In a flash, our surroundings changed. Erani, Ainash, and I were all suddenly standing in a completely new area—a massive building constructed around the Teleportation Circle. We were no longer in the town of Salvation, but rather in the capital city of the Barinruth Empire—Precipice.
The building was a massive cube, probably almost a hundred paces in each direction, all made around the Circle. I had to imagine a place like this was expensive to build; Salvation just had its Teleportation Circle set up in the middle of the woods outside the town. And more than that, this whole place was fitted with countless defense measures. There were armed guards crawling the floor, massive weapons set up on balconies lining the walls armed and ready to fire, and by the looks of it, it even seemed like the support pillars keeping the roof up were rigged to be easily knocked down, so they could collapse the entire building if need be.
“Halt!” a voice said the moment I tried to take a step forward. It was an armored guard standing off to the side of the circle, hand already on her sword. “Do not move until we finish questioning you. What are your names?”
“Gods, paranoid much?” I muttered. Then, in a louder voice, I answered, “Annor Ton.”
“Eita Niin,” Erani called out as well.
The woman, looking at a paper, nodded. Then she pointed at Ainash. “And the monster?”
“She’s unlicensed,” I responded. “But officially she’s currently under our responsibility.”
“Mhm.” She nodded. “Okay, we will put you under Truth Stone to verify your identity and intentions in coming here. Please stay where you are.”
I sighed and mentally asked Index to prepare to help me get past the Truth Stones once again. This whole process seemed like it was gonna take a while.
The process did, in fact, take a while. Several hours later, we were through the many security checks necessary to leave the building, and collecting our gear from a large table—they’d confiscated pretty much everything not attached to our bodies and thoroughly examined that, too.
“Is that everything you brought with you?” another woman asked. She’d been the one to throw everything—quite roughly, I might add—onto the wooden table for us to sort through.
“Uh…yeah, I think so,” I said, sifting through my backpack, all its contents having been rearranged by the examiners. “Oh, actually, there’s one thing missing. It should look like a small puck of shaped metal, about as wide as an arm.”
“Lemme check in the back for you,” she said, ducking into a side room. Eventually she came back out, with a noticeable lack of my missing item. “It was Enchanted, right?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re still looking over it. It’s apparently got a weird configuration, or something; I dunno anything about that stuff. Anyway, it’ll be another few minutes.”
I fought the urge to groan in frustration. I understood why they were cautious of that item—it was one of those prosthetic arms that’d been attached to the enemy soldiers Jon brought in, and those things had even confused Index when it examined them—but I’d still spent more than enough time going through these rigorous security checks, and was not happy to hear it’d be yet more time before I’d get out of here.
“Er, we’re here for the capital city,” Erani said, making conversation with the woman while we waited. “Which road should we take to get there fastest? Or are we close enough that it doesn’t matter?”
“There’s only one road heading out of here, so you’ll just walk down there for about a day’s worth of travel before you get to the outer walls,” she said.
“Wait, a day’s worth of travel?” I asked. “We’re really that far away?”
She nodded, face betraying no emotion. “Just be glad you’re not at the eastern arriving circle; that one’s three days away from the city.”
“Are there any places we can stock up before the journey?”
“Nope. You’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere, right now.”
“Well. Good to know, I guess.”
It was closer to half an hour than ten minutes before we got all our stuff back and were finally good to leave. The stone-walled building had no windows or openings that let in natural light, so I honestly didn’t even know what time of day it was; though, Index apparently had a perfect internal clock going at all times, so it helpfully informed me that we’d spent exactly four hours, twelve minutes, forty-six seconds, and nine hundred and thirteen milliseconds in the building thus far. Still couldn’t tell me what the weather was like outside, though.
But now we could finally leave. With everything collected, we headed for the front doors, which were surprisingly small considering the building’s massive size.
