Herald of Shalia 5

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Herald of Shalia 5 Page 1

by Tamryn Tamer




  Contents

  Let's Have Some Fun!

  Other Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Free Book Offer

  Acknowledgements

  You may also like

  Copyright

  Let's Have Some Fun!

  That's our goal here. On it's surface it sounds good, right? Everybody likes fun! Well, it's important to clarify that when we say fun we're not talking about family board game night. We're talking over the top explicit content. Now, once again you're probably thinking that sounds good, right? Well, we really want to emphasize over the top really means over the top. This book is meant for adults. You've been warned.

  Other Series

  Herald of Shalia Series

  Herald of Shalia Book 1

  Herald of Shalia Book 2

  Herald of Shalia Book 3

  Herald of Shalia Book 4

  Herald of Shalia Book 5

  Herald of Shalia Book 6 (Coming Soon!)

  Forbidden Arcana Series

  Jinx (Book 1)

  Ariel (Book 2)

  Mirage (Book 3)

  Theia (Book 4)

  Sable (Book 5)

  Luna (Book 6)

  Talia (Book 7)

  Morgana (Book 8)

  Valaria (Book 9)

  Arcana Slice of Life Series

  Animal Magnetism (After Sable)

  Rank Zero (After Morgana)

  CHAPTER 1

  Frost smirked as he looked up at the sky, wondering when the large mass of dark clouds would burst open and drench them for a third time.

  The first time they were soaked he was slightly annoyed but his irritation faded away after glancing back at the wagons full of drenched demihumans behind him. The women’s saturated clothing clung to their bodies revealing all of their gorgeous curves as well as their undergarments. Since then he was rather looking forward to the continual downpours that prevented them from drying off.

  The wagons were primarily filled with elves but there were also gorgons, orcs, lamia, a wide variety of beast people, and a small quartet of centaurs walked comfortably alongside the wagons with two Arachne trailing behind them. An overwhelming majority of the demihumans were women but there were also several men.

  “Herald Frost,” Shael laughed while smiling at him. The tan elf moved her stallion closer to his as they trotted down the brick road. The muscular woman moved her wet crimson hair behind her ear so she could see him better. “Should I be offended?”

  “What?” Frost asked, glancing at the elf. Her red shorts clung to her thick tan thighs and her soaked white camisole had become transparent, showing a yellow lace brassiere.

  “You keep looking up at the clouds like you’re hoping for rain,” she answered. The muscular elf adjusted her top, pulling it down to show off her large tan breasts. “Which would be fine if you didn’t keep glancing back at the wagons even though I’m right here.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frost said, playfully rolling his eyes. “I’m just keeping an eye on the weather.”

  “Hey!” Renna shouted from the rear of the caravan. “None of that you ancient shrew! He’s spending tonight with me!”

  “No, no, no!” Ena yelled while rushing over to Renna. “You used your turn already! It’s our turn!”

  “The way you say that makes me feel like I haven’t been doing a good job,” Fayeth said. “Maybe I shouldn’t share my turn with him.”

  “Enough about turns,” Frost shouted. “I’ll decide whose tent I sleep in!”

  “But that’s not fair!” Renna said.

  “Then you figure out the rotation peacefully and stick to it!” Frost yelled to the women.

  “At least you’re all part of the rotation,” an elf ranger in the wagons said while glaring at the arguing women. “The rest of us have to make do on our own.”

  Seconds later an argument broke out between Ena, Renna, Fayeth, and various women in the wagons. The rain was definitely messing with their moods. In hindsight they should have covered the wagons since they expected poor weather.

  “See what you started?” Frost joked as he smiled at Shael.

  “You mean what you started,” she nodded while glancing back at the carts. “It’s not my fault that you play favorites. Just don’t forget that we’re here for work, not for fun.”

  “You weren’t complaining about favorites or fun last night,” Frost teased while eyeing up the beautiful elf.

  “You should still stop drooling over those young women,” she said defensively. “It’s not fair to us older elves.”

  “There you go fishing for compliments again,” Frost said, reaching out and running his fingers down her drenched back. “You know that you look young to me.”

  “I wasn’t fishing,” Shael said, blushing as she turned her attention back to the long road in front of them. “But their arguing is going to get worse before it gets better. They’re already anxious about everything and the weather hasn’t helped. How much further is our destination? We’ve been riding for two days.”

  “We should arrive by the afternoon. We’re really making great time,” Frost answered as he imagined the territory.

  A glowing map appeared in front of him highlighting various points of interest. Whenever he focused on one of them, he could read notes he’d previously thought about the places. The ability was tied to one of his memory abilities, Geographical Knowledge. Since the ability was level ten there was always plenty of room for more information. It was one of the abilities that he’d been granted at level ten when he first arrived in the world but with practice he’d learned to use more effectively.

