Cloth scraped and shuffled against the microphone loudly. The sun’s glare swallowed the video in brightness, before receding as the brightness setting adjusted, focusing on a smattering of chonky trees. Their branches hung heavy with spiky orange bananas and a metal-glowed gorilla, who was in progress of spitting said spikes from its mouth.
“Hi! Hey hey, hi there. This is Riko.” A young asian woman with bangs covering most of her eyes appeared, smiling shyly at the camera below her. Sweat stained her green top and a brimmed adventurer’s hat shaded her face. Behind her, the chirping and chirrups of a lively jungle were being drowned out by the chatter of several loud voices.
A male voice said something next to her, making Riko look sideways.
“Right. Um. Hi! Hi again. Welcome to Riko’s travel-vlog. You may not believe it, but we’re on an alien world right now, and everything you see is real, but if you look at the shadows carefully at the reflections you can see it’s not CGI…” She adjusted the camera to show the green shadows of the canopy shifting.
The male voice said something again.
Riko facepalmed. “Drat. Good point. It’s not too unbelievable compared to a cultivator apocalypse. Do you think I should start over?”
He said something.
She giggled softly. “It kinda does. Okay. I like that. Let’s go with it.” Her attention returned to the camera. “Hi again everyone, and sorry. I’m Riko. This is my boyfriend Maxman. Say hi Maxm.”
A lean muscled young man with glasses appeared briefly, waving his hand in a hello. Focus returned to Riko as she stood up to walk around the camp.
“We arrived on this world a few weeks ago and finally embarked on our first expedition this morning. We’ve been walking for six hours. It’s been… it’s hot and tough going, but everyone’s feeling excited so far. And the nature is… breathtaking. I have no words to properly capture it. I’ll try to do a documentary mini-series between the vlogs to show you. But first, let’s meet the team.”
The camera shook, focusing on an impossibly muscular man whose face was covered in huge butterflies with metallic rainbow wings. He laughed alongside a young woman with thick brown hair, muddy feet, and a sun-flower dress more suitable for a picnic than an exploration mission into the depths of an alien jungle.
“That’s Titan, our leader and protector, and that’s Nelly. She’s been having some of the jungle critters help us around. The squirrel next to them is…”
***
A downpour as deafening as a waterfall drummed the dark-blue view. Droplet on the lens blurred the warm campfire behind Riko’s face.
“Day two of the Great Expedition. Some kinda blue lion-dragon thing flew over and all of a sudden… this.” Riko gestured at the rain outside the cavern. “We’re all soaked, but our spirits are still high. I’ll edit in a compilation of the scenery pictures here later. Nelly traded candy-bars for three buckets of Qi-infused honey from some funny-looking bumblebees. Titan had Max and Dese Nuts wrestled with a huge ‘awakened onion’, and we nearly got squashed when one of the mountains broke and fell on us. My heart is still pounding from it! A crazy day. My feet are starting to hurt from all the walking so I think I’ll end this here…”
The video cut abruptly.
***
Purple sunset made the arrows poking out of Riko’s adventuring hat gleam. Her shoulder was wrapped with a bandage, and her dark green top was splotched with dried blood. Though she smiled, her face was a little pale.
“Day… five.” Her words dragged like the feet of a man after a 120-hour work week. “Sorry. I missed a couple there. Uuuh… My… feet. I’m not sure they’ll ever recover.”
Boisterous laughter made her glance left. Rustling sounds followed as she turned the camera. A campfire made out of a scrapped boat crackled in the middle of a small shrubby valley between dunes.
The brown-haired girl in her summer dress danced with an enormous man of impossible physique. He kept twirling and tossing her in flips and pirouettes that should’ve broken a gymnast’s neck, but the girl only laughed and shouted for more! In the background, a gorilla, lean muscular man, and a red-and-black demon sprouting from a blonde’s back were clapping and yodeling an improvised tune.
The camera returned to Riko’s face. She sighed, nearly sobbing. Her eyes glazed over as she stared into the sunset, shaking her head. “I don’t know… What do I say… The floating islands at the jungle border were pretty. Oh, yeah. Sand pirates found us when we left the jungle. They moved on some odd wooden undersand submarines. I believe I did snap some shots of it. Uuumm… And the Dao Storm came by, but Max and the others shielded the rest of us. Oh and we just finished eating a big sand-ray that tried to eat us. It might be why my tummy doesn’t feel so good…”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
She paused again, staring into nothing, then sighed again, before cutting the feed.
***
Hot midday sun smoldered above the bones of a sand-swallowed city. The lapiz-blue marble pillars and roofless walls were covered in washed out hieroglyphs and statues whose features had been ground smooth by the passage of time.
A distant thump shook the camera as it was moved. Cloud of sand and dust billowed against the dark azure sky like living mountains.
