Langa changed into his new armour and found someone to barter with in the marketplace for his old armour. He exchanged his old leather trousers and jacket for a belt with enough slots to place his glaive and daggers leaving one free slot, and some copper coins. He even managed to get some regular clothes as well, so that was nice. After that, he made his way back to the lucent carriage rank. He'd been thinking that today he would only look around the city, but after his encounter with the charlatan, he needed to forget everything and concentrate on one thing, clearing his mind. Normally, what would help him to do that was to run in the wind, but today, he wanted to hit something.
He looked around the carriage rank, he hadn't paid all that much attention to it when he got here in the morning. It was a busy transport hub, much smaller than the transportation hub on the other side of the plateau that Langa had first arrived at through the teleportation wheel yesterday. There were several different lucent carriages of different sizes and shapes, each lined up neatly along the different aisles. There was also a ticket desk, an admin office, and a security office, with the security personnel in uniform milling about the aisles, maintaining order. The glow of lucent crystals filled the air as people went about their business, with groups and queues of people either boarding or alighting from their carriages everywhere. Most of them were the native goblinkin NPCs and birdkin NPCs, going about their everyday lives with their wings folded behind them like it was normal. It was easy to differentiate the players from the NPCs, they were many different races, most of them wearing armour and carrying weapons, walking around in groups, or solo. There were also vendors walking about, selling food and other travel necessities to the people.
It was called the carriage rank, but there were other modes of transportation here as well, including giant birds like Jandri's falcon, as well as other odd flying objects like flying mats, carpets, and something that looked like a broomstick. Langa shook his head, marvelling at all this grandeur. There were even smaller teleportation wheels as well, but Langa grimaced when he checked the prices for using those. The cheapest one was local, and it cost 20 silver. To get to other provinces, the cost was at least one gold. That was how much money he needed to have in order to go to the capital and meet Liv. 1 gold or 100 silver coins, yet all he had on him were a few coppers.
Langa turned away from the teleportation wheels and concentrated on what he could afford with his copper coins. In front of the administration office was a large lucent tile filled with carriage timetables and route information boards. There was nothing on Theria's Hollow, so Langa decided to ask.
He went up to one of the rank marshals in the area where the tickets for the lucent carriages as well as the flying carpets were being sold. There were quite a few players in this area, and Langa glanced longingly at the shiny gear of one of the parties renting a flying carpet close by. Their gear looked very good, but the only worthwhile piece of equipment that he had was Tonare. Speaking of which, he still had not checked his Legacy quest yet. He would have to do that later.
"Excuse me," Langa said to the rank marshall. "Can I get a ticket to Theria's Hollow? When is the next carriage going over there?"
The old hawkkin gaped at him as if he were crazy. "Sorry, son, but no carriages go to that place anymore. You must be new here, but that whole valley has been taken over by the Accari Crows and they aren't letting anyone through. I cannot believe those poor villagers are being held hostage by the voidents. It's an outrage, I tell you, an outrage."
Langa found that hard to believe. He'd seen some of the Federation Police in town, and they were all around levels 15 to 20, and he could not, for the life of him, figure out why they would let a level 11 voident run around freely. He could understand that the low-level Guardians were spread too thin to take care of all the voidents in this province, but why weren't the NPC law enforcement doing anything?
"Can't the Federation Police deal with them?" Langa asked.
"You really are new. Sure, there are not many members of the gang in that little hollow; I think it's like ten of them at most, but they have Void Pearls! It's a death sentence for any NPC to step into those void territories. Most of us ain't like you players, most of us only have one life," he explained. "Those Feders are strong, and I'm sure they could easily knock those young voidents around if they weren't protected by the void veil, but how the hell do you expect them to live through the effects of Void Pearl?"
Ah, that was right. Langa had the two divine artefacts from The Unrivalled to fight against voidents thanks to the Guardians, but it seemed that The Unrivalled did not give that privilege to just anyone. "Well, I need to get there as soon as possible, is there no other way? A teleportation wheel?" Langa asked.
"In a small village like that? That'd just be wasting the Federation's resources. Our Magistrate has a lot of faults, but he ain't going to waste coins like that." The old man looked at him as if he were insane for even wanting to go there, and then sighed. "The closest teleportation wheel is in one of the fields close to the village, but it's outside the void veil. You'd best check your player forums then, maybe you might catch a ride, no? Maybe you'll find someone crazy enough to take you to that wretched place."
