Supreme Summoner Overlord: Rise of the Endless Legion-Chapter 414: Caravan in the Crosshairs (2)

The caravan moved at a steady pace through the forest. The wagons creaked under the weight of their cargo, and the summoned horses snorted as they pulled their loads over the uneven dirt road.

Reidar rode on the back of one of his Vorathid Sky-Hunters, which he had shrunk to the size of a large dog.

He had dismissed most of his summons after the battle with the monsters that attacked the caravan, keeping only a handful of Sky-Hunters for scouting and the one he was riding. The survivors in the caravan had been grateful for his help, and none of them had questioned his decision to join them. If not, they were grateful.

The destination was Sweetwater, a town that Kara had said was now a hub for the Church of Unbinding. Reidar had decided to go with the caravan because he needed information about what had happened while he was gone. He had spent more than a month on the Ignis homeworld, and a lot could have changed in that time.

His perk, Stealthy Presence, would help him avoid drawing attention there, but there was one problem he couldn’t solve easily: his nametag.

The system showed names and levels above everyone’s heads, and his read "Reidar Miller—Level 557."

That would reveal everything to anyone who looked at him, and he couldn’t let the Church of Unbinding discover he was back on Earth.

Of course, it wasn’t like Reidar could avoid going to the town. He needed to visit a vendor to sell the loot he had gathered and buy supplies. More importantly, he needed to send a message to Lena.

He had to know if they were alive. If they were, they would have to do something for him.

At this point, the church became a secondary issue. Reidar was too strong for anyone on Earth to be able to do anything to him, as far as he knew, with maybe a couple of exceptions, but he wasn’t sure. He could send his army and wipe out both the church and the portal monsters while he was drinking a beer in Creamont.

The numbers didn’t lie. Level 557, with access to tens of thousands of summons, skills that could debuff entire armies, and perks that made his summons stronger than their base levels, made him hard to kill.

The real problem was the Allied Worlds.

If what happened to the Ignis race was true, then there was a great chance the Aegis Phalanx would leave Earth, and the system would be deactivated from humans.

That would leave humanity defenseless against mana. Without the system acting as a filter, everyone above level 450 would begin to turn feral. Their minds would degrade as raw mana saturated their bodies faster than their brains could adapt.

Reidar had to prevent that, and to do that, he needed to build the magic circles the Ignis were trying to complete.

But to do that he needed to gain time, which he would not have if the church was around. What the Ignis did, what they theorized and tried to prepare, would need a lot of time to be completed and tested, and the church would not give it to him.

So Reidar had to give Lena and Jake enough time to set everything up.

Reidar didn’t know how much time would be needed to do that, but it was certainly possible. After all, the church managed to create magic circles that sucked mana from the environment.

Yes, that would be to open a portal or feed it to someone, but that also meant that condensing all that mana into crystals was possible. It was just another application of the same initial concept, after all.

The problem was that Reidar didn’t have a single idea of how a magic circle worked, and he doubted Lena and Jake would too.

The best thing would be to kidnap someone from the church and extort the knowledge of how to make those magic circles. From there, he could implement everything with the Ignis schematics.

<First things first. I need to find out if Jake and Lena are still alive. >

He looked at the caravan ahead of him. The wagons were arranged in a loose line, with guards walking alongside them and scouts moving through the trees. The survivors were cautious, but their formation suggested they had made this kind of trip before. Plus, having Reidar there was making everyone much more relaxed.

It wasn’t an everyday occurrence that a level 557 survivor escorted them. Though the appearance of such a powerful individual was going to stir up troubles once in Sweetwater.

Someone might have known he was an enemy of the church; plus, he was basically the strongest human alive, so reporting his appearance to the church was going to be assured.

As he was lost in all those thoughts, Kara approached him with a confident gait, one that only someone who had survived the end of the world through skill and hard work could have. She had a spear strapped to her back, and she kept watching the trees for danger.

"I wanted to thank you again for your help back there," she said. "We lost a few people, but it would have been a lot worse without you."

"There is no need to thank me." He looked around. "With everything that is going on, we must help each other."

"I wish everyone would think like you," she said. "We have lost more people to bandits than to monsters."

"Bandits? Around here?"

It was the first time Reidar heard about bandits. Criminal gangs? Sure. Crazy murderer psychos? Obviously. But bandits? What was this, the Middle Ages? Were they going to demand his horse and satchel of gold coins if they met?

"I guess they are stupid, or desperate, to come their way down here to rob people... Maybe it’s because they can’t leave the region. You know... With the level the monsters have here, it’s not that simple to escape. This area is the safest one despite everything."

Reidar nodded. "How much longer until we reach Sweetwater, by the way? It’s been a while now since we started walking."

"Another day, maybe two if we hit more trouble. Of course, with you here we should have no problem at all..." She paused.

"If you don’t mind me asking, what brings someone like you all the way out here? I’ve seen no one above level 350 before, and they were all from the church. You don’t look like someone from their organization, and... well, your level speaks for itself..." She glanced at his nametag and the level it contained.