The two weeks spent in Agur-Bas while the group waited for the undersea [Crafters] to finish their work on the equipment meant for the progenies was a relaxed one.
Naturally, they had not spent the time dawdling. The locals had spread out to say their farewells to their families, since everybody was well aware that they were unlikely to return from the trip. Most of Ani’s warriors – all of whom were now in the fourth tier, if in the very early stages – accompanied their families for probably the last time, made memories for their loved ones, so that they could be fondly remembered.
Even Ani herself spent some time with her siblings – the mixed-breed woman was older than she looked, and her parents had already passed on years ago, while she had no family of her own – though in the second week she started preparing supplies and other things the group would need for their planned trip. It was unlikely that they would return to Agur-Bas, and unless they ran into other refuges of their people, no town was likely to welcome them.
As such, other than new equipment, they also prepared other things. Since Ani was well aware of Esperanza’s [Soul Storage] and how she could use it to transport other items besides souls, they had planned around having her carry the most important parts of their supply there. Esperanza herself felt that it was a good plan, and approved of it, as long as it was not too much for her to carry around.
Part of the supplies they prepared were a sort of dried ration block that the locals of Agur-Bas made to preserve excess food. The blocks were made from all sorts of things, grains, various kinds of sea vegetation, as well as some kinds of seafood, that had all been dehydrated and ground into a fine powder, then compacted into their blocky form.
Each block was roughly half the size of an adult human’s palm, and they simply needed to be dissolved in hot water to create a thick, highly nutritious soup. One serving of such a soup served as a full meal on its own, and a block was enough for an adult to use for up to three days, with the assumption of three meals a day. If further rationed, it could naturally be stretched out even further.
Esperanza loaded up on hundreds of such blocks, which occupied nearly half the space in her storage. While time did pass in her [Soul Storage] as far as she could tell, the preserved blocks of food had great longevity, and remained edible for up to ten years, so it was not a worry.
Other than that, they also prepared other things, like tents and bedrolls, but those could be carried by the individuals instead, and were not as vital, so there was no need to store it in Esperanza’s storage. She did feel somewhat weighed down when she carried too much stuff in there, so they mostly limited what she carried to emergency rations, as food could be the most difficult thing to find in some places.
Water was not an issue, as many members of the group had some way to conjure or find water. Shelter could be built from scratch in worst case scenarios, while money would likely have little value where they were headed. For one, they didn’t have any human or demon currency, and that was on the assumption that they would manage to get into town safely in the first place, which was a very unlikely thing.
By far the most valuable thing they prepared however was a gift from the temple priests in Agur-Bas.
“What is this?” asked Esperanza when an elderly priest brought out a large roll of parchment – she wasn’t sure what sort of animal skin was used to make the parchment, but given how the backside had marks that hinted of scales it was likely an aquatic one – and placed it on the table.
The whole group had gathered in the temple to see what the priests wished to give them. The parchment before them looked rather new, but looks could be deceiving. Without a word, the old priest unrolled the parchment, which was large enough to cover most of the table, and exposed what was drawn on it for everyone to see.
It was a map, a large one that probably contained the whole world, or at least the continent they were on.
Depicted on the map was a lone continent surrounded by oceans all around it. The continent itself had a crude squarish shape, one that stood on one of its corners, slightly tilted to the right. The uppermost part of the continent lay in the north-north-eastern direction, and Esperanza saw how wide the terrain varied all over the continent on the map.
To the far north and far south, the land was colored an off-white that indicated snow and ice, likely locked in permafrost all year round. The climate seemed to turn more temperate as it approached the center of the continent, with a wide band of thick forests running from the west to east in the middle. There were next to no notations of cities and other places on the map, however.
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“This is a copy of an old map we inherited from our ancestors, from a time when Ephemera was not yet torn into endless war,” explained the old priest with a somber tone, naming the continent they were on for the first time in Esperanza’s knowledge. To be fair, she had been too busy with other things to inquire about the name of the continent – if the people she had been around even knew it – or the like.
“This map is up to date?” she asked with some wonderment.
“That, we have no certainty about. The map we inherited had the location of cities and borders, but they were from dead nations that had passed on thousands of years ago. Because of that, we have no idea about the location of the actual cities of the current age,” admitted the priest openly. “What we could copy was the terrain, which shouldn’t have changed too much even after the time that has passed. We hope that this will be of help to your endeavors, Exalted One.”
