The next morning, I got out of bed a little early. I had a long journey ahead of me, one that was bound to take nearly a week on foot. Reito was in the Eastern part of Roa, while the between lands were located in the southeastern part of the country, which meant that I was headed due south.
After leaving the guild hall, I passed through the normally busy commercial district. Most shops remained closed for a few more hours, at least, but one that had already opened its doors caught my eye. It was a map shop, which were a reasonably valuable commodity. There were classes for everything, including mapmakers, but they were in short supply nonetheless.
Thankfully, the mapmaker at the counter had a map of Roa and its surrounding countries, which would allow me to find the between lands more easily. From what I could tell, the between lands seemed rather small... compared to Roa, at least. The territory was about as large as Reito and its surrounding towns combined, it would take about a day to cross from one side to the other.
Getting there and finding this ‘artifact’ shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, getting there quietly was another matter. [Aura step]’s explosions were as noisy and eye-catching as ever, and going there on foot seemed tedious. Thankfully, the solution to this problem came to me when I called for an old friend.
After arriving at a small clearing a few kilometers from the city, I grabbed hold of the talisman around my neck.
The evolved tier 3 [Undead Pseudo-drake talisman]. After more than a year, the talisman had finally grown to match its ancestor, the undead pseudo-drake I had encountered in my first dungeon. Revan had been a loyal companion since then, though he had been too weak to aid me in the latter half of tier 2. Now that he had advanced under my influence, I hoped he would be a little stronger and tougher, so that he could do more than act as a shield if it came down to it.
I braced myself as I summoned Revan, ready for any outbursts. The mana gathered around me concentrated on the talisman in my hand, quickly enveloping the obsidian crystal within which the evolved Revan resided.
Then, surprisingly, my overloaded mana followed suit. Even though this occurrence caught me off guard, I quickly gathered myself and generated more overloaded mana, in hopes of it strengthening Revan.
Sure enough, when the talisman was finally done sucking up mana, it started forming black threads, which reached beyond the confines of the crystal and started to outline a wingless bone dragon. With sharp claws and sword-like teeth, the monster’s size alone was astonishing.
The dark mana quickly solidified into thick black bones, which were almost as thick as my armored thighs, without counting the second bone that each limb had. Revan’s skull came next. This time, sharp, twisting horns pointing backward appeared at the back of his reptilian skull. Finally, his tail formed. The bony protrusion ended into a pair of scythe-like blades pointing back at Revan’s front, creating what looked to be a battle ax at the end of Revan’s tail.
As the summoning finished, Revan tensed and dug his claws into the ground, before reeling back and letting loose a roar that made me cover my ears. Nearby animals end birds were scared away and made a racket as they fled from this apex predator. Revan was even larger than his ancestor at this point, and the way his beady red eyes settled on me convinced me he was smarter too.
Funnily, I was about to discover over the course of the next few minutes that his character had remained as docile as ever. Revan had bounded up to me like an excited dog asking to be petted. I indulged him and we sparred over for a few minutes after that, leveling much of the forest in the process. It was fun at first. Revan’s bones were too tough for me to penetrate, and he was fast enough to black my strikes time and again. It was a good fight, or, in other words, it was fun. That was, until Revan’s breath attack pushed back my sword laser and sent me right off of a cliff. It took more than five minutes for Dark form to patch me up enough to walk.
Needless to say, the spar ended in my loss. At least Revan had regained much of his broken pride. On second thought, I wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing.
Revan’s new size also came with its own downsides. His saddle, for one, had become completely unusable. Revan’s skull was almost as large as his entire body had been before, so I couldn’t even wrap my legs around his neck to mount him. Instead, I had to stand on top of him without a harness.
It took some practice, but eventually, I got the hang of it.
With that done, I jumped onto Revan’s back again, and told him to take me to the between lands. It wasn’t like he needed to sleep, anyway.
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-Scene transition-
Despite Revan’s undead stamina and sleepless nights, it still took nearly a week to get to the border with the between lands. Thankfully, the between lands were rather noticeable, even from a distance, since they were surrounded by a 100-meter tall wall on all sides. Was I supposed to climb this thing?! Andross hadn’t warned me about this! Was I about to enter hell itself or something?
It took another day to actually find a gate inside. When we finally found the place, I still had to explain to the guard captain at the gatehouse why I wanted him to let me inside. Thankfully, a helpful guard did me a favor and notified the captain upon my arrival.
While we walked, the guard struck up a conversation.