  “The roads do certainly make things faster,” Shael said. “Normally this would be a six-day trip in wagons.”

  King Asmund of Rilia loaned Frost nearly a thousand geomancers and elementalists in exchange for a service Frost did for him and Frost immediately put them to work. The first thing he did was show the mages a massive map of his territory covered in lines and circles. The lines represented roads he wanted built and the circles watchtowers. There were also other symbols for walls, bridges, and also some specially marked off segments where he wanted keeps built. Since he had the men for six months, he wanted to make the most of it.

  After he showed them the scope of the job, he proceeded to show them the specifics of what he wanted built and how he wanted it built. Using earth magic he flattened the earth, pulled up stones, piled them on the flattened earth, and then he covered everything in crushed rocks. After that, he added a layer of sand, clay, and finally bricks creating an extraordinarily durable road.

  The elementalists immediately looked like he punched them in the stomach while the geomancers immediately became excited and started asking questions like why i
t had so many layers and why it curved upward in the middle. He couldn’t believe the looks on their faces when he explained the mild curve would cause the water to run off making the road less slippery when it rained and reduce moisture damage.

  The geomancers and elementalists quickly realized why there were so many of them there. The job was massive. The roads not only spanned his entire territory but he wanted them to be wide enough for two large wagons to pass each other. Hundreds of miles of roads built the way he wanted was a monumental task.

  “I’m honestly a bit surprised by how much more quickly we’re able to travel,” Frost said.

  “Well it takes a lot less physical and mental energy,” Shael said. “Although even nice dirt roads don’t take so little. My horse could ride on these all day without becoming the least bit exhausted.”

  Frost knew that roads felt better but he never looked at the detailed information until after his roads were built. Physical and mental energy deteriorated much more slowly on roads which allowed even amateur riders to go further at higher speeds. The roads were better investments than he originally imagined.

  Although his towers were the key to that investment. The geomancers and elementalists were confused when he told them that he wanted identical stone towers built alongside the road every ten miles.

  Frost designed the towers with two primary purposes in mind. The first was to serve as outposts for guards so he could ensure that travelers were at least somewhat protected from bandits and monsters and the second purpose was communication.

  Each tower had a communication orb built into a pillar on the first floor.

  Communication orbs came in hundreds of different varieties and all of them were expensive. They were carved from various rare gemstones and required specific enchantments to function. Higher quality gems and enchantments wouldn’t only allow the orb to connect with a paired orb over longer distances but also reduce the energy necessary to use it. Unfortunately, Frost had to use the cheap ones.

  It wasn’t a matter of price but availability. He couldn’t find even mid-grade communication orbs in the quantity he was looking for.

  The communication orbs he was able to purchase for the towers used a significant amount of energy and barely reached the two neighboring towers. But despite the low quality, a guard at the outpost could comfortably hold a ten-minute conversation every few hours making them suitable for his purposes.

  Both the roads and the towers were necessary due to the growing size of his territory and his recent land acquisition.

  “Herald Frost!” Renna shouted as she raced toward him on Dancer, her nimble antelope-like mount. “Fayeth sees another group of Granite Scorpions in the east. Can we stop and go take care of them? It’ll only take a few minutes and since they’re level twenty-five they offer a fair amount of experience!”

  “Not today,” Frost answered while staring at the tan elf’s exposed midriff. Renna frequently wore shorts and skirts combined with tight-fitting athletic tops. “We’ll reach our destination soon and I want to make sure everybody is ready to go.”

  “Really?” Renna said excitedly. The green-haired elf turned Dancer around and rushed back to her place at the back of the caravan. “Hey everybody! Herald Frost says we’re almost there!”

  The demihumans grew excited as they continued on their long journey.

  The same agreement that earned Frost the geomancers and elementalists from Rilia also earned him a large stretch of land that started just west of Serino and spanned all the way to the northern mountains. He knew the land was largely uninhabited and it quickly became clear that King Asmund offered such a large parcel because of the quantity of monsters that spawned in the territory.

  Soldiers and monster hunters were expensive and since the land only had a few small villages and no valuable resources, the land was essentially worthless. At least that’s what King Asmund probably thought. He imagined that King Asmund was laughing about being able to offload such a burden in exchange for killing the Prophet of Riliandra.

  But it wasn’t lacking in value to Frost since he saw the monsters themselves as valuable resources.

  In the world of Nivara a person’s power was dictated by their level and their level was dictated by the amount of experience they gained. They could gain experience points dozens of different ways but most of them were extremely inefficient. They could gain minuscule amounts of experience by running, playing, or by doing basic exercises. Even cleaning a house provided a couple points. Blacksmiths gained a few experience points for every nail they crafted but they could spend their life savings on metal and craft nails for years only to gain a level or two. It was insanely inefficient but the vast majority of people in Nivara gained their levels just living life.

