When Kai finally landed on Deadwaste, the lamia ship left him alone and he suddenly realized that he wasn't back home at all.

To the civilizations on Rosemount or Cloudspire, Deadwaste was a backwater that they just thought about as a brown smudge on the edge of the map, a bunch of undistinguished barbarians. Yet it was actually a massive continent as large as either, filled with numerous different peoples.

More importantly, Kai had never been to the Elemental Nations in his entire life. As he stepped onto the docks, he could recognize the powers he saw around him but not the cultures. Goralia was on the opposite side of the Frontier, completely unreachable, and he was basically alone in a foreign land. The Elemental Nations were just lines on a map to him. Landing in the Wind Union still put him unbelievably far from home.

As he walked into the port city, he could at least embrace a few familiar aspects. Even if he didn't recognize the buildings, which were strange winding structures topped with numerous flags and odd funnels to track the wind, the boards were ordinary wood. He might not grasp every detail about currents being relayed in the news, but he enjoyed the feel of mana in the air.

After the chaotic powers of Rosemount, it was almost shocking to be surrounded by such a consistent population. Most people had little power, and those who did had wind elemental abilities, practically all the same. The foreigners he saw were mostly from Rosemount instead of other Frontier nations, and when they saw him they sometimes nodded, as if he was a fellow outsider.

What threw him most was the massive drop in power. Not that he had really expected Deadwaste to inexplicably scale to challenge him, but he still wasn't prepared. He would see muscular men with some scars who he would have evaluated as a threat in other circumstances, then check their souls...

<

Name: ???

Total Power: 14

Physique Level: G-4 (10)

Soul Level: 2 (4)

>

They'd have 14 Power, maybe 10 or 20. He could still remember that stage of his life and how big a difference a few points from Physique made to him, but it was completely immaterial from his perspective now. Part of him understood why people from the other continents were so arrogant, though he tried to extinguish that part of himself.

All the locals around him had the wispy wind-like hair he associated with the Elemental Nations, even if only a small number of them had the actual abilities. He had always known that there were fewer element users than hunters in Goralia, and it seemed like an even lower percentage than crystal cultivators in Krysal. That would have made more sense if their average strength had been higher.

For example, when he looked at a woman in her forties with bright green hair brimming with mana...

<

Name: ???

Total Power: 62

Windborn: Onceswept (41)

Physique Level: G-5 (12)

Soul Level: 3 (9)

>

She only had 62 Power. That put her on par with the "veteran hunters" he'd grown up seeing, but now he knew that all of them had failed to make the jump to more difficult challenges, like the Frontier. The base level of power for Windborn abilities seemed to be higher, but most had only modest Soul Levels and G-rank Physiques.

But Kai hoped that he'd learned better than to judge everyone by power alone. When he first got hungry, Kai looked around for a restaurant of some kind. The one he found didn't cook mana foods or anything wind-inspired, it was just a shack that served noodles. He chose it over the others because it contained a large number of "Onceswept" fighters with Windborn powers and he hoped they might help him adjust to his new environment.

"Hey, a Goralian!" The man behind the counter looked surprised to see him. "Don't get many of you this far north!"

"I'm doing some traveling," Kai said mildly. "What do you have?"

"Not much in the way of Goralian food, I'm afraid."

"I'll take whatever's standard here."

"Might be spicier than you're used to, haha!"

In fact, the noodles proved to be milder than he'd grown used to on Rosemount, and Kai more than anyone wasn't going to balk at unusual food. It was a bigger problem exchanging a Crest for local money, not because the port city was unused to Rosemount's currency but because they struggled to split such a large coin. That had been one of the smaller ones he had in his spatial ring.

Once he had his noodles, Kai sat in a corner and just listened to the conversations around him. One stereotype definitely seemed to be true: the Elemental Nations cared far more about conflicts among one another than they did about anyone else. All of the local politics were basically nonsense to him, a salad of names and clans and laws unfamiliar to him.

Over time he gravitated toward a table of middle-aged men and women who were discussing continental politics. Those he could follow more easily: there were rumors of war between the Earth Union and the Water Union, the Fire Union was in decline, there'd been some sort of scandalous affair between high-ranking members of the Wind Union and Water Union.

