Chapter 159: Everybody Likes Vacations
Aside from beating up teenagers, the internet’s favorite pastime, the team participated in some of Saggia’s local contracts. Since Saggia was a medium-to-high magic zone, most monsters were bronze and silver rank. Lower rank monsters still manifested in high magic zones, but magic quality generally indicated most common manifestations. Gold rank monsters were possible, but rare. They made their unwelcome appearances usually during the monster surges.
Any location with magic above Saggia and Esmera-Mar was considered almost uninhabitable, although there were gold-magic settlements, usually populated by high rankers only—gold rank monsters were too dangerous and too frequent to defend against. The Bad Lands, the location of the crafting compound, was a continent that essence users only traveled to in order to attempt the transition from silver to gold rank, or gold to diamond rank. Other than that, famous recluses and hermits made their homes there, entirely undisturbed from the world at large. With magic, you were never more than a single portal away from civilization.
They took contracts north of Saggia, up into the countryside, and away from the seas were most of Saggia’s local adventurers contracted. Since the Tier-Media was a high-traffic trade zone, adventurer contracts were always needed. The team however, decided to leave it to the local experts.
Pirate hunting contracts were also available at the adventure society, but the team stayed far away from those. Nara may not have qualms killing to protect her team anymore, but the idea of hunting pirates like they were cyclical pests left an unpleasant taste in her mouth. John was similarly adverse to the idea, so Sen aptly didn’t suggest those contracts. He judged that his team was sufficiently comfortable with the realities of killing human enemies, with no further need to push for bloodshed. There would be no shortage of adventurers willing to do what they would not.
They spent two months in Saggia, hunting monsters. Occasionally a particularly strong silver rank monster surprised them, and they ran for their lives, either dashing into a conjured door domain where they had a massive advantage thanks to Soul Legion or jumping though Nara’s astral domain portal in frenetic baseball slides, except the reward for home plate wasn’t a score but keeping their limbs connected to their abdomen.
That reason was why Saggia adventurers often had a higher rank escort, provided usually by academies or guilds. Hiring a higher ranked adventurer escort to protect you while you killed monsters was too expensive for iron rankers, so the influence and importance of guilds in high magic zones was greater than low magic zones. Adventurers needed the support system otherwise the next near-death experience would become their eulogy: woe is Nara Edea, slain by a silver rank mosquito swarm. Her potential was great, but unfulfilled.
The low magic zone adventurer education system was quickly popularizing, and Sanshi was at the forefront. The Arlang had it figured out; they sent their relatives to Sanshi for general hands off training and independent experience. Yalte was another nation sprouting as a popular destination for low rank adventurers, on the same continent as Rowan, although on the opposite coast. Yalte was to Rowan what the Shian Union was to Rona.
Changing times meant that the traditional adventurer institutions of high magic zones needed to adapt, or they’d be left behind in the wake of ages gone. While cooperation had been posed by Sanshi, the De Lucas would be remiss to seize this opportunity.
*****
Two months had passed, and the team crawled up to Bronze 2, interspersed with significant recreational activity. With a pace matching the cold theme of Kallid, the team made their way up north, stopping briefly in Vasenne for sightseeing, the seat of the Continental Council of the Adventure Society.
The temperature cooled as they traveled upwards, flirting above freezing like a hummingbird warbling above a flower. The temperature would warm as the year transitioned into spring, but Eufemia complained all the while, even though her bronze rank attributes kept her warm. She’d miss the oceans of Sanshi and the Tier-Media, the pleasant weather, (the skimpier clothing), and the glimmering sea untouched by horrors like ‘ice’ and ‘snow’. She had spent many years in Nekroz unwillingly, and the similar temperatures soured her mood.
Thanatos and Caspian enjoyed the weather, frolicking through patches of wet snow as they crossed fields draped in nature’s icy tears. Caspian was larger now, although he could still become the small fae wolf that tormented Sen’s hair into premature baldness if not for an essence user’s natural regeneration. Sen kept his own supply of hair growth cream, and so far, no one had noticed when patches of hair went missing, only to be restored the next day.
They had a guide, a surly, lone hunter woman of burly proportions named Mathilde. She was stout and sturdy, wrapped in warm patchwork furs and thick, water-resistant clothing to prepare for the continual temperature decline. Kallid was surrounded by a magical storm that would only abate in late spring; they would catch the tail end of it as they approached the city in their four day long journey to the north, largely expedited by Nara’s nebula ship.
Kallid was far to the north, and trading was done almost entirely with portals. There were no well-maintained roads, which would be gradually torn apart by the ravenous winter every year, if the monster surge didn’t degrade them entirely.
Nara’s nebula ship hovered above the ground, saving Mathilde and the rest of the team a trek through semi-melted snow mixing with the earth in a children’s playground chilled mud soup. They followed the scenic fjordic coastline to their east, the nebula ship floating above sheer drops of stone covered in the faint fuzz of moss growth that dropped precipitously into beautiful crystalline waters. Strange shadows of massive monsters lurked beneath the waters, as dangerous as they were enchanting.
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Many magical beasts habituated the northern fjords. Shardshimmer falcons dived into the waters from their cliffside nests, their feathers and body melding into the texture of water to pluck prey from water unseen. Riverskippers were lanky, deerlike beasts covered in grey, water-resistant fur. They danced upon the water, naturally able to water walk with inherent magic. This same magic propelled them up cliffs, goats of both sheer stone face and the water’s surface. And snow fluffers, the most evil and dastardly magic beasts disguised as cotton balls of white the size of a snowman’s head, with the same beady raisin eyes matching a creation of joy, but it was a hell spawn of pain.
