As the blinding light faded over a second or so, Gilliam could see Rhyan’s surprised face. And he liked it.

“I should perhaps have mentioned it, but she can teleport.” He pointed at the creature in the back of his hair as he mentioned ‘she’.

“Yeah, I got that as she shouted teleport, I just wasn’t prepared.” He looked a bit stressed but quickly recomposed himself. “I haven’t teleported that much before... not exactly... used to it..” He didn’t look like he was going to throw up but at the same time, he didn’t look entirely fine either.

Gilliam knew this feeling, it would pass so he ignored it for now, instead looking around to find out where they landed. And it didn’t take more than a single second before he saw a massive city to their left.

“Ah... I assume that is Poline?” He commented to the group, hoping that Rhyan could identify it as they were still some distance away.

Rhyan looked in the direction of the city and took a few seconds before he responded. “Yeah, it seems like it.” He looked around for a few seconds as the colour returned to his face and the apparent nausea faded. “I think we’re on the North of the city, so we’re kind of where we need to be.”

He proceeded to point out a road that came, from their perspective, from the road exiting the right side of the city and leading up into the forests in the defined North direction. “We can take that road North and we should be there in a few days.”

“Yeah, no. Not interested in using several days to get there.” Gilliam commented as he pondered their direction.

There were two ways of getting there fast, he could have Savia pulse-teleport them there. In that, she teleported them up, then forward as far as they could see, and then forward again as far as they could see from the new position... This would be at least several teleports right after one another and... Besides himself and Savia, it would most likely mess with the other two quite harshly. An alternative is that only Savia went like that and came back to get them, but she didn’t know what they were looking for.

Another option was just to fly there. He had vastly improved his flight spells since he used them in the counter-invasion those years ago. It was much faster and simply felt better using it. He didn’t know how good the others were at using flight, Rhyan might have used it before at some point but Cera most certainly had not.

Turning to the group he decided that flight was better. Putting a barrier around them should handle the air and let them fly faster without problems. And since roads were never a straight line, flying would ignore any twists and turns of the road.

“So, I have a few ways to get there, but I think the best is to just fly.” He smiled.

Rhyan looked at Gilliam with a raised eyebrow. He didn’t seem entirely surprised but at the same time, he didn’t -not- look surprised.

“Do you have enough mana to fly all of us there?” He gestured vaguely to himself. “I’m not exactly lightweight in this.”

Gilliam chuckled, he had a good point. Though he looked to be of decent weight without his armour, he wore a lot of metal. His shield alone could probably be used as a bunker door in the right circumstances.

“Yeah, I’m fine, shouldn’t be too taxing.”

Though this flight spell pulled a substantial amount of mana compared to the passive and slower one he used in the Fractured Lands before, it had a different use case. Another bonus was that his Boundary had improved quite a lot since then.

“Well, I’m not going to complain if we get there faster, but are you sure about this? A mage without mana isn’t really too useful.” Rhyan stated matter of factly. His voice hinted that he might have been in a situation like that before and wanted to avoid it again.

Gilliam turned to the last companion in the group. “So, Cera.” he started to get her attention, and she looked at him with slight worry. “Have you flown before?”

She shook her head. “I... I’m not... I don’t like heights...” Throughout the sentence, her voice lowered to a point where it was almost problematic to hear what she said through the half-mumble.

“Well... That’s a problem.” Gilliam sighed. One option was to fly there and then send Savia back to get her. Another was to just hold onto her and let her close her eyes...

He wanted to be supportive of her issues, but at the same time if he did it would cause other problems. Delays weren’t a huge problem but he was somewhat impatient. If Rhyan could explain what he was looking for, then he and Savia could go alone. The latter idea would also let him push the flight spell to its maximum to get there much, much faster.

“Rhyan-” Gilliam decided to take this up with him. “-I can go there with Savia and she can come back to get you two after, alone I can fly much faster as well, but I need to know what I’m looking for.”

Rhyan thought for a second and seemed to nod at what he concluded. “Yeah, that could work.”

He took out a map, not as detailed as the one Jial had, but still plenty for their use. “The road goes North here, there’s a few farms and road branches that go of it, but if you follow the main’er of the road you’ll come to a large forest. The forest will have the outskirts burned as well as being vaguely surrounded by camps with palisades, it should be relatively easy to see from above.”

Gilliam checked the map and followed the tiny line that Rhyan traced with his finger. If they were culling and maintaining the forest of these creatures, it made sense that there would be several camps around. It should be somewhat easy to find them, especially since the road went over to their areas.

“That works, in that case, we’ll be back suddenly. If it takes four days on foot...” Gilliam tried to calculate distance, something very hard with the lack of GPS or areal maps of the modern world.

Just based on roughly how far he walked from the academy to Yar’i, and how long that took, the distance between those on the map. At max flight speed, this should take less than an hour. At his max overland flight speed, he was racecar-fast, after all. Though turning and G-forces were a bit problematic. Some were alleviated by his improved flight spell but not all of them so sudden stops would be... not fun.