The moment we stepped through, a wave of heat hit me. We were standing in the middle of an expansive desert, dunes all around us, with tall six-sided crystals cropping up from the sand like trees. They were multicolored—some green, or blue, or red, while others were perfectly clear—and varied just as much in size. Some that I could see nearby were small enough that they didn’t pass my knee in height, while others were tall as a nobleman’s three-story mansion and wide enough that twenty people holding hands wouldn’t be able to wrap their arms around them. Those massive ones were much rarer, though, only appearing once or twice off in the distance, with most being about as wide as a tree trunk and a little taller than I was.
Other than the sand, the crystals, and the building at our backs, there was almost nothing in sight. Well, there was also the road, of course—a thin strip of packed sandstone stretching off in a straight line, into the horizon. It looked worn down, and entire sections of it were crumbling off into the sand to either side of it. I just hoped there weren’t any stretches of the journey ahead of us where the fragile road had entirely worn away; hiking such a distance in the sand dunes would be miserable.
“This is amazing!” Ainash yelled into our minds. Looking over at her, I saw her looking around with wide eyes and a big smile on her face. “Have never seen this type of ground before! Have never seen these big crystal things before! There are lots of animals underground! Do not know what they are!”
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“I’m glad you like the landscape,” I replied with a chuckle. “Seems like we’ll be spending the next while out here.”
I had been expecting Ainash’s enthusiasm to wear off pretty quickly once we set off, but surprisingly enough, she seemed just as interested in the plain sandy surroundings after our second hour as she had been during our first two minutes. She constantly bent down to poke at the multicolored crystals we passed by, as if being a slightly brighter shade of red we’d seen before would change its nature. As far as we could tell so far, there was nothing special about them. Just normal old boring crystals.
Though, the boredom wasn’t the problem, I’d found. It was the heat. When we’d first exited that building and I felt the wave of hot air blast into my face, we’d still been in the shade cast by the damn thing. Now, out in the sweltering sun, there was nothing to protect us. Ainash, of course, was completely unfazed by the temperature, but Erani and I weren’t so lucky. Really, I estimated that if it weren’t for our Stats, we’d have died from heat exhaustion by now.
“You think there’s any reason they put the Teleportation Circle this far away from the city?” I breathlessly asked. “Or is it just to fuck with us?”
“Probably a defense mechanism,” Erani answered, just as feverish as I was.
“What do you mean? Felt like they had plenty of guards in the building itself, what do they need more defense for?”
“Well, having a Teleportation Circle near your capital city—where your own emperor lives—is a pretty risky move. Especially for a massive empire like Barinruth, where there are plenty of access points where people could theoretically take over some random small town, then use that Circle to invade the capital. So it makes sense they’d monitor who comes through pretty closely. I mean, sure, if we’d come through and started killing random people, the guards would have it handled, but what if instead of just us coming through, we’d been holding the people running Salvation’s Circle hostage, and we secretly teleported in an army of two hundred? With another twenty thousand on the way?”
“Guess that makes sense,” I said.
“Yes, the Teleportation Circles are great for the economy, but can be a double-edged sword when it comes wartime. That’s why you’d have them set up so far from the city, with such a low-quality road headed there, and no natural resources or towns you could pillage on the way. It ensures large armies will have an extremely tough time getting from the Circle to the city itself. Same reason they have several Teleportation Circles all around the city—the one you’ll go to when you teleport here is randomized depending on the day, meaning you can’t plan ahead if you’re trying to invade.”
“You seem to know a lot about this sort of thing. Does it happen often?”
Erani gave me a strange look, then smiled and shook her head in exasperation. “Yes, Teleportation Circles are used constantly during wartime. You know, sometimes I forget that you’re uneducated. E-er, no offense, I mean. It’s just…You know.”
“Wow,” I said sarcastically, “the love of my life called me uneducated. Excuse me while I go find the nearest monster and shove myself into its mouth.”
“Shut up,” she said with a laugh.
“You know, if I was really that committed to the bit, I could go and actually let a monster kill me. Just for the sake of the joke.”
