Chapter 384 - Another Day, Another Dungeon

The brigade set out from Lia’s hometown early the next morning. With everyone well rested and refreshed by the spontaneous vacation, the party sped off towards the nation’s northern border. There was still much distance to be covered—Paunse was nearly half a thousand kilometers across—but they escaped its range by the end of the week.

Even without any checkpoints to signal the crossing, they knew exactly when they passed into Kryddar, courtesy of the local biology. The species themselves were unchanged; neither the shrubs, the trees, or the grasses cared much for national lines, but blessings bestowed by the nations’ patron deities manifested clearly in the resulting displays.

Catgirl country was wet and humid. There were always clouds overhead, the air was so damp that it threatened to stick to one’s skin, and the forest as a whole was much cooler. The vegetation grew closely together, with few spots left uncovered and individual plants standing at only ten or twenty meters tall.

As the land blessed by Rikael, the goddess of the sun, Kryddar was its polar opposite. Its trees were much further apart. And though their leaf structures were the same, the individuals grew far wider and taller. There were large gaps between them. The wagon could have easily passed through if not for the giant roots that interrupted the unbeaten paths. But even with the sun shining overhead and the air fairly arid, the forest was still covered with green. More sunlight meant more energy, and the strongest individuals, those who could outcompete the others for water, shone as brightly as the star above.

While the vegetation differed primarily in its sparsity and size, the local monsters went through a dramatic shift. Those that preferred watery habitats, like beavers, capybaras, and frogs, thrived in the thunder god’s domain, while lizards, snakes, and turtles positioned themselves beneath the sun goddess’ grace.

The most striking features, which only appeared a little further in the moth people’s lands, were suspended within the canopy. Held in place by their own stringed forms were massive white-threaded nests woven of the finest silk. Some were smaller, roughly the size of a shield, while others had grown to such an extent that one could fit a house sized for a family of four. But while the glimmering, luscious strings extended far and wide, their capacities were hardly as expansive as they appeared.

They were not suspended, tree-built homes, as many foreign scholars had first suspected, but places that would be lived in only twice in their lifetime. They were the cocoons that the people donned to grow from child to adult, the holes in their exteriors serving proof of their maturity. Legally, the individual pods were owned by those who wove them, for they would return again when it was time to die.

Only then, after the corpse within withered to nothing, would the pupae be harvested and processed. It was through that specific act, the returning of a body to its place of maturation, that would produce the finest silk, the highest quality good that an individual could birth in their lifetime. A magnum opus that summed up their entire existence. And it was why the Kryddarians always retrieved the bodies of their fallen.

Foreigners often argued that the sale of said silk was a nightmarish artifact of capitalism, but they were simply how the nation's retirees provided for their descendants. The derived funding was what paid the wages of the garden's defenders—the wages that ensured that the growing adolescents were kept safe as they turned to goop and reformed.

Birthwoods like Sunbright Rest were a common sight in Kryddar. They could be found all over the nation, with at least one for every notable set of settlements. Some of the larger cities, like the capital city of Edelgrove, had as many as ten scattered around their vicinity. They were practically as common as suburbs thanks to the rapid rates at which the moth people reproduced.

They didn't mate and give birth as frequently as cottontails, but a given female could produce over a dozen eggs in a particularly abundant batch. In the distant past, before the state grew organized enough to accommodate and unburden new families, births often led parents to run themselves ragged. The problem was supplying all of the necessary nutrients. A newborn Kryddarian needed to eat at least five times as much as an adult—ten to be healthy and grow at the expected rate. Food wasn’t too expensive or difficult to come by in Kryddar, but with an average clutch size of eight, it was simply unaffordable for the average family.

Those unwilling to settle for small clutches, especially those who lived in rural areas, often wound up dead from overexertion shortly after their children began to pupate. And perhaps, that was how the Kryddarian population was naturally kept under control.

It was a problem that had persisted until just a few hundred years prior, at which point the nation cleaned up its act and put the necessary services together. It not only provided all the food but also a full set of accompanying daycares to abate the parents’ stress.

So successful was the service that it dropped the parental death rate from sixty percent to just shy of zero. The few who still passed away were typically traditionalists who complained that the state was indoctrinating their children, but though vocal, they made up a negligible minority.

