Chapter 61 - Arid

Laurence and the rest waved goodbye to Winoa as she walked through the gate back home before entering the eleventh floor themselves. What they saw when they exited the test floor was an arid wasteland. The sun was low in the sky, beating down on their heads as they appeared in the new world. As Laurence looked around he could see for miles without any interruption, the plain they were on was flat with only a single interruption, an outpost around a mile to the north.

Dust was kicked up by their footsteps as they walked towards the quickly looming buildings. It was hot. It was not the same kind of heat that Laurence remembered from the fourth floor of the tower. The fourth floor was a burning heat, a scalding heat that tore at the flesh of the person and burnt their very bones. This floor was a heat that wore you down, it ate at your soul and turned the sweat from your body to salt seconds after it formed on your skin. The dust caked to the skin of everyone in the group as they forged ahead. Occasionally a blissful wind would kick up and a cloud of dust would follow along with it, scouring the land of any footprints made by Laurence and his friends as they walked through the landscape.

They reached the outpost after about forty minutes of walking and were immediately met with silence. The place was ransacked, like it had been invaded by someone days or weeks earlier, the dust storms scouring the place clean of human interaction. Jim called out to see if there was anyone left inside but hearing no response he could only shrug his shoulders and begin searching through the rubble of the buildings one by one. The only option left was for the group to split up and search each building individually.

By the time they had reached the far side of the encampment they convened back together, all with sorry looks on their faces. Laurence sat down against the side of the well near the exit of the outpost and glanced around the area nervously.

“Did you find anything?” he said.

“I found nothing. It was disconcerting, there wasn’t even any blood for me,” said Cleo. “It made me think of Biqiril, honestly”.

“I saw blood,” Jim said, sitting down next to Laurence. “It wasn’t much, definitely not enough for someone to have died, but still. I don’t think that there’s man-absorbing golems here”.

“It’s not,” said Louisa. Her forehead creased in anger and worry. “Slavers came through here. Very little blood, they didn’t want to damage the merchandise. They obviously didn’t care about the buildings, but they wanted to keep the people undamaged, hence some of the doors being knocked down but most of the buildings still intact. It’s... It was a big group of slavers. There’s no way a small group could have taken out an outpost of this size, not to mention that there was obviously an overwhelming presence in the group, someone strong enough to take on all the Saints staying here. Believe me, there would have been Saints here”.

“Do you reckon it was the Lupe?” said Jim. Since hearing Louisa’s musings he had been ringing his hands nervously.

“We’re close to the Valley of Kings, so the chance is high. There must have been a reason why they were sending out so many hunting groups”.

“Well then,” said Laurence, “We should move. Let’s get to this valley and find out what the Lupe are actually doing there. Perhaps there is something we can do to convince the clans with what we find, because I fear that there will be more than what we can deal with there”.

“What, do you think there will be a lot of Lupe we can’t deal with there?”

“That is my fear. I really thing this was the Lupe”.

“Alright then,” said Louisa. “We should leave soon then. We don’t want to be trapped by the Lupe on this floor”.

They stood up and quickly exited the outpost, leaving the empty buildings behind them. The desolate plain that stretched before them was unsettling after finding the outpost so devoid of life. Everyone was far more on edge than they would have liked, but still they continued on. None of them wanted to end up like the people in the outpost, and even if they had Heaven rankers on their side the group was not confident in being able to survive something that could wipe out an entire town with very little damage left to the structures within. The only way forward from this point on was carefully.

They walked until the sun began to set, going off Jim’s directions. It was hard to tell if they were going in the right direction because of how few markers there actually were within the landscape, but soon they began to see a pair of mountain ranges pop up on the horizon. Finally they had a general idea of where to go. Those mountains were either the mountains near the valley or they were on the wrong side of the desert.

As the sun went down, the temperature of the plain sank to near freezing and the group retreated back into Yun’s world. They sat down in the main hall and began eating fresh food prepared by Louisa and a couple of members of the new Hephaistians. It was effectively a mystery meat from one of the creatures within Yun’s world, with a side portion of rice and mixed spices. Without a word said amongst them, the group dug into the piping hot food and began to relax.

“Why are you all travelling with me and Yun anyway?” said Jim, his mouth half full of dinner as he tried to talk around a piece of meat. “We’re the only ones who really have to travel outside, I mean Yun is this realm’s lodestone and I vaguely know the way. Why aren’t you all relaxing in here?”

“You think I would leave you guys to suffer on your own?” Laurence smirked, “I’m coming because I think it’s kinda unfair to let you guys do all the work. I assume Cleo is coming because I’m there, and Louisa is there because of Yun”.

“Right,” Cleo and Louisa said in unison.

“But that’s kinda dumb... Especially with how dangerous it is”.

“It’s fine. Yun can just bring us back into his realm when we need it, and as long as we set things up right when spying on the Lupe, there should be no issues with them finding out about us”. Laurence stopped, before standing up and smacking himself on the forehead. “I just realised I need to make some changes to my equipment before we arrive, some stuff will not be up to par. Call me when we arrive. I should be done by then”.

Following him, Cleo grabbed their plates of food and ran off, leaving the rest of the group to their idle discussions. Sitting down at his table, he looked back at the young woman who cleared out a place on his bed and lay down just to watch him work. He turned back to the table and cracked his fingers before pulling a cloak out of his bag. Affectionately stroking the bag he put it aside and began working on his first contingency.


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