The following day we all got up again. Aisha was a little subdued, but started talking again, asking questions about our trip and how we were going to go about it as we disassembled our makeshift camp. We couldn't just leave the whole structure there every time we stopped for the day. It would be super easy to track us. Or is that what we wanted? The surest way to civilization would be other people guiding us. Then again, I don't know if I want the sort of people that would follow camp trails like this to be doing so.

"And food? What are we going to do?"

I looked at Zenith, who shrugged. "When we ran out of food back during our adventuring days, we hunted or if we were really desperate, we fou-"

"Aisha!!" I jumped and grabbed her, getting her out of the way from the talons that came from out of the sky.

I looked up. A pair of griffins flew through the sky, and squeaked. The other one dove down at me.

I set out my palm and let out a Water Cannon straight to its face. It was launched back, its neck broken from the impact. It wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.

Good to know they weren't very sturdy.

I let go of Aisha and drew my sword, just in time to deflect another swipe from the second griffin.

"Kyaaaa!!" Aisha screamed.

It flew back up again, getting ready for another attack.

"Kaa-san! Protect Aisha!!"

I summoned magic in the sky, guiding two wind currents and quickening them, sharpening them. The beast, sensing the wind buildup, tried to dodge out of the way, but it's left wing still got clipped by my Wind Cutter.

In anger it flew at me again. This time I was ready though. I put myself into a Water God stance, ready to absolutely demolish this thing.

Fire, and not a little fire either. A lot of fire flew straight for the creature as soon as it got close to me, almost catching me in the blast as well.

The griffin was launched to the ground, writhing in pain as hot flames worked at destroying its body.

"Aisha!"

I looked over, Aisha had a fearful look in her eye, her palms outstretched. That magic came from her? Certainly that was Intermediate Fire Magic, something Zenith couldn't produce.

I sliced through the griffin's neck, ending its suffering before I made my way over. "Aisha, that was… impressive. But don't do anything like that again, okay?"

"Huh? Why—Why not?" She was still trembling in Zenith's arms, but responded properly.

"Because you don't know how to fight." And I'm not about to teach a four-year-old to do so. Not in this environment. If something went wrong, we were outta luck. "I taught you that magic to protect yourself, so only use it when you're in danger and I'm not there to help, okay?"

Ruijerd could get away with teaching Eris, since he had a third eye alerting him to dangers and Eris was way older. We had no such advantages, so I had to bench her, figuratively speaking. I wasn't going to make my little sister fight their way out of my mess.

"Kaa-san, do you know how to use magic in battle?" I doubted she had many martial skills, but you don't get to S-class as an adventurer by luck.

"Yes, you can count on me, Alti! I used to be the party magician until Talhand showed up, you know!" She banged her chest with her fist. I'm assuming to inspire confidence.

"Can I rely on you to cover Aisha then? I can't fight very efficiently if I have to think about her safety the whole time."

"Of course!"

…I don't know how far she'd get with just Elementary level magic, but I'm not gonna question her on this one. Let's make preparations in case she goes down, either way.

"Mmmm. Well at least we got the food situation worked out." I stared at the griffin who wasn't currently actively being burned alive. The one taken out by my magic might still be alive, but not for long. Can't breathe with a broken neck, so.

"We'll have to stay here to prepare and cook it, so we wouldn't be able to travel this morning."

"That's fine. We can go in the evening." I'll expect this trip to take a whiiile.

----------------------------------------

We were lucky we had Zenith with us. Having an experienced adventurer to learn from was more valuable than I thought.

For one, I didn't know how to pluck and skin a griffin, but Zenith did. She knew how to handle and prepare a litany of monsters, often having helped Gisu out with the cooking.

If I remember right, isn't her learning how to cook how she got Paul to fall for her or something? Paul sure is an easy guy, huh. Really, the definition of easy.

Anyway, I got Zenith to teach us how to do it properly, once she got some tools made from Earth magic by me.

Aisha was entranced, asking questions about this and that constantly. She loved learning. It also served as a nice distraction for her from the current hellscape she was in.

She picked it up faster than me too, which I was only a little salty about.

Side note? Even without any spices or whatever, griffin meat is actually pretty good. Kinda like chicken, but like really big chicken.

I suggested keeping some with us for the road, but since we didn't have a bag or anything Zenith told us to just eat as much as we could and leave it behind. If we carried fresh and cooked meat around, the scent might attract monsters. I then promptly asked her if we were attracting monsters right now. She said the signs of fire keep most of them away, usually. Well, the lower level ones anyway.

A-ranked and higher usually didn't care, but those don't especially seek out human contact unless you're in their territory. Think dragons and so on.

…I really hoped we weren't in some kind of desert dragon's habitat or anything. That would end badly fast.

By the time it turned into evening we didn't encounter any more trouble, although a swarm of giant bats led by a flying humanoid creature did fly by. They didn't react to our little hut, so I assumed the leader was a succubus.