Kryddar was even more unified than Cadria. Most of the population had lived under King Ragnar for their whole lives, and swayed by his efficiency, they had become conservative traditionalists with little interest in reform. Or at least that was how Claire had always seen it, as an outsider looking in. In reality, she doubted that there was no political strife; one could never truly be at peace with greedy, power-hungry nobles and money-grubbing merchants afoot, but either way, the nation presented itself as one whose concerns were more outward than in.

As far as the party could tell, there was little to contradict the claim. The woodlands were calm and tranquil. Even though the nation’s average level was nearly as high as Cadria’s, Kryddar had none of the overt dedication to the development of military affairs. There were no troops patrolling the highways, nor any warlords training their soldiers in the wilderness.

The only sounds not belonging to the natural world were those of merchants, local and foreign, as they peddled their wares between the major cities. And it was as they crested a hill and laid eyes on one such landmark that the party finally slowed its advance.

“What the heck is that!?” cried Sylvia.

She was back to being a fox. Like all of the other critters, she was lazing on top of the carriage with Lana. Claire was, of course, counted amongst their number. Her tiniest form was not just the most comfortable, but also the most convenient. She rarely left it without reason.

“I believe it is a city," said Arciel. Her voice was a little muffled, coming from inside the carriage.

“There’s no way that’s a city!” said Sylvia. “It looks more like a dungeon.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The supposed settlement in question was covered in the same silken threads that lined the Kryddarian birthwoods. But unlike the suburban territories in question, the city was not built into the woods. Nay, it stood as but a single megastructure made of a dark but lustrous material. At its core, the structure was cuboid. The central base was a giant hexahedron that extended roughly five kilometers in each dimension.

Smaller cubes jutted out from the core, and even smaller ones were built off those. It was a veritable cascade of rotated blocks only emphasized by its position in the middle of a valley. The only abnormality in the structure was the massive flag that sat on top of it.

“That’s just how Kryddarian hive cities look,” said Claire. “They make them out of their spit.”

“H-huh!? W-what the heck!? I bet you’re just saying that ‘cause you’re trying to trick me again. How the heck would you even know in the first place!?”

“One of Rubia’s tutors mentioned it when I visited her last week.”

“Hate to say it, but she’s right,” said Panda, who had appeared out of nowhere as usual. “Kryddarians condense minerals in their bodies and excrete the excess in their saliva. They can make the stuff flexible, tough as nails, and even half the weight it should be. It sells for a pretty penny to the right buyer. Here, they call it mothimite, but you probably know it by sunsteel.”

“The name does bring something to mind,” said Arciel. “I believe one of the ministers proposed using it in the weaponry, but it was rejected on account of its inconsistent quality.”

“Yeah, since any Tom, Dick, or Harry can make it, you can’t really trust it unless you can vet the source or test it onsite. The bad stuff is real bad, but the good stuff makes for some pretty high-grade shit. Some of the blades’ll probably last you until five or six hundred as long as you aren’t fully specced into strength.”

“I think I might actually have some sunsteel needles lying around, now that you mention it,” said Chloe. “But I don’t think they look like that.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t turn black unless it’s naturally heat-treated like the stuff you see on the walls. Doing it the normal way makes it turn silver,” said Panda. “Anyway, that’s enough about all that. I was just dropping by to say I’m gonna be out of touch for a bit. Something’s come up on my end.”

Claire narrowed her eyes. “You’re dropping out.”

“No, no, not if I can help it, at least. Trust me. Merchants never go back on their deals.”

“Except for when it earns them profits.”

“Well…” the raccoon averted his gaze. “Anyway, I’ll be back in touch once I manage to uhh… fix my problem.” Lightly waving at the crowd, Panda hopped off the wagon and wandered into the bushes before abandoning his body.

He didn’t lose his rigidity and squeeze his way out of a corpse, as a lorputus would. If anything, his trick was more akin to Claire’s—he ejected his mind from his matter and returned to its point of origin. The similarity between their abilities was hardly a coincidence. If anything, it was quite the opposite, seeing as how he was her uncle.

