Chương 446: Chapter 429 - The Far North

Alonso watched the projected screens as the airship cut low over the landscape below. The sea had given way to coastline a couple of hours back, and since then the terrain had shifted steadily, the rocky shore bleeding into dense boreal forest that stretched as far as the screens could show in any direction. Spruce and pine packed tight together, their canopies heavy with snow, broken here and there by frozen rivers that caught what little light came through the cloud cover and threw it back in dull silver.

The ground beneath the trees was white and unbroken, no roads, no structures, no sign that anything had passed through in a long time. Further north the treeline thinned, the forest opening into wide stretches of tundra where the snow lay flat and pale against a sky the colour of slate. The ship's marker on the holographic screen crept toward the border indicator on the navigation display.

"We are approaching the Greywood threshold," Leonie pointed from the front.

"Let's land nearby." Alonso watched the tundra scroll past below with mild interest. Leonie, with Pablo's and Lukas' help, eased the EM feed back gradually, the ship decelerating in long, smooth stages, Mach 30 dropping to 20, then 10, then crawling down through single digits as the landscape below slowed from a blur into something recognisable.

They dropped lower, skimming the canopy, and then lower still until the invisible aircraft settled into a wide clearing between the trees with a soft, barely audible thud, the snow compressing slightly beneath the hull before the craft went still. The screens outside showed nothing but forest and white in every direction. Alonso looked up from the display.

"So the projected settlements would be just north of here?" he confirmed, more than asked.

"That's what the references suggest," Pablo said.

"Though I wouldn't call it a fact exactly, more like… educated guesswork from very old accounts. The Greywood border sits about two thousand kilometres ahead, which from what I gathered marks the start of what natives call the Far North. How far beyond that we would actually find anything…" he exhaled, "hard to say."

"Mind you, these are people that do not want to be found, and whose likely approach to outsiders is… well, not exactly a welcome party," Lukas said, almost amused. From beside him, a small rolling unit roughly the size of a large cooking pot rotated its domed head slowly and emitted a single low tone that somehow managed to convey complete agreement.

"Gerald agrees," Lukas confirmed.

"We are not giving it a name," Leonie said. Gerald emitted another tone, this one slightly more indignant.

"Gerald disagrees," Lukas replied. Ayu pressed her lips together, holding her laugh. Leonie closed her eyes for a moment, then turned to face the rest of the group.

"Our standing is not as low as it might seem. Sitting somewhere between peak-Gold and Mithril rank from an Adventurer's perspective, we fall into what this world would consider upper middle class on the power scale. Most powers would be glad to have us."

"If they don't consider us Church-indoctrinated spies first," Lukas pointed out.

"So we introduce ourselves carefully," Leonie answered calmly.

"Or," Lukas offered, "we send Gerald ahead as a goodwill ambassador." Gerald spun its dome once, apparently very much in favour of this plan.

"That's actually a fantastic idea," Leonie said, her grin carrying just enough edge to be concerning.

"It would solve two problems at once." Lukas stared at his sister for a moment, then slowly pulled Gerald a fraction closer to his side. Gerald emitted a quiet, uncertain tone.

"Well, let's see what we get," Alonso said calmly from the side. A short silence settled over the group as different eyes turned toward him, before they nodded one by one. They moved out. The flying group lifted first, Leonie, Lukas, Chiara, and Pablo rising above the treeline and pushing north at speed, the frozen canopy blurring below them within seconds. Gerald floated at Lukas' shoulder, dome rotating slowly as the wind hit it, emitting a continuous low hum that may or may not have been distress.

Imani, Ayu, and Alonso stayed low, threading through the forest at ground level, boots and bare feet launching off snow-covered roots and frozen ground in long, powerful strides that carried them several hundred metres at a time. Ayu glanced sideways at Alonso after the first few leaps, one eyebrow raised.

"You're not flying?"

"Not in the mood," Alonso said, landing clean and pushing off again without breaking rhythm.

"Wanna stretch my legs after being cooped up for nearly two weeks."

"Fair," Ayu smiled and matched his stride without another word, the two of them cutting through the frozen forest side by side, the cold air parting around them in heat warps as their speed built, the trees blurring into long pale streaks on either side. The Greywood ended without ceremony. One moment the trees were dense and close, the next the forest simply stopped, the canopy giving way to open tundra that stretched ahead in every direction, flat and white and enormous, the sky pressing down on it like a lid.

They pushed through without slowing." We just passed the Greywood border," Leonie sent through a pulse from above." We are in the Far North."" Should we perhaps use The Hermit?" Pablo suggested." I considered it," Leonie replied." But I believe it would work against us. First impressions, and all. If we arrive hidden and they find us anyway, and they will, we look like we were trying to sneak in. If we arrive openly, we look like we have nothing to hide.

Given what we are walking into, I would rather start from a position of confidence than concealment." A short pause." Gerald agrees," Lukas added. Leonie rolled her eyes. They pushed on.

The hazy silhouette of a mountain range appeared on the horizon an hour in, a dark line at first, barely distinguishable from the cloud cover above it and the blizzard that had picked up around them, the wind driving sheets of snow sideways across the tundra and cutting visibility down considerably. The dark outline grew.

