Clearly, Cain didn't understand much about women, so Luna might be missing many important things that he wouldn't have thought of.
"Did you get everything that you needed? I can go with you if you need to pick up any more items that you were embarrassed to pick up when there was a man accompanying you." Little Moon suggested.
"I think I got everything. Everything on the travel checklist that the Lady Librarian made for me is filled now, and I even got some extra stuff like pretty dresses and spare comfy shoes, when only spare walking shoes were on the list." Luna shrugged.
"Do you have some sort of security enchantment? I know it's not safe for a lady to travel in a small group, so you should have something to protect your sleeping spot, just in case your dad also isn't awake, or is just too deep into his meditation. The Immortals are really fast, so he might not be able to catch up if one grabbed you." Little Moon pointed out.
"Hmm, that's a good idea. Nobody in our old world would be that stupid, but here we're just random travelers. I also have some summoning skills, like the Seraphim that Cain called, but what would be good for the protection of a sleeping spot? Poisonous snakes? Or would they be too slow? Maybe something incorporeal, so that they don't get noticed right away?" Luna asked.
"I was actually thinking more along the lines of an alarm spell, that made noise and alerted everyone around you if someone got too close." Little Moon told her.
"Oh, we have those all the time anyhow. Even here in the Inn, we set an alarm to warn us when someone tries to enter the room. It worked really well on the first two who tried to sneak in."
"Someone tried to break into your room? Are you alright?" Luna could see that Little Moon was genuinely concerned for her, so she smiled and hugged the small woman.
"Perfectly fine. They weren't strong, I could have killed them both myself, but they woke Cain up before I had to do anything at all. He was expecting someone to do something stupid the first night we were here, and even Master Moon showed up to see what the commotion was, so I think we were pretty safe."
Hearing that her master was on watch helped assure Little Moon that Luna was safe, but she still worried about such a cute little kid wandering the forest with only one guide.
"Alright, if you think you've got things well prepared, that's enough for me. Just be careful. Life is hard for female cultivators in this world, and the general rule outside of the cities is that might makes right, so mean people will try to do bad things if they think they can get away with it." Little Moon sighed.
"Got it, I will keep my daggers poisoned," Luna replied, taking her advice as a hint to be prepared, not a general warning about the difficulties that women face in the world.
The two women returned to the front of the Inn, where the men were going over a route that would lead Cain by some simple challenges for Luna, and then into the mountains.
"Just avoid this spot if you don't want trouble. There is a dungeon there that the Sects protect. It is off-limits so that the monsters inside escape into the area and repopulate the ones that their acolytes hunt. The whole area is a trial ground, so it is best if you stay well away, just in case someone thinks that you're there to interfere with the students." The Sect Master told Cain, pointing at a spot on the map.
Back at home, the monsters didn't escape dungeons, but that seemed normal here if they weren't dealt with, so Cain made a mental note that anywhere they found a dungeon portal might be a hunting ground for a sect, and not a great place for them to train, as it might seem when they first arrived.
"Are there other off-limits areas, other than the mountain slopes themselves?" Cain asked.
"If you get that far in, there is a crystal lake. It is just a regular clear mountain runoff lake, but the bottom is covered in opal-colored shells and gems. It is beautiful but strictly off-limits. I don't know why, but nobody who goes there looking for treasure ever returns alive. Even the ones with escape talismans are dead when they appear on the other end." Master Moon said, pointing to the mark on the map.
"Then there is the city of Demons. Not literally, but they are evil cultivators. It's a good spot to get questionable goods, but it's also a good spot to get killed, so I don't recommend going there." Little Moon pointed to the city, which was clearly marked as unsafe.
"Alright, that should be enough to get us going through the next few months, and then I think we will go see this Lycan City by the ocean. I've had good luck with beastkin races in the past, so I think we should be fine. If they don't want visitors, we will turn and head back along the ridgelines, which will bring us close to your sect territory." Cain detailed their planned route, in case they met up with some of these people again.
"Do you have proper weapons for dealing with Spirit Beasts, if you should find some? Most of the monsters will be Mythic Awakened, but there might be some Spirit Rank ones out there as well that haven't been found and hunted by the Sects for training yet." The Sect Master asked.
"We have that covered. It's only Immortal Cultivators that we are concerned about at this point. The beasts we can deal with relatively safely." Cain agreed.
"Humans are always the most dangerous of opponents. In that case, I will return to studying this wonderful text that you provided. I think I might learn another secret of the universe from it, not just the skill that it is intended to impart. My intuition tells me there is more to this knowledge."
The Sect Master turned back to his studies as soon as he finished talking, so Luna turned to Little Moon for entertainment.
"I don't suppose you have a book, do you? I always liked finding new things to read." Luna asked.
"I have one you can read for tonight, but you can't take it with you, I'm not done with it yet." Little Moon agreed, pulling a small book from her storage ring.
It was some sort of a knife technique, and Luna was instantly engrossed in the details, forgetting that there were still people around her.
"She's like that with knowledge. How about I loan you one for the evening since everyone else has left and there isn't much left to do?" Cain offered to Little Moon.
"Oh, no, I have to prepare the kitchen for the morning and clean up, then meditate to absorb the knowledge from the book on kitchen knife techniques I had been working on."
They all sat quietly for a while, reading books and drinking the local ale until Luna jumped up on her chair and cheered.
"That's it, the piece I was missing. Now I know how the [Disembowel] technique is supposed to work. You have to make a little twist of the wrist when you get to the anus for the innards to fall out smoothly." She cheered.
Little Moon was certain now that Luna was a lost cause to womanhood. She was far too excited about the ability to smoothly gut something to ever become the delicate flower of maidenhood that most sects expected female cultivators to keep as their public persona.
She had the looks for it, but she might find the personality impossible to emulate, even if she trained to master it for infiltration purposes. That was almost a relief, she would never end up as a honey trap assassin.
Luna returned the kitchen knife technique book before heading to the room to meditate for the evening. That was how these people built their cores, so she and Cain had decided to give it a try, in case it provided the experience needed to integrate the ones that they had used.
If nothing else, it gave her a reason to focus on this new body and get used to not having enough arms.
That had become an issue while shopping. You couldn't store items until you paid for them, but with only two arms, and short ones at that, it was nearly impossible to hold all the things she wanted. If she didn't have Master Moon there to hold things and help her sort out what was good and necessary, she might have never managed the clothing section of her shopping trip.
As it was, she had bought over fifty new outfits, in every style that this city had to offer, and the storage crate in her inventory was now half full. A few more cities and she would be putting things in her regular inventory for lack of storage.
That would never do, she would have to sort out the ones that she liked the most. Unless they found some creatures to fight. Regular clothing got destroyed incredibly easily in a good fight, so Master Moon had warned her that she would go through them much faster than she might think.
