Chapter 18 (Patreon)

[Dimensional Rebound in 71 Hours]

I took one step and crossed the distance between worlds. The ground found me with a stumbling step. My hand was already on my sword as I glanced around. I was not buried within the ruins as I had been the first time; instead I stood atop the wall that surrounded Spearpoint. For a single moment I felt warmth that the city had survived.

There was a misplaced desire in me to protect a city full of strangers from a monster that could rival the Patriarch. But I had cities of my own, and risking myself for this one would have been a mistake.

To my chagrin, the monster hadn’t left the city undamaged.

The top of the wall had changed. Instead of the beautifully smooth, uniform stone that had made the wall of Spearpoint, I was standing on a rugged pile of boards that crossed above a gap in the wall. The stumble was because I had started to fall through the air before landing on the boards an inch below me.

The treeline around Spearpoint was gone. Broken and burnt trees marred the horizon as far as I could see. Saplings fought their way up out of the earth, renewed by the fire, but still so young in comparison to the ancient jungle that was once here.

The scar of a great furrow in the earth remained, damage from the monster’s approach to the city. The churned earth was already covered in new grass and moss.

I turned back and stared into the city. There were signs of devastation — but here, too, new growth covered the scars. There were missing buildings here and there, filled in with wooden houses stacked on top of one another.

The city wasn’t the same. Something healed never returned to what it was; it became something new. A new jungle, a new city, sprouting up out of the ashes of the old.

There was a problem, though: this much change couldn’t have occurred in three days.

But I had only been gone for three hours, not three days.

A terrible realization overcame me as I started to add the math together.

The city wasn’t the same. There was a tension in the air from the people walking in the street. The crowds were gone. The feeling of safety provided by the city’s walls was gone.

Twenty four hours in a day.

The air smelled like iron and earth. The qi in this world was rich — richer than on the Bloodstone continent.

Thirty days between activation.

The Trailblazer guild was still visible from atop the wall, one of the most prominent buildings in the center of the city.

I dismounted the wall, climbing down the stairs. There had been guards scattered atop the distances of the walls, but none had approached me; there were none on guard at the base of the stairs.

I didn’t bring Stef with me yet. I didn’t want him to get in the way of my leveling; or to go and report to the city guard that we had stepped between two worlds. I cemented that decision further after seeing that two entire years had progressed in the city. Unlike before, the people in the street seemed wary. A quiet tension hung over my shoulders.

The stares found me praying that I would not have to cut down a man in the streets who stole for money for food. When I was young, I prayed to the Feng Ancestors, until I came to hate the dynasty that raised me.

I didn’t know who I prayed to anymore.

Gazes and glares hovered on me from alleys as I stepped through the road, my boots stomping through mud accumulated in the streets. The cobblestone hadn’t been fully smoothed and repaired after whatever had damaged it.

Some parts of the city had been abandoned and gone to rot, ceilings broken and windows boarded.

I walked past it all, reaching the Trailblazers guild. The building was hauntingly empty. It smelled like cheap beer, spiced food, old wood, and boiled leather. 

Two Trailblazers haunted tables covered in cold food and warm beer tucked away from the windows in the back, while a third browsed the wall of tasks.

I paused as I took in the young man at the counter. I recognized his face; I had seen him only three days ago.

But today, he was two years older. The shadow of facial hair grew around his chin. His hair was a choppy mess, like he had cut it himself without a mirror. He was staring back at me.

“Greetings.” I said, approaching the counter. A dull worry that he recognized me rested at the back of my mind.

He was already leaning over the counter, squinting as if trying to make out my face better. I glanced at the Trailblazer assignments on the wall then back to him. On my first visit, the paper slips had been neatly organized and aligned in symmetrical patterns. Now, though, they were stacked on the wall, pinned up with whatever they could. An entire section of them had been stripped away to make room for new cartographic maps.

“Hey.” The young man said. “Copper assignments are over there. Or if you’re feeling suicidal, silver is just past them, mixed in with the gold. There’s no teams looking right now. Everyones already either heading for the Titanfall dungeon or to fight the Titan themselves.”

He pointed around the room as he spoke. My gaze followed, but ultimately landed back on the cartographic maps. The precursor ruin to the south of them was crossed out, labeled with the words ‘Iscassia - crater.’

I wasn’t sure what a Titanfall dungeon was — but I didn’t want to get involved with any teams right now. I wasn’t sure how people would react to my mixed, unusual class — one whose very nature seemed to imply it was illegal.

If insurgents were treated here like they were in the Feng Dynasty…

The memory of Governor Song’s screams came into my head unprompted.