That, along with the griffins, really just confirmed we were in the Begaritto Continent. Where precisely, I don't know.

"What do you know about the geography of Begaritto?" I asked as we started walking. Zenith held onto Aisha's hand so she wouldn't wander off.

"There's not really any countries like on the Central Continent, just towns and settlements for the most part." Zenith started, her expression like she was digging this from the recesses of our mind. "There's I think two places big enough to be a city? Labyrinth City Lapan and Oasis City Quendenshe."

"What can you find there, Zenith-okaa-san?" Aisha asked.

Zenith smiled. "In Lapan there's a bunch of dungeons close to the city, so a lot of adventurer parties come to conquer them, hoping for riches. They also have.. something going on with glass? I don't know."

…How likely is it that we're just a few days away from said Labyrinth City?

"And Ke- Kwue- Quenin-?" Aisha tried.

"The Oasis City is an area with a lot of fertile land and giant trees surrounding the largest lake of freshwater in the world!" Zenith exclaimed. "Most people who aren't adventurers or merchants live over there."

"In which areas of the Continent are they?"

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Ummm. Lapan should be closer to the east, and Quendenshe is… somewhere in the southwest?"

"So to get out of here and back to the Central Continent, we head to Lapan? Since it's closer to the ports."

"Or we head Northwest, if we're closer to that side."

Right now we were heading East, slightly Northeast if I had to guess. We didn't have a compass, so we had to figure it out with the old stick and shadow method.

"For now, let's just stick to finding civilization, and they can guide us from there."

"How are we going to talk to them? We don't speak the Fighting-God language."

…you know I did not think about that. "We'll figure that out when we get there. The majority of communication is non-verbal anyway."

Even Aisha looked doubtful at that, but it wasn't like we had any other solutions to our problems.

We walked and walked until it became night, and the hills started becoming visible on the horizon. Not bad progress.

For the night we repeated the same process as yesterday, gathering shrubs we could burn for a fire and setting up an Earth Fortress for shelter. We didn't get attacked by any monsters, but we decided on keeping a watch anyway. Zenith would take the first shift, while I would take second. Aisha, obviously, didn't get one. We just let her sleep.

She didn't take all that well to the walking, as when it came to morning again, after about half an hour she had to be carried by Zenith to go any further.

We encountered monsters again. This time we fought an Earthworm that shot out of the ground under us. I felt the tremors just fast enough to get them both out of the way. Thankfully, the thing, with its incredibly dry skin, was super susceptible to Fire Magic and was taken care of easily. For the rest of the morning, there were just some simple Cactus Treants and a Twin Death Scorpion, to which we took the long way to walk around it.

When the sun started becoming unbearable is when we put up an Earth Fortress again and camped out. Instead of a fire in the middle I made the inner walls out of ice, digging little trenches on the inner perimeter for runoff to collect and pool to the outside so we didn't get soaked. I also did my best to air condition the inside with melded Water and Wind magic.

After Aisha took a nap she promptly became bored and asked me to teach her more magic. We couldn't do much inside the Fort, so I did my best in that regard, teaching her more about how buoyancy and surface tension and all of that worked so we could move on to Intermediate Water Magic. The least dangerous one, compared to the other Intermediate magics.

In the evening I started noticing less and less monsters in the area. Even Treants stopped appearing, and when we finally went from walking on sand to solid earth, I knew why.

There was an enormous Giant Ant colony on the other side of that mountain. I counted at least a hundred of them on the surface alone. Who knows how many of them were currently below us, burrowing.

"We need to turn back. Now." I whispered.

Zenith and Aisha had their eyes on the colony, rapidly paling expressions on their faces.

We left the way we came, and didn't stop until the hills were out of eyesight.

It was becoming night again, and I could tell we were getting to the point of exhaustion.

Our last meal was that griffin meat from two days ago, so once we made camp I decided to go out to hunt a bit.

Animals tended to do their best to avoid you in the desert, but that didn't mean I couldn't find any.

I'd have to be careful, but there were things like quail and rabbits that sped away the moment you got close.

I charged up a Wind Cutter in my hand to launch. The quail tried its best to fly away as soon as it noticed me, but it couldn't escape the sheer speed at which my magic came for it. I cut off its head before it could gain any serious momentum, and it fell onto the sand lamely.

I repeated the process for a fox and a lizard that I found, though I missed plenty of opportunities for others, either digging back into their holes or flying out of my reach. Once there was absolutely no sunlight left I headed back to the Fortress, (which didn't leave my eyesight, I wasn't dumb) and we prepared them all together.

The Lizard thankfully wasn't poisonous or anything according to Zenith, so we had plenty of food to eat to sustain ourselves for the travel we would have to do tomorrow.

In the morning, we headed out again, north this time. We encountered three Giant Ants, heading straight for us from the direction of the hills from earlier. I took care of them with the help of Zenith, and really hoped more weren't on their way here.

