The following day, Esperanza’s group woke up late, close to noon, apparently, according to Belug-ur’ani who had been sent to guide them around, since she was the lucky one who first met with Esperanza. At least that was what she told the group, and regardless of whether the fourth-tier warrior was there to keep an eye on them or otherwise was not something the group cared about at that juncture.

Despite the late hour, the temple still prepared a breakfast for the group to fill their stomach with, a simpler one which consisted primarily of freshly baked breads – ones that tasted oddly savory like the sea, at that, and had rather dark colors – along with cold cuts of preserved meats and fresh fish that had just been caught less than an hour ago.

It was a satisfying enough meal – if a touch on the salty side, since salt was one of the main methods of preservation in Agur-Bas, not a surprise given the town’s proximity to the ocean – to fill their bellies at the start of the day before Belug-ur’ani offered to take then around the town proper to take a look for themselves, in the assumption that they were going to stay there.

Esperanza saw no reason to refuse the offer, so she and the rest of her group – the youngest children being held up by some of the Progenies – followed the warrior woman around the town.

Ani – as Belug-ur’ani insisted they call her instead of her longer full name – first led them to a higher terrace. The large cavern where the town was situated was only slightly lit by a few beams of sunlight that entered from the seaside wall, which supposedly leads to a sheer cliff on the other side, as well as the naturally luminescent moss and fungi that grew in many places.

It was a rather beautiful sight to see it all from a higher vantage point, the town looking like a dreamy landscape only lit sparsely in the bluish-green bioluminescence. The locals were clearly accustomed to the poor lighting, as they went about their business without showing any signs of being bothered by it. The town was lively, far livelier compared to Navef.

Esperanza’s early guess of a couple thousand people turned out to be off by an order of magnitude, as according to Ani there were around twenty-five thousand residents in Agur-Bas. The town that the group were seeing was just part of a network of caverns, and there were six other smaller sites which the locals also inhabited, along with three more underwater caverns where those from the Gour-ug’rech lived.

They formed a sizable part of the town’s total population, but since they spent the vast majority of their time underwater, they rarely showed themselves on the higher parts of the inhabited areas like the one Esperanza and the group was in. Instead, hybrid children carrying their blood was not an uncommon sight there, with Ani herself being one such child.

It was perhaps a fortunate accident that hybrid children between the Gour-ug’rech and other races were blessed with the ability to survive well both on land and under the water, unlike their parents which could only survive in one or the other. Those like Ani were equally at home on both dry land and swimming in the water, which was a beneficial thing given that part of the place they called home was permanently under the water anyway.

In fact, the lower caves where the aquatic Gour-ug’rech lived were connected to the higher ones which were kept dry by tunnels where the water level fluctuates with the high and low tide. At the low tide, the water would recede until it nearly reached the lower caves, but at the high tide, it would fill the entire tunnel and a small lake at the upper cave it was connected to besides.

Since fishing – an activity made easy by the ease with which the aquatic residents of Agur-Bas moved in the water – was one of the main sources of the town’s self-sufficiency, those tunnels were some of the most important parts of the town’s infrastructure, as the fishermen would bring their catch for the day to the upper caves on the high tides.

Esperanza also learned that other than fish, the locals of the town kept a few ranches of large rodents that sort of resembled guinea pigs, just larger. Similarly, they farmed edible mushrooms and some vegetables that grew fine in the darkness to diversify their sources of sustenance. The bread that Esperanza and the others ate earlier was not made from wheat flour. Instead, it was primarily made from flour that was milled from the hard stalks of certain kinds of seaweed.

That certainly explained the taste.

Since the group was already well acquainted with the temple – having spent the whole night there and all – Ani brought them towards an area that served as the town’s market instead. Since the local community was mostly enclosed and self-sufficient, they did their trading by bartering, and Esperanza even saw a Gour-ug’rech out of the water trading some still-moving fish for some handicraft made from bones and rocks.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

It was the first time she saw a full-blooded member of the race. The Gour-ug’rech’s whole body was covered by silvery scales other than their face, which hid the grayish skin they had. They were hairless, and Esperanza couldn’t tell whether it was a male or a female just from looking. The Gour-ug’rech did not stay for long, though, and as soon as the trade was concluded, they headed towards the lake that connected the cavern to the lower cave and leapt in with their goods carried in a net.