“I would like to inquire as to the status of other trailblazers.” I asked. The question surprised even myself.

“Sure. Do you know their names and ranks?” He said, leaning down and pulling out a notebook before flipping through it. He spun back and looked at a wall behind him. The adventurer necklace he had given me was attached to a magical disc of copper; what must’ve been hundreds of similar ones filled slots in the shelf-wall behind him.

If it had been two years, Poppy was probably a higher rank… if she was still alive.

“Poppy?” I asked.

“Sorry, Poppy?” The man asked, setting the notebook down. “Poppy who? Vascara?”

I paused, taking a moment to reply. The man stared at me with a look of incredulity. I didn’t understand his reaction.

“Yes. Poppy Vascara.”

“The Black Fist of the Frontier. Poppy Vascara.” The man said.

“Yes?” I asked. “Did something happen to her?”

The system said her title had changed to Void Shattering Fist. That one sounded more intimidating than Black Fist. But she wasn’t called the Herald of the Dawn when I met her either; maybe she would have acquired that title later.

I had an ominous premonition about how much Poppy had changed in the last two years.

As for the man behind the counter, he rolled his eyes, setting down the box of papers.

“Look man, is this some kind of prank? Do not use Trailblazer resources to try to send unsolicited communication to people. She’s off to confront the Titan before it reaches our town.”

“Apologies… the Titan?” I asked.

“The level three hundred monster?” He said.

I stared at him in incomprehension. It had been two years since the earth qi monster had surely died — the signs of the battle ravaged the space outside the city and scarred the city itself.

The man sighed and started explaining.

Once a year since I had appeared here, a level three hundred monster had charged down from the north, directly into Spearpoint. Every year. There was some contention about what was drawing the monsters here — perhaps the human settlement had simply grown too large and was now attracting the natives.

Others suspected that Iscassia knew something, as she swept down from the west, obliterated a precursor ruin that every scout had somehow missed only a few hours south, and left again without a word.

Regardless of the cause, Spearpoint had rapidly lost populace, many returning by ship and sea back to the old country, while others founded new territories deeper into the frontier, chasing the trail of Iscassia, who left a path of shattered ruins and dead Titans.

Every Titan — any monster that reached the Sixth Tier at level three hundred — left behind a dungeon. The first Titan had led a swarm of Trailblazer’s to chase after Iscassia’s path through the jungle. She hadn’t been seen again in the last two years.

For her to kill so many monsters who matched the level of the Patriarch, she must have been stronger than him. 

“What about — ”

“Okay, if you’re going to ask about the rest of Poppy’s party I’m going to throw you out. Eros and Annabelle are still members.” The man said. “Please do not send any letters of admiration. We throw those all away. And their party isn't recruiting."

"So I can pull any task from the board?" I asked, scanning the pages on the wall once again.

“Yes, but if you die on one above your rank the Trailblazers don’t pay out insurance. Is that all?”

He didn’t wait for my reply. The man stepped away from the counter, putting the box of notes away in an annoyed huff.

Poppy had mentioned that goblin populations would explode out of control. When we first passed through the Trailblazers guild, I hadn’t seen a single task of them or image on the wall. But now, there were images of them pulled from bestiaries and scattered to the boards, describing hordes of hundreds of them in the wild.

I didn’t want to fight Goblins. They were easy to kill, sure, but they provided no challenge. I needed to test the limits of the Anti-Lightning sword art. I needed something that could truly test myself.

There wasn’t enough time for a spirit beast hunt back in Sandgrave. Even if there was, I wouldn’t want to reveal my advancement to the Patriarch.

Each of the task-notes estimated how much time they would take, as well as the direction they were in.

I plucked something that looked manageable from the wall. I recognized it from the bestiaries I had sorted.

It was a Wingblade Roc — a bird the size of a horse, with two legs and a wingspan bigger than a building. The note mentioned it was meant for a silver team — and was ten hours west. But it looked manageable.

Bird spirit beasts were a favorite of our many hunts, and the entire caravan of goblins hadn’t posted a threat to me. I returned to the copper board and picked up every monster killing task supposedly between the city and the bird. There were many, many goblin killing missions.

I prepared to depart for my hunt but stopped. I didn’t have a bag to carry all the ears home in. My hand flew to one of the pockets inside of my robe. None of the silver coins used as currency remained inside. I had given those to one of our mortal schools.

In exchange, they reproduced the coin by the dozens. I had no idea what they meant when they said it was a composite alloy of silver, but I trusted them to reproduce them. The bag in my robe jingled with dozens of remade coins.

After all, silver was practically valueless in the Feng dynasty.