They broke camp early in the morning taking time to cultivate for ten minutes each, refreshing themselves more than sleep had.

Rick had taken second watch, Len got the idea to lighten their load or atleast make it easier to manage. He’d taken two of the Hunter’s packs, filling them with food from the crate, reducing it down drastically, leaving just enough food for a few days in the crate which he’d added to the cache.

Used a mixture of heat and earth he’d created a hollow in the stone outcropping of their camp. It had taken several casts to create it, giving enough room for the crate and other valuables they’d be leaving behind.

“Need anything?” Len asked, waving at the crate and the hole in the rock, throwing a nut into his mouth.

“All good,” Rick bent down, the newly filled pack on his chest, the straps in the middle of his back as he wore his original pack normally.

Len closed up the crate and pushed it into the hollow with his foot, throwing the remaining nuts and dried fruits into his mouth. He dusted his hands clean and picked up a stone piece, fitting it over the hollow, he fused it in a couple of places and stepped back, you couldn’t tell it was hollow.

A flick of an earth spell grew the plants that had been flattened in the area by his work.

Pleased with his work he donned his new front pack, old backpack with additional gear and moved around, checking his movement and making sure he could draw his weapon easily.

Rick yawned before drinking from his canteen.

Len pulled out his canteen taking a gulp and washing down his remaining breakfast. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Rick said, slipping his canteen away.

Len did the same.

Rick took off at a ground-eating lope, moving through the forest towards the stained mountain range.

Len followed him, using his full strength as they picked up pace, settling into a sustainable rhythm.

The sun awoke the world to morning as they breezed forwards. As it dipped down the ground started to slope upwards.

The trees started to thin as Rick signalled for a pause. They slowed their pace Rick pulled out a map and compass.

Len took a knee infront of him, leaning forward as he dug into his front pack for food.

“Thanks,” Rick said, using his pack for his map.

Len took out jerky and honey dipping the jerky in before holding it back.

“Nice!” Rick took it and Len repeated the process eating his own piece of jerky before closing up the honey and putting it away safely.

“Need to move a bit more north, looks like there’s a pass there we can use.” Rick folded up his map, his weight moving off of Len’s back.

“Alright,” Len stood up.

Rick stored his map and they were off again.

They moved along the mountain range, Rick’s head on a swivel, checking land marks and drawing out his compass occasionally.

“There we are!” Rick pointed up the mountain range when they crossed into the mouth of a valley that reached about half the height of the mountains on either side.

“The javelins use air to move right?” Rick asked as he trekked higher up the rise they were on.

“Yeah,” Len said with some trepidation, they’d need to go lower in order to start up the valley.

“Perfect!”

Rick put his compass away, still moving higher, up the mountain they were on, but now angling into the valley. Ahead it cut off into scree and loose footing.

He drew his hammer and the javelin.

“Make sure to keep up old man!”

“Ah shit.” Len snatched out a Javelin and the sword he’d taken from Larry.

“Woooh hoooo!” Rick jumped using all of his strength, leaving two flattened footprints and sending rocks and dirt tumbling down the side of the rise.

He jabbed the javelin forward, its enchantment activating and pulling him forward. With a swing of his hammer, a small boom sounded out, sending him bounding into the air.

Len reached the edge of the rise, reinforcing his body with mana and activating the weight enchantment on the sword, and jumped, hurting upwards and forwards.

He stabbed out with the javelin, using its enchantment. It drew on the air and dragged him forward in the direction he was aiming.

He started to fall and slashed out, the sword dragged him forward.

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Rick cackled through the valley.

Len grinned working out a rhythm of javelin, javelin, slash, repeat. He focused on drawing in mana, his reserves dropping but not alarmingly slow.

“Hey! Get back here!” Rick complained as Len passed him. The two of them, stab, slashing and hammering their way through the valley’s air.

“Why are we doing this?” Len yelled over.

“I thought it would be fun! Also I didn’t want to waste the time going down into the valley to come back up!”

“So you’re lazy?” Len asked.

“No, I just find different solutions to problems! Plus it’s a test!”

“A test?”

“Yeah! Shit trees!”

Len glanced over, Rick didn’t have the weight altering enchantment. He stepped on a tree, shattering it and throwing himself back up into the air.

“I though masters were supposed to step on a feather to throw themselves through the air!” Len smirked.

“Mana wasting idiots maybe! I’m built for function, its just my luck I look fucking incredible doing it!” Rick shook his head back and forth. “I tell you its fucking great having hair again? Like sweaty, gotta wash it, in the eyes. Damn I think I look even better with it than I thought I did.”

“Cause you’re heads dented more than a steel bowl thrown off a mountain.”

“Its as smooth as polished marble and you know it!”

Len kept his grin to himself as Rick destroyed another tree by launching off of it.

They reached three quarters up the rise between the mountains, Len decreased the effect of the weightlessness enchantment, drifting lower, using the javelin to angle towards the rise, a rocky edifice between the peaks.

He ran forward before he hit the ground, stumbling, finding his feet and slowing down.

Rick cam in lower, swinging his hammer to decrease his inertia disappearing from Len’s sight.