She looked at me seriously. “Do not do that. It would be a waste of resources.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, “ I sighed. “Plus, you wouldn’t even remember it if I actually died; I wouldn’t be able to transfer your memory of my dramatic final moments. So unfortunate how these things work out. I have the opportunities to make some of the funniest jokes ever, and yet only I get to remember them. It’s a curse, really.”
“I don’t think it would be that funny anyway, so not much is lost.”
“Uneducated and unfunny,” I gasped, mockingly clutching a hand to my heart. “I don’t think I can go on.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, smiling. “You have my sincerest apologies.”
“Unfortunately, my pride has been wounded too severely. I can only accept your apology if you give me a compliment equal to your grave insults.”
Erani gave me an unamused look. Except, there was still a hint of amusement there, it was just well-hidden.
“I just called you the love of my life,” I said. “Surely that’s earned something in return.”
“I—” Erani suddenly looked extremely flustered. “You said that as a joke. You don’t get to retroactively decide it was serious.”
“What if I say it again, but totally seriously this time?”
“Well now, you’ve ruined the moment anyway. It’s too late.”
“Ah, damn. Unfortunate. Though, to be fair, it wouldn’t be as meaningful a phrase coming from me, considering how many lives I have. So saying you’re the love of my current life doesn’t hold much commitment to it. I’d have to say something like,” I looked over to her with as serious an expression as I could muster, “‘Erani, you hold more importance to me than anything in the world—in my current life, in any futures I may live, and in all the pasts I’ve experienced. In all of those times and all times to come, you will never stop meaning everything to me. So please, stay by my side forever, and I will do everything in my power to ensure you never regret that decision.’ I’d have to say something like that.”
Erani stared back at me, red in the face, then shut her eyes and shook her head, lightly slapping my chest. “You seriously can’t joke around saying things like that!”
I laughed, wrapping an arm around her. “What if I said ‘I’m just practicing for our wedding day’? Would that be too much?”
She looked at me. “Yes. That would be too much.”
“Fine, fine. Then I’m just practicing for some nonspecific day that may or may not come in the future when I say that seriously.”
She sighed. “That’s only a little bit better.”
An hour of walking later, we came across a group of travelers going in the same direction as us. I’d been periodically using Expedite to speed us up, so it seemed like we caught up with the people going at normal speeds. They were traveling in a caravan, three lined up wooden carts wobbling along as best as they could on the thin road. Though, these carts didn’t seem to be drawn by anything at all, instead turning their own wheels through some sort of surely complex system of Enchantments.
“Ho there!” I called out with a wave, having swapped into Dark Plate as soon as we saw their silhouettes ahead of us. “Don’t mind us, just coming up from behind!”
A middle-aged woman poked her head out from the middle cart, looking back at us and squinting. Our forms were assuredly startling to anyone who saw us—with me and Erani looking somewhat monstrous in our disguised forms, and Ainash literally being a monster—but thanks to my warning, she at least knew we were friendly. Eventually she called back, “Are you three adventurers? Headed for Precipice?”
“Pretty much,” I replied. “And yes, we’re going to the capital.”
“Come then, sit with me! I’d like some company with a few Levels under their belts, especially now that we’re headed for Sand Hive territory.”
“Sand Hive?” I asked, slightly speeding up in my walking so I could catch up with the carts.
“Ah, are you new to Precipice’s surrounding deserts? Yes, this place is crawling with the Sand Hive monsters. Terrifying, deadly beasts that get aggressive if you don’t respect their territory.”
“Are you planning on doing that?”
“I surely don’t plan on getting attacked, but I’d like some insurance in case I do. I’ve got some hired guards, but that’s more for any roving bandits trying to intimidate the coin out of me. If you’re a group of dedicated monster hunters, I’m sure you’d be happy to sit in one of my shaded carts in exchange for some help in the case that a disaster does strike?”
“Shaded?” I glanced at Erani, who also perked up at the mention of respite from the sweltering sun. “And all we’ve gotta do is solve a disaster or two? Yeah, you’ve got a deal.”