Chapter 9: Destiny Awaits No One

"Good afternoon." Eristia greeted with a smile. "I take it you're all set?"

"Yes indeed! Are we visiting apothecary first or setting off right away?" Joshua replied with a smile.

"We're going to visit the apothecary first. We need to pick up some supplies from Gali who owns it then we'll ride through the southern forest towards the Asacreta Mountains where the plants he needs grow." She replied.

"Hop on. We only have three horses." Yuriy said as he pat his horse's back.

Joshua nodded and boosted himself up behind him before they rode further into the city. The townsfolk eyed them strangely as they passed, but Joshua was used to it at this point. Luciana noticed the stares pointed at Joshua, making her worried, but saw he kept a big smile on his face. They eventually rode into the middle district and received some cold stares from the guards posted on the corners with two paying close attention to them. They stopped and dismounted in front of an ordinary-looking building with a flag that had a white cross on it hung above the door and were approached by two guards who had been watching them from afar. One kept his eye on Joshua, and the other who carried a spear spoke to Eristia and Luciana.

"Hero Eristia, What is that thing traveling with you?" The guard asked with disdain as he pointed at Joshua.

"Easy there, Simon. I can promise you he's harmless." Eristia responded calmly as Luciana nodded.

"Harmless? I can't sense a soul coming from that thing! For all any of us know he could be an enemy spy!" he retorted.

Eristia raised an eyebrow since Joshua's existence and appearance were known by many at this point. She looked at Joshua who only shrugged since he had only been to the central district a few times and never had an incident with the guards. The one who had kept his eye on him while the other spoke to Eristia noticed the dagger on his hip and gripped his sword's hilt but did not draw.

"Sir, this creature is armed. Should I make an arrest?" the one gripping his sword asked.

Eristia and Luciana both shot each other a nervous glance. Simon looked at Joshua and saw he was indeed armed just as the other guard said. He began to slowly approach Joshua, gripping his spear tightly, before pointing it at him. Joshua took a step back and raised his arms slightly as a nervous smile spread across his face and he swallowed hard.

"E-easy. I'm helping the three of them with a job they've undertaken. T-this dagger was a gift from Captain Mersé h-herself." Joshua stuttered nervously.

Simon raised an eyebrow at his words. He slightly withdrew his spear when he noticed Luciana had her left hand on her sword and was giving him a dirty look. Luciana was an Imperial Guard Knight appointed as a deputy by none other than Wilmarina Noscrim herself. She had worked tirelessly to master the sword from an early age to help her family who were rabbit farmers. Once everyone had heard of her great leap forward they showed her respect but secretly began mocking her behind her back seeing how she was from the countryside. Despite everything stacked against her, Luciana always succeeded no matter the threat. The guard motioned for the other one to reluctantly follow him and they returned to their post with Joshua letting out a sigh of relief.

"Are you okay?" Yuriy Asked him with a concerned look on his face.

"Yeah…just trying not to go to jail," Joshua replied in a half annoyed voice.

Yuriy pat him on the back as Eristia approached the door and knocked three times. the four of them could hear a muffled voice from the other side before it opened a small crack and an old man peered at them from the other side. He gave Eristia a look of confusion before noticing the other three and wondered why they would be here at his clinic of all places. Gali let them in and became suspicious of Joshua when he couldn't sense anything coming from him. Multiple plants with brightly colored flowers hung from the ceiling and a shelf lined with various medicine vials stood behind the counter. A mellow aroma similar to marijuana wafted past Joshua's nose from some of the hanging plants. He wasn't surprised as he knew ancient civilizations often mixed cannabis into medicines to help with various ailments from fever to hemorrhoids and as an early anesthetic in a powdered form mixed with wine. Now that Joshua had a chance to think about it, a fair amount of medieval medicine was just colored alcohol, but since he was in another world maybe things would be different.

"Come in! Come in! So what is it that I can help the…four of you with today?" he asked them as he kept his eye on Joshua.

