Chương 46: The Path Ahead

By the time I reach Claire's, the sun has set, and risen yet again. I take no breaks, not daring to stop for even a moment. While the surge had been mostly contained, the incursion has still vastly increased the amount of monsters near the city. None of them are particularly dangerous to me anymore, but I didn't want to be delayed. Not that I am in that much of a rush, we have a timetable after all. When I told Carla I just happened to have a friend that is an elemental, she just signed and started calculating.

None of us knows if Claire would actually help though. But, somehow I feel she will, a bit of intuition one might say. Of course, some argued against seeking her aid. They warned that if she assisted, the city would just be gone, and argued that we could just get stronger and win on some later day. The loss calculations quickly turned out of favor for that idea, though. So here I am, standing in front of the barrier. The barrier opens up without me even touching it, and I step through.

Claire is waiting for me, with a frown on her face.

"You are back."

"Calder is dead, Reli too probably. An incursion… the heart awoke, and we were not ready." Before I can react, all of Claire's arms are wrapped around me and she picks me up. She squeezes me tightly, in what I think I supposed to be a hug. Kinda hard to tell as I feel my ribs threaten to stab my heart.

"You poor thing. To experience such a thing, so young…" She says before letting me go. I push her away.

"Hey, I am not that young!"

"Semantics. To me, you are nought but a seed waiting to bloom, remember?" Claire says and takes a step back.

"Now, how about some tea? I just got a new shipment of different leaves!" She drags me into the house and before I know it, I am sitting down at her table, a cup of fresh tea in front of me. Luma has taken the opportunity to collapse right onto Claire's couch. Apparently my neck does get a bit poky after a while, or so she yipped at me.

"So, Blackharbor has fallen." Claire says casually as she sips her tea.

"That bastard went and croaked too. He still owed me some of these fancy tea leaves, you see. The guy always slipped out of my grasp before I could thoroughly throttle him for the delays. He said his wife was the political one, but damn could that guy get outa just about anything even without her." I take a sip of the tea, it is a bit sweet, but also with a hint of sourness. I don't hate it, but I don't particularly like it either.

"Sounds like they were a real power duo." Claire snorts, "They made leading one of the most influential minor cities this side of the Snarq Mountains look like a piece of cake."

"But, they are gone." I say, the idea is still refusing to settle in my brain.

"Such is the cycle of life. Be it humans, elementals, and even dragons. All journeys must come to an end. At least they went out fighting for something they cared about. Very few get that chance." I sip my tea again, really savoring the taste as much as I can. Good tea is truly intriguing, and I can see why Claire could get so into the hobby.

"Reli told me to ask you for help. To defeat the dragon for the people, I think." Claire freezes and looks at me very seriously.

"Are you sure that is what she said?"

"Yeah, is that odd?" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. She sighs and glances out the window.

"Given the circumstances, no. But to think she would pull that card after all…" Claire stands up and heads over to a bookshelf, from it she pulls off a dusty tome.

"What's that?" I ask.

"A tome containing a teleportation spell. One that will clear the region of all cored beings. It'll send them somewhere nearby that is safe. Loder, or other minor cities, most likely." I frown, "Is that necessary?" She turns back to me.

"The moment I step outside of my domain, this region will be destroyed." She walks over to me and sits down.

"I doubt you even have the mental capacity to understand the extent of my power. There is a reason why higher stared beings migrate downwards so rarely. A single star above is usually fine, but anything beyond that, and the being will be a walking calamity. Very little will survive that."

"But wait, aren't you three stars above?!" I say shocked. It takes a moment for her words to sink into me. Claire laughs, "And thus, you understand the problem. The moment I leave, Blackharbor ceases to exist. The sheer energy casually leaking out of my core will transform the landscape entirely. The dragon might survive, and if so, I will deal with it. But everyone else that remains will die, hence the mass teleporation." Well, to be fair, it's not like I had much attachment to Blackharbor anyways.

Calder, sure, he taught me a whole bunch of shit. But as for the city itself, I only spent a short while in the library, and slept a bit. This is what Carla was talking about. I need to find things that I want to defend for their sake. Not just because a quest showed up and told me to do it.

"Okay then, I think I will head North. Reli said the sixtieth great city could be a good place to rest up. Then she mentioned something about reaching the capital?" Claire laughs, "Damn, that woman was scheming even as she walked to her death, huh? I don't know that much about this realm, to be honest. But I believe the capital is somewhere over the Snarq Mountain range and through the Archipelago of despair. Quite a treck it will be, given the transportation networks are probably down due to all the incursions."

I spit out my tea, "Wait, there are more incursions?"

"Of course. My senses aren't what they used to be, but malice is pretty damn easy to detect. I would say there are at least three hundred incursions in this realm, as of now. Though they all appeared at the same time, oddly enough. Somehow, I feel like figuring that out is a you problem, o grand hero of spirit." I swat her hand away as she tries to pat me on the head. That is a lot of incursions, a part of me hoped that Blackharbor was the only city affected. But that was foolish, in hindsight.

Malice affects this entire world, not just a single city. Whatever caused the incursions to suddenly appear en masse must have been triggered by the appearance of us heroes. Pulling out the map device that Calder gave me, I place it on the table and start fiddling around. Claire watches with amusement as I figure out the device. Eventually I get it to show a wider map, not just of Blackharbor, but the entire territory around Loder. As the seventy second great city, the territory is quite vast.

But to the north, I can see that it borders the sixtieth, my next destination. Zooming out further, the map reveals a world at a scale I cannot begin to describe. Yet, standing out against the gigantic world are one hundred marked great cities. It would seem that the realm is some sort of disc shape, if the map is anything to go by. Past the edges of the ring, the map is merely labeled 'the abyss.' But as I look farther in towards the center, it seems like the world gets more lively.

Until eventually reaching the capital, sitting almost exactly at the center of the realm. Loder is naturally along the edges of the plane, with the sixtieth being a bit more north, and thus more central. It is a bit strange. As far as I can tell, 'north' simply means closer to the center of the realm, whereas south means farther away. A bit similar to the maps of my old world, interestingly enough. The sheer scale of it all is a bit much to take in for now. So, I shrink the map down and put it away.

I just need to head north for a while, once I get closer to the next city, it will be damn obvious. The only problem is that between me and that city is roughly four thousand kilometers of wilderness. With only a few minor cities dotted here and there.

"Looks like I've got a bit of a trek before me." I grumble. She claps two of her hands together.

"Ooo, let me help!" Before I can argue, she starts chanting and I feel power wrap around me. She even grabs Luma from over on the couch. I barely know what is going on by the time she finishes the incantation.

"<Warp>." Without any chance to resist, my body feels like it is encompassed in a warm blanket of magic. Then, with mind-shearing disorientation like when I first teleported, I disappear. Perhaps now I know why Calder seemed so wary around Claire…