And kept growing long past the point where it should have stopped, the peaks pushing up through the cloud layer and continuing beyond it, the upper faces disappearing into a sky none of them could see the top of." Those are visible from what…

"Lukas sent, his pulse carrying a rare trace of genuine interest." Forty, fifty thousand kilometres out, through a blizzard. We are probably looking at somewhere between 200 and 400 kilometres tall.

"A brief pause." To put that in perspective, if you dropped Everest at the base of one of those, you would need a telescope to find it." They kept moving, the mountains growing steadily ahead of them, the blizzard thickening as they pushed further north, the cold pressing harder with every kilometre. Another half hour passed. Then Alonso felt a pulse hit him, clean and focused. He frowned. It carried structure, intention, the shape of a message, but the language was completely foreign to him.

Then a second pulse arrived, this one from Lukas." Old Norse, by the way. Sent you all a rough dictionary, run the original signal through it." Alonso processed it quickly, cross-referencing the signal against what Lukas had sent. The meaning assembled itself in rough but clear terms. [State your intentions.]" How in the world do you know Old Norse?" Chiara sent. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation."

You would be surprised the lengths one goes to set up a proper campaign," Lukas replied, and Alonso could feel the grin through the pulse." Anyway. Sis, wanna take over the diplomacy?" Leonie confirmed calmly. A brief silence followed as she composed her response, and then a carefully constructed pulse went out into the blizzard ahead of them, measured and clear, carrying in Old Norse:" Adventurers from south, enemies of Church, seeking refuge and alliance. We come no hostility."

They slowed to a stop in the snow and waited, the wind howling across the tundra around them, the mountains filling the horizon ahead.

Several seconds later a signal came in return." Stay where you are. You will be escorted. Do not resist." They looked at each other and waited. Several minutes passed in silence, the blizzard filling the quiet around them, before movement came through the snow ahead. Alonso sent scouting waves out and felt nothing return, which meant whatever was approaching had its own means of cloaking from EM entirely. Then the figures emerged from the white.

There were perhaps a dozen of them, cloaked in layers of grey and white that made them difficult to separate from the snow even at close range, each one moving with ease. Arrows were nocked but not drawn. Daggers sat visible at belts, hands resting near but not on them. And then Alonso registered the ears. Long, tapering points that slipped from beneath the hoods, definitely not humans. Elves?

The faces beneath the cloaks were pale and finely drawn, every line balanced with an almost sculpted symmetry, features that seemed untouched by time. The one at the front carried herself with quiet authority, her presence light yet unyielding, her sharp eyes gliding across the group with a calm, measured clarity that missed nothing. Eiravyn Frostfang Stage 1 – 50. 346% Alonso assessed her prompt, the highest SP in the group.

He was not sure if she was peak Gold or already at Mithril standards, but she was definitely stronger than Gregor. She spoke in Old Norse, her voice soft yet precise.

"Identify yourselves." They each reached for their Adventurer tokens and held them out. Gold across the group, the metal catching the faint, diffused light through the blizzard, each one read through subtle pulses and acknowledged by the woman as her gaze moved along them. She stopped in front of Alonso. Her gaze settled on the silver token. Then on him. Then back again, a faint crease forming between her brows. A silence followed, somehow quieter than the wind around them, stretched thin and deliberate.

She lifted her sharp green eyes to meet his, and whatever sat behind them felt considerably older than the question forming there. Then, with no tell whatsoever, the space between them blinked. Her blade cleared its sheath and stopped at Alonso's throat in a single motion that existed somewhere below the threshold of visible movement, the tip pressing just enough to draw a single bead of red against his skin. Alonso flinched.

A fraction late, hands moving toward his swords, eyes snapping to the blade as if he had caught it at the last possible moment rather than before it. The rest of the group reacted quickly around him, Ayu already shifting her weight, Imani's hand dropping to his hammer, the tension spiking through all of them in an instant. The woman sheathed her blade in the same unhurried motion and raised one hand, a small precise gesture that stopped everyone where they stood. The message was clear. This was a test.

Nothing more. She studied Alonso for a long moment after, her expression unreadable but her eyes working, turning something over behind them. The reaction had felt genuine. Unless the man before her was at least at the Grandmaster Realm, it should have been impossible to pierce through her layered intent that quickly. And if he were at the Grandmaster Realm, he would not be appearing before them like this.

She held his gaze a breath longer, then turned her back on him and signaled the others, who closed in around the group in a loose, practiced perimeter. Yet just as she turned to lead them out, her eyes caught something at Lukas' shoulder and stopped. Geralt, the small domed unit hovered there, rotating slowly, dome tilting toward her with what could generously be described as curiosity. She frowned.

"What is that?" Leonie's jaw tightened. She shot Lukas a look that communicated, with remarkable precision and no words whatsoever, exactly what would happen if this fell apart because of his damn robot. Lukas smiled pleasantly.

"A harmless companion," he said, and a moment later Gerald disassembled in mid-air, the components flowing outward and reforming in a smooth continuous motion into a compact mech frame that settled across Lukas' chest and arms like a second layer of armour. The elf stared at it for a long moment, sending what Alonso assumed was a careful EM probe across it. Whatever she found, or didn't find, seemed to satisfy her well enough. She turned away.