"Got any work you need to be done?" Eristia asked him, raising an eyebrow.

Gali was a tad bit surprised by Eristia's question. He was having trouble acquiring herbs recently as anyone who took the herb collecting job seemed to disappear into thin air and was never seen again. Eventually, people stopped asking for work and that left Gali in a bind as the local knights were too busy or just didn't care to search for missing people no one knew the last location of, and on top of that the church started labeling certain medical practices as heretical. Yet even still, these three young folk and an unknown entity standing before him looked up to the task. Gali began rummaging around his shelf looking for some herbs he was short on as he felt his hopes rising again.

"Ah…yes, yes! Good timing!" Said Gali happily. "I'm short on two very specific herbs-Northern Wolfsbane and Solar Glory-I need them as the knights need more wolfsbane to handle werewolves and the Solar glory is for making stomach medicine."

"How much do you need?" Yuriy asked him curiously.

Gali smiled as he pulled four jars from his shelf. One of the jars had a bright yellow flower resembling an Australian Wattle flower while the other had a deep azure blue one similar to a poppy plant. Joshua felt his stomach sink as he looked at the jars and began hoping the job wouldn't last too long as he did make a promise to Sasha, after all. At least it was only herbs and not like in videogames where NPC's would give you a quest only to fill you in on bad news about the job part-way through just to make it nonsensically difficult or draw the task out longer than it needed to be.

"I need two jars of Wolfsbane and two of Solar Glory. The Wolfsbane grows among the grass in small, visible clusters and the Solar Glory only grows in trees. Be mindful of Solar Glory as the stems are covered in thorns and it tends to attract honeybees." Gali said with a smile.

Joshua felt his heart sink. "I've got to climb for some of this? And on top of that, he said bees?! I can handle climbing, but I…fucking…hate bees!" he thought nervously.

Gali then reached under the front desk, grabbing a map and then handing it to Eristia. The area around the kingdom of Lescatie was surrounded by forest on all sides, but beyond the forests to the north sat a fortress next to a beautiful lake, Salvarision, and to the east lay the vast plains. The south had a vast mountain range, the Asacreta mountains, where many mines could be found with most abandoned after they became infested with monsters. The Asacreta mountains also separated the plains in the east from the Lescatie to their west. The Asacreta mountains also tended to be rich in herbs and if one knew how to use them they could make medicines that would fetch quite a high price. Traveling far to the west one would come to a port town where many of the imported goods arrived. Lescatie sat on the main continent along with several other kingdoms here and there but many of the smaller kingdoms tied to the larger ones were in the hands of monsters, whose evil mana ended up changing both the landscape and wildlife turning the sky a dusky red with a dark red moon and even caused strange plants to take root that tended to have a sweet taste but if a human woman were to eat them they would turn them into a monster. Wild animals tended to suffer a great physical change and become slightly more aggressive but still tasted the same on the inside.

"I already have the areas where both plants tend to grow marked on that map. You shouldn't have to travel over the mountains to find them unless they've been already picked clean, but that is highly unlikely. Do be careful out there as others who have taken the job have gone missing and I can't get a single knight to go looking for them." Gali told them calmly.

"I think that about covers everything we need. No need to worry about us though, we'll be fine." Yuriy said with a smile as he began stuffing the jars in his knapsack.

Joshua set his backpack down and began rummaging through it for his monocular. Once he found it he hung it over his neck and then rummaged through his jacket for his contact lenses. He took his glasses off and placed them in the left inside pocket and proceeded to put his contacts in his eyes. The other four were watching him with confused looks on their faces before he stood up and blinked a few times before smiling.

"I have just one question…what is that?" Gali asked nervously as he pointed at Joshua.

"Joshua is the result of a summoning ritual to look for a secret weapon to turn the tables on the monsters. His lack of a soul, at least in our world's terms, is coming from what appears to be a far more advanced world where magic doesn't exist according to what he's told me. Regardless of his lack of a soul, he hasn't caused any problems so far so he can be trusted." Eristia reassured him.

