As both mother and son began crying, I decided to leave them alone. I was not that cruel. "Fine. You can stay with your mother. The last thing I need is someone that will want to sabotage me out there." I told them before I left the house. I had learned where Dalmar lived from all the outings we all had after work. When I knocked on his door, it was Dalmar who answered the door. I was relieved when he let me in the house without much of a fuss. The time to ask him was now. "Dalmar. I'm leaving town soon. I want you to come with me. Will you join me on an adventure?" Dalmar sighed and looked off to the side. "I knew this was going to happen one day. Fine. I'll go." he said. It was a pleasant surprise. I asked him what changed his mind. "Well, Azgath is clearly the better blacksmith at this point. When the master retires, it's clear he's giving it to him. I need to find my own place. I guess I can go with you until we find a place for me to set up shop." he explained. I smiled as I told him the plan. He rolled his eyes. "Yeah. That sounds just like the kind of dumb plan you'd have." Dalmar teased me.
Just like that, we had a party of 4. I gave the ring to him and told him to get his things in order. He saw me out. I wondered who Dulgron would pick with his 2 remaining rings. When I got to the inn, I saw him sitting with Helelin and a red eyed female demon I did not know. He introduced her as the female he had been courting. Her name was Tryxlyn. She was a town guard. He was taking them both along for the journey. I thought about it. We had 2 merchants that were Bronze ranked, 1 guard, 1 Bronze ranked adventurer, and 2 blacksmiths. Was the party balanced for the journey? We could certainly make it work if we established our own shop in some human town or city. If we had to fight, I was not too sure. 4 of us were veterans, but that still left Tryxlyn and Dalmar up in the air. The genders were split 4 guys to 2 girls. That might lead to problems down the road, but it would be fine in the immediate. I nodded and we all went about our lives to prepare for the journey. Everyone had retired from their place of employment and let everyone know we were leaving. We all kept the where a secret.
Kicking off on our journey we made sure were all equipped for the journey. Phirlax had his steel armor and weapons that he had from adventuring. Helelin and Tryxlyn still had their weapons. The rest of us got some good leather armor for the trip. Each night, we made camp. Dulgron and Tryxlyn shared a tent. Everyone else had their own to sleep in. We first went south to get to the village we originally came from. There were dangers on the road. I took great care to make sure that Phirlax was hanging in the back. As a guard, Tryxlyn was leveled to the Players. I happened to be the only Player so she was level 36. That made her the most powerful demon in the group. As that was the case, she was also in the back. Helelin, Dulgron, Dalmar and I were the main fighters. We all had to catch up to them. Because of that, we made lots of detours and fought lots of enemies and monsters. I was not in any kind of rush. By the time we made it to the village, we had leveled up quite a bit. I was level 31. Phirlax was level 33. Dulgron and Helelin were both level 27. Dalmar was level 25. It was great for us.