“Mother fucker.” Rick’s hammer boomed, stone cracked and Len ran over to the ledge to see Rick picking himself up, coughing from the stone dust all around him.

He waved his hammer, the wind picking up and clearing the dust.

“Rough landing?” Len asked.

“Rock in my way.” Rick craned his neck upwards, he moved back, stored his javelin, eyeing the rocks and sparse dirt.

“What are you thinking?”

“Taking the express route!” Rick squatted and threw himself forward, he hit out with his hammer, pushing himself forward, he stepped on a rock and leapt upwards again.

Len put his javelin away and looked up at the rocks angling away. “Great.”

Rick passed him, running up the hill, using the hammer to press himself up against it aiming for his next step.

Len jumped, reducing his weight once more and launching himself up the side of the rise.

They reached the top by mid-afternoon. Rick at the top eating and drinking when Len landed.

“See, much faster,” Rick grinned.

“Novel way of doing it,” Len agreed.

“Go faster on the other side when we launch ourselves off, move even faster than when we’re on the ground. Though, could you make me one of those reduced weight enchantments?” Rick turned and kept walking, moving across the snowy ground rapidly.

“Yeah I can do it when we make camp. What are you thinking?” Len sheathed his sword, to pull out food.

“Think that we can get to the other side of the mountain range today, find a place to launch ourselves from for tomorrow and settle in for the night. Train up a bit.”

“Sure.” Len said. He glanced back, they were above the forest, in the distance he could see Plynthia laid out in a mass of colored stone, organized and broken by roads and rail.

Beyond it tamed patches of land.

He turned his head back to their goal, moving to catch up with Rick.

“How far to the other side?”

“Not long now, and its down hill so we can move faster.” Rick bounded forward, using his full strength again as if to put words to action.

"You are some mad bastard, you know that, right?" Len said.

"Keeps shit interesting, don't it?" Rick said, turning with a grin full of snacks. Len shook his head, unable to wipe the smile from his face.

They made quick time running over what remained of the rise, pausing as they reached the top.

"Well, there it is," Rick said in a subdued voice.

Len crouched down, pressing his hand to the ground. He surveyed the land ahead. Features were similar. Sections, dips and rises, where the river crossed a hill to the west. Or where a fort had been built upon a raised section of stone.

“Its weird without all the buildings. Though I can picture it with them,” Len said.

"Yeah, it feels strange," Rick said. "Right now, it must be unexplored. Maybe a few people have come through here, at least to make the maps. Not a single building or road.”

“They didn't build Harmonia small, that was for sure, it took over all of this. I think it spread out here to where the mountain range was.”

“There were those rocky broken hills where the range used to be,” Rick reminded him.

“Right, they looked so out of place compared to the rest of the city,” Len said.

“What remained of it got broken down into stone to build the city.” Rick shook his head. “Harmonia was a fortress. More of a fortress within fortresses.”

Len nodded. In his mind, he could see the city stretched out before them. The 15 outer forts, the five inner forts before the interior city. He played through what it must have taken to build up such a city.

“Crazy to think of how much they built.” The people of Harmonia and their ruler had brought ruin upon others, though some achievements he couldn’t help but admire. Maybe because it hasn’t happened yet and we can change it makes it easier to think of it without the stained reputation.

"Remember when we visited Harmonia? Back in the beginning,” Len asked.

"Before Dennis lost the freaking plot," Rick said. "We'd escaped Plynthia, headed west. Fought our way through everything possible. Then heard of Aurora making their foothold up here. We thought it would be a way to get back to Plynthia to see it again now we were stronger."

"We made it back," Len rebuffed.

"Yeah," Rick said, looking over. "But there wasn't anything left." His eyes grew distant, staring past Len. “The whole country had changed at that point. There were none of the people, none of the places. Cities were overrun. The only thing keeping them going were Dominion stones. Turned into great, massive power banks for defenses.”

Plynthia, like nearly other nation collapsed. Cities were the largest organized groups after the apocalypse.

"Harmonia was just a guild town at that point.” Rick picked up his chat again. “Barely a, what, fifth of what it became? The inner city at least.”

“They had plenty of dungeons, and after everything exploded here.” Len gestured at the stained mountain range. "It certainly gave the area abundant resources.”

“Do you remember how the stained mountain range got leveled?" Len asked, stepping forward, continuing their journey.

Rick screwed up his face, following Len. "I think, I don't know, something made it detonate. There were whole sections blown out, like something had come up inside of it and split it apart. That's why there's so much coal, stone, iron, and other mana materials everywhere.”

“And there was plenty of mana stone to be found as well," Len said.

“You ever think that it was a pretty shit place to build a city though?”

“What you mean?” Len jumped between boulders before finding a flat path to keep moving.

“The river didn’t have enough to supply everyone so they had to use enchanted means. They had iron, stone and coal, but the ground was pretty crap afterwards to grow food and they didn’t have a small population.”

“I’m guessing they built it right over the Obelisk. Most important thing for Dennis,” Len said. It was right in that divot there.” He pointed at the unassuming part of forest. They were so close now.

“Everything charging down towards them. Though I guess when it got big enough they made up for it.”