“If my guessing on distance is correct, I should be back in less than an hour.”

This caused Rhyan to react. “Less than an hour? To cover a four-day walk?” He sounded like he was blaming Gilliam for lying.

“Well... yes?” Gilliam commented. “Four days walking on winding and turning roads, compared to flying in a rough straight line with the boon of an aerial view of where I’m going. It can’t be compared, really.”

“But that speed...” Rhyan didn’t want to accept it.

“Yes? I can’t say that I have properly measured. But when testing earlier I covered a thousand paces in the desert... so... Much less than a thousand proper steps, but I covered that in less than 10 seconds.”

His math was off, as a step or pace wasn’t a proper measurement, and adding how sand shifted and dunes went up and down, it wasn’t the same as saying a thousand of anything, but it was fast enough at least.

Rhyan looked to be in disbelief.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter, Savia will be back for you in a bit.” He turned to Cera. “Are you fine waiting with Rhyan for a bit?”

She looked hesitant but silently nodded twice.

“Good, then I’m off.” Gilliam didn’t waste time and produced a spell circle, it was dominantly yellow-coloured but had traces of sky-blue. A single rune reading Flight in the centre before it collapsed into a field of energy that covered Gilliam and faded into him.

“We’ll be back soon.” He commented as he took to the sky, finding himself well thrice the height of the tallest trees in the area before he started heading north at full speed.

He kept roughly over the road, as that was the main landmark he had to follow at the moment. The barriers around him worked as protection from the incredible winds he would otherwise feel at these speeds, he had tried lower speeds without a barrier before and it almost tore his clothes off him and started hurting quite badly. So max speed like this was impossible without some form of protection.

Though any landmark he saw was short-lived, it was interesting seeing this much forest and landscape as he flew past. It felt almost like flying in a glass aeroplane, he could look anywhere and see everything, and this was ignoring the freedom to just go wherever with this. Having Teleportation through Savia, and flight like this, which he could improve if he used some time on it, was incredibly liberating. The sense of freedom was surprisingly comfortable once you got used to it.

The main problem at this speed was flying creatures... It had happened before that he didn’t see things in time and... He was extra glad for the barriers at that time.

He passed over several farms as Rhyan explained, and having flown at a slight upward angle he got a very good aerial view, not unlike the satellite map pictures from modern Earth, and being lucky enough for good and clear weather he saw what he was after faster than expected.

As his guide stated there was indeed a solid forest down there, a wide band around it looked to have been torched and logged down to make a wide band of good visibility, and in somewhat even distances there were large camps with simple wooden palisade walls around them, seeming to work as a simple wall.

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Using considerable distance to slow down, to negate the breaking G-forces so he didn’t pass out or just lose all his organs, he ended up floating in the air still at a considerable height from the camps.

“Savia-” Gilliam commented as he dug the creature from his hair. “Can you take us down to the road outside that camp?” He pointed at the first camp they would come to had they taken the road.

Savia didn’t comment but focused on where they were going, and expertly pulsed her magical gift and had Gilliam stand on solid ground yet again.

Dismissing his flight spell he took a glance around before he felt good about where they were, it would only take a minute or so before reaching the first camp but due to the forests and uneven roads, they weren’t in direct view of them.

“That’s great!” he complimented his familiar, who returned a wide and proud smile.

“Now, let’s go get the others.”

The energy she built up was a bit more than when they landed, though going somewhere you couldn’t see always took more energy and time, but a few seconds later he found himself again blinded and standing on grass. He knew he was in the correct spot as Rhyan let out a half-swear in surprise.

The white faded and Gilliam could see that Cera was still here with him, though seemingly keeping her distance.

“Gods... I don’t think that was more than half an hour... Did you get there?” After recomposing himself from being startled, Rhyan asked to confirm if they covered the distance during this time.

“Yes, we landed a minute or so from one of the palisade camps, going up there shouldn't be an issue once we pop up there.”

Still holding Savia in his hands he put her on his head before he reached out his hands for Cera and Rhyan.

They took his hand as Savia built up energy, and a moment later they found themselves within earshot of the camp. Rhyan was still a bit surprised but seemed to get over his nausea rather fast. Gilliam was kind of surprised that Cera didn’t show any signs of being nauseous, which was a good thing but he didn’t think she had gotten used to it that fast.

“Well, I suppose we’ll move on, then.” Gilliam commented as he started moving towards the closest camp, Cera followed in tow immediately and after doing an inventory check, Rhyan caught up and followed the group as well.

It didn’t take more than a minute or two to stroll over there, the landscape here was a bit different from only a few days of walking south. The grass was green and nice but the trees were hardly logged, especially between the camps and the forest. After logging it seemed that the area between was also scorched, seemingly to keep things from growing there, though this didn’t seem to stop nature from doing its best to retake the area, a few sprouts and bushes had done their best to grow.

