Chapter Thirty: I See Trouble on the Way

Marc looked out at the valley below from atop a large hill. He couldn’t be sure if this was the same hill he had first appeared on, it had been nearly a year, but it was close. Grenn had made a small detour at his request so that they could visit the scene of the crime. The site of his first epic battle against a raiding army of vicious monsters.

Marc was happy that he had at least advanced enough to see the humor in the situation. Although he did not find it nearly as amusing as the true hero of the story did, the brave man who rescued the helpless visitor who was so weak he couldn’t beat a single rabbit. At least that is how Grenn recalled the story repeatedly as they passed through the area where they had set up camp while Marc had recovered.

According to Grenn, they were still about a couple of hours walk until they reached the city. As they walked, Grenn played tour guide, explaining things about the land they were passing through, and preparing Marc to see the city.

Clearwater City was the largest of the fortress cities bordering the wild lands of the Breen Forest and the Ged Mountain Range. He described the city as a giant walled fortress, completely surrounded by a ring of walls, fifty meters high and three meters thick. Marc was shocked.

“Are all cities like that?”

“No. Only the outposts near the wildlands need to have such high walls. They were built over eight thousand years ago, so the stories say.”

“Eight Thousand…” That was older than the pyramids. Maybe?

《Much older. By nearly three thousand years.》 Kira chimed in.

“This city has been here for that long?” He asked Grenn.

“Longer, although it was wiped out and rebuilt many times before the wall was built. We still have beast surges every ten or twenty years which could easily wipe out a city of this size.”

“Beast surge?”

“The Mana in this region is not stable. We don’t quite know why. But occasionally the Mana will rise by a huge amount in the forest and the mountain range. Then we see a large amount of beasts appear, and sometimes even worse things.”

“Worse things?” Marc asked, realizing he was acting like a grade-schooler on a field trip.

“Yeah, like a Calamity Beast. Beasts that are experiencing Mana Panic. That’s when the Mana crystal is so oversaturated with Mana that it shatters. They become monsters many times stronger than the beasts they originally were, but it’s temporary. The release is more like an explosion. After the power is burned out, they drop dead. But for a short period of time, they are incredibly violent, unbelievably powerful, and effectively unstoppable. It’s supposed to be truly terrible.” Grenn shivered slightly.

“You have never seen one?”

“Oh no, It’s incredibly rare. Even during a surge. If were to appear, I’m not even sure the walls of Clearwater would be guaranteed to hold up. I don’t think there has been a single Calamity Beast in this part of the Republic in my lifetime. But I’m no scholar. Meservi would know.”

Grenn explained that in ancient times there was a gigantic lake that covered this whole valley. Once the lake had dried up, it had left a very fertile and flat land. Many cities had grown up, but beasts had changed that. Slowly cities had disappeared, wiped out by beast surges. Finally, the Republic had consolidated its resources and built the giant walls around Clearwater, as an outpost to protect against Beasts as well as to harvest the Mana Crystals they possessed.

“What are they like? The beast surges?” Marc asked, glad he had enough speed to keep up with Grenn, although he needed to use every stamina-boosting ability he had to manage it.

“Not that bad really. Of course, that’s with the walls. Without them, I don’t think we would stand a chance.” Grenn answered casually.

“They can last for months. Thousands of beasts. Wave after wave. A normal city would be wiped out in days, maybe hours. The longest one I can remember lasted nearly six months.”

“Six months? How can you last that long?” Marc asked incredulously.

“Theoretically we can keep the walls locked up indefinitely. We even have farms and livestock, everything we need inside the city.” Grenn said proudly.

“It’s a sight to see. That said, it’s not fun to be locked up inside the city for that long. That’s why I like to get out when I can.“ Grenn stretched out his arms and took a deep breath.

“How large is the city? How many people?” Marc asked.

“Oh, about half a million, give or take.”

“Half a million?” Marc choked out. He thought back to his old home. Silver City had barely ten thousand people, Deming was about twice that. You would have to go down to El Paso to see a city that large.

“Half a million… and everyone lives inside the walls? That’s incredible.” Marc was shocked. The city must be huge.

“It’s big. We have to keep the population relatively stable, but it’s not that hard. There are always people leaving, heading outward to places with less beast activity, or bigger cities with more space, and there are always plenty of hunters who want to come here to make money. That’s why immigration is so strict. It makes it a very lively place, with people coming from all over the world.”

Marc was eager to see what it would be like. He had trouble imagining what it would be like. It turns out, his imagination was far from adequate. When they finally approached the city, it defied any of his expectations.