“Listen young fellow, I don’t know who you are, but let me warn you. The captain is strong, but he’s a little... strange. Just nod quietly while he talks and you’ll be fine, okay? Oh, and if he asks you to do something, just play along.” he warned.
“All right...” I answered tentatively.
I was led to a small office outside the stone barracks, where I found a mustache sipping tea from a delicately crafted cup. It had twirly ends and seemed impeccably well-groomed.
Surprisingly, a man was attached to the mustache. He was a man of small and... how do I put this... round stature, so much so that his armor was almost certainly custom-made. Beyond that, however, he seemed rather impressive. From what my [Weak mana sense] could tell, he had a lot of earth-element mana. If even my weak sense could pick up on it, then the man was almost certainly tier 5.
When the small round man finally finished sipping his tea, his small eyes focused on me.
“I know who you are.” He said, before falling silent.
I didn’t quite know what to reply, so I just stayed silent as he continued to sip his tea.
“I also know why you are here.” Again, he fell silent.
I, too, stayed silent.
“Listen, young man. I am not good at politics.”
Silence.
“But I have been told that you are part of the Royal faction.”
No reply.
“And I am part of the aristocracy.”
This time, I couldn’t help myself.
“Right...” I complained, sighing.
“That means I have to make things difficult for you.” The round fellow continued.
“Uhu...” I replied, with a hand on my head, already exhausted by what I knew was about to ensue.
“But!” the elegant aristocrat shouted pompously, before promptly falling silent again. I leaned forward, intent on hearing what he had to say...
“...”
But he just continued to drink his tea.
“...”
And stayed silent.
“...”
“...”
“’ But’ what?” I asked, my curiosity finally getting the better of me.
“I don’t like difficult things... so I will let you inside as long as you tell others that I made things difficult for you at the gates...” he finished quietly, in an excited whisper.
I held back a snort and nodded in affirmation.
“You made things difficult for me at the gates, got it.”
“THAT IS THE CASE, YES! I AM MAKING THIGS VERY DIFFICULT FOR YOU!” he shouted all of a sudden, as if putting on a play for the guards out in the hallway.
My mouth fell open in shock at his terrible acting, but it seemed that wasn’t the end of it. The round ball of a man was shooing me with his little arms to play along! After being lost for words for a moment, I decided to just do as he asked.
After a long sigh, I began.
“OH NO, HOW COULD YOU MAKE THINGS SO DIFFICULT FOR ME? CAN’T YOU FORGET ABOUT POLITICAL AFFILIATION FOR ONCE?”
“NO, I CAN NOT! MUHAHAHA! All right, that’s enough They definitely fell for it! Now shoo, get out of here!” the captain finished in a loud whisper, pointing with his stubby little hand at the door.
-Scene transition-
A few minutes later, as I was heading through the large metal set of gates that led into the between lands, I still couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened. Did the aristocracy stuff that guy at a border post because they didn’t know how to deal with him? Almost certainly...
Revan seemed to agree with my line of thought, because he growled happily as we continued along the path.
The other side of the wall was vastly different from the average forest that I had passed through to get to the gatehouse, signifying that we had well-and-truly entered the between lands.
Thanks to the lack of fog, Revan and I had a clear picture of our new environment and I had to admit that the place looked like a dungeon at first glance. That was just how foreign the plant life seemed.
All of the trees around us looked dead. In fact, they looked like ashen statues created to look like trees. They lacked leaves and even the bushes remained barren. Yet, the forest was still so dense that you couldn’t see through it.
There weren’t any bushes or small plants, only dust and gravel. That meant no grass or moss, no clover or flowers.
Only an endless grey landscape, broken up by the white sky and dusty landscape.
“Wait a minute... white sky? The sky had been blue outside of the gatehouse, with no cloud in sight for miles! Was this the special weather effect that the church had mentioned?
I opened up the church’s letter to take another look. ‘Due to the between land’s unique weather phenomena our church’s attempts to retrieve the artifact have all failed.’ Was this what they had been referring to? For all I knew, this place was completely dark and I could only see because of [Dark flow sight].
Revan and I headed deeper into the forest, along a path that remained free of foliage. As we went in deeper and deeper, the concentration of dark mana started to rise explosively, so much so that Revan grunted in satisfaction. He felt at home here. In fact, I, too, was starting to relax in this environment. Strangely, I felt at home here. I had a goal to accomplish, however, so I just patted Revan’s horse-sized skull on the head and told him to find a secluded spot.
After we found a quiet cave that ended in a dead-end, I put up a small tent and put my sleeping bag inside while Revan stood guard at the mouth of the cave. Not long after, I fell into a dreamless sleep.