Chương 103: The Surface

I looked at the sunlight filtering in through the dusty clouds in the sky, and felt a strange mixture of awe and horror as I looked at the surface for the very first time in this life. When I had heard of the 'surface settlement,' I had been expecting some sort of relatively ordinary middle ages village. I hadn't really known what the surface of this world would look like except from Ella's stories, but I had imagined an ordinary village, perhaps guarded by soldiers and attacked by monsters from time to time.

Instead, the first thing I noticed was that the surface settlement consisted of about one hundred tents, clustered in the area near the cave entrance. I assumed that they were near the entrance to the underdark so that the surface settlement could flee underground if Outsiders or Orukthyri came to attack the settlement. There were plenty of people going about their business here, likely because they hadn't heard of the settlement getting overrun yet.

In town, people had noticed the soldiers starting to run away after a few minutes, but it looked like we were the first group to flee towards the surface. Which, luckily, meant the Orukthyri would probably pursue other groups besides ours. The second thing I noticed were the colors. The grass and trees on the surface were pink, which was completely different from the green leaves and grass I was used to. However, the rest of the landscape was an ashy gray color.

Apart from some blacker soil near the trees and grass, most of the soil looked more like dust than something a plant would grow in. It also smelled… burnt. The entire world smelled vaguely like charcoal on the surface, which was something I hadn't expected. The acrid smell made me feel uneasy, as if someone had used a fire spell recently and missed.

To the side of the little camp of tents, I could see a few fields of well-tended crops, which were likely the source of the few luxury foods the nobility and wealthier members of the city occasionally ate. The quantity of crops growing was larger than I had expected, but I could also tell that there weren't any magic items speeding up the growth of the surface crops. Which naturally meant that the output would be much lower compared to mushroom production. However, most unique was the sky.

The planet was donut shaped. When I looked up at the sky, I could see the other side of the planet. If I considered the planet to be shaped like a donut, or a ring, our settlement was apparently situated on the ridge of the ring, between the outer and inner rings of the planet. In the distance, I could see our sun. It was a giant, ice-blue star that glowed softly in the distance. Coming into contact with it made my body feel strangely cool, rather than the heat I was used to sunlight carrying.

In the center of the ring-shaped planet, there was a massive black dot hovering in space. It seemed to drink in all of the light of the cold blue sun in the distance, as if it wished to devour the whole world. The darkness emitted by the small star in the center of the planet made me feel weak and fragile, as if merely coming in contact with it was making me sick, and looking at it felt wrong. The world didn't seem to have a moon, at least as far as I could tell.

The other celestial bodies were just as bizarre as the ring-shaped planet. I was used to the sky having a soft, blue color. However, in this world, it had a sort of clotted, orange color that reminded me of a sunset from one of my previous worlds. It surrounded the planet in a perfectly spherical shape, even though the planet was donut-shaped. I had no idea why or how the atmosphere worked here.

It was one of the strangest sights I had seen so far, beating even the total chaos of the world beneath the waves back on the islands. Overall, the sky and terrain of this world was so utterly alien that it shocked me out of the depression I had been feeling about not knowing if my family was all right. I found myself wondering how space worked here, and why the sunlight was cold instead of hot. Was the sun also magical in nature, or was it created by some bizarre aspect of this world's physics?

What about space itself? If the sun was cooling me down, where was the heat of the planet's surface coming from? Why did the soil smell like charcoal? Why was the grass pink? I had so many questions that I stopped moving and simply stared, stunned at the alien world that existed outside of the caverns. I was brought out of my thoughts when Ella yelled at the tent city.

"Orukthyri have attacked the city, and it has fallen. The Orukthyri might enter this area soon!" Then, without waiting to see the responses of the surface dwellers, she quickly led us forward. I saw a few of the people near the tents look at us, shocked by Ella's words, before they ducked into their tents and started packing things up. Ella's clothing had such a large amount of white thread sewn in that it was obvious she was important.

That, combined with the fact that we were clearly fleeing, convinced most people to start packing and move without much hesitation. Ella didn't stick around to help people evacuate as we moved past the tent city. We quickly made our way past the fields of surface crops, making good time as we traveled past the field. The further away we got from the tent city, the more wild the area became. Ella started to move more slowly, constantly scanning our surroundings for threats.

Felix's parents were doing the same, which made me also start focusing on the area with greater caution. I used my soul-sight to check our surroundings for any strange entities, since I had no idea what threats might be present. Luckily, we didn't run into anything unusual. Finally, after an hour of travel, Ella spoke again.

"We should be far enough away that the Orukthyri won't bother tracking us down," she said.

"We're a pretty small group, and they have better food sources elsewhere." Then, she turned towards Felix's parents.

"Now that we're out of immediate danger, let's talk. You two are retired adventurers?" This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Felix's parents nodded.

"We were never great spellcasters, but we were at least good enough to survive some adventuring. We're mostly focused on staying hidden, though. We can apply stealth abilities to other people, so if we need to hide from something big and scary, let us know. We can handle that kind of thing. Also, we have some detection spells that we're decent with, although the spells are somewhat limited in what they can detect.

We usually get around this by layering several detection spells on top of each other, but it's a bit mana intensive to keep it up all the time…" said Felix's mother. Ella nodded.

"Your skillset sounds very useful. Getting into pointless fights is how a lot of adventurers die, and knowing where hostile creatures are and being able to sneak around them is one of the best defenses. How much experience do you have with surviving on the surface overall?"

