Legendary Traveler: By Earning Progress Points I will Become Supreme!

Stepping out of the Cavern several hundreds of times richer in materials and Progress points than before he entered, Aoni took a nice long draw of breath of the mountaintop air.

Having been surrounded by the strange yet tangy stench of blood and other bodily fluids for several hours, it was a nice reprieve from disgusting smells and textures. Surprisingly enough, it also seemed to rejuvenate the Lad automatically by just standing in place and allowing the DayCelest light to wash over his body.

'Now where is she,' Gazing up into the sky and looking for any sign of his beloved birb, Aoni thought.

That's right, the reason for his timely procrastin…cough, recess from physical labor was none other than receiving communication for the first time today from Nyria.

'Everything seemed to be going well on their end; it's just a certain floof won't stop bitching about being hungry,' wearing a cheeky smile, Aoni pushed his tired body forward, drawing both his weapons and trekking down the trodden path, then up the mountain toward his camp.

As time went on, and he continued at a leisurely pace, Aoni started to notice a lack of additional noise, which should have been caused by thousands of creatures returning to their native land. And on top of that, he had yet to be attacked since vacating the Cavern.

The answer for his reason came not long after he started moving up the stone path leading to the rampart.

"What…did they do…" Slack-jawed, wide-eyed, and completely dumbfounded by the image he bore witness to, Aoni stood rooted in place, staring up at a chest-high wall formed solely…of corpses.

Clang, clang

Dropping Vestr and Austr onto the stone walkway, Aoni opened and closed his mouth robotically as his brain tried to catch up with the visuals he was seeing.

Wolves, sheep, donkeys, birds, bears, some weird lion-looking creatures, reptiles, the familiar chimeras, and even dozens of the monsters Glacia recently brought back could all be observed, as their lifeless bodies were neatly organized by species, and amazingly enough, size.

"Like…hah, I kinda wanna be mad here because I have no clue what to do with all this, but at least Nyria was able to organize it to some extent," Aoni mumbled to himself while taking everything in.

"CHEEEE!"

'Brother! You're back…uh…are you okay?' Gracefully landing beside her lord, Nyria was happy to see him, but when she noticed the strange facial expression he wore, along with his rigid body posture, the birb knew something was up.

Instead of giving her a proper response, Aoni simply raised a hand up and pointed at the corpse wall while turning mechanically and looking at Nyria.

"Chee, chhheee click clack chee, cheee." Sharp-witted as she was, Nyria immediately jumped into action, throwing Glacia under the bus…I mean explaining what had happened and why things had turned out this way.

'Ah…uh, well…uh…Big sister and I didn't know what to do with the enemies once they weren't moving anymore, and um, you see, I um, remembered how you use parts from everything Sister brings back.' With her small emerald eyes darting around frantically, Nyria did her best to articulate her thoughts while bearing the strange gaze Aoni was presenting.

"Uh huh…and…"

"Clack…click…chee…checlick." Hearing the tone of voice Aoni was using, combined with the fact that he hadn't blinked throughout the entirety of her prologue, Nyria…well…panicked and began rapidly spilling everything so quickly that Aoni's head became a jumbled mess of word vomit soup.

'And Big Sister said we should just bring them back like she normally does…but one became many, and many became TOO many, and well, I didn't know what to do, so I started making piles while she went out and hunted more and more, and then at some point, the bad guys stopped showing up and then since they weren't showing up anymore and then and then, I didn't know where to put things so I started stacking higher, and then the piles fell over so I merged them and then this started forming, and once the gate was covered It spilled again and flowed over to the side and now half the outside of the camp is filled…PLEASE DON'T BE MADDDDDD!'

"Woah woah, calm down, calm down, breathe Nyria, deep breaths." Crouching down and patting her head the moment he realized his birb was about to have a full-on meltdown, Aoni comforted her before she could start crying.

"It's fine, don't worry, you did great, now, GLACIA, on the other hand… Experience more content on My Virtual Library Empire

"GAOOOO!"

"Speak of the glutton, and she appears," wearing dead-fish eyes, Aoni tilted his head upward slightly and noticed the floof standing atop the wall, waving her favorite snow shovel over her head in triumph.

"GET YOUR FLUFFY BUTT DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT OR SO HELP ME I WILL MAKE YOU TAKE 10 BATHS IN A ROW!" Seeing the way she was acting as if she did nothing wrong, Aoni's anger spilled out in the form of the worst punishment he could come up with on the fly…multi-bath-no-jutsu.

"MEEP!" Of course, how could that EVER work? Because the instant the word bath was uttered, Glacia dropped her shovel, spun around, and tried to take off.

Unfortunately for the floof, she seemed to forget she was on unstable ground, and her movement caused a chain reaction in the corpse wall, which ended up with her lying down in front of the pair of Nyria and Aoni with pure fear in her eyes.

"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, Glacia," Lunging forward and tackling his floof, Aoni rolled around with her on the ground for a few seconds before using some hide-rope taken from his inventory to hog tie the poor glutton.

"GAOOOOo GAaaOaooOOoo MEEEPPP!!!"

"YEahhh, you're screeewwed this time; what the hell were you thinking? YOU KNOW BETTER!" Hoisting the furball onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, Aoni gave her a spanking and, after nodding down at Nyria as a sign to follow him, took off back down the mountain toward the only source of water he knew was still around, now that the snow had all melted.

"MODERATION DAMN IT, I LITERALLY ALWAYS SAY BRING BODIES BACK IN MODERATION!" Giving her another pat on the butt, which he clearly didn't use any force, Aoni began a long lecture about the importance of safety and moderation the entire walk down the mountain and to the Cavern.