Mathilde explained to throw rocks at suspiciously shaped balls of snow. Either you throw the rock hard enough and kill the snow fluffer, or the rock penetrates the snow harmlessly. Both options were preferable to being stung with a pain that ended bloodlines.
Through the landscape they passed a single massive black stone monolith, keeping a wary distance according to Mathilde. Thick winter storm clouds gathered above the monolith, so low and heavy they obscured the tip. There was no snow—it was far too cold. The area was void of heat and life, reduced to greyscale as the colors of life dared not grow. Instead, a violent wind ripped at the ground, scarring the land and ripping out any tenacious roots and rocks that may have once challenged the monolith for the right to exist but failed.
“The Monoliths of Lightless Ice,” she said grimly, her voice low and weathered. “Do not approach. They absorb the cold and the magic of the storm, and their surroundings are even colder. Too close and you will die. But if not for the lightless ice, we would not have spring. The storm would rage eternal.”
John conjured a pair of binoculars, gazing as he could at the monolith of black ice. It stretched into a sky; a Washington monument made of smooth, lightless ice. The view of the base of the monolith made John shiver, not from the code, but from the frozen statues of people and animals that had wandered too close. The ring of death was immortalized by frozen corpses gradually eroded, of those who had wandered too close without making it back out.
The final leg of the journey was the hardest. Kallid was built in a valley between mountains, which meant ascending those mountains.
…Or so Nara would say if the entire team wasn’t cozily tucked away on a hovering ship, free of the burdens of physically trudging through snow. Caspian would dive off nose first into snowdrifts and sail around the wind like a lost kite. Thanatos sat on the deck, occasionally drawing shapes in the snow with lances of black fire, such as targets for Caspian to dive at. As always, the Simurgh could never sit still, and it was a team effort to entertain him.
“…this is going to make me soft,” Mathilde muttered, her voice low and gritty. She clasped a warm mug of something like cocoa in her hands, but it was generously ‘enhanced’ with her favorite drink. “Why am I being paid for this. I am not doing anything.”
“Just treat it as a vacation, Mathilde, everybody likes vacations,” Nara said cheerfully, glad to not be trudging through snow drifts could surpass her own height. She could probably walk on top Legolas-style with Cosmic Path, but the idea was unappealing compared to the cozy deck party they had now.
“I do not like vacations.”
“Everybody but Mathilde likes vacations,” she corrected.
As they crested over the highest point of the mountain passage, they saw the expanse of the city below, tucked away in a massive and bountiful valley of green shaking off the last vestiges of winter. Clear streams of fresh snowmelt flowed from the mountains, pooling in a shimmering lake in the center of the valley.
Kallid was more of a city than a nation—it was the name of the largest city of the area, as well as the nation as a whole. Sporadic villages cropped up in the land of ice and snow, but most of their population was entirely within the nurturing embrace of the Kallid’s central valley.
The valley winded through the mountains, into bowls where smaller towns were gently nurtured by clear mountain streams and chilly air. The largest gently sloping bowl cradled the main city of Kallid. The temperature warmed slightly, brought about by smaller monoliths (modeled after the lightless ice monoliths) created by Kallid’s researchers that absorbed magical cold. Non magical cold (aka normal weather) was untouched by the mini monoliths, but Kallid too possessed weather manipulation arrays, a standard for most large cities, although strong enough magical weather would punch past those too, and regularly did, during Kallid’s famous winters.
“I leave,” Mathilda said curtly. “Farewell.”
She disembarked the ship, trudging off into the wet earth towards her home village. Nara had offered to send her there, but Mathilde stubbornly insisted on walking. She was a guide for those who made their first trip to Kallid, traversing between this city and the last city of the Rona Kingdom in the north, Langt.
Nara started the process to dematerialize the ship, while Aliyah set up their secondary form of transportation. While the Nebula Flask was convenient, it wasn’t suitable for intra-city travel. All of its forms were far too big.
Aliyah’s Arcane Constructs were not strong nor sturdy summons, but their value lied in their versatility. She could use rituals to mold them into forms better suited for combat, but she could also form them into forms suited for personal transportation.
Her golden floating ritual lines transformed each of the six Arcane Constructs into small, personal skimmers of arcane bronze design. They were like small motorcycles without wheels, with lines of blue magic like racing stripes channeling low-altitude flight magic.
They shot off towards the city like a magical half-biker, half-zookeeper gang. Nara rode on Thanatos with Encio, and Lawrence rode an arcane construct as his paper constructs didn’t possess the ground speed Aliyah’s arcane constructs did.
The city of Kallid extended from the base of the mountain and encircled the lake at the bottom of the valley. A semi-circular wall encompassed most of the city, with farms and characteristic church of fertility growing towers sporadically dotting the landscape beyond the wall. The city was the closest to a medieval theme Nara had seen yet, with cobblestone houses and stone-lain streets. Soft columns of steam arose from chimneys, dissipating into the chilly air. Combined with the colorful wool and fur drapery of the city, Kallid’s ambience was that of a much-needed swaddled hug in the dead of winter. Especially since Erras was modern enough to have sewage systems and the greatest blessing of magic, cleansing and purgation magic, which eliminated which could have been an unpleasant, decidedly unmagical and unhygienic experience.
And finally, to complete the medieval fairytale, a large castle was built at the far shore of the lake, towards the base of the mountains—the residence of a diamond ranker and ancestral ruler of Kallid, Tyranel Kallid.