The trip to Nailad was blood-stoppingly dull. The checkpoint sucked, but he knew how to manage those now. After his stint in the chamber with the Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, his ability to seal up his energy had massively improved. It did make him wonder how many divinations just slid right over him. Not finding anything to latch on to.

Merkovah’s plan for him since day one had been to make a spell resistant little monster. The Exorcist knew what he was talking about. Truth watched a flock of seven black birds wheel over the mouth of the River Fan, before scattering. Then another batch was summoned, and then scattered again. And again. Divination of a sort. Not finding anything, apparently.

Such a shame. What a terrible waste of money and magic, here at the end of days. Truth could feel it more clearly out on the water. The magic was noticeably thinning now. Things took that little bit more energy. Talismans, carefully calibrated to work in specific magic environments, became noticeably less reliable. Not all collapsing all at once, but Truth was seeing an awful lot of busted light talismans.

Five years my entire ass.

<>

Forever. Ten reincarnatons from now, I will flatten the first dumbfuck who starts yapping about a light’s operational lifespan and have no idea why. Or why it feels so right.

The freighter made its way steadily up towards Onis. Truth had a vague sort of fondness for the country. It was one of two countries other than Jeon he could name before joining the Army. He knew about it because you could buy a pretty decent dried noodle soup in the convenience store for not too much money that claimed on the package to have “Authentic Onis Flavor.”

He thought Onis was an ingredient, but eventually got set straight. Onis was the country to the north. It had a lot of similarities to Jeon, but the language was totally different, it was way bigger, and way less developed. And it was the source of tasty, affordable, dried noodle soups. This was the total information Truth had, then and now, about Onis.

The freighter docked at the cargo port in Nailad and cranes started lifting crates off the deck. Human operators in the cranes. Truth could see them moving with golem precision, lifting and shifting the enormous metal boxes. If it was any slower than the docks in Harban, it wasn’t by much. He jumped ashore and jogged down the road. Next stop- a convenience store.

He needed a new road atlas. And toilet paper. And snacks. And just maybe, some dried soup.

He stopped suddenly and smacked his head. They didn’t have the System here. He would need money for those times when he wanted to spend money. He would have to look into robbery as he went.

The buildings were annoyingly similar to the docks he had seen in Jeon. So were the apartment blocks. He even recognized some of the same chains. And, alright, he was just barely on the other side of the border from Jeon, but it was disappointing. Say what you like about Siphios or the Free State, they were different.

He sighed. At least the people were speaking a different language, and the food smelled different. Some similarities there, but different. System, the language?

<>

Valid.

Truth spotted a convenience store. He grabbed a road atlas, filled his backpack to bursting with snacks, water, and whatever supplies he thought he might need. There was a decent little hot food selection too. It was probably the worst possible example of that kind of food, but it had been a long time since he ate something hot.

Lots of braised dishes he noticed. Lots of sweet and sour smells. He grabbed something he could recognize- shrimp. They were startlingly nice. Large, plump, fried in oil then served coated in a salty, savory brown sauce and some kind of sweeter… something. He didn’t know what the sweet thing was, but it was good. He dove in on some chicken. This was both sweet and sour, with loads of savory flavors creeping up. Loads of ginger and scallion in everything.

Truth smiled. He would make a point of coming back. If convenience store food was this good, how good would food from a street stall be?

Back on the sidewalk, shoplifting done, Truth consulted his new road atlas. Great White Mountain really wasn’t all that far from here. Not close, but he reckoned that, road conditions permitting, you could drive there in six hours or less. Eight if you had to take a detour. Next thing to find- a carriage. He might be able to run as fast as a carriage, but he was damned if he wanted to.

Clothes! He would probably need new clothes. Yeah, he was going up, then into, a mountain. Might not need-need them, but comfort mattered in international espionage. He had to change his way of thinking. He was out of the terrorism game.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He rushed around the city, hunting for whatever seemed useful. He wound up changing his backpack to a larger camping backpack. He would stick to using a tarp instead of a tent, but Great White Mountain was a damn big volcano surrounded by a deep forest and rugged mountains. Body cultivation or not, some camping supplies sounded sensible.

He was unable to find any romance novels in a language he could read. He couldn’t even find a thriller in Jeongo. Disgraceful. He could only beseech the heavens with his eyes, and set off to find a stealable carriage.

After thinking about it for a bit, he went back towards the docks. If it was anything like Jeon, the difference between “criminal enterprise” and “legitimate business” would be the comparative poverty of the criminals. On the other hand, they would be much less inclined to call the cops. So that would be one less worry.