Langa thanked the rank marshall and stepped out of the line. He sat down at one of the waiting benches and brought up his comcer interface. He opened the forum page, a page he had not explored yet, and searched the forums until he found one for people looking for, or offering, rideshare services. There was a way to narrow down the search, and he narrowed it down to Risa's Plateau, but still, there was no one offering a ride to Theria's Hollow, so Langa brought up his 1st Floor map and looked at areas beyond Theria's Hollow, before making his first post on the forum.
There was an option before posting, which allowed him to select whether he wanted his top ten verification badge to be visible on the post. He hesitated, if he did that, he might be more trustworthy, but at the same time, as Jandri said, that would be inviting vultures, people he did not know, to seek him out before he tested his strength. He needed to fight against the voidents first so that he could measure if his ranking was deserved and how strong he really was compared to people who were already in the Tower. That way, he could pick his battles much more easily. Besides, this would only work once, and after the Guardians posted his exploits on the Dent, everyone would know his username. For now, he chose to hide his verification badge.
> @langelihle
>
> Looking for a ride from Risa Carriage Rank to Theria's Hollow. If you're going in the direction of Lilinga Gorge, Apayera Village, Meijfd Valley or Death Shadow Valley, you can just drop me off along the way.
He bought some diamond-shaped nuts from one of the vendors around the carriage rank while he waited for a reply. He did receive a few replies that were not quite what he hoped for, and some of them were very rude.
> @loadreyeda
>
> If you want to get murdered by voidents don't drag us into it, noob.
>
> @guntadakiller-hallow.reaper.cult
>
> click on the link below to watch Mione from the Dungeon Seekers guild vs a tentacle monster, it's hilarious bro.
>
> @ignisfarrah
>
> are you an idiot?
>
> @dasiefs
>
> you seem new here, friend, but that place has been taken over by voidents, a noob like you will be slaughtered, no question.
>
> @dietta-speedrunners.guild
>
> I'm going to Lilinga Gorge with my party. Meet us at aisle 27 of Risa Carriage Rank in ten minutes, don't be late. We'll drop you off for 20 copper.
>
> @marikrina-iron.claws.clan
>
> If you get there, please bring me a bouquet of corrupted hollow rain lilies from Theria's Hollow. I'll pay you one silver for twenty.
>
> @ignisfarrah
>
> hey (@langelihle, @dietta-speedrunners.guild ) why would you go there? You fools are gonna feed the harpies a good meal today.
>
>
Langa read through the replies and thought to himself how weird it was that there were internet trolls everywhere, even in the Tower. Anyway, the only response that he cared about was the one from the person offering him to come and get a lift. He closed his comcer interface and headed towards the aisle in question.
Three women were waiting for him in that aisle. Two of them were goblinkin, and they watched Langa suspiciously when he approached them. They looked nothing like the goblins that Langa had heard about in the myths of South African history, which were used by witches to bewitch their enemies. Their skin was a pale green colour, and they both had long dark hair, long hooked noses, and small pointed ears. He'd always been of the firm belief that goblins were ugly creatures, but evidently, that was not true of goblinkin, as these two were quite beautiful to look at, with blue eyes that seemed to look deep inside him.
The third woman was bigger than the other two, and she had dark skin like him, but she did not quite look human, beastkin, or like any of the other species that he'd seen so far, so he guessed that she was some type of halfkin. She had a mass of natural red curly hair with black eyes, and her muscular body sauntered towards him as he approached. She wore a blue cloak, and peeking from inside it was a belt that looked suspiciously like a bandoleer slung across her torso.
He tried to scan her, all of them really, but all he managed to gather from the system scan was that she was Level 17, and the other two were both Level 15, and he could not see their classes. He started to feel the headache that he always got when he tried to use his title skill on people with a Shroud. It was worse than the time he'd scanned Liv, at least then he'd been able to gather his information before being hit with the pain. Was it because Liv and him were closer in level, or was it because Liv had rejected the deity that Shrouded him? Either way, he did not know, and at least this time the headache was not as bad as when he tried to scan Alfsol.
"Hi, I'm the one who requested a ride," he said, extending his hand towards the halfkin woman.
She looked him over, "Langelihle?" she asked.
"Langa's fine," he said, and her hand clasped his.
"I'm Di Etta, and my friends over there are Gria and her twin sister Gertina. Where's the money?" She asked, her eyes sparkling in anticipation. The other two rolled their eyes in frustration, and Langa hesitated before handing her the money. It was only 20 copper, but he was broke, and if he got scammed, well, that would seriously piss him off.
