Chapter 685: The inhabited settlement

The woodland gradually thinned as they continued north. Fallen leaves gave way to longer stretches of coarse grass, and the trees became scattered clusters occupying the shallow folds of the land.

The ground began rising and falling beneath their feet, drawing them across low ridges from which they could see increasingly far ahead.

Behind them, the leaning spire slowly disappeared among the distant treetops.

Farther still, the enormous mountain where they had first arrived remained visible against the horizon, its lofty outline softened by a pale veil of haze. Elion glanced back at it once, finding it rather strange that the caldera had already become such a distant landmark.

They crossed a narrow watercourse shortly before midday. Its clear current slipped between rounded stones, shallow enough that most of them stepped across without much difficulty.

Eva lingered at the bank for a moment, studying the gaps between the stones, before Nora offered her a hand.

She accepted it without speaking.

The girl’s silence had persisted throughout the journey. Occasionally, she looked around with the bright curiosity Elion had come to associate with her, watching a bird settle upon a branch or following the movement of something rustling through the grass.

Yet whenever Kali came too close, she immediately drew nearer to someone else.

By then, even Kali seemed to have noticed, though she showed little interest in addressing it.

They stopped briefly beyond the stream to drink and eat from their own dried rations. Elion was rather pleased to see everyone taking their time over the food, and even more pleased that there were no strangers offering them suspicious tea.

Once they resumed walking, the terrain became rougher. Dark outcroppings rose through the grass, forcing Kali to guide them around broad shelves of exposed rock, while shallow gullies cut across their route in several places.

The trees grew thicker within those depressions, their roots trailing down the banks toward small pools left by recent rain.

Eva began falling behind.

At first, she simply took shorter steps, occasionally hurrying to catch up with Nora. Before long, however, the effort had become obvious. Her shoulders drooped, and each climb out of a gully seemed to take a little more out of her.

Cole eventually stopped and crouched in front of her.

"Come on. You’re going to wear yourself out."

Eva hesitated, glancing past him toward Kali before quietly climbing onto his back. He hooked his arms beneath her knees and rose, adjusting her weight before returning to the others.

"Well," he muttered, "at least she’s light."

Yaana smiled faintly at that, though Eva merely rested her chin against his shoulder. Within a few minutes, her fingers had loosened around his coat, and Elion suspected that she was drifting toward sleep.

The sun had moved well beyond its highest point by the time they climbed the next broad ridge. They had been travelling for roughly half a day, and the land ahead was finally beginning.

The scattered stones beside their route became a low, weathered wall.

Beyond it lay an overgrown stretch of level ground, with faint parallel lines running through the grass. Elion slowed, recognising the remnants of cultivated land, then looked farther ahead as they reached the crest.

The settlement came into view.

It occupied a broad rise between two wooded hills, its buildings gathered behind a substantial wall of timber and stone.

Rooftops overlapped in uneven rows, and thin columns of smoke ascended from several chimneys, drifting sideways beneath the afternoon breeze.

Watchtowers stood at intervals along the perimeter, while cultivated plots spread across the gentler slopes outside it.

Elion could even make out figures moving among the fields.

"There," Kali said, pointing with one pale finger. "That’s the place."

Elion followed the line of her hand toward the distant gates, then glanced at the woman beside him. Her expression had become noticeably less pleasant now that the settlement was before her.

He sincerely hoped the person waiting inside would be considerably more welcoming than she had been.

Humans were always more reasonable to speak to than humanoid monsters, though they liked to waste a lot of time on pleasantries... or, better yet, scheming to sate their greed.

In a way, that was sometimes even more troublesome to deal with than Kali, who, in retrospect, was very brash and clear about what she wanted, even if she had also spent quite some time playing games with him.

In all honesty, he wondered what she would have done to him if she hadn’t found him interesting.

’I would have been eaten, no doubt,’ he thought.

He couldn’t be sure, but perhaps the reason she found his flesh so delectable had something to do with his physique and bloodlines.

’On that note, I have enough points for at least one good bloodline now. I wonder what it would be like to have four bloodlines in one body. Hopefully, I can hide any new features that appear, as I did with the dragon bloodline.’

He hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but walking around with cat ears or wolf ears would certainly be quite a sight.

’Actually, it wouldn’t be so bad...’

Then again, he hadn’t exactly been walking around with his draconic wings, scales, or reptilian tail on display either. He liked his appearance as it was.

Thinking of this, he probed for Mira’s and Tessa’s coordinates, as he had done many times since they entered this world.

They were far to the north, and it was unfortunate that they had ended up so far apart. Still, since he had an appointment with a certain someone, they would eventually cross paths.

’I’m going to have to convince Maya that we need to keep heading north...’

Elion let the thought linger for a moment before turning toward Maya, who was still studying the settlement below.

She had taken out one of their maps, though judging by the expression on her face, it wasn’t doing much to help.

"Anything useful?" he asked.

"Not particularly." She folded the sheet again, taking care along its worn creases. "There are a few markings that might correspond to those hills, but nothing about a settlement."

Elion glanced toward the rooftops gathered behind the walls. "Well, hopefully the people living there can help us with that. Speaking of which, once we’re done here, I’d like us to keep heading north."

Maya looked up at him.

"Any particular reason?"

"Mira and Tessa are somewhere in that direction," he replied. "They’re still quite far away, but I should be able to find them if we get closer."

"You know where they are?"

"More or less."

He could have lied to her, but she was going to find out when they did reunite anyway. It was better to be honest with her from the start if that was going to be the case.

Maya regarded him for a moment, clearly considering whether to ask how, before deciding that there were more pressing matters to worry about.

"We haven’t settled on our next destination anyway, so I don’t see why not. We’ll discuss it properly once we know where we are."

Elion nodded, rather pleased that she hadn’t required much convincing. Just as that thought crossed his mind, however, Kali suddenly rose into the sky and glanced down at them.

"I suppose I should announce our presence," she said, looking far too pleased with herself.

Elion could only sigh, ’Of course, she wants to make an entrance!’