When some of them ambled off to get back to work, Kai moved to sit at the table. They frowned at him at first, since he was so much younger than they were, but they warmed when Kai bought them all a round of drinks. At less than a full Crest or Eagle, he barely even thought about the price.

"I've never been in the Elemental Nations before," he told them, "and frankly it's a lot trying to keep up. Anything I should know?"

"Eh, we have no problem with Goralians," one of the women said. "You're too far away for us to have any opinions, ha!"

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"You feel differently about the Krysali or Irunians?"

That question got a chorus of contradictory replies: while in their day-to-day lives they cared more about the other Unions, they definitely had opinions about the neighboring Frontier nations. The Wind Union actually didn't share any borders with the others, so they seemed to view them as exotic lands that were extensions of the neighboring Unions.

"Krysal got shook up again," one of the men was saying. "Some new leader on top, so the Fire Union can't get qi crystals as fast anymore. That's a real frustrating skill, but I like how it pisses off the Water Union."

"There's new leadership in Krysal?" Kai asked, suddenly tense.

"Oh, sure. There was a revolution or something a few years back."

"Do you mean the lower workers in Krysali society took down the merchants?"

"Eh, something like that. They've been arguing about that sort of nonsense my entire life and I don't see why they can't just get along. Here, we stick together. Families stick to families, clans stick to clans, and ultimately Wind Union is Wind Union."

Kai listened in bemusement as the group fed him a garbled version of the Krysali revolution. His first fear had been that a counter-revolution had happened while he was gone, but it sounded like the nation was stabilizing. He could have moved the conversation on, but he kept listening just to hear their opinions about Krysali decadence.

They weren't incorrect in terms of the inequality, just laughably wrong about the details. Despite all his time in Krysal, Kai had never known there was an entire class of servants whose sole job was to feed grapes into the mouths of crystalliers. He wasn't sure if this group was particularly ignorant, or if the desert and mountains in between blocked too much information.

"The softness is infecting the Fire Union, though," one of the men said gruffly. "They say one of their princes has eight children and only one of them gained any fire."

"Good for us, isn't it? Less trouble on the border."

"But fire stirs wind, everybody knows that. We can't let them get too lax."

"What about the incursion?" Kai asked. "Has that caused any trouble?"

"For the Earth Union, sure. But that's always the case..."

He'd technically known, but hadn't really understood, that the Earth Union was the only part of the Elemental Nations with major exposure to the Frontier. They had long ago made an agreement, mediated by the Frontier elites, that all four unions would send warriors to combat the incursions. It sounded like they mostly fulfilled those obligations, but when monsters got through, only the south really suffered.

"So the Earth Union is on the decline?" Kai asked, and blinked when they laughed at him.

"That's not how it works, son," one of them said. "Earth takes the hits, so they have to get stronger or shatter. They're always a threat. Maybe not to us, because we don't have a clear border, but to everybody else."

"And they might be making an alliance with Irun," somebody else pointed out.

"Bah, are we afraid of a little steel? What good will a bunch of sword-makers do?"

"There are millions of Irunians who have never taken the elemental trial. If even some of them turn out to be Earthborn..."

"It's random, ain't it?"

"Nah, the Earth Union will cheat, always do."

It seemed to Kai that this group had a very loose idea of how the elemental powers trials actually worked. Presumably they had all taken the test at some point in their lives and been found wanting - so they had something in common. He thought that the results were only partially influenced by genetics, however, meaning that people with different abilities regularly showed up in different clans. Back in hunter training he'd been taught that was one of the things that kept all the clans in the Elemental Nations bound together instead of truly dissolving into war.

Eventually he felt like he'd discovered all the news he could understand from them. The Fire Union had been impacted by the revolution in Krysal and the Earth Union was engaged in suspicious negotiations with Irun. That left the Wind and Water Unions pretending to be above it all while bickering with one another.

Kai decided that there was no point in spending much longer in this little port city. Their meeting point was further inland, where he hoped that he would find greater challenges. He headed off down the southern road.