Once he gave her the money, she skipped away from the aisle, happily running towards one of the vendors.
"The rented carriage's over here," Gertina said, gesturing to a small, red lucent carriage. "If you're working for bandits, pirates or PKers, just know that once I'm done with you, your family won't even want your body back to bury you."
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Well, that was ominous. "I'm only level 10, as I'm sure you can see. If anything, I'm the one who should be worried, since you're all so much stronger than me," Langa said. Then he gaped at the lucent carriage, as it was really small—smaller than the smallest hatchback that he'd ever seen on Earth. He frowned, "Are we all going to fit in there?"
"Of course we are, it's a five-seater. Get in; we're late already, and because of you, Di Etta is making us take a longer route," Gria said, glaring at Langa as if it were his fault that he'd been offered a ride. He chose not to argue and entered the carriage. There were five seats inside, the one in front was on its own, with the helms with the air and gravity lucent crystals in front of it, while the other four seats were in two rows of two seats each and were very cramped.
Well, Langa supposed he should have expected as much from a ride for only 20 copper. He sat down in the back, just as Di Etta returned, holding a hand of large purple bananas, and humming serenely.
"Seriously? You know that we're on commission, right?" Gria said, pulling Di Etta's ear angrily. "We are going to be stuck inside that gorge through the night because you suddenly craved some purblans?"
"You refused to buy them for me. If you're in such a hurry," Di Etta pouted, squirming out of Gria's hold and sliding into the seat next to Langa. "Then start driving, then we won't be late," she said comfortably, peeling her purblan while Langa wondered why she chose to sit next to him when there were plenty of other seats in the carriage. Gertina sat down in front of him as well, and his legs were cramped between the two seats. Gosh, he had not been inside a kasi minibus taxi for a long time, but even those were not this cramped. No, actually, those kasi taxis were the worst. This was much better.
Gria took the front seat and closed the carriage, then it took off as they left the rank, and flew down to the mountains below. Langa looked out the window while Di Etta continued to hum while indulging herself in purblans. Were they that good?
"Stay alert, and remember that we'll be passing through a red zone. There are supposedly flying monsters in these skies,” Gria said, glancing back at them. “I’ll try to outrun them, but we might have to fight.”
“Di Etta will sense them, so we don't have to worry,” Gertina shrugged, sitting back in her seat. "Besides, her shooters have good range, and I can assist as long as you can keep me in the air."
Langa glanced over at Di Etta, and she had her eyes closed, savouring the taste of the purblan as if it were the most precious thing she'd ever tasted. Would she be able to sense monsters coming for them in this state? He was a little apprehensive about it. What kind of monsters would show up here anyway?
He opened the window of the lucent carriage to get some air. This carriage was too small, and he did not want to think about it. The more he thought about it, the more likely he was to start feeling claustrophobic. It would be awkward if he had to ask the girls to drop him off in a forest full of monsters because he couldn't breathe inside the carriage. So, he looked outside as they were flying through the air. The small amount of wind that he could feel on his face was calming, and it made it easy for him to think that he was outside, not trapped in a confining carriage.
The girls were speaking about something or other, and Langa worried if he had done the right thing, impulsively deciding to go after the voident without doing any research on him or learning about his skills. Hell, he wasn't even sure about what kind of edge being a voident gave his target. He should have thought about this calmly instead of letting his mind convince him that it was a good idea. He should have just pushed his worries away and not needed stimulation like this fight to get his mind off the prophecy. Maybe he could-
"Something is coming from the right!" Di Etta said, her eyes opening wide as she stood up. A few seconds ago, she had looked completely absorbed in her food, but now she was alert, and she drew two weapons from inside her cloak. They looked like plastic water guns embedded with multiple lucent crystals of various colours that Langa had never seen before. Those must be the shooters that Gertina mentioned before.
"There it is!" Di Etta said, pointing to a blurry shadow that was flying towards them. Langa fell back into his seat when he saw what was coming for them. It was a large birdlike creature with red skin, with the head of what looked like a woman, and its face was ghostly white, fangs bared at them as it swooped down towards the carriage. It also only had one eye. A... a harpy?
Corrupted Popobawa
Level 15
HP: 7500/7500
Gertina opened the carriage door, and a gust of wind burst inside, pushing Langa back as both Gertina and Di Etta jumped out of the carriage. At first, he was worried about them falling, but then he noticed that Gria had only one hand on the gravity lucent crystal helm, keeping the carriage afloat; her other hand was lifted up, and her two teammates were suspended in the air for a moment, and then swiftly carried onto the top of the carriage by her magic.