It took a while. The docks were depressingly orderly, and quite heavily policed. It wasn’t until he saw a shipping crate being loaded with people that he knew he found his targets. He waited until the crate was packed up, then followed the smugglers back to their carriage. A little disappointing to see a ten year old coupe fancied up with decals and undercarriage lights, but it would do.

It was the work of a moment to relieve the smuggler of both the activation talisman and his life. Truth took some small pleasure in tossing the body into a crate, and the crate into a shipping container. It took fractionally longer to rip off the under carriage lighting. The decals were really on there, but with some careful scraping and a complete disregard for the paint job, he got them off. The coupe now looked like absolute trash, but the kind of trash you would ignore every day on the road.

Perfect.

The interior was a bit messy, but not terrible. It smelled of artificial pine, covering up the smell of cigarettes and bleem or some other drug. Well. He could deal. The smell of his childhood, right there. As prepared as he could be, he set off.

An hour into the drive, Truth concluded that Onis was a highly overrated country. This was dull. Dull highway, with dull things just off the highway. The advertising provided an occasional flash of color. The sky was a beautiful warm blue. The early summer was at that sweet spot where it was warm, but not hot. And he was bored silly.

They were up in the mountains now, which was nice when there was a view. Mostly there wasn’t. Just kilometer after kilometer of cliff face and thin trees. He made it ninety minutes before he pulled over at a rest stop. There was a viewing platform, letting him look down a little valley. Apparently it was important.

There was an informational plaque by the guard rail, with pictures of mages warring on each other. Just grass, trees and rocks now. The heroes, their immortal names lost in the echoes of time, lay on the field where their imperishable legend was ignored by busloads of senior citizens queuing up for the toilets.

Truth looked out over the valley. He didn’t know what happened here. He probably wouldn’t know even if he could read the sign. He knew even less about history than geography. People died here. A lot of them, it looked like. And that was that. On to the next thing. Heaven, Hell, or your next life. And people just rolled on past, looking for the bathroom and a place to stretch.

Was that… a good thing? That people could forget? That people could live without being trapped in that memory of mass murder? It should be a good thing. Truth felt a little nauseous at the thought. He never fought in a battle that would be memorialized. He was glad of that.

The fights he did get into were memorable enough for him. Nobody else needed to carry that. But it would be nice if someone remembered something about him after he died. There should be some kind of immortal record of those who did amazing things, right?

A couple of old ladies complained. About what, he didn’t know, but he knew the sound of complaining. They walked straight past the little plaque, grabbing their hips and waving helplessly at the sky. Not even glancing down into the valley. Seen one mountain valley, seen them all, apparently.

The immortal heroes could rest without people gawping at them. Their bones strengthening the mountains, their souls carefully pruned of the sin and horror of their final moments before being returned to God. And that wasn’t so bad, was it? Truth poked at the idea. It should be alright. Your life might be a brutal series of nightmare moments, but eventually all that would be washed away.

You might never be clean in this life, but in the next, you would be pure. And hey, maybe they died doing something useful. Stopping an invasion, or defeating a murderous rebel army, or something. The glory of the nation.

“If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.” Truth murmured

<>

Truth just shook his head and joined the queue. He needed a pee too. The dead wouldn’t grudge the living that comfort.

Truth came out of the bathroom and took a final look at the plaque. There were pictures of the mages, and underneath were maps with little boxes and arrows. They made a little story, the boxes moving around the map in the direction of the arrows.

One group of boxes closed in around the other, smaller group of boxes. The small group fell back, trying to retreat up the mountain. The terrain was more defensible, but they were so badly outnumbered, it didn’t matter. Truth could see it. Some absolute lackwit decided to march them through the valley, then was shocked to learn that the enemy had pickets set, and plenty of troops nearby. It would have been an utter slaughter.

In a fit of desperation, someone led them up the mountains, using the narrow valleys and ridges to limit the effective number of enemies their outnumbered troops had to face. There was never any hope of victory. There was only the hope that the enemy could be stopped long enough to allow the main body of the troop to escape.

It seemed that, right here, off the most godforsaken dull highway in this stretch of mountains, a company stood- and held. They bought that time. The main body of the troop escaped. The forsaken company held the valley to this day.

He didn’t know why he was crying. The real world just hurt. Were there heroes buried here? Or villains? Was this the best humanity had to show, or the worst? He didn’t know. It just shouldn’t be like this. He knew that. It shouldn’t be like this.

He wiped away his tears and got back in the carriage. The world shouldn’t be like this. Time to change it.

He had barely gone another hour before it all went very wrong.