Another Stupid Isekai

The first few hours of my run were in complete darkness, and not because of the night. The reason was I used ‘Eyes of the Void’ to avoid slamming into a rock formation because of lack of light.

Illuminating my path was out of the question because I didn’t want to let guards find out about me out there, and also not alarm the monsters. Especially not the ghosts.

I was quite fast actually, but not at full sprint since I also wanted to avoid noise.

And then the night passed and the day started, showing me a terrible view of a catastrophe that devastated this land. Scarred earth with the bones protruding out in a form of jagged, sharp fangs of rock, reaching high. Sometimes a few meters, some times more. The worst were crevasses under my feet that I had to avoid.

Everything was gray and dark. Lifeless. With dust thrown into the air by occasional wind.

I kept running until around midday and then decided to climb up, on one of the formations, to look around. The view remained the same, just the scale got bigger. There was nothing around to help me chose a path, and there actually shouldn’t be. I realized this finally.

This was a territory of a flying city, Aaraam’soturi, a place with the device far more upgraded than ours. I didn’t have to run for a day or two to reach the edge. I had to run for weeks to do it.

It was one thing talking about it in our city, with Will, and completely something different to be here and realize what a task I took upon myself.

I climbed down and took a small break to eat some food. Then started running again.

It took several long hours before I stopped again. This time because of noise. I looked around for the biggest rock to climb and then did it.

The action was happening far away from me. At least a mile or two. There was a small creature running around the orcs, hiding as best as it could, and another one, trying to hunt it. It was the same stingray-looking thing that Ki’rai transformed into, just the size was different. This thing was as big as a freaking building.

She had to either be assuming a form of a baby, or this creature out there was the child of the forces acting on this land.

I climbed down and picked my path to avoid getting involved.

Somehow I didn’t, as hours passed and the night turned the light down. I had to use my skill again and kept going. It was annoying because I couldn’t hear anything around me, and the radius wasn’t as big as I would like it to be, but that was still my best choice if I wanted to move relatively fast. Not to mention I was still on the outskirts of that place, which had to be way safer than the center.

I stopped few times during the night to have some food but overall kept pushing, trying to keep my pace.

As morning came I turned the skill down, just to discover it was quiet around me. After so long in the darkness, it was quite nice to see the colors, even if it was only a few different types of gray, blue, and white over my head, and of course the sun.

I stopped almost unconsciously to have a moment to enjoy this view, which led me to a short break to eat after that I resumed running.

It took only another few hours before I heard some noise, but it was so distant, that I ignored it, and kept pressing on.

From that point time kinda blended with everything around me. Light and darkness came in cycles, but it’s hard to count how many since it was quite some time ago.

I’ve seen many things out there. Monsters hunting monsters, and then consuming their crystals. Even ghosts. Black dots flying through the sky at a speed of a fighter jet. Some even faster. Every time I noticed, I hid and waited, sometimes for hours, and only then restarted my run.

[0)ᴠʟ I’ve seen strange creatures roaming those lands. Beasts of different shapes and colors. Some small, some big. Some could fly, others couldn’t. They had one thing in common. Hunger. They remained me of the madness happening in the void with all those shadows out there, consumed by their hunger, scratching the border between absolute darkness and reality, waiting for an opportunity to get here and stop it even for a split of a second.

They would do anything for that. Just like those monsters would do anything for the crystals.

Talking about crystals. I’ve found some, just lying on the ground ready to be picked up. Small and bigger, but nothing extraordinary.

I got used to this kind of life, maybe because of all the hunting I have done, or maybe it was my personality, but it wasn’t bothering me that I was out there, alone. What was bothering me, was that there were no clues. I had no idea if I was close or far to the right place. I had no idea if I was close to anything.

But there was nothing I could do about that. I needed to suck it up and keep pressing forward. There were two cities out there to be discovered, maybe more, and one of them was flying above my head, so sooner or later I would for sure come across it. At least that was what it thought because I had no idea…

I was a mouse in the labyrinth, just there were no walls, but I was gonna realize that later in a somewhat annoying way. Yes. I discovered my own tracks on the ground.

And that’s not because I wasn’t using the compass given me by Jayadeva because I was. Just that place, it’s way stranger than you might think….