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This trip was not like the others.

I could feel the strain on the ritual as we attempted to drag the whole cart, filled with loot, with us through the realms; it was clearly too much of a strain and the ritual was performed 'poorly' in the first place. The many roots and vines spread across the load held firmly to the violently shaking wooden frame; Rose sending out even more of them over all this loot as to not lose anything during the surprisingly turbulent process. [Presence] veils it all in a thin layer of mana, but it is straining to keep everything together as I've slightly overused it earlier during our transformation and the subsequent wild ride.

This Ability's cooldown isn't something that should be forced - not without a very good case like maybe a life and death situation, and is included in the skill for a reason, as [Presence] puts a burden on my Spirit. We will need some more practice to become more familiar with it, and learn how exactly it operates and interacts with everything before we pull this stunt again. What knowledge and instincts the system provides, be it Ability or Skill, is never the full picture; although new Abilities come to me much easier than Skills, I still need time to familiarize myself with them.

The trip takes longer than I remember, but maybe that's just because of the enormous effort we put into bringing all this with us. All in all it was not a very good plan. The chaotic red visuals of the boudrary between realms present during this ride are especially violent.

Then everything went back to black.

In a flash of mana, the darkness between worlds was broken, and I could immediately feel that we were back in the hellish desert. Our cargo shook and hit the sands with a groan, wheels digging deep into the sand. Something snapped.

"Home sweet— Fuck."

The moment the light of the magic formation which transported us back to hell dimmed enough, we've found ourselves surrounded. Rose immediately raised a thorny guard around me, and only the fact that she was still coiled around the cart prevented her from lashing out as many blades, holding strange magic, were pointed our way.

Green skinned demons, wearing brown burlap cloaks. Their big yellow eyes glowing at us with tangible hate and resentment, all around. At least a few dozen, their wagons and beasts of burden are also here. -Damn, out of the frying pan and into the fire, the caravans bad luck rubbed onto me...

And I'm all out of instant precast fireballs.

They surrounded us- or rather, we appeared right in their midst. A tall spire of glassed sand is here right ahead, looming over us, painfully visible as it sticks out from the ground like a sore thumb and marks the entrance to our lair. Took us a while to get back and a lot of sand moved in the meantime...

-Yeah, it has to go, or I will maybe need to work on some permanent illusion to hide it from sight. But that's a problem for the future me.

Jarred had a truly bad timing with his summoning. If these little runts looted my tower I will be royally pissed, but the glass 'tunnel' still looks intact; I'm pretty sure the enchantment I've put in place for protection would have it crumble if someone else beside us tried to enter through this way, burying the intruder in sharp shards of glass and tons of sand. There is a small group of these 'Pugs' around it though, likely trying to breach my security measures to get inside -little bastards.

Let's run first and asses the situation, I can feel some strong individuals among them. Then we can come back—

Something's odd. How do I put it.. Lax?

"Different." A whisper, or rather a hiss from one of the green skins reaches my ears.

-So it seems they can talk.

"From before."

"No curse..."

"—Innocent." Saying so, this other one puts away a strange looking lantern it's been holding up towards us.

The many small demons started whispering at once and looking around between themselves, seemingly for confirmation, and one by one their strange knives were put away, hidden under the strange cloth of their capes.... And they started to disperse... and give us room— totally ignoring our presence as they simply went back to their odd, wide wheeled contraptions that seemingly serve to haul a lot of cargo across the sand, and the now much calmer beasts harnessed to them, doing whatever they were doing before we showed up; even pulling the closest ones away from my cart while at it...

-The fuck is going on?

...Where did all that hostility disappear? No, it's still there -just strangely disconnected, like it is shimmering under their skin but without aim. They just went back to doing their own things; shuffling stuff on the wagons, doing small repairs— some even started to prepare a camp as I watch them -blinking and utterly confused.

Another fucking caravan...

-Alright, not the bloodthirsty type it seems... But I'm still unsure about what should I do in this situation.

First thing first, need to check our hoard, make sure we weren't robbed— Yeah.

Then I can figure out what the hell is going on.

——

We are currently sitting on our cart, under the tall spire of jagged glass where I've parked it before shooing away a group of the little green bastards after laying my claim to it. They didn't contest me on this - surprisingly.We watch them go around the camp, doing minor works or sitting around strange runned stones like if they were campfires.

After we briefly went inside to confirm everything was in order and where I've left it; our thorny vines making the climb up the spire a non issue, we came back outside to figure out this strange development, as it seems like the currently most pressing matter - only to find our 'guests' setting up small tents all over the impromptu entrance to the burried tower.

An opportunity.

There was however a slight problem down in the sewers that keeps nagging at the back of my head - quite litteraly. At least from what we briefly gathered from the roses left down there we should still have some time to deal with it, and despite the anxiety we felt coming from the link we share with our Spawn, all of our flowers seemed to be stillmostly fine; so whether we like it or not, we will first need to deal with our guests up here.