Marc realized that he hadn’t really accepted the “parallel dimension” situation. Sure he had seen magic, pocket dimensions, dogs the size of cows, not to mention rabbits with horns. But over the last year, these things had become quite normal. Everything had become quite normal, as though he had just traveled to a faraway country. That feeling ended the moment he saw Clearwater City. He was definitely in a different world.

It was large, Perhaps not compared to cities that he was accustomed to, but it was nothing like what he expected. Desert towns like Silver City were basically just an intersection of two or more highways. At some point someone digs a well, or a gas station. Then they start spreading outward. Marc didn’t know anything about urban planning, but he assumed they just got bigger and the buildings got taller, and sooner or later you had a metropolis like Dallas or Los Angeles.

This looked more like a gigantic football stadium, the city resembled a fancy wedding cake in its shape and arrangement. Situated in the center of a vast plain covered by a short purple-green grass was Clearwater City

Forming the base of the shape were the City walls that he had heard about. When Grenn had talked about walls around the city, he had envisioned the tall concrete walls used to surround prisons or the fantasy walls in movies where guards could walk ten meters off the ground between parapets and towers. What he saw was far beyond anything he could have imagined.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

A circular wall enormous and rose straight from the ground to a height of at least fifty meters. The wall was seamless and had no gaps, although there seemed to be numerous entrances near the base. Rising above the wall were hundreds of tall buildings and towers, giving the appearance of a second layer atop the base level of the gigantic cake-like structure. The wall had a uniform dark grey color, while the buildings rising above tended to be light or white colored.

Not a single structure of any size, no road, no sign, not even a bush or a tree was visible outside of the city wall. It gave the illusion that the city was floating on a green sea. Marc could see a large blue lake behind the city, but apart from that, the city appeared to be a perfectly circular structure of massive size, alone in the sea of purple-green grass.

“Kira? Do you know…”

《The walls are over ten kilometers across, it has a circumference of 34.5 kilometers and an internal area of nearly 9,500 hectares or 95 million square meters.》

Marc had gotten used to the metric measurements, but this still didn’t quite help him grasp what he was looking at.

《It’s about four times the size of Silver City.》

“And how many…”

“The current population is 523,423 people.”

Marc was speechless. How could so many people live in such a small space? How could they build something so massive? He had so many questions.

“So, what do you think?” Grenn stared at Marc with a smile, waiting for his reaction.

“That is a city?” Was the only thing he could think to say.

《Of course it is, Idiot.》

“Of course! Quite a site to see, don’t you think?” Pride seeping out of Grenn’s assessment.

Instead of heading straight for the city, Grenn was walking off towards the western side, where the city met the lake.

Marc was curious why they didn’t head to the things that looked like entrances at the base but was too embarrassed to ask so many questions.

《Don’t worry, I think I know what those are for. But we should be able to figure it out when we get to the main gate.》

Marc continued to gape at the megastructure as they approached the city.

《It would be more than fifty times the size of the Astrodome. And that’s just the part above ground.》

Marc blinked and almost tripped when he heard this.

“There’s more underground?” He checked with Kira.

《Oh boy is there. I won’t ruin the surprise though. One thing I can assure you is that there is nothing like this in your old world.》

While the plains surrounding the city were shockingly barren of any structure, flora, or fauna, Marc started to notice things moving in the lake, and also hundreds of bird-like shapes in the sky over the city.

《Boats in the lake, there seems to be a lot of activity there. As for the birds, well, they are not birds.》

Grenn noticed Marc looking up.

“Ah, the wyverns. Have you ever seen wyverns?” Grenn asked curiously.

“Wyverns?” Marc had to search his memory for the unfamiliar term. “Wait… dragons?”

“Hmmm.” Grenn frowned. “Wyverns. Large flying lizards? Wingspan of around twenty meters. Mostly used for transportation and high-value cargo.”

Holy shit. They have dragons. Real, flying dragons. And they use them for FedEx?

“Hey!” He shouted after Grenn who had started to pull away.

“Oh sorry, eager to get through the gate.” He slowed his pace back to a speed Marc could keep up with.

They approached the city gate, similar to an enormous garage door, four stories high. To the left, there was a port of some fashion. The majority of the structure was over the water, and it appeared to be floating. It was connected to the land by dozens of ramps of various sizes. Marc could see several large ships moored to the floating dock and cargo being loaded and unloaded onto wheeled trucks of some kind.

There were hundreds of people moving around between the docks and the gate, many forming a large line near the right side of the entrance where a guard station was. The cargo seemed to be kept to the left side where it looked as though inspectors were busy checking through everything.