"Trust me, if I wanted to hurt you I would have done so the second I walked through the door. On top of that, I also hate pointless violence. The only reasons I'm here are because they asked and I'm the group's medical assistant." Joshua added calmly.

Luciana, Yuriy, and Erişti gave him a confused stare while Gali raised a skeptical eyebrow. Joshua looked no different from every other commoner minus his jacket and lacking a "soul" made him come off as either a threat, an illusion, or something else entirely. Since commoners had little to no education and Gali has studied plants and human anatomy since his late teens he was one of the only people in Lescatie who could even remotely be considered a doctor. Lescatie may be medieval in comparison to Joshua's world, but medicine was effective in treating some diseases. It was only when the plague from ten years ago began spreading like wildfire did priests begin to question or condemn such studies and turned more towards healing-type magic and rituals.

"You're their medical assistant?" Gali asked him skeptically.

"Yep! I'm trained in bleed control and thanks to my grandpa I know how to suture wounds." Joshua replied with a smile.

Joshua's grandpa had fought in the Vietnam war in his early to mid-twenties and enlisted in the marines in the early 1960s when he was seventeen. He did well and ran missions in Vietnam since 1965, being amongst the first soldiers to land near Da Nang with other fellow marines. His greatest act of heroism came in 1968 when he helped evacuate several wounded soldiers and saved five others by covering a grenade with his helmet during an intense ambush. Joshua's grandpa earned a Medal of Honor for his actions that day and later in his life told everything to Joshua, who he trained how to fight and taught him "combat casualty care" procedures. His grandpa was also known for his accuracy with pistols during his tour of duty and later passed his skills on to Joshua which led to Joshua becoming the crack shot after he trained under a secondary instructor and went on to win his first pistol shooting competition.

"If that's the case…then take these with you," Gali said as he reached under the front desk and handed Joshua two bandage rolls.

Joshua stuffed the bandages into his backpack. He felt a little more wouldn't hurt and the bandage rolls he already had weren't even full rolls.

"Thank you! That'll be a big help. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get good bandages these days back home." He said with a thankful smile.

Eristia raised an eyebrow. This was the first time Joshua mentioned anything about being medically trained. What else could he be hiding?

"That should be everything we need…thank you, Gali," Eristia said as she turned to face Gali.

"Oh, it's not a problem, Ms. Vitral. The help I get from young folks allows me to help Lescatie further." He replied.

They turned to leave, but as they left what Gali had called Eristia stuck itself in Joshua's head.

"Vitral?…..why does that sound so familiar?…come to think of it a lot of names have sounded familiar. Have I been in this world before? If so, then when? I'm going to have to look into this at some point." He thought to himself, with slight confusion and worry sitting in the back of his mind.

"Hey, Joshua, what were those things you put in your eyes?" Yuriy asked him curiously as they mounted the horses.

"Corrective contact lenses. I'm far-sighted so I need glasses or my contact lenses to correct my vision." He replied calmly. "On top of that switching to my contacts was for the best as the last thing I want is to lose my glasses if we encounter some trouble and I have to rely on my contacts after that as you have to remove them before you go to sleep or risk waking up with irritated eyes."

"Why don't you just wear your contacts all the time?" Luciana asked him curiously.

"Because this is my last pair and they'll be no good by the end of the month. As such I've been trying to get them to last as long as possible seeing as in my world I'm out of money and currently got laid off from my job." He replied in a disheartened voice.

Luciana, Eristia, and Yuriy shot each other worried glances. When a man is at the end of his rope he may fight like a cornered animal if there were no other options. Joshua was teetering on that edge and they were about to take him into potentially dangerous territory. He may have a gun, but the three of them were unsure if he'd be able to handle it outside the walls. Little did they know of the warrior that would arise from this venture. As they rode in silence towards the southern gate, Joshua thought back to the Sino-American war and then of what awaited him outside.