Riko’s breath shivered as the camera focused on her unnaturally pale, blue-lipped, face. “I’m dying…” she whispered. “I stepped on a dune-ray. A small one with a stinger. It was like a chameleon and had… You know what? Doesn’t matter. I think this is it. Everywhere is going numb. Titan went into the tomb to find the antidote with Karen. I trust him, so I’m not afraid, but—”
An explosion shook the video.
Riko didn’t react to it with so much as a blink. “—if this is goodbye, I want everyone to know that it’s been… mostly alright. Last year was chaos, but also the best time of my life. Max, I love you. Thank you for finding me. Thank you. Thank you so much…”
Riko started to cry, then went into a coughing fit and the video cut.
It continued a while later. Her face was even paler, her voice hoarse and weak. “And Titan, Nelly, Laura, and everyone in Happyland. I love you. You’re like a second family to me. I’m glad to have been part of something important. I’m glad to have seen everything I saw. Oh, and Dad? Fuck you dad. Fuck you fuck you fuck you piece of human garbage!”
Coughing fit cut her off. The camera fell sideways onto the sand as Riko clutched her rapidly ballooning neck and let out a long choking wheeze.
“Riko! She can’t breathe!” Nelly shouted, rushing to fuzz over her.
Max ran over, gathering the collapsed Riko in his arms, shouting at her as tears ran down his cheeks. “Riko hang on! You can do it! C’mon, I believe in you! Live! Live!”
Another tremor shook the camera. The last image it captured was that of a hypermuscular man appearing in the towering cloud, as he peeled glowing hieroglyph marked bandages off of a mummified Fuzanglong dragon.
***
Rustling of sand only barely won the contest of loudness against the wind. Camera’s view wobbled as if it were on waves. Beyond a wooden railing, the dunes rose and fell behind her, mimicking an ocean. Further in the distance, beneath a sunrise, sandfalls the size of Niagara glowed in shades of gold and bronze.
The camera turned. Wind flapped Riko’s hair sideways and tore at the glowing mummy-bandages wrapped around her neck, torso, and arms.
She smiled shyly. “Surprise. I didn’t die, technically. Sorry again. Updating this vlog slipped from my mind. It’s been fifteen days since we departed. We’ve ran into all manner of amazing things on the way, I think I’ve lost count. But most importantly, this whole journey has given me some… new perspective on things. I can’t quite put it into words, but I’m feeling less restless. Less stressed. I was so preoccupied about thinking I was weak before we left. And now?”
Riko stared into the sunrise, her smile as peaceful as the fluff of clouds above it. “What happens, happens. I don’t think I have it in me to chase strength, but I’d like to be there to witness it all.”
Wood groaned and Riko grabbed the railing as the view tilted to match the steep cliff of a rising dune. A gorilla roared in the background.
“Um. Right, the bandages. Karen explained that they’re a saint level artifact with a name I can’t for the life of me remember. But they supposedly somehow make whoever is wrapped in them immortal. Kind of like a mobile Xianxia cryogenic chamber, except it involves some kind of time magic. I’m not too sure, but I’ll be wearing them until we find someone who can make the dune-ray antidote. Anyhow, I’m still alive and good. Will try to update a few more times before we arrive. Bye-byeee!”
***
Another clip began with Nelly, Riko, and Laura atop a dune, all three in a serious state of drunkenness, while Titan stood in front of a massive sand-storm that had an old man’s face.
***
Another clip focused on the distant horizon, where a shimmering mirage bent light into the shape of a city of gemstone towers and palaces. The view flickered, whilst a bandage wrapped Riko interviewed Karen for the history of the Lost Sect of Mirage, which was supposedly trapped in a pocket realm only accessible if you managed to run up to the mirage.
In the following clips, a confident smile slowly filled Riko’s eyes, as she transitioned to increasingly in depth interviews of her fellow expedition members.
***
Twenty-three days after leaving Happyland, we reached the sea and by extension, our destination. Aside from Maxman’s girlfriend dying and being revived by a magical cultivator artifact, it was what I would describe as a refreshing hike.
The distance was by far the longest I’ve ever walked on account of spending so many of my formative years in an asylum, but we’ll definitely make a habit of hiking with Nelly in the future. As fun as the trip was, however, I detached my attention from the memories made in those twenty-three days and focused on the City called Harbor of Stars rising from the sea.
Or, more precisely, laying on the beach.
Wrought coral and colorful stone stood several dozen stories at their highest. Buildings and districts were packed so tight they might’ve as well been carved into the same colossal star-shaped piece of dried coral. Lightly dressed people and cultivators buzzed about the tunnel-like market-streets and elevated boulevards, which burrowed through the city. Enormous seafaring vessels rested against the sea-side docks, as did sand submarines and barges against their on-land counterpart.
Even half a kilometer away, I sensed the presence of tens of cultivators capable of bending the Dao. And I sensed him.
Somewhere up there was my senior bruh, the Fifth head of the Gigachad sect, waiting for a fellow bruh to wake him from the clutches of Alphaholism.
clutches of Alphaholism.