“This will be helpful, sure,” said Esperanza with a nod. A map was a great help, and if they managed to pilfer some maps from the humans or demons they met, they could then interpolate it with the map they had. “If I may ask, do you happen to know roughly where we are on this map?”
“Certainly. Agur-Bas is right here,” said the old priest as he took a stick and pointed towards an area near the easternmost corner of the continent. “Based on the Exalted One’s descriptions, the village of Navef you told us about should be around here,” added the old priest as he shifted the stick to the left. Contrary to Esperanza’s estimation, however, the stick didn’t shift much. It didn’t even move as far as one-tenth of the width of the continent portrayed on the map.
That was the first time she gained a sense of just how massive the continent was.
The journey from Navef to Agur-Bas was probably around a thousand miles away. It was hard to be certain, but she knew that the people of this world – at least the higher tier ones – were far more robust than the people of her former world. If a thousand miles was barely one-tenth of the width of the continent portrayed on the map, then that meant the continent was easily over ten thousand miles across.
Larger than the largest continent in her previous world, by a sizable margin, even.
“From what little information we garnered through our allies and friends in the sea, the frontlines of the battle is roughly around here,” said the old priest once more as he drew a horizontal line on the map a short distance above the forested part in the middle. “The forest you see here used to be the divide between what is now human lands and demon territory, the no-man’s land where our kind hid. At the present, we are well inside demon territory, however.”
“Interesting,” noted Esperanza as she mulled over the implications of the world’s size and the mission she had chosen to undertake. “Any of you have opinions on how we should go about things now that we know of this?”
“From what I see, we have two choices,” said Belug-ur’ani after some consideration. The woman was the strongest warrior in Agur-Bas and also had many decades of experience over Esperanza and the progenies, so they listened closely to her words. “Since we are already in what is considered a part of the demons’ territory, we could strike out towards the south and make a mess in their territory, which would weaken them from the inside.”
Several of the progenies nodded at her suggestion, though several others – namely Resitia, Iryl, Mel-Ivas, Dai’vasy and even Tiesya – showed looks of consternation on their faces. It was understandable, as the five of them were humans or otherwise had human bloodline in their ancestry.
Other than how both sides would hunt them down just for being believers of the Deities of Yore – or Oldies, as Esperanza still favored to call them – some demons also had skills that would allow them to detect humans. Such skills made sense, given how shapeshifting skills existed and both sides were likely to spy on each other that way. As such, the fact that several of them could be detected in such a way even if they managed to hide the fact that they were under Oldies’ care was an issue.
“You mentioned two options, what’s the other one?” asked Esperanza towards the older woman.
“The frontline of the war,” stated Ani simply as she pointed towards the region where the elderly priest had drawn the line signifying the border between the human kingdom and the demon territory. “Both the humans and the demons worship the new gods, and another war is underway as [Heroes] and [Champions] have been summoned. While they are busy with one another, we could work behind the scenes to let them destroy each other.”
“It probably wouldn’t be too hard to do, either,” added Ani as she gestured with her hands to illustrate her point. “They would be in high alert near the frontlines, sure, which makes this course of action more risky to undertake, but on the other hand, we would be able to do things without either side noticing for a good while before anyone got suspicious.”
“Can you explain what you mean by that?”
“Both the demons and the humans would most likely attribute any setback or sabotage they experienced to the other side,” said Ani confidently. “Unless we were caught red-handed or let some witnesses escape, they would only think that their enemies were responsible for whatever we did. While we would still need to keep ourselves hidden, it would allow us to make our moves with more impunity, while at the same time both sides would continue to weaken one another, which is a good thing as they are both our enemies.”
“On the other hand, if we were to head towards the interior of the demon territory, we could weaken them with less risk. They would be less alert, especially deeper inside their own territory,” added Ani as a counterargument to her first idea. “It would be lower in risk, and would still likely affect the situation of the war, but we’d have less direct influence over it, so it’d be harder to get the result we aimed for.”
“Both are valid ideas,” admitted Esperanza after some thought. She had at first considered searching for other enclaves or refuges that still worshiped Oldies and grow their numbers that way, but now that Ani mentioned it, the war was an opportunity to really change things, and directly affecting it would likely show greater effect than what they could do even with greater numbers if the war was done and over with.
“What do you all think?” asked Esperanza as she directed the question to the progenies. Despite their tender age she valued their opinion, which tended to be more pure and unbiased by the vicissitudes of life. Besides, this choice would greatly affect them as well, so it was only fair that they got a say in it. “Which do you think would be the better course of action to take?”