The carriage swayed, and she moved her hand off the gravity crystal helm to the air crystal helm, trying to keep it steady. The popobawa was a monster out of his league, so Langa moved up to the front of the carriage.
"Can I help?" he asked Gria, and she spared him a quick glance.
"Have you ever driven a lucent carriage before?" she asked, biting her lip in frustration when he shook his head. "Is your mana core fully formed?" Again, he shook his head.
"That's actually better, you'll have to use pure, untainted mana," she said as the carriage swayed once more. "It's hard for me to use my skill while also driving the carriage, so just infuse your mana into the air crystal helm and concentrate on the enchantment. Hold it steady, and don't think about anything else. Just continue to infuse it with you-"
Di Etta released three large, circular discs of light from nowhere and hurled them at the monster. It dodged by flying in different directions. The wind from the popobawa's wings struck the carriage, and it shook. Gria hurriedly had to use her skill to make sure that her sister and Di Etta did not fall off.
Langa hastily infused his mana into the air crystal helm, and a series of small glyphs lit up on the crystal. He concentrated on one of them, the one that Gria told him would stop the carriage from shaking. He felt his mana leak into the crystal helm, and he held it in both hands like a steering wheel. Thunderbird's Stunning Strike was the only skill he had that used mana, and it just took him infusing his mana and thinking about activating the skill for it to work, so it was quite bizarre to have that glyph constantly syphoning his mana into it. It seemed to be working as the carriage stopped swaying, coming to a standstill in the air. He was aware that if he made even one mistake, the entire team would plummet to the ground.
Since she only had to concentrate on the gravity crystal helm, Gria was able to assist the other two better.
As the popobawa swooped down from the stormy skies, Gertina extended her arms, and vines erupted from the forest below, and they wrapped around the popobawa's wings, making its approach harder. The popobawa was undeterred and let out a loud screeching yell, flapping its wings with unprecedented strength, allowing it to free one wing from Gertina’s vines.
Simultaneously, Di Etta unleashed a bombardment of elemental bullets—a red one emitting fire, and a black one emitting darkness magic—from her shooters. Some missed as the popobawa used the wind to deflect them, but this weakened the force of its charge. Langa concentrated on keeping the enchantment active and steady while Gria slowly lowered their position with the gravity crystal helm, getting the carriage down towards the forest.
Since they were now closer to the ground, Gertina focused on her staff and began pulling multiple thorns from the trees below, sending them soaring through the air towards the popobawa. A gust of wind sliced through the air, but Gertina’s magic uprooted a large tree from the ground, raising it into the air in front of the gust of wind, so that it interrupted the popobawa’s attack. In this commotion, one of Di Etta's discs cut deep into the monster's side. The two of them worked really well together, and Langa could not forget that Gria was using some derivation of gravity magic to keep the two of them in the air. He could tell that they had worked together for a long time, and they each kept using different skills unlike him, who, except for Tonare, only had two skills. These girls were badasses.
Screeching angrily, the popobawa circled overhead and descended rapidly towards the carriage. Gripping her enchanted shooters, Di Etta fired two quick bullets at the creature’s torso, a deadly combination of acid and ice bullets, each imbued with arcane energy. The acid-ice bullets rose into the air, leaving a glimmering stream of foul-smelling frost. Once hit, the popobawa was slightly pushed back, and Gria took advantage of this to activate her other magic. Her eyes whitened, and she uttered an incantation, and a transparent bear-like spirit beast materialised on top of the carriage. It circled around the other two and created a transparent magic shield around them.
The acid seeped into the popobawa's veins, slowing its movements, and Gertina was concentrating on gathering more vines from the forest below. In an instant, multiple feathers were ejected from the popobawa’s wings, and they flew like needles towards the group, but the spiritual beast shield from Gria blocked the attack.
The carriage swayed again, and Langa looked at Gria next to him. She seemed to be struggling to breathe. “Hey, every time that shield gets hit, I lose mana,” she panted. “Hold this crystal helm as well for just a few seconds while I catch my breath,” she said. “Focus on the enchantment to keep us still in the air.”
“I don’t have much mana left either,” Langa warned her. “Which glyph will keep us still?” he asked as, after infusing his mana into the crystal helm, three glyphs lit up. He was bent over awkwardly to reach over the driver's seat in order to use the crystal helms.
“The middle one,” she said, sitting down and closing her eyes to recover the mana.
