After stealing half a dozen eggs and cooking them in the lake, Leo departed.
Unsurprisingly his travel speed had considerably increased as well as the coordination – jumping long distances from branch to branch and even from tree to tree had become almost as natural as walking. Sadly the mist in the treetops was still the same and somewhat limited his movement, but it took less than a month for Leo to find the newly built ‘road’ just by going southwards. The bridge was actually impossible to miss and even though a year had passed, it still looked rather sturdy.
It didn’t take long for Leo to realize why. Almost every day he met travelers going one or the other way and these people didn’t mind to stop and spend half a day or more to fix a torn rope or an unstable part of the deck. They didn’t really have to do that and they were not payed, but for some reason everyone found it natural to help. Leo could’ve understood if it were only those coming from the Nameless city, but people traveling from the far west happily showed off their expertise as well.
Leo wasn’t the most experienced traveler in the world, but he had been around quite a bit. Still, he had never seen such unbelievable concept of every person wholeheartedly investing themselves in the name of the common good without any reward whatsoever. It seemed paradoxical that the most toxic environment had groomed the purest civilization, but somehow the people of the Greenland mortal realm had lived this way for thousands of years.
Leo didn’t follow their example though. Firstly – this was not his home and secondly – since he had decided to leave the place, there was no reason to hang around. Of course, he did lend a hand now and then, but mostly rushed towards the east to the Nameless city.
His plan was to take another detox bath up on the mountain, just in case, and then go south and find the teleportation platform. While living on the island with the three Divine tribulation trees, not only he didn’t accumulate any toxins, both – from the environment and antidotes, since the lighting waters cleansed him and the food he ate several times a day. But now, spending a couple of months in the poisonous mist, even though it wasn’t as toxic as the fog below, his nails began to blacken once again.
Upon his arrival to the Nameless city Leo had to alter his plans. The whole place was bustling with activity and, as it turned out, it was because it was finally time for the high dryad’s matrimonial ceremony. Everyone was in celebratory mood and, from what Leo could guess, there were thousands of guests from the both sides of the continent. Of course, there were no huge plazas built in the trees for people to gather and even if there were – one wouldn’t be able to see large crowds because of the everlasting mist. Nevertheless, the presence of the so called ‘easterners’ and ‘westerners’ was hard to miss.
People in Greenland didn’t brew any alcohol, probably because the environment was already toxic enough, and no one was strolling around drunk or having parties. Everyone, including the guests, were doing the same chores the locals usually did, except more effort went into the food gathering. Of course, this was the time when local ladies could take their pick and choose a more exotic husband – either one with bluish skin from the west or dark grayish from the east. Similarly quite a few women from afar had come and openly showed their interest in the local men.
Ignoring than the skin color the people looked the same – all of them had the signature pointy ears and wore similar tree bark clothing. Leo’s guess was that the difference in the skin color was due to the foreign tribes spending a lot of time on the ground – either directly in forests or at the side of the ocean.
It didn’t take long to prove his guess was right. On a couple occasions he saw some of the foreigners showing off their well built bodies and few had clearly visible scars from greenlander beast bites. Needless to say the locals were shocked to no end and exclamations and shouts ‘Mata faka!’ were heard all around.
Leo was kind of curious to find out if easterners or westerners had any remedies against the tranquilizing effect of the fog below, but he got distracted by rather interesting brawl between a local guy and an easterner. It looked like a spar, except both sides genuinely tried to hurt each other, but the onlookers for some reason didn’t split them up or help their own.
Exactly the opposite – everyone cheered for their favorite and when the fight ended with the easterner’s victory, the surrounding crowd congratulated him in a friendly manner and immediately took care of both, applying ointments on their bruises. The looser wasn’t too upset either, except he did express his sadness for not being able to participate in the matrimonial ceremony.
Despite spending quite some time with locals, Leo was far from being fluent in the local dialect. But from overhearing the murmurs of onlookers he gathered that there were limited spots to witness the high dryad’s matrimonial ceremony and just now the two guys were competing for one.
Leo was curious of what the rare event was like, but not enough to bully the locals thus it didn’t come to his mind to try to compete for the chance to become a spectator. He already decided it was time to leave the Greenland realm, but first he intended visit the mountain top to take another cleansing bath and afterwards travel south where the teleportation platform was located.
Unfortunately someone had a different idea. The witch that enslaved Leo for a few days more than a year ago showed up from who knows where and recognized him from afar even trough the mist.
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“You!” She shouted, angrily pointing at him, “How many fights have you won so far?”
The crowd that had gathered on the platform and the walkways leading to it turned their heads towards the author of the angry shout and then immediately found the target. Leo, not understanding why, blushed as a child that had done something wrong, but before he managed to think of a retort, the old witch was already at his side.
“Don’t tell me you lost all tokens!” She was still shouting, “I know you’re strong – how many fights you managed to win?”