The roads were hard-packed dirt that had become rock-hard over years of rolling and stepping, the palisades themselves looked maintained, in the form where certain logs had been swapped and looked considerably newer than the rest, so patchwork maintenance. Being closer now it was easier to see that there was a walkway on the inside at the top of the palisade, letting people walk around in the height, as well as a guard-tower on one side facing the forest.

It was afternoon, the sun was on its way down though there were still several hours of daylight left, Gilliam wanted to use this to find the Alpha and get this done.

Walking towards the gate connected to the road the group was stopped by two guards, they both had the same kind of armour; mainly leather but with some metal pieces here and there, especially around the arms and chest.

“What do you want?” One of them asked unceremoniously.

“Oh, we’re here for the job posted with the Guild, something about an Alpha Dreadfang?” Gilliam responded simply, not having expected to be stopped like this.

They looked at him, then the badge around his neck before the man responded.

“Then you want Thregar, he’s in the larger building in the centre.” Stepping aside they let the group enter.

Gilliam entered, eager to get it started, and headed for the mentioned building.

Being on the inside of the wall he got a better look at things, it didn’t give him some more insight than he saw from the outside, just a better look at things. Everything was either nailed or roped together and looked surprisingly sturdy. It wasn’t just a quickly thrown-together thing but seemed focused on practicality rather than looks. Except for a few tents here and there, everything was made of wood.

Gilliam knocked on the door as he got to the building before entering. As he stepped inside he saw that he directly entered an office of sorts, two doors were heading further into the building. In this office, behind a simple desk sat a man who lifted his eyes as the door opened.

The man looked like he was in his forties, a rugged face from being in the sun and fighting a lot, and a few scars across his face but the most dramatic ones were along his arms, showing signs of fighting something with claws and being healed. He had short brown hair that looked like it was just randomly cut to keep it short and out of the way, his brown eyes stared into Gilliam’s soul as his expression looked like he might jump on them at any second. He wore the same metal-upgraded leather armour as the men outside.

He looked over Gilliam for a solid second. “The fuck you want?” He sounded like he wanted anything but this to happen.

“We’re from the Guild, we’re here for the Alpha?” Gilliam didn’t know how to respond to this, he wanted them there to help out with this... right?

His expression mellowed out considerably, a large almost goofy smile grew on his face and his entire aura changed. “Oh, that’s great! Come in, let’s get this started.”

This caught Gilliam completely off guard, he didn’t mind; this was better, but the massive change was just weird.

However, he did enter and walked up to the desk and saw a lot of paperwork and maps with various things marked.

Rhyan came in after Cera, who was sticking very close to Gilliam.

“Well, let’s start then. I see you are two Iron-rank and... one companion. That’s fine, as long as the guild OK’d you there shouldn’t be an issue. First of all, I’m Thregar, sort of a commander in this area.” He gestured to them as he mentioned them and to himself as he introduced him.

Gilliam took a glance and he seemed to be the same Iron rank as they were.

“Let’s just get started. I would love to chat but don’t have the fucking time...” Thregar looked somewhat sad as he said that but bounced back fast.

“We have the outpost system here to keep the Dreadfangs under control, which works fine with the people we have here but... Over a while they came out less and less, which was unnatural and when we went in to inspect we... well... We lost three men and discovered the Alpha. First, we want it dead, as it seems to be smart enough to use tactics and somehow control the others. Second, if you can somehow damage it as little as possible we want to inspect it.”

“So... Find it, kill it... gently, and bring back what we can?” Gilliam summarised, perhaps a little too abstract.

“Well... kind of, yes. But I have to ask...” He looked over the group again. “The fellow over there looks ready for this, but the two of you look...” Thregar didn’t look entirely convinced, though he did like Rhyan’s getup.

“I’m a mage and she’s our scout, she won’t fight and I’m confident in my abilities.” Gilliam smiled honestly.

“Ah, I don't see your badge so I didn’t know, but that’s fine then.” Thregar smiled. “In that case, we don’t know where it is just that it’s somewhere in the forest. Kill any Dreadfangs you see and have fun, I guess.”

Gilliam couldn’t stop himself from letting out a few chuckles, the loose attitude of this man was strangely refreshing.

“Ok, I suppose we’ll just move out then, we have a few good hours of light left so might as well use it.”

Turning around he motioned for Rhyan to follow, he knew Cera would stick close to him and Savia was where she always was. If they ended up not finding anything until it got dark, Savia could just bring them out so there was no danger.

“So... we’re going right away, just like that?” Rhyan asked after they left the building Thregar sat in.

“Yeah, I mean, why not?” Gilliam didn’t see a reason to wait.

“I... I like to prepare, learn more about my enemies and get some good items going. I feel confident in my ability to take and deflect a hit, but my offensive is mostly items.” Rhyan sounded a bit stressed.

“I think it’s going to be fine this round, it’s just a simple kill quest.” Gilliam smiled at his companion who returned an uncertain and worried look as they headed towards the gate.