The preparation took three days, but now I was standing in front of the portal station, ready to venture further than I ever had in this world. I was the first to arrive, as I was quite excited to see what this world would show me.

Roger arrived just a bit before our agreed meeting time. We greeted each other, but after a small pause, Roger continued, "And I thought that I was early. How long have you been waiting here?" He asked with some amusement.

"I've been here a little while. I woke up early and didn’t want to do yet another check-up of my gear, so I came here. It would have been better if it was a sunny morning, but I guess at least it isn't raining." Roger nodded his head before he looked up at the sky.

"You are correct about that, but who knows what the weather might be behind the portal. The second time we went, one side of the portal was sunny with perfect summer weather, while the other was having one of the worst downpours I’ve ever experienced."

We continued our small talk until the portal was opened. When we stepped through on the other side it was later in the day, but it seemed to be quite a lot sunnier here. My appearance seemed to have frightened some of the guards around here who looked at me with worry in their eyes.

I guess I should have let Roger go first. When he came through, everyone calmed down a lot. I was then introduced to a friend of Roger's who was this portal complex's guide. I was half paying attention as I looked towards the sea.

In my later life, I lived quite far away from the sea, but my childhood was spent in a coastal town with beautiful beaches and a large river. While I had never seen so many sailing boats as there currently were sailing on the sea, it was still a familiar sight that I didn’t know I had missed so much. Our guide noticed my attention and we were soon led to oversee the bay that brought so much wealth to this city.

"Rich, if you ever want, you just have to ask and I will organise you a sailing boat so you can go and experience the bay as it’s meant to be experienced," offered the guide. "I would probably take you up on that offer, but unfortunately not right now. But I will certainly remember this offer."

All of us continued to talk, but I did little of it. When I was finally asked how I was feeling after the portal jump, I remembered that it was supposed to be unpleasant after the first time, but when I explained to them that I wasn’t feeling anything wrong, things started to move faster as we prepared to jump to the next destination.

The next place once again had a lot of water, but I could instantly tell that it was a lake. I don’t know exactly how, but it just looked different. We didn't spend much time here, and since I wasn’t feeling anything wrong after the portal jumps, we continued onwards. Everyone else had travelled enough through portals that they didn't have to wait as long, but in the next city, we needed to wait longer as there were actual schedules for portal jumps into Verdia.

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Unfortunately, this city wasn’t that interesting as there wasn't really anything to see this deep into the city, but mainly because leaving the portal complex meant having to deal with religious preachers, and honestly, I was having too much fun to deal with them currently.

Still, it seemed like an interesting city, especially the deep forest where there were many dungeons and even more dangerous monsters. There also still seemed to be a lot of freshwater lakes and rivers here, but they were a bit further away from the city. The weather, however, was a lot warmer. It seems that we were truly approaching the tropical zone.

We had a six-hour wait, which got a bit tiresome, but at least there was music in the waiting area and they did offer refreshments. One thing that was unfortunate was the amount of people. When I brought that up to Roger, he just laughed at me and told me that I hadn’t seen anything yet. His answer dampened my mood a bit, but I guess I should expect it from the largest city in the world. When we finally went through the portal into the largest city in the world, I was honestly a bit disappointed.

At first glance, the city didn't look anything special. The only thing different was the taller buildings, but I was quite used to that back on Earth. I guess it would be a lot more impressive if I could look at this from the sky and see the absolute immensity that this city is.

The portal complex was already so crowded, and I could see every race imaginable represented. On average, I was one or two heads taller than everyone else, but there were still quite a few who were as tall or even taller than me.

At first, I was a bit overwhelmed with so many people and wondered how the smaller races were able to walk in this crowd, but soon I figured it out. Usually the edges of walkways close to the buildings were left for the smaller inhabitants. I walked closer to the edge of the road because of my size.

Carriages were constantly moving, but there were some streets where only people were walking. The roads were paved with stone, but as we were walking closer to our compound, I saw more places where the street stones were broken or missing altogether, leaving dirt holes behind.

I guess that the maintenance priority was in the more affluent areas and places that saw more traffic. Perhaps calling the land that we owned here a compound was a bit of a stretch. We simply owned a large city block with multiple smaller streets and many buildings, but mostly warehouses.

One of the smaller warehouses was converted into a more tavern-like building, and this is where we were going to stay until I found out more about this dungeon Luana wanted me to join them for.

It was a bit uncomfortable sleeping in such a humid and hot environment, but with my extra stats, the problem wasn’t physical but more mental. I suspect that in a few days, I will be used to it. I still had three days until I was supposed to meet with Luana, but I also needed to visit the Court of the Young, so I could finally get that problem taken care of. When I got out of my room, I found that Roger was already up and eating breakfast. I joined him.

"What are your plans today, and do you want me to come along?" Roger asked, but I shook my head. "No, I will find my own way. You do not have to worry about me. You can do what you need to do here without having to shepherd me around." I answered him. We continued to talk, and he gave me the general layout of areas around us.

After eating breakfast, I was going to need to walk quite a long way. The Court of the Young only had one location here, and it was close to the very center and the busiest area of the city. There were also many arenas around there, but I was quite amused that you don’t actually need to go there to view the fight.

We could actually just sit at our compound's tavern and see every fight that was going on in the hundreds of arenas in this city. What an absolutely brilliant wonder. Whoever the wizard was who made this happen, he must’ve been quite brilliant.

I also found an interesting function with my interactive map. I can actually incorporate real maps into it, so now I had a perfect city map so I wouldn’t be able to get lost, and I could actually make a route to my desired location which would help keeping track of my location even easier.