Village

After leaving our own village, we followed the path just as Ran-san instructed.

The reins in my hands were not of a familiar horse… but of a creature a bit less comfortable to ride.

“Mm, I just can’t get used to these Earth Dragons…”

“Oh my, Lord Woody, do you mean you’ve never ridden an Earth Dragon before?”

“Yes, I can manage horseback riding well enough, but…”

In the desert, Earth Dragons were as common as camels.

To picture them, imagine a chicken crossed with a lizard, then its back bent in such a way that a person could sit on it.

Apparently, camels were used mostly for long distances, while Earth Dragons were used for short ones.

Camels were slower but didn’t need feed, while Earth Dragons were faster but required a huge amount of food.

Ran-san’s group owned both; normally, they loaded cargo onto camels while riding Earth Dragons themselves.

But since the three of us were accompanying them this time, they left the cargo cart behind.

We mounted relatively docile Earth Dragons, while Ran-san’s group rode the somewhat trickier camels.

“This Tree Barrier… It’s incredible. To call it merely convenient feels like an understatement.”

“Ahaha… thank you.”

Though we had only been traveling for a few hours, the journey was going smoothly.

This time, everyone carried a World Tree, and we traveled surrounded by the Tree Barrier.

So not a single grain of sand struck us, and not a single monster encounter occurred.

Ran-san and her companions spoke in unison about how they had never experienced such a safe journey before.

“Thanks to this Tree Barrier, we can go at several times our normal speed. We might even reach the village before the day is out.”

I laughed at Ran-san’s joke.

But as the saying went, truth was stranger than fiction.

Just as Ran-san had said, we reached the first village before sunset.