"Can I….really do this? The war may have been only a year and a half long, but it was no sunshine and rainbows. I had to watch people die right next to me….sleep with an eye open…..Some nights I still hear the distant gunfire and shouting….and now I'm jumping into a whole new fight…." He thought nervously.

"….Hey…you okay?" Yuriy asked him, pulling him back from his thoughts.

"Yeah…I'm fine. Just some bad memories is all." He answered. "Just some bad memories…."

They soon arrived at the South Gate and Eristia dismounted. The gate was guarded by knights clad in full armor plating who stood at the ready for anything. Two knights stood at each side of the gate with a longsword hanging on their left hip and a spear gripped tightly in hand. These are elite knights with more than ten years of service and more skill than the knights you'd find standing at the street corners. Some had proven their worth during crusades many years back or took charge in desperate situations and led by example.

To get into a fight with one of these knights would be a one-sided victory for the knight and an unfortunate ending for those fools willing to try. Monsters on the other hand were a completely different story with most outclassing the elite knights in a battle within seconds. Very rarely did a knight survive such encounters unless one of the heroes was present. Since monsters had the alluring bodies and voices of females many knights hesitated to strike giving the monsters an opening. Eristia approached a knight with a red plume of feathers sticking out of his helmet and the two of them began talking. The knight standing next to him with a yellow plume on his helmet listened and then approached Yuriy. He looked up at Yuriy then Joshua and noticed Yuriy had no weapon. He shook his head in disappointment and raised the visor on his helmet.

"Sir Karlstein….where is your weapon?" The knight asked as he looked back at Yuriy.

"At the blacksmith for repair. The spear's head broke off during training with Captain Mersé a week ago." Yuriy replied half-heartedly.

The knight shook his head. "Go to the armory over there by the gate and get a weapon." He said, sounding slightly irritated.

The knight pointed to a wooden door next to the gate and Yuriy dismounted to go grab a new weapon before the knight looked at Joshua.

"What about you? Where's your weapon?" The knight asked him.

Joshua lifted his shirt and Jacket showing he had his dagger and baton before letting go of his clothes.

"Just a dagger? For the love of the Chief God…..go grab a proper weapon!" The knight said as he shook his head.

Joshua unholstered his pistol, pointing it up into the air and taking the knight by surprise. He had never seen a hand cannon so compact but wasn't all too impressed. Joshua's lack of a "soul" also disturbed the knight who didn't know what to make of him. Despite traveling with Eristia he hadn't made any attempts on a hero from Lescatie's religious order which would be unusual for an enemy spy. Maybe he was waiting for the perfect opportunity? The knight turned and began walking over towards Eristia who was still talking to the knight with the red plume.

Despite not knowing what he was saying to Eristia, he didn't look too happy. Joshua watched as Eristia raised an eyebrow before she shook her head. He had an idea of what they were talking about but there was no way he could change his lack of a soul by their world's terms. Joshua watched as the knight stormed back to him looking rather angry.

"I don't care who you are or whatever world you came from, but if you mess this up I'll rid this world of you myself!" he warned Joshua.

The knight stormed back to his post as Yuriy emerged from the armory with a spear and a small buckler shield. He and Eristia both walked back with Yuriy's face being contorted in confusion as he looked at Eristia who wore a scowl and they remounted their horses just as the knights began raising the gate.

"I grabbed a small buckler for you seeing how you don't wear armor," Yuriy said as he hand Joshua the small, round shield.

The buckler was made of wood reinforced with metal bands and was no bigger than twelve inches in diameter. The front side had a narrow, iron spike in the middle no longer than six inches. The wood was painted yellow on one side of the front and blue on the other, the primary military colors of lescatie, but the paint was faded and the wood chipped in a few places. The handle was wrapped tightly in leather that looked like it was ready to fall apart if he gripped it too tightly. The buckler's poor condition and small size didn't impress Joshua but he smiled as he accepted the shield and said thank you. The group finally set off for their little adventure with the knight with the yellow plume glaring at Joshua as they rode past and the gate closed behind them.