Highways enabled commerce and connected settlements.
But here in this fantasy world, proper urban planning was virtually nonexistent; a lot of roads had been laid out pretty thoughtlessly. And the highway Zelos, Ado, Lisa, and Shakti were traveling along was one such example.
Instead of being optimized for efficiency, most road networks centered around the nearest ruling lord’s town and branched out from there. As a result, the terrain created a lot of detours.
To someone born on Earth, it all seemed strange. Builders here didn’t dig tunnels through mountains to allow for more direct roads or anything of the sort.
It wasn’t just the terrain itself that made traveling dangerous, though. There were narrow roads that wound their way through natural mountain passes, but most would be perilous for any merchants who dared to make the journey. On top of the inherent danger of narrow mountain roads, they provided plenty of cover for bandits and burglars to ambush travelers, so merchants had to keep their eyes out. Forts and fortified cities were built along such paths to keep criminals in check, but with crime constantly on the rise, it was an endless game of cat and mouse.
Even highways spanning open plains weren’t completely safe.
The problem with bandits and their ilk was that even if you destroyed their organizations, the survivors would simply regroup and start doing the same thing again.
National budgets could only stretch so far; a country couldn’t just throw more personnel at the problem forever. The upkeep costs of forts and fortified cities were nothing to sniff at; simply maintaining their garrisons required huge sums of money for food and salary.
Then there were the costs of equipping the soldiers, repairing damaged fortifications, and so on. Altogether, nations allotted about a third of their budgets to defense—which was a high price to pay for smaller countries.
Long story short, building more roads wasn’t a silver bullet that’d improve travel and trade. The real limiting factor was maintaining the defense personnel to keep those roads usable—and those personnel weren’t free.
“Given all that,” Zelos said after he’d finished explaining all of this to the others, “this mountain road is apparently a bit of a no-man’s land. Bandits could be hiding anywhere! Oh, and we can’t forget about the monsters...”
“So why did you take us this way?!” the others snapped, unable to stop themselves.
Zelos had chosen this route for a good reason, though. Namely, he’d used his map to determine that it’d be the quickest way to Hasam.
Ado followed Zelos in his kei car, while the Great Sage rode his Harley-Sanders Model 13. That had seemed like the smartest idea, given that Ado’s sense of direction was so atrocious that any of his attempts to navigate would’ve ended in embarrassment.
But he hadn’t expected following Zelos to mean he and his party would sleep outdoors at a rest stop built along some mountain highway.
Sure, they had magic tools they could deploy to create impassable boundaries, not to mention the strength to obliterate any bandits with their bare fists, but that didn’t exactly make them feel safe. Attackers could feasibly release a paralyzing poison upwind, for example, or just target the two women, who were much lower-level than Zelos and Ado.
“What’s your plan if we get attacked by bandits, then, huh?!” Ado shouted.
“We just...get rid of them?” Zelos replied. “We could even get a reward out of it, if they’re wanted.”
“But if monsters attack us—” Lisa started.
“Then we might get some fresh meat for tonight’s menu!” Zelos said.
Shakti sighed. “Oh, it’s no use. He’s gotten too used to living here.” She turned to Zelos. “Exactly what kind of life did you have back on Earth?”
“Oh, I was self-sufficient for the most part. I’d go hunting with people from the local hunting club, work the fields...you know. Just your average, everyday lifestyle.”
But Zelos’s idea of an “average, everyday lifestyle” was far from average.
Ado had floated between part-time jobs. After he and Yui had discovered she was pregnant, he’d hurried to find full-time employment, all while keeping up his part-time work on the side to earn some money. He’d spent every day worrying about the future. And here was this old guy, who’d apparently been living in a farming village, surrounded by nature.
Ado had desperately looked for a full-time job, but finding one had only brought him a mixture of relief and nervousness. Meanwhile, Zelos had been going hunting with a buddy from the farming village he lived in.
It was hard for Ado to believe that Zelos’s lifestyle was average in the slightest.
And that was before he considered Zelos’s days as a salaryman, which had seen him traveling the world and eating all sorts of strange foods. It had been a pretty hectic lifestyle, by the sounds of it, and it had turned Zelos into a man who wouldn’t turn his nose up at anything but the most bizarre culinary creations.
Such creations did exist, mind you, and even Zelos had his limits. He’d had moments of thinking, There’s no way humans are meant to eat this stuff! But he was fine with eating things like big spiders and centipedes, at least.
Of course, insects were considered a valuable source of protein in this world as well. They didn’t taste that bad either, so Zelos didn’t feel a need to get hung up on appearances.
Ultimately, it hadn’t been that hard for him to adapt to his rugged new environment—he’d started laying the groundwork back on Earth.
He had years of experience on Ado, Shakti, and Lisa.
“So... So you were living off wild game even back on Earth, huh?” Ado asked.
“It sounds like you were pretty rural,” Shakti said. “Just how far out in the mountains were you? By the way you talk about it, I don’t think we would’ve been able to live like that...”
“Personally,” Lisa said, “I’ve eaten deer and wild boar on trips to the countryside. I haven’t had civet or anything like that, though.”
“Oh, I’ve never eaten civet either,” Zelos said. “I did come across a dead one in my storeroom one summer, though. And it had started to decompose, so it stunk like hell...”
Worse, he’d found it right in the middle of Obon, so the animal shelter that usually would’ve disposed of the body had been closed.