  If a person wanted to level quickly, the fastest way to gain experience was hunting monsters.

  At first Frost thought it was strange that so few people hunted monsters given the importance of experience as well as the raw materials they dropped, but it made sense. In his own world he wouldn’t have gone looking to hunt a wolf with a sword and monsters were a lot more dangerous than a wolf.

  Some kid with zero training running into the forest in hopes of defeating a wild boar was as good as dead. It was painfully obvious why virtually every villager he came across was under level ten with only a handful of points in combat abilities. It would be absolutely insane to risk your lives unless you had to.

  Even the elves when he first arrived in the village only hunted to keep monsters away from the village so they could gather food. Most of them didn’t hunt monsters by choice. They needed to in order to survive.

  Then Frost taught them how to hunt safely and everything changed for them.

  He spent an enormous amount of time documenting all of the monsters in his territory along with their respawn rates, their levels, their strengths, their weaknesses, and even what useful items they broke down into.

  He also taught the villagers how to hunt in organized groups to minimize the risks and share in the rewards. Armored classes like knights would act as shields for the parties and hold the monsters in place while damage dealing classes attacked them. Healers and other supporting members of the group would be there to heal, protect, or enhance their party.

  He even had an academy built with classes devoted to teaching strategies that were effective against different types of monsters. Most monsters had specific weaknesses that would allow a party to wipe them out with minimal effort. Golems and other mindless monsters were susceptible to paralysis spells while plant-based monsters were highly susceptible to fire. If the party wanted to hunt wild boars then all they needed to do was bring a geomancer or elementalist capable of creating sinkholes. A boar in a hole was basically target practice.

  Monsters were not a problem for Frost’s villagers but the lack of monsters was becoming one.

  While most villagers were completely happy helping around the village by farming, cleaning, sewing, or learning a trade, there was a small subset of villagers that wanted to become stronger. They would take every class offered at the academy relating to hunting monsters, listen in on every lecture, and train whenever they had the chance.

  Frost would frequently find them drinking at the temple while quizzing each other on various monsters’ weaknesses and discussing group compositions. They were so loud and energetic about it that he ended up having to build them their own adventurer’s guild so they would stop irritating other people in the temple.

  They were so obsessed with hunting monsters and becoming more powerful that it wasn’t long before they were too high level to hunt the monsters surrounding the village. They could have but they would be stealing experience from lower level villagers that needed it more. They moved onto the surrounding plains and gained more levels but they would inevitably hit a wall.

  Frost was empathetic since he also had difficulty finding monsters that yielded experience. Fortunately, the new territory provided a solution.

  “
I’m so excited,” a robed gorgon said from one of the wagons. The snake-haired woman kept plucking excitedly at her bowstring as her snakes hissed excitedly. Her name was Mesime and she was one of the first three gorgons to arrive in his village. The other two both chose to focus on herbalism and alchemy respectively but Mesime developed a passion for hunting monsters. “Who do you think is going to land the finishing blow?”

  “If we’re gambling, I’m in!” a Durra male laughed.

  “I am as well!” an Orc male said loudly while elbowing a Myrran male, nearly knocking him out of the wagon. “We can pool fifty rel each and whoever guesses right takes the pot!”

  Several other demihumans chimed in to join the wager and the Myrran pulled out a small slip of parchment. The cat-eared thief quickly started scrawling down the participants and their guesses.

  “How can you all be so excited?” Erissa asked while rubbing her head. The blue-haired elf cleric recently graduated to priestess and was the primary healer for the forty-person raid group. “Herald Frost said that the ettin was level forty-four.”

  “My group defeated a level thirty golem when we only level twenty-five,” a random elf chimed in. “There are over forty of us. This will be a piece of cake.”

  “Golems can be paralyzed all day,” a black-haired Myrran rogue said smugly. The cat-eared woman held up her dagger and stared at the blade. “I’m not really sure how much damage I’m going to be able to do to an ettin.”

  “Don’t worry! Herald Frost is here to protect us if things go poorly,” a blonde Myrran chimed in. “Isn’t that right Herald Frost?”

  “I’m not going to help you unless I absolutely have to,” Frost said, glancing back at the carefree monster hunters. “Shael’s leading the raid and I’m just supervising. Treat it as if I’m not even here.”

  “Lady Shael’s strong too,” a dark-skinned Durra male said reassuringly from the rear wagon. Like most Durra males, the dog-eared man was massive and muscular. “I can’t beat her in a fight and I’m twice her size. An ettin’s going to be no problem!”

 

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