In contrast, a hybrid like Ani only had scales covering parts of their body, and had hair as well. Her skin did have the same grayish shade, but given how some Nevilosk also had skin of that same shade, Esperanza had at first thought it came from that side of the woman’s parentage. Unlike the more sleek-shaped aquatics though, Ani was visibly more muscled and solid in frame.

“There’s quite a few of them amongst the townsfolk as well, isn’t there?” asked Esperanza.

“Probably around four to five thousand in the lower caves alone, Exalted One,” replied Ani reverently to her question. “There are others who lived in nearby enclaves further out into the sea as well, most of them neutrals though there are also some of those who worship the Deities of Yore there. There had been more people moving there because those who followed the new gods had gained more ground of late.”

“Oh? I thought they were neutral to that conflict, though?”

“To those who followed the new gods, you’re either with them or against them, Exalted One,” explained Ani wistfully. “Those who worship no gods were nearly as bad as those who worshiped the Deities of Yore in their eyes, and their numbers have been on the increase as time goes on. For the time being, those who were neutral remained the majority, but we have no idea how long such a state of affairs would persist.”

“You sound worried.”

“I have friends and family who live in the ocean, Exalted One. I can’t help but worry for them, for if war was to break out under the sea, none would be spared its effects,” replied the hybrid woman with a shake of her head. “That’s notwithstanding the issues we already face. Year after year, there have been more natural disasters that encroach into our living space down there. Sometimes it feels like the world itself is driving us to the edge of a cliff.”

“That… might not be an inaccurate analogy for the situation,” admitted Esperanza, as she recalled what Oldies had told her. That the world itself was long due its end and the way the new gods kept forcibly sustaining it was not something that would work for too much longer. The decrease in places suitable for the people to live in was just a symptom of that issue.

Fortunately they kept the conversation quiet, so it did not bother the children, who were quite occupied by the new sights and scenery before them. Ani later brought them to several houses and introduced them to the families living there – mixed race families more often than not – which she explained were a few families that the temple trusted and had picked to house the young children.

For the time being, they were not hurrying the children to move with their new foster families yet, as the day was mostly about meet and greets and allowing the children to feel a little more familiar with their new families to be. It was a clever way to go about it, Esperanza thought, as the children were still very attached to her and the Progenies at the moment.

It also brought Esperanza second thoughts about her previously nonchalant willingness to help Oldies destroy the world.

She couldn’t help but think about what would happen to all these people, people who still believed in Oldies at that, should they succeed at destroying the world. Part of her guessed that they would likely perish like everything else would when a world came to an end, which in turn made her wonder if Oldies perhaps meant destroying the world in a more metaphorical sense, or whether she could find a way to set things right without having to go that far.

Her ruminations were brought to a halt as the group moved on and she almost called out that they were one house short, having accidentally counted the young boy who died in the forest in their number as well. That incident struck her with a harsh realization. She couldn’t even properly protect a group of children as she was then, much less alter the course the world was headed into?

That was mere wishful thinking.

Until she actually has the power to alter the course of the world, it would have been useless for her to fall into such wishful lines of thought. There was no point for her to dream of things she couldn’t bring to fruition yet, and when she eventually gained enough power to do so, she would then have time to ponder on how to do it best.

For what it was worth, the effort that the temple made to accommodate the children was an exemplary one. They chose families that already had children of a similar age to the younger children in the group, probably done on purpose to make the children feel at home more quickly, as they would have a friend of similar age to play with.

The locals she had seen so far were a lot like the locals of Navef. They were straightforward and honest to a fault, at times, the sort of people who were content with their lives and wore their feelings right on their sleeves, without any hint of duplicity to be found. Esperanza knew that she was perhaps being paranoid about it, but she still chose to observe a bit longer before she’d make the call to ask the children whether they would like to stay here with the new families that awaited them.

As for herself and the Progenies of Yore, she knew that while they might be staying at Agur-Bas for the time being, they would eventually leave to go their own way. She had already heard from the Progenies that they sometimes received vague dreams that they strongly believe came from Oldies for some reason, dreams that hinted at them to follow after Esperanza.

If they were to follow after her, then by necessity they would have to leave with her. She had her own task, though as yet she still had no idea on how to best deal with it. To destroy a world was by no means an easy feat, much less doing so under the eyes of a pantheon of gods who would most certainly be averse to that happening.

For better or worse, though, Esperanza knew that she would no longer tread her path alone in the future.