"Follow," she said, her Old Norse clipped and final.

"No questions." They did as told. The woman led them at a steady pace through the blizzard, the rest of her unit moving around the group without sound, their cloaks shifting with the wind in ways that made them difficult to track even at close range. Alonso kept pace, finding the earlier test quietly amusing. Truth be told he could have ended all of them with Will alone in an instant, but that would have been a remarkably poor way to start a diplomatic relationship.

They kept going, and he half expected the mountains to be the destination. Instead, after perhaps twenty minutes of running through open tundra with nothing visible in any direction, the woman stopped. Two of her units moved to a specific patch of ground that looked identical to everything around it, brushed the accumulated snow aside with practiced efficiency, and revealed a flat slab of dark stone beneath.

Beneath that, as they levered it aside, was another layer A heavy horizontal gate of dark metal, seamless and flush with the ground. Alonso sent a wave at it and felt nothing come back, the material swallowing his perception as cleanly as the airship's coating had. The woman reached to her neck and lifted a token on a short chain, holding it close to a point on the gate's surface that had no visible mechanism.

A low resonance moved through the metal, felt more than heard, and the gate descended smoothly into the ground, revealing a shaft dropping away into darkness below. Three of her men dropped in first. She turned to the group, her eyes finding Alonso first.

"You. Down. Low profile." Or at least that was roughly what he made of it. Lukas' Old Norse dictionary had its limits… Alonso dropped in without hesitation. The shaft was deep, the walls close, carved smooth from dark stone. Darkness swallowed everything for a long stretch of descent before the first light appeared, conductive filaments running along the corridor walls in thin lines, carrying a pale blue-white current that threw just enough light to move by.

The glow was steady and cold, casting long shadows across the carved stone on either side. The corridor opened ahead of them, wide enough for four abreast, the ceiling arching several metres above. The filaments continued along the walls and ceiling in branching patterns that grew more complex the further they walked, the light brightening gradually as the passages widened. They all moved forward in formation, three elves at the front, the rest at the rear. And kept going for quite a while.

Alonso estimated the distance somewhere past a hundred kilometres when the corridor widened dramatically, and some sort of massive fortress gate came into view ahead. It was huge. Dark metal set into the stone face, reinforced at intervals with horizontal bands of a different material that caught the filament light differently, throwing back a warmer tone.

Figures stood at the entrance on either side, tall and lean in layered armour, and then shorter, broader figures beside them, built close to the ground with a density that made the elves beside them look almost fragile by comparison. Alonso blinked. Dwarves too? The guards on both sides gave a single nod to the woman leading them, and the gate opened inward on a mechanism that made no sound at all. Beyond it, the world opened up.

The interior was enormous, a vaulted underground space carved with care, the ceiling lost somewhere far above in shadow, the walls lined at every level with walkways and structures built directly into the rock. Filament light ran everywhere, the branching networks covering every surface in a web of pale illumination that made the whole space glow from within.

Soldiers moved across the floor and along the upper walkways, different races, different builds, all carrying themselves with the particular ease of people who trained seriously and regularly. Alonso scanned the room without making it obvious, clocking the prompts as they moved through. The power levels were not low. SP ranging between 35 and 48% among the guards he had seen so far, putting the weakest firmly in Silver territory by Adventurer standards, with more than a few Gold-rank mixed in.

The woman led them across the main floor without stopping, down a wide staircase, through two more corridors, down another set of stairs narrower than the first, and then along a passage that ended in a row of open doorways cut directly into the rock. She stopped and turned.

"One each," she said.

"Enter. Sit. Wait." Each doorway opened into a small room carved from stone and lined with dark metal, a single table at the centre, two chairs facing each other across it, a guard standing at the entrance with the relaxed stillness of someone who had stood exactly there many times before. One by one the group was directed through separate doorways. The doors did not close behind them. But the guards did not move either.

Alonso settled into the chair facing the empty one across the table, took in the carved stone walls around him, and waited. He was not particularly fond of putting themselves at someone else's mercy, the control stripped away, the uncertainty of what came next sitting just below the surface. But the treatment was appropriate for the circumstances, and by any honest measure, they were still far from strong enough to navigate this world entirely on their own terms. So he calmly waited.

His mind drifted over everything he had just seen. The underground world. The elves. The dwarves. And what had looked very much like beastmen toward the back of the main hall. He found himself grinning. Actual elves. Fantasy creatures he had grown up reading about, watching, playing, and now here he was, sitting in a carved stone room somewhere near a 400-kilometre mountain while an elf guard stood at his door.

And if this was just the start of the Far North, he genuinely had no idea what else was waiting further up the road. More races. More civilisations. More of whatever this world had tucked away in the parts the Church had spent centuries trying to make everyone forget. And it wasn't just this stage. Along his climb, how many wonders would there be? What sort of sights would he behold? As much as his path was his main focus… he truly wanted to enjoy the view all the way to the peak.

He leaned back in the chair, still grinning. Whatever came next… he was looking forward to it.