Grenn led Marc toward a tall woman wearing what looked like an old army uniform. Green-colored overalls, with a cinched belt and several pouches of various sizes hanging off it. Her hair was tied back. She was holding something that looked like a clipboard and appeared to be checking some boxes that were unloaded near the gate.

As they approached, Marc realized that she was the size and build of a professional wrestler. The coveralls hid her muscles, but he could tell she was probably strong enough to go toe to toe with Grenn, despite a slightly smaller build.

Grenn called out to her. “Ritchi!”

The woman turned and noticed them. She quickly straightened up, then bowed sharply while placing her right hand on her right shoulder, a motion that Marc now recognized as a formal greeting.

“Instructor! Good day.” She said deferentially as she rose from her bow.

“I’m looking for the Adjutant. Have you seen him today?” Grenn asked politely, but with an air of authority that Marc had not noticed before.

“I’m sorry, I hav-”

She was cut off by the familiar voice of Meservi booming out from behind her.

“There you are! About time!” He shouted loudly at them, garnering the attention of several people nearby.

Ritchi again shot to attention, then greeted the Elf.

“Adjutant! Good day.”, her face was sharp and professional, but with a hint of exhaustion that Marc would swear was not there a minute ago.

“Ritchi! Good day to you. Everything in order?”

“Yes, Adjutant Meservi. Everything is in perfect order.”

“Really? That’s Wonderful. Wonderful to hear. Have we figured out how those shocker mice got through customs last week?”

“Umm. Not yet Guild Adjutant. We are still investigating. We believe it was a smuggler from Praxim. How he brought them all the way from F’ell is a mystery. We don’t have enough evidence to confirm it though so he is currently under surveillance.”

“I see. Nasty things those vermin. One cornered a cook on the lower floors a few days ago and blasted him good. Cheeky yellow bastard. It’s all good though. We had a team go and find the nest and clear them all out. The burnt hair smell was horrible though.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you, sir. We appreciate the Guild’s assistance in this matter.” She said, her voice getting gradually cooler as the conversation went on.

“Of course! That is what we are here for! You stop the problems from getting into the city, but when they do, the Guild will happily clean up the mess. It’s all about cooperation, yes?” Even Marc was getting uncomfortable by the cheerful Elf’s provocation.

“Thank you Guild Adjutant. Yes, you are correct. Now, I must get back to the inspection.”

“Of course! Of course. We won’t keep you. But first.” Meservi gestured to Marc.

“If you would be so kind as to clear this young man for entry?”

A visibly uncomfortable Ritchi was about to protest, Marc could tell, but before she could open her mouth Meservi pounced.

“I have the entry approval here, just got it from the administration office myself.” He shoved a handful of papers onto the clipboard she was carrying.

“You really should…”

He cut her off again, “This is a new Guild prospect from Ba’Samur. He’s come an incredible distance obviously and will be staying temporarily as a ward of the Guild. We must get him settled in quickly. Everything is in order as you can see.”

Meservi was pushing the clipboard into his face, pointing out random places in the stack of documents.

Ritchi pulled the papers away from her face and started to leaf through the pile. As she was reading, a nearby pallet of boxes tipped over, spilling what appeared to be cabbages all over the ground. Next to it, a tall and thin man who appeared to be the owner of the boxes started yelling and pointing in multiple directions.

Ritchi sighed. Then she pulled a stamp from one of the pouches at her waist and deftly stamped the papers on three different pages, faster than Marc’s eyes could catch, one quick swing of her arm and she was done. Then she pushed the pile of paper back to Meservi.

“Alright, everything looks good.” She looked at Marc and with a tired smile said “Welcome to Clearwater.” then ran off in the direction of the cabbages.

Grenn watched the whole interaction with furrowed eyebrows. Meservi returned the scrutiny with an expression that looked more like a teenager stealing a case of beer from a convenience store than a senior official. Then the Elf put his arm around Marc and led him towards the gate.

“Welcome to Clearwater my boy! This is going to be wonderful! I promise! You are going to love it here. Just a few things you must promise me.”

Marc looked at Meservi questioningly.

“The first rule: You must always let us know where you are. Not running off on your own.”

Marc nodded. That was fair.

“The second.” Meservi lowered his voice and whispered into Marc’s ear, “Protect your secrets. This is a crowded place. You are never really alone and never unwatched.”

Marc looked around. As they passed through the gate he could see people everywhere. Inside the walls, he could see what appeared to be a crowded marketplace, everyone packed in and pushing to move around.

He looked back at Meservi and nodded again.

“And rule number three…” the Elf continued.

Marc’s eyes were trying to absorb everything around them. there were so many things happening and everything was so alien to him, that he couldn’t keep up. Meservi continued as they walked into Clearwater.

“…Always trust Meservi!”