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

Nearly a week has passed since Aoni returned to Genovia, and from an outsider's perspective, not a whole lot has changed in his territory.

There were no new large structures built, the Fort hadn't been expanded outward, and more importantly, it was fairly easy to see that neither Aoni nor his summons had grown by even a microscopic margin.

In fact, it was almost as if they'd stagnated in terms of statistics.

Yet, that was all from the outside looking in.

In actuality, things had changed quite a bit, especially in the morning routine.

If before it revolved around checking the camp, working out, and working on projects, there were now several new tasks on the daily agenda, such as small twenty-minute lessons in which the Lad went about teaching both his Summons how to speak more fluidly.

To achieve this, he utilized a series of child-development books that he'd acquired during his shopping spree at the Bureau, and, sure enough, even after only seven Genovian Days, Glacia had become able to speak in very basic yet understandable sentences.

"Gaoooo~"

{'Brodder, shooov done!'} Running through the open gate, Glacia quickly slowed down and happily pranced into the camp carrying along her snow shovel before dropping it off by the cave door, where it "Belonged," according to Aoni's teachings.

"Great job as always, Glacia; breakfast will be done in a little bit; we just gotta wait on your sister to return," Kneeling and patting his floof's head, Aoni went back to cooking up a large serving of pancakes on the camping stove set up where the campfire used to be.

He was even flipping them in a brand-new cast-iron skillet, like some kind of professional.

Then again, anyone could pull that off if they had to make 50-something pancakes a day to feed the insatiable glutton named Glacia.

"GaAaaoOO OoOOo!" Sitting down like a good girl on one of the log seats, Glacia used one of her paws to wipe the drool accumulating at the corner of her mouth; after all, proper ladies don't drool everywhere, or so Aoni had told her.

{'Wat favor today?'} Glacia asked, sitting prim and proper, as she knew that would make Aoni pay attention to her.

"Aww, my adorable little Glacia is so cute," Aoni said, making sure the pancakes wouldn't burn, and quickly scratched Glacia's chin before responding.

"These are called red velvet. They're kind of like yesterday's chocolate-flavored ones, but these are my personal favorites!" Turning back to start the next pancake, although he wasn't looking at her, Aoni knew his floof was probably drooling already, as it was obvious the chocolate pancakes were a hit with the glutton.

Upon Nyria's return after her morning scouting session, breakfast was served, and Glacia had a new favorite breakfast food, so after destroying 20 of them on her own with ease, the floof carefully brought her plastic plate over to the dirty dish rack and got ready for whatever mission would be handed down to her for the day.

Nyria was pretty much the same, while Aoni was left to clean up, but he didn't really mind, as back on Terra dishes had always been his responsibility.

Once everything was cleaned up and put away in its proper storage chest, Aoni motioned for his summons to follow and made his way to the top of the Wall.

"Alright, in about 35 minutes, the morning monster tide will hit; we gotta be quick with this one, though, because today's the first day we start working on the Cavern."

"Chee?"

{'Are we gonna clear it out?'} Nyria asked after helping Glacia up to the top of the Wall and landing beside Aoni.

"Amongst other things, but yeah, the first goal is to make sure there isn't anything inside; after that, we will start working to close off all the entrances, seal them up good, and from there, it's all about cleaning up the mess I left down there before I left." Rolling out his shoulders and taking his shooting stance, Aoni scanned the mountainside for any signs of movement.

One of the biggest surprises he'd received upon his return was the lack of corpses scattered about outside the camp, and from what he learned, that was Nyria's doing.

Unlike Glacia, who could go on slaughtering without thinking about the consequences, Nyria was more keen on following each of Aoni's instructions to the letter; thus, every corpse would have its valuable parts salvaged and separated into specific chests.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the over 20 chests he'd crafted to be filled up. After giving it considerable thought, Nyria had taken it upon herself to dispose of any corpses that held no value…by dragging them into the sky and flinging them outside the barrier after every tide.

Similarly, the remains were handled by scavenging monsters that couldn't breach the barrier.

However, this caused an unintended side effect, and that was being subjected to twice-daily assaults from the mountain's natives in the morning and before sundown.

Thankfully, now that Aoni had returned, the disposal was handled by him, and that entitled getting rid of anything under 2-Stars by way of a large burn pit he'd created a bit down the cliffside on the northern mountain face.

Putting it there was no easy task either, because he first needed to create a platform that was large enough to handle not only over a ton of dead weight but also multiple large bodies.

Once that was established and built, and the corpses turned to ash thanks to a high-intensity fire he'd make each time with a few tools brought back from Terra, all that would remain after each tide was ash that the winds could sweep away.

It had taken him several days to work out this system of disposal. Still, now that it was in place, Aoni could finally get to work on the multiple projects that would inevitably result in him moving down into the cavern, something he'd envisioned since the moment he and Glacia found it.

---

As it had every day since his return, the monster tide took all of an hour not only to destroy but clean up after, and with that done, Aoni, with summons in tow, jumped off the fort wall and made his way down the path Glacia had finished clearing toward the cavern earlier in the morning.

"Gaooo gaoo gao oOo Gao!"

{'Did see brodder, I do goo?'} Hopping up and down like a hyper puppy, Glacia babbled through the LoS, causing Aoni to look down at her and smile.

{'Yes, you did well out there this morning, Glacia. You too, Nyria; without your scouting, things would be a lot more difficult when it comes to wiping out all those weak monsters.'} Since Nyria was flying roughly a hundred feet above the ground, Aoni decided to speak through the LoS as well; that way, she could be part of the conversation.

To be honest, the first battle had been a bit rough around the edges that night after he came back to Genovia, mainly because neither Nyria nor Glacia had any sort of method or strategy behind their fighting.

Instead, they would essentially turn it all into a giant meat-grinding session, with Nyria sniping monsters from the sky by dropping rocks on their heads and Glacia hacking and biting her way through whatever came into her line of sight.

Doing things in this way turned what should have been a relatively short battle into a three-hour campaign twice a day; however, that all changed with Aoni back in the picture.

Now, instead of letting them run wild, he would direct Nyria in such a way that she could draw in the aggro of the incoming monsters while positioning himself and Glacia at certain spots so they could obliterate everything that came to them.

The first couple of times were, of course, rough around the edges, but after having fought twice a day every day for the last 7 Genovian Days, the three fell into a rhythm, and instead of fighting with their lives on the line, clearing the monster tides became a game to see who could get the most points.

Then again, what is a game without prizes? So Aoni, always thinking on his feet, found special ways to encourage his birb and floof and even made up a scoring system that would allow Nyria to earn points depending on how well she kited the enemy along with how many she brought toward either Aoni or Glacia.

By this point, they had it down to a science, and the time it took to complete the tide drastically dropped off before settling at around 30 minutes or so.

Setting that aside, Aoni looked to the sky with a serious expression on his face before issuing a mission to his birb.

{'Nyria, I need you to carefully head into the cavern ahead of us using one of the other entrances on the northern side of the mountain and get a good look at what the situation is inside. Be careful, though, and if there are too many monsters, safety is your priority, so get outta there quickly.'}