-Let's see what we can learn.

Traders.

Or at least they claim to be... Only interested in trade and gold.

'No nonsense' they say. 'Profit only' they say, as I annoy them with questions.

These guys, they travel the Planes looking for opportunities, and are not even from this realm; came here through some Rift or something. Who would have thought.

Honestly, in my opinion, from the few words I've managed to get squized from the silent little buggers, they are just a bunch of scavengers.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

They came to loot the area and clean up the old battlefields from anything of value. Ended up here after the major event when some kind of 'Sea of Sin' - whatever that was, got turned into a desert and its surroundings became known as the Wasteland, burying untold riches that managed to survive the whole ordeal under the sand and dust.

I think... It's hard to squeeze even a single sentence out of any of them.

I knew that others referred to this dust-bowl as such, but it's my first time hearing anything about there being a sea out here; the news about Other Hells shouldn't have surprised me really; there were clues I've read about in various books back in the mortal realm while in captivity. It just didn't connect for me that areas like Purgatory, Gehenna, or Inferno are separate realms altogether, and not just some different locations found on a map out here.

Anyway. They've discovered these ruins and decided to explore and rob them, although they would never admit to robbing anything. Our guests soon ran into trouble with the locals, both inside the underground city and out on the Rim. Getting so much information from the unfriendly bastards wasn't easy. Fortunately one of the Pugs was interested in selling me more information - as expected of a self proclaimed merchant, in exchange for gold and surprisingly —some of the pink stone we brought with us; now that I look at it while parting with majority of the samples I've collected, this rock is reacting weirdly to the hell's environment, and I will be sure to experiment with what remains of it later, but for now I still have many questions. And since the little guy became relatively more talkative after the goods of unknown value changed hands I better take advantage of it.

And so we now sit here, in a hastly raised tent of their temporary encampment, listening to the little guy. A rare opportunity to learn about my new world after finally meeting some - not friendly, but not murderous residents.

Their presence here is nothing surprising really. After the most recent storm, while traveling to another location, they've found this tall glass spire in a place there was nothing before and went to investigate the anomally. Since they didn't find anyone, nor any mark or claim of ownership, they tried to get inside to the ruins below. Apparently - and I was chided for it, if this was any strong demon's lair, they would've usually left their mark on the entrance to ward off any opportunists from trespassing and avoid exactly such situation, so to the Pugs this was just another opportunity and a location free to loot...

-A mark of ownership huh? Signature, or more like a sybol, like a sigil? Should we stick a flag on top of the spire for the heck of it? Riddiculous. Something we will have to think about at a later date; for now I should pay attention as this guy is pretty hard to understand anyway.

...Although getting inside was proving to be a problem for the Pugs, as the magic protecting this place was much different when compared to the rest of the local ruins, so it was taking them some time to figure out how not to collapse the tunnel leading down below the sands. These guys are not very adept in arcane form of magic - as my host relucantly admitts... or so he says, so my enchantments were a pain to deal with. It's not something you often see in Hell, as miasma would usually erode any such setup after a short amount of time. It was only able to persist in here because of the deserts low miasma levels, but with a few more storms they would likely erase it. They had the time - a lot of time really considering their situation, but couldn't stay here in the open during a storm.

And so, while they were debating on wheter to brute their way in before they had to leave, or just move out to roam the sands looking for other ruins, I showed up in a rather unusual manner.

So.. What is a group of self proclaimed traders doing in the middle of nowhere? They've been roaming the sands for years if I'm to believe this guy and already got most of what it has to offer. With few exceptions, anything of value was already taken. -Damn it.

"...Can't go back. The black wall hostile now, won't let us pass. Not without glyph..." The greedy runt explains in a somewhat broken speech, characteristical to all of them, as he takes another poof of smoke from his long pipe; what's inside I don't know but it's pink and the little guy seems to enjoy himself. They are stuck out here in the wasteland now after taking too long exploring the ruin, the bastards hit the jackpot but can't cash in. All that treasure sitting on their carts yet noone to trade it with.

"...No glyph - the abominations attack. Too many there can see. You, similar— but different. Didn't kill kin." He points at me with a green, clawed finger and nods. "Clans no longer honor old agreements. Give glyph for swearing allegiance to rebels. Not interested. No taking sides." He keeps going now and I don't even have to try and pry every word out of him. "Would rather stay. Can't stay either. Danger under the sand— killed many. Can't take revenge. No revenge is torment..."

He stops his sudden rant and we can sense that odd magic of theirs flare up in the guy, yellow eyes glowing brighter for a moment before returning back to their usual state. Another huff of smoke and he seems back to normal.