As a precaution, we walked a little more into the day. I gave both of them ice to hold onto and put in their clothes and we made sure to stay hydrated, but the lack of covering for our heads got to us eventually, so we set up camp.

When we came back out for the evening, four more ants attacked us.

…they almost got to Aisha, before I carved their skulls open with my sword.

It felt like a hit. A premeditated attack. Either this was the backup for the original crew, or the colony itself was trying to take us out. Either way, I did not appreciate the advances.

"We have to keep moving." I didn't stop to hunt for food that evening, just kept walking. Aisha complained, but I felt we had no choice at this point.

We killed two Twin Death Scorpions and fended off a jackal pack that came a little too close for comfort.

Although the presence of mammals that big likely meant some sort of water source. And if there was water…

The next day, while it was still dark outside, we woke up to a noise. An awful, terrible, chittering noise. I looked, and I saw more than two dozen ants on the way over to us.

This… they intended to wage war.

Zenith was already waking Aisha and took her in her arms, drowsy and all.

"Go. Run as far and as fast as you can. I'll catch up to you." There was no way I was going to involve them in this fight.

They got up and left immediately, leaving me behind. I drew my wand first, leaving the sword in its sheath.

Cumulonimbus had an area too wide to control this particular enemy. It would catch Zenith and Aisha in the crosshairs too. It was too dangerous.

But I had other magics that could prove to be useful. If Rudeus could develop his magics by upping power, speed and rotation, then I could do the same.

With my wand pointed in front of me, I started gathering mana. First, grabbing the existent air and spinning it around the center. First horizontally, then another stream vertically, then diagonally, all the way until I had a sphere, the center of which hovered about two meters above me.

They were getting closer. I had to hurry it up.

I made the sphere bigger, and sped up the streams, making them cut against each other. The residual wind started pushing the sand around it away. The ants didn't stop their march towards me.

It became sharper and sharper, bigger and bigger, until I started to hit my limits for control. It was around 4 meters tall now. I couldn't launch this one. Instead I let them run into it.

I waited all the way until they were close enough to me to hit, and they ran to their dooms as they tried to ensnare me in their beaks, straight into the spell.

They were utterly eviscerated, each of them not able to get away from the almost gravitational pull of my spell. I caught at least fifteen of them before the backline wisened up and approached me from the sides.

I released the spell, and the resulting blast of wind knocked all of us away. Including me.

I got up as fast as I could and drew my sword, stowing my wand not before I put up a Fire Wall to the left side. They would have to turn around that before getting to me.

I deflected a lunge from the first that came at me and ducked under the attack of another, slicing its belly open. My left leg almost cleaved in two, but the thirds jaws only got my sword in between them, cutting through its mouth into its eyes and brain. The horde that dodged the fire wall came at me, along with the rest of the ants. I launched an Icicle Spear into their path, killing two. The other just jumped over their corpses, but I dissected them with a Wind Cutter.

There were only three left. Without relenting, they came at me with the intent to end this fight.

I got into a Sword God stance, and flashed over to the first one, beheading it before leaping off of it and landing upside down into my next target, using North God Style to ram my way into their body. It wasn't dead yet, but the last Ant jumped onto the one I was on and tried to bite me. I jumped away, launching another Wind Cutter once I landed.

This one was noticeably lower power, and it didn't cut all the way into its neck.

It was still writhing its death throes.

"That.. was the last one I think." My breath was ragged, and I could feel the signature lethargy of mana exhaustion creeping in. I had used a lot of mana in that fight. But I got them all.

Somehow, I got them all.

Once I got some of my breath back I ran to the direction the other two ran. Once they came in proper sight what I saw…

Aisha was face down on the sand. Zenith stood protectively over her, launching an Ice Dagger at the face of one of three ants that were assaulting her.

I sprinted over, hacked off one head, before I adjusted and jumped at another, dissecting it vertically in a spinning arc. The one Zenith hit was still alive, having missed the head and hit one of the legs instead. I made short work of it.

"Aisha!" I ran over to them, Zenith already starting to chant healing magic on my downed sister. "What happened?"

"I don't know. They just.. jumped out at us all of a sudden. I didn't see them coming, I'm so sorry Alti I-"

I sat Aisha up out of the sand. Zenith had closed the wound on her side, but there was still blood all over her clothes. I wouldn't be surprised if she had bruises on her either. She was unconscious, but her breathing was stable, luckily.

"Don't worry about it. She's alive. You're alive. That's all that ma—what happened to your arm?!"

I just noticed her left arm was twisted the wrong way, clearly broken. I summoned healing magic as a matter of course to her injury, setting it back correctly and mending the breaks.

"There! That's.." Black spots started appearing across my vision. "That's.. oh that's.." I lost feeling in my legs. Am I falling?

"Alti!" Her voice was far, faint. My vision was waning.

Thats…not good.

I lost consciousness.