“I …” He stuttered. For some reason this old lady had become his local nemesis. No matter what he did around her – it was done wrong and she never hesitated to curse him like an old sailor.
“What ‘I’?” She said, poking his forehead. And then loudly, accentuating every word continued, “SHOW ... ME … YOUR … TOKENS!”
“What tokens? What are you talking about?” Leo helplessly asked.
It looked like the crowd was enjoying this verbal spar much more than the previous one where fists were used and curiously watched how the youth was going to get out of the predicament.
“You! Don’t you dare to play dumb with me!” The old hag furrowed brows in anger. Surprisingly she had another level of looking angry to switch to, “You damned bastard! You lost your first fight! How could you let our Dryad mountain down this way! Didn’t I teach you well enough?!”
Leo looked back at her stupefied, but then realized he didn’t actually need to go through the verbal abuse.
“What ‘teach’? And what Dryad mountain?” He snorted in return, “I just returned and have no idea what’s going on. And more importantly – leave me alone! I don’t even know you!”
Unsurprisingly the old woman had the skin thicker than a rhino.
She completely ignored the last part, grabbed Leo by the elbow and pulled away from the spot, excitedly explaining, “I knew you weren’t so weak! You need to do something about this! The honor of our tribe is at stake! The eastern and western tribes somehow are winning all the fights and if it continues this way, those cheaters will take all the spots in the matrimonial ceremony.”
Battling against this person turned out to be harder than fighting the snake headed beasts. Leo felt helpless every time he met her and this occasion turned out to be particularly annoying.
While rumbling about the importance of honor, she brought the helpless youth to a larger platform a mile or two further away. The only thing Leo understood was that the Nameless city was actually called the Dryad mountain tribe, obviously because they were located below the dryad mountain, and that strong representatives from the two other tribes, from the east and west respectively, had arrived to take away their honor, whatever it meant.
He was still in daze when an elderly dryad put a strange wooden token, that looked like a large, thick coin, in his palm and began to explain the rules of the competition.
“Good thing you made it on time! Even though today is the last day one could apply, for the past few days no one promising came and we already began to loose all hope.” She said, “I know we should be impartial, but it’s disheartening to see our most promising men to get knocked out one after another. The other two tribes turned out to be incredibly strong compared to our own – no wonder the previous high dryad wanted us to build the bridges connecting the two ends of the world. Of course, finding out who’s the strongest is important, but we still want ours to do well ...”
Either the oral diarrhea was contagious or the two of them were relatives, the dryad spoke as fast and much as the old hag and what she said also didn’t make much sense. The only thing Leo understood was that somehow he had become ‘one of us’ and was now representing the Dryad mountain tribe. For some reason everyone ignored his non-pointy ears, blue eyes and naturally tanned skin that was completely out of place if compared to the slightly greenish skin of the people from the Dryad mountain and assumed he was actually a local.
‘Sigh, I think I need to start wearing a mask.’ Leo thought, throwing a side glance at the old witch.
If she didn’t recognize him he’d probably be on the way to the mountain and making plans on how to scale it more effectively – after all he had stepped into the Core formation stage, even though the core he formed was a fake one and it was highly likely he would never advance further than the initial stage.
While Leo was lost in thoughts, him registering for the competition was noticed by a few men idling not far away. Clearly they were waiting for someone weaker taking a shot at the competition at the last moment in hopes to get lucky. One of them reacted first and upsetting the others rushed over to issue a challenge to a duel.
“Let’s go!” He said, ”The mist will be dark soon and I don’t want to postpone the duel till tomorrow.”
Leo looked back at him in confusion, but the dryad explained, “Everyone who is registered can issue challenges to the others. You’ll both have to stake your tokens and the winner will receive both. Ready? Pass me your tokens, please!”
Apparently there was no arena, no special spot to fight. The surrounding people who overheard the conversation immediately stepped back, drawing the attention of few more and in few moments Leo found himself standing in front of a man, probably in his late thirties, dressed in the tree bark clothing just like everyone else around here. The dryad took a token that the man passed her and grabbed the one she gave Leo just moments ago. The old hag was the only one who wasn’t happy, but still stepped back grumbling something about ‘fighting between your own’ under her nose.
“Sorry kid!” The man said, drawing Leo’s attention. He noticed the youth seemed absent minded as if not fully understanding what was going on, “It’s better I take the tokens – at least then the Dryad mountain has a chance against the foreigners. Very few of ours are left, you know?”
‘F*ck!’ Leo cursed to himself completely ignoring him, ‘When will I learn? Rule number one – women are dangerous!’
He really didn’t want to fight. The people of Greenland he had met so far, except for the old hag, of course, were nice and honest and he didn’t want to hurt them. Even if one ignored the fact that no one here actually cultivated and he had just advanced into the Core formation stage, the only real combat techniques he had practiced were taught to him in Dreadlands and they all involved crippling or killing his opponents! This was not the Golden city where an immortal would look after the duel making sure both duelists would not get badly hurt.