Given all the disturbances, it might be more difficult for them to meet up than he had expected. Zae Zin Nim was supposed to land furthest east, in the most obscure port so that she couldn't be spotted by any Brightwind investigators, but she had a long road to travel. She'd insisted on taking the diamond star, so at least she'd be moving at a faster pace. Omilaena's whaling vessel would come in later, then he'd simply hope that she caught up.

For his part, Kai enjoyed being on the road again. He considered hitching a ride on some of the wagons he saw, only to realize that even the flying ones moved far slower than he could. Drawing on Thunderbird's Wings he easily burned his way south, moving far faster than most.

He could have made it in days if not for a distraction: a caravan was being attacked by monsters. Kai actually grinned when he realized what was happening, then rushed to go help. After the demons and politics of the Commonwealth, this would practically be a vacation.

Much of the trouble seemed to be a cluster of grotesque bats that slipped around the wind bursts that the defenders tried to use against them. Kai hit them in midair, swallowing a couple whole before anyone noticed and then taking out the rest with a Tyrant's Claw. When he came down, he flattened one of the other monsters with his impact alone, barely even paying attention to what it was.

Things only got more difficult when he rushed past the caravan to defend the other side. Not because the monsters were stronger - they weren't even close to a threat - but because of his own movement. When he burst forward with Thunderbird's Wings, the shockwave and the rush of air that followed knocked over some of the caravan's defenders.

A few panicked and loosed arrows at him, but Kai easily snatched those out of the air. His new speed had been built to match chakra-infused bows and lightning-fast techniques - normal arrows might as well have been falling through honey.

He moved more carefully with the rest to avoid knocking over more guards. Thankfully he'd built Thunderbird's Wings as a flexible skill, so he could use less than his full explosive speed. As he ran, Kai killed a few twisted dogs, which made him nostalgic for the old days in the wasteland. Now just one enemy left, a heavy serpent-like beast fighting against an older warrior.

Kai felt a moment of hunger... until he realized that the monster was just Gamma-ranked. Once that might have been a challenge for him, but not anymore. He could have killed it in one blow, but that might have humiliated the old man. Instead Kai slowed down and joined him, fighting off the serpent together.

When Kai deflected a strike of its fangs, the veteran finally generated an intense-enough burst of wind to decapitate it. Many in the caravan cheered as the last monster went down, while the old man glanced at him. Thankfully Kai no longer had any concerns about his monstrous soul, but he looked back at the old man.

<

Name: ???

Total Power: 96

Windborn: Onceswept (48)

Physique Level: F-2 (34)

Soul Level: 4 (16)

>

He had 96 Power, which wasn't much by global terms, but Kai respected him. This old man had built up his Windborn abilities and Physique as well as he could, hampered by Deadwaste and other elements of his life. Maybe he had less potential, but it looked like he spent his life fighting off the monsters and keeping the people around him safe.

The merchants of the caravan were grateful and offered Kai a reward, but it was such a small amount of money that he would feel bad about accepting. Instead he asked for a meal and ate with them that night. Many of them introduced themselves, but Kai struggled to pay much attention because he knew he would be moving on soon.

Instead he got closer to the veteran and, when the others finally drifted away, got an opportunity to ask. Before he could, the old man spoke up.

"You're holding back, aren't you?" The veteran stared at him cautiously. "Don't deny it. I may not be able to see through that shroud of yours, but I can tell when a man's holding back."

"I didn't want to take your kill," Kai said humbly. The old man promptly scoffed.

"You don't have to spare my feelings. I know that there's a difference between folks like me and those who go on to bigger things. You, you probably have the potential for the Frontier. But me? I realized that wasn't in the cards long ago."

That hadn't been how Kai anticipated the conversation going, but he decided to accept it. "I'm trying to challenge myself," he said. "Where do the real talents of the Wind Union gather?"

"Well, ultimately they either become princes and princesses, or they go to the Frontier. But if you want a challenge... well, it depends. But I suggest you head southeast, there's a competition called the Hundred Zephyr Rings that might interest you."

The veteran went on to tell him about some of the other cities, but the first competition remained the most interesting. Kai spoke politely enough to the others and slept alongside the caravan that night, but his mind was on the Hundred Zephyr Rings the entire time. In the morning he would head southeast, to the competition and hopefully a real challenge.