"We've only raided one facility. We spent about eight months on our adventure, but we couldn't find many old research facilities in that time. Of the three we found, two had already been explored, so there wasn't much of note inside. The third one we found seems to have been the base of a spellcaster, although he was only an apprentice." Felix's mother grinned bitterly.

"Well, apprentice for his time period, at least. He was a fifth circle mage, we think. He didn't leave behind much of use, but there was a fair amount of precious metals and some wand materials, which sold for quite a bit once we returned. After that, we retired, settled down, and had Felix together. That was a few decades ago, so we might be a bit rusty." Ella faintly grinned.

"That's a pretty good ending for most adventurers. Well, if you survived eight months in the wilderness, you're definitely a valuable addition to the group. Finding clean food and water can be difficult if you don't know what you're doing, and we only have about a week's worth of supplies." I absently touched my dimensional backpack, and was happy to realize there were still a fair amount of supplies available inside of it.

I had never dropped the scout's supplies after we returned from trying to raid the Orukthyri a while ago, a fact I was now thankful for, and I also had a fair amount of extra food and water I had grabbed from my home after seeing nobody around. I probably had three or four more days of food and water laying in my pack. Sallia also had her noodle bowl, which would replenish once per day automatically, although between the nine of us, I doubted one extra meal a day would make a large difference in our supplies.

However, I suddenly had a headache when I tried to figure out how to explain where the supplies were coming from. I had never mentioned much about Market items so far, and I had always played off the effects of my {Lake-Gazer's Dress} as part of my attunement. Since I was known to have a slightly unusual attunement, nobody had ever raised an eyebrow, but there was no way I could pretend that spatial manipulation was related to my attunement. It was way too different to make sense.

I sighed, and decided to just push ahead. If I just stated I had extra supplies stored in my bag, and claimed it was because I had a storage pack, maybe nobody would question it?

"We have more supplies than that," I said.

"I have about three extra days worth of food and water in my bag, as well as a few miscellaneous medical supplies like bandages and disenfectant. It's a storage pack.

"Oh, a dimensional bag?" Asked Ella, giving my pack a curious look.

"I haven't seen one of those in a while. The group leader of my previous adventuring party had one. How did you get one? They're quite rare and expensive, since nobody knows how to make them, and they weren't that common even before the dawn of the black sun." I paused, trying to figure out the answer to that question, before I winced.

"Uhh…" I paused.

"It was a gift from scout leader Nells." I did my best to sound as confident as possible. Ella looked at my backpack, and then frowned, before sighing and shaking her head. I had no idea what to make of that.

"Whatever, I guess it doesn't matter right now. Anyway, that means we have almost two weeks of supplies. And with Felix's parents, we also have a pretty good idea how to find food and water, which will be very important if we run into an emergency. A lot of the water and plants that have been more heavily affected by the black sun tend to be poisonous or have bizarre effects on those who carelessly consume them. Purifying or avoiding the more dangerous plants is very important if we wish to survive.

Our food and water situation looks fine for now. How about you two? What are your skills?" asked Ella, turning towards Anise's parents.

"I'll admit, I don't know as much about you guys. What do you do?"

"We're just ordinary mushroom harvesters," said Anise's father, and her mother quickly nodded.

"When Anise showed signs of being a supe- a Witch, we were really excited," added Anise's mother.

"I used to tell Anise lots of bedtime stories about witches and shapers, and she was really excited when she realized she could do the same thing in the future…" I suddenly realized where Anise's obsession with super-witches came from. Ella simply nodded again.

"Perfectly understandable. Don't worry, I'll do my best to keep everyone safe until we get to our destination. Now, about our destination…" she frowned.

"There are a few cities we can head towards that have entrances to the surface. But I'm currently planning on heading to Silver city. It's about a week away, assuming we don't run into any major delays, and it used to have massive silver deposits before they were mined out. The dragon there has silver scales, which is a little different from the white dragon, but the color culture won't be too different, so it'll be easy to adjust to life there.

I know a few merchants from that city who occasionally traded with ours, so I would have a pretty easy time verifying my identity. And it's not too far away, which means we won't have to spend too long on the surface. Does anyone have any other suggestions, or do you guys agree with my planned destination?" Felix's parents thought for a moment, before nodding.

"Sounds good to me," said his mother.

"I haven't interacted much with Silver city, but I've heard the Overseer there is rather competent at managing the city's bureaucracy and army. He's… also rumored to be able to cast eighth circle spells," she said, frowning. Felix's father snorted.

"Our own overseer was also rumored to be able to cast eighth circle spells, but look how that ended. If he could cast a proper eighth circle spell the city wouldn't have ended up like this. Bastard was just boasting, and it ended up with the entire city in a crisis waiting for a spell that never came. I doubt the new overseer will be any different. He can probably just barely squeak out a seventh circle spell if he claims he can cast eighth circle spells." Ella thoughtfully nodded.

"Either way, seventh circle is still pretty strong. Heck, even a sixth circle mage with a higher than average mana reserve can keep a city safe from most threats."

"True enough," said Felix's father, his disgust dying down somewhat.

"Even with third circle magic, my wife and I managed to survive traveling the surface for quite a while before retiring, getting married, and having Felix. I suppose a seventh circle spellcaster is respectable enough."

"All right, since nobody objects, we'll confirm our destination," said Ella.

"Now, let's get moving. Along the way, I'll teach the kids some of the stuff you need to watch out for on the surface. It's easier with visuals to back up my words, and it's definitely critical to make sure our survival odds are as high as possible." With that, the group got moving again.