It was not easy to infuse his mana into two crystal helms simultaneously, and it felt like they were both draining him rapidly. He was starting to feel lightheaded.
The popobawa struggled to stay in the air as its ranged attacks failed to penetrate the shield, while Di Etta fired a barrage of ice bullets and penetrating bullets made from venomous steel, and the popobawa thrashed around in the air, trying to fly away. However, more vines rose from the forest to tie it up. Gertina was now standing on top of these vines, constantly trying to keep the creature still so that Di Etta, who was clearly the strongest of the three, could get a clean shot.
Eventually, Gria’s mana went down, the shield ran out, and the popobawa made a last-ditch beeline for the carriage, but the bullet that Di Etta shot at it this time was a swirling rainbow colour, and it was the size of a fist. It struck true, so that it left a fist-sized hole in the popobawa’s abdomen.
As the popobawa plummeted to the ground below, one of its wings hit the carriage, and Di Etta, who was still standing on top of the carriage, lost her balance and fell off the carriage. Perhaps it was the adrenaline that he got from watching the fight, or how exhilarating it had been for him to watch the three of them battle the monster with their incredible skills, but Langa's heart was already beating fast, faster than it would after a 100-metre sprint, so he closed his eyes and said, "Impulse Pulse."
He could feel 50% of his total stamina drain all at once, and the world slowed down for him once more. This was the first time that he used his attribute without Thunderbird's Stunning Strike, and he knew instinctively that he had to choose a direction for his Velocity to work. In the direction where Di Etta was slowly falling, there was a large, thorny tree. He could not land there. In that case, there was only one other direction he could choose: down. He hoped that he would be able to land gracefully even from this high up. He could not waste any more time, as the more he delayed, the more stamina he lost as long as the attribute was active.
In that moment of slow time, Langa jumped straight down, grabbed Di Etta, who was frozen in the middle of the fall, in his arms, careful not to change direction, and landed hard on the ground with her on top of him.
[-153HP]
Aargh, well, that fucking hurt. His stamina had been drained, but it had not fallen below 10%, so that was a big improvement from the last time he used the skill. He might be able to learn how to control his attribute better with time. He'd been so excited that he could use the skill without experiencing backlash and had forgotten that it only boosted his speed, not his health. Di Etta sat up, looking around wildly. She looked winded, and her red hair was a mess.
"The hell? I was just falling, what-" she muttered, looking around and seeing that she was on the ground. She saw Langa lying down there and immediately turned to him. "Are you okay? Did you save me?"
Well, at least she was okay, but his leg was injured and his back hurt. He tried to sit up. A week ago, losing this much health would have been critical, but now he could shake it off. Di Etta, panicking, reached into her inventory and handed him a common health potion. He would have liked to decline, but she looked worried and fussed over his clearly sprained ankle as it was swelling.
"You should have let Gria catch me with her magic, now you're hurt," she said in concern.
"She was low on mana, and she still needed to steer the carriage," Langa said, downing the potion and looking up. The lucent carriage was flying down towards them, and Gria landed it on the grass a few metres away from them.
Gertina ran out of the carriage. "Are you guys okay?" she asked, looking over them.
"We're fine," Di Etta said. "Langa saved me."
Gertina looked Langa up and down, her face unreadable, "You're fast," she said. Her staff was raised, and there was very clear suspicion and distrust on her face.
He could sense her wariness, and he could not blame her. They had only met today, after all. He hoped that they weren't going to dump him in the forest because they didn't trust him. "A little, yeah. Please don't leave me here, I'm not a suspicious person, I promise."
Di Etta glared at Gertina. "Will you stop looking like you're ready to attack? You're scaring him!" she said, patting Langa on the shoulder. "Of course, we won't leave you here. You saved me."
Gertina snorted and put away her staff.
"Do you guys think that we can go and loot the popobawa's claws, blood, and tongue? It sucks that we don't get experience from 1st Floor monters anymore, but I'm sure they are worth something. Freida will love them," Gria asked.
But Di Etta shook her head. "Don't even think about it. I can sense the monsters moving around the forest. There is a maestril rift not too far in the distance, and this field is a level 15 hunting ground. We can handle it, but the maestril boss will definitely wipe us out, and then we'll be delayed."
"Ugh, fine, let's go. My mana will regenerate along the way, I'm sick of this place already," Gria said, her voice annoyed as she got back into the carriage.
Well, that had been a lot of excitement for Langa, and he hadn't even reached his destination. He stood up, now completely healed, and got back inside the carriage.