"Danger, huh? What kind of danger are we talking about, what's under the sand?" I ask the important question afer my companion calms down, despite possibly having some idea. But in the case there is still more out there hidden under the dunes, I want to know; since we do plan on staying. Information about anything dangerous around here will help me in planning for the future, and these guys were apparently roaming around for years.

"Too strong. None who saw lives. You also will die. No deal." Our little green informant shakes its head after appraising me. -The hell? I've never offered anything.

"We contract powerful demon. From elemental plane. The genie thief, came, took payment. Never came back-" That magic of his again spiked up for a bit there. "I said no pre pay. But kin need revenge." The green skin is deffinitely mad now, voice louder than before. "So, we paid. If alive we find it and take back what ours. Even if it also strong— resist our calls tho. If it dead the danger even worse. Killing Dao in desert not easy. But contract still there. Odd."

He deflates and calms down after taking in more smoke from the elongated pipe.

Dao? Ohhh-

-Oh, we might know something about that... sorry but I don't think it is still around, but let's not bring that up in case they would still want their payment back. However this confirms that this danger the Pug talks about is the thing I saw back there.

I was curious about how they have managed to 'contract' that ugly demon despite being supposedly stuck in here, but decided against drilling the subject in case I were to out myself somehow. I was already attached to the treasures we got from that fatty.

Also, a glyph needed to cross the Rim huh? From the clans? Maybe...

"Is there anything else dangerous out there in the dunes? Your group traveled around here for a long time, surely you know a lot more?"

"Name not Shirley. Pay and we talk more. That valuable information." It reaches out a greedy little hand.

Greedy bastard. You are not getting anymore of my gold. Apparently he is done with our conversation after venting some of that anger. Still...

"Mhmm, about that. I might have a job for your caravan instead, if you are interested." I offer him with a slowly growing smile. "If you help me move some cargo across the wasteland, I just might have a way for your group to get out of this here dustbowl, so that you can travel back to that rift of yours or to wherever else you want. I'm sure that would be worth a lot more than some gold." I propose instead.

We don't need them around, looting our ruins even more. "We can talk about the dangers of this place, and more, as part of our little deal..."

This can get us two birds with one stone.

——

Well, I'll be damned. I knew my luck couldn't be so rotten; these past few days, it was all on that caravan back there.

We are currently sitting atop of one of the Pugs' massive wagons -again I fing myself sitting on one, been doing that a lot lately - pulled by a big demonic beast and making quite a good pace, watcing the empty wasteland zoom past us. The thing harness to this contraption looks like if someone skinned a rhino and mixed it with a bit of dog, but stranger.

The rest of their demonic caravan stayed behind at one of their usual restin stops and is currently, presumably, preparing to move north; they will slowly move towards where the Black Wall - as they call it will be easier to cross. Northen part is supposedly more traversable and this guys will join them there after delivering my stuff back to the desert as according to our deal.

The driver and his escort are not very talkative, but still answer all of my questions as was agreed upon. -Huh, I'm having a deja vu right now. After a closer inspection i can see that the vehicle is made mostly of giant bones, leather and dark metal; long chains and hooks hanging all around the savage construction dingle, jingle and clank as the craft, filled to the brim with my old junk of a hoard, rolls slowly along the wasteland towards my new lair.

We took everything out of my old cave under the ancient bones -that place strangely started to slowly crumble sometime in the past weeks since we've last been there, and loaded it all on one of the Pugs' wagons. Those can move surprisingly fast.

This whole ordeal was actually very helpful to our move as we managed to get everything in just one go; especially since I noticed that the wooden cart we so painfully worked for and then brought to hell - or rather to the Purgatory as I've learnt, started rotting very fast when some Taint got to it. Wood from the mortal realm apparently doesn't last long in here either. -Damn, should have known better, but it is fne now. All of my loot was secured and waiting for our return; getting it all through the narrow tunel was a pain in the ass though, especially the body.. I will need to figure out another way to get inside the tower.

I was able to learn a lot from the demonic merchant after they've confirmed that the Sigil I've got from the goat-man was exactly what they needed. What was the chance of that? I took that thing just because it was a magic item, but didn't expect to have any use of it. All the damn thing did was emit a strong mana signature. Makes sense now that I know what its purpose is.

Who knew it was a pass, one that allows you to cross the Rim currently occupied by 'rebels'.

Keeping it for myself? Nah, I have a different idea on how to cross it, and can even afford to wait until the whole rebellion debacle is dealt with. I have time... and now a whole of the wastelands to myself, with the ruins able to provide for all our needs, as according to the Pugs they were the only ones moving around this place since demons don't do well in this environment. The destruction of the Sea did a number on the area...

There is a small group of wierdos settled somewhere in the heart of the dunes but they just stay there it sems, keeping to themselves.

This welcome distraction is almost over.

In just few days Jarred should be summoning me again. We need to deal with the situation down in the tunnels soon... and with the baggage we brought with us from the mortal realm.

Why am I always so busy these days?

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