'I need to fucking hurry!'
Ian rushed through the open plains of the frontier with a complete disregard for any and all dangers that he could encounter on the way.
If he wanted to take the safe path, he would stick to the imperial roads and highways. Regardless of the quality of their surface, they were still patrolled and generally considered to be free from the risk of monsters appearing.
No.
It was two of his subordinates that took the easier and safer path as a backup in case something were to happen to him. As for Ian himself, he felt like he had no other choice but to put his life on the line—all to deliver the news to the duke before it would be too late.
'Knowing her, though…' A moment of doubt nearly caused Ian to stumble, lose his pace, and end up burying his face into the dirt—a crash he would be lucky to come out of without any major injuries given the speed at which he ran through the wilderness.
'Knowing her, it might've already been too late before I even left!'
When Ian learned that the stranger his lady bumped into was that pathetic loser of a prince, he couldn't help but feel scared for his life.
He was the first one to draw his sword, after all! And the mere act of brandishing one's weapon in the face of a member of a royal family, if done for any other reason but to protect them from other harms, would be considered high treason!
What's more, given the harsh fate the young prince was subjected to, it was only reasonable to expect him to turn extremely sour, seeking to impart his own suffering onto those around him at every chance he got—not out of malice or cruelty, but to—even if only for a moment before the hate would take over—find someone capable of understanding and thus sympathizing with his own plights.
All of that, however, turned out to be useless worries, given how Theo Valor appeared more interested in saving himself the hassle of formally greeting the local lord than he was in flaunting his status to punish Ian for pretty much doing his job.
Back then, Ian relaxed.
'He seems to be a reasonable man,' he thought as he went off on Lady Tia's orders to deal with that very hassle for her, fully expecting this encounter to turn into a pleasant talk or maybe even a little adventure for the young lady.
A moment of respite that would allow her to stop thinking about all the duties and responsibilities she was burdened with ever since her earliest years.
Not in a million years did Ian expect, however, that upon his return he would learn that not only did his lady accept that useless prince—a loser that accepted his unfortunate fate rather than fighting tooth and nail to change it—as her master!
And if that wasn't enough, she openly aligned her entire household with his name, effectively dragging the grand duke into the factional war that he was so vehemently opposed to joining!
'Faster!'
Only this one order existed in Ian's mind for the moment as he shortened the distance he had to cross by targeting the Grand Duke's domain directly, like a bird flying freely through the sky would, rather than following the laid-out, rigid set of the roads and highways either restored from the crown's imperial period or laid anew during the times of the kingdom's restoration.
It was a much tougher, more challenging, less comfortable, and brutally more dangerous path to take… but one that effectively cut the distance Ian had to cross from a month by a carriage to just two weeks.
That, when accounting for the speed at which a rank seven cultivator of the Nascent Soul could run at, brought down the travel time to just a measly four days!
Still.
Four days to reach the duke and inform him of the development, then at least two more days to get back to the young lady—and that's assuming the duke would spare one of his precious artifacts given the urgency and weight of the situation.
Either way, it would take at least six days from the moment Ian learned about the young lady's unexpected move to when the grand duke would be able to rectify her foolishness. And given the rumors about what the young lady offered up as a price for her tutelage first…
Ian gritted his teeth at the mere thought of that loser of a prince daring to lay his filthy, unqualified hands onto the fair skin of the duke's young princess.
'Faster, I need to go even faster!'
//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\
"Hurry it up, men!" Leno twisted his body in the saddle to look over to the back, where the small cavalry detachment followed in his steps. "We still have a week's worth of distance to cover!"
The kingdom was one of the biggest entities on the continent's map. And while nowhere as big as the remnants of the old empire, it would still take at least a month by a beast to cross from one of its ends to the other.
Unfortunately, the frontier where Gracian was deployed to oversee the culling of the monsters just so happened to be quite some distance away from the wilderness frontier of the Slevian sect. And while it wasn't as bad as being on the literal other end of the country… it still wasn't a distance one could cover in just a day or two, regardless if they used a travel beast or not.
'Heck, even an early divine stage cultivator would struggle to cross the country in a hurry!' Leno thought, gritting his teeth as he raised his eyes up to the sky, to the open path that only birds, monsters, and cultivators of the ninth rank or above could traverse.
Still, using a travel beast was better than running on foot like some sort of peasant or even using a horse like most of the merchants did.
A travel beast could travel nearly thrice as fast as a horse while accumulating exhaustion at merely a quarter the rate of a horse, making it the best possible mount to cross long distances quickly.
Yet, for all its endurance and speed, the huge lizards of the cultivator's cavalry still needed to get some rest, to make a stop to satisfy their thirst and hunger or even to take a piss and dump out by the side of the road. What's more, for all the speed that those beasts could offer, those huge and extremely comfortable lizards offered little to no value when it came to battle, making them a prime target for any wild monster that managed to make it past the kingdom's defenses or slipped through all the long years of the royal efforts to fully genocide them.
That weakness forced Leno to stick to the roads big and small, nearly doubling the distance he needed to travel to reach the sect of Gracian's brother. And when accounting for the trip back…
It meant Leno would be away from his friend and master's side for over two damn weeks!
And just the thought of that was enough to make the precious core in Leno's pouch feel all the heavier.
"Hurry it up, men!" Leno screamed out once again, this time with renewed passion. "Do you want to slack forever?!"