Back in his real body, Constantius Augustus rose to his feet and slowly stretched his shoulders. The long, unkempt hair that spilled across his face was mostly black, but the roots had already fully regained their silvery sheen. Applying a fresh layer of dye each week should have been a part of his usual routine, but he had no time to concoct the mixture on the run. His brother had finally sniffed him out. It was funny for him to think that Virillius had held the grudge for the better part of a millennium. He would have thought him competent enough to have either figured it out earlier, derived the ultimate truth, or at the very least, recognized the extent of the loss that stemmed from keeping Constantius in mind. But alas, Virillius had accomplished none of the above. It was likely their uncle’s fault. Ferdinand was one of the few crafty bastards capable of keeping the wool over his eyes for long, though evidently, even he eventually paid the price for attempting to fool the goddess’ chosen.

Whatever the case, the results were unchanged. Constantius had abandoned his life at his safe house and donned the guise of a wanderer. His uncommon species drove all manner of attention, but it only barely affected his ability to lie low. Even if abrupt and suspiciously uniform, the visible change in his hair colour led others to assume that his blood was less than royal. The most common subspecies had chestnut hair that stood in stark contrast to the white fur all over their lower halves, and masquerading as such an individual made for a very profitable outcome indeed.

A loud, groaning yawn escaped his lips as he threw on his clothes and grabbed his things. He didn't have much time. If his avian informant was correct, his brother’s soldiers would be upon him within the hour. They were surprisingly competent. They had pinpointed his location based on the faintest of clues, and they had done it in record time. But he wasn’t worried. He was sure to come out ahead in any game of cat and mouse.

After all, it was he who had planted the clues to begin with. Confirming the extent of the agents’ abilities would allow him to better invade their eyes going forward, and establishing a set of false patterns would turn them blind to his tricks. That was why he had ordered his familiars to supervise the points in question.

They knew that he was a beastmaster—that much, he had gleaned from the pests that overran their houses—but they severely underestimated the extent of his power. Eliminating all the mice and birds on the scene did nothing to stop him from overhearing their conversations. All he needed to do was listen through the mosquitos, earthworms, and cockroaches. Failing that, he simply needed to tap into the parasites embedded within their bodies, or perhaps some of the sentient plants like the mandrakes that lay by the roadside.

He may have spent only a few days in town, but every single creature within it had already fallen into his grasp.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Plinius.” The inn’s clerk called to him as he reached the bottom of the steps. “Are you heading into town today?”

She was a charming little thing, a cottontail maybe just ten years old, already manning the desk. He did have to admit that it was a viable cost-saving measure, but he doubted that it would pay off in the long run. Allowing a child to run the shop unattended was a testament to the parents’ irresponsibility, especially in a circumstance like the one soon impending.

“I’m heading out for a walk. I’ll be back in a bit,” said ‘Plinius of Rodna.’ He lightly waved at the girl and flashed his best smile, a necessary procedure to ensure she remembered his face. If Virillius’ agents—technically they served Ephesus, but the details were hardly relevant—behaved the way he expected, the seemingly unnecessary effort would soon prove itself a worthwhile investment.

Constantius kept his lips curved even after he slipped out the door, but his mask warped as he pulled his cloak over his face. It went from calm and gentle, warm and sweet, to about as crooked as one could find. It was the same smirk he wore as Panda, though it was less noticeable there courtesy of the accompanying inhuman face.

He just couldn’t help it.

His brother’s agents were already playing into his trap. His birds, his rats, and roaches all confirmed that they had just arrived in town, and that they had immediately gotten stuck on the obvious red herring that was his graffitied note.

They were racking their brains and heatedly debating the meanings of specific phrases that meant nothing as he got away. They were fools, complete and utter fools incapable of uncovering even three of the seven hidden clues he had laid out before them, or at least that was what he thought before one of them suddenly appeared in front of him.

The man in question was a standard reverse centaur with the body of a man and the head of a horse. The six wings that grew from his back and the blades that grew from his arms implied that he was thrice ascended. It wasn't the most common set of racial traits, but Constantius recognized them regardless as those of an Enlightened Horsehead Herald—one of the obnoxious racial priests whose caustic blood burned those who rent their flesh.

But as far as the cervitaur was concerned, the man’s abilities were irrelevant.

Closing the gap in an instant, he grabbed the agent by the face and filled his head with mana. It wasn’t a lethal strike, but a simple demonstration of a beastmaster’s capabilities—a demonstration of the fact that, just like animals, insects, and monsters, people could easily be tamed.