Chapter 272: Something Fowl

Diane logged out after our discussion to message Marron. Although she had technically registered as a citizen of Fallcry, there was no telling where she actually was at any given moment. After acquiring the map from the historical dungeon, I wasn’t even sure if she had spent more than a single night in Fallcry.

While we waited, I took Bella and Diane’s Chosen out to get in the car. We had mostly decided that we wanted to investigate Khestra, but I had never been there before, and could thus not teleport there. In fact, as far as I was aware, the rift near Fallcry didn’t connect to Khestra at all, so we would need to go through a roundabout method to get there.

In total, we waited for about an hour before Diane returned. “Sorry it took so long,” she muttered with a long sigh after her brand lit up again. “Marron was in the middle of a dungeon, so she only just logged out to check the message.”

“That’s fine,” I shrugged my shoulders. “Were you able to get any information from her?”

At that, Diane’s expression grew more confident. “I did. According to her, there were references to a few different dungeons in what should now be Khestra. However, she hasn’t visited any of them yet, mostly because Khestra is a rather unwelcoming environment for her.”

That made sense. Although Marron could largely ignore the threat of monsters, environmental damage was still a problem. “Did she give you a way to find the dungeons?” Bella asked in concern. “If she’s never been there, it doesn’t sound like she would have any solid information.”

“She drew me a map,” Diane smiled brightly. “She warned me that some landmarks might be different now, given that the whole place is covered with several meters of sand, but the Cromorans accounted for that. There are a few landmarks that the sand wouldn’t get rid of so easily.”

“Of the three dungeons that she mapped out for me, there were two that are accessible at all times, and one that can only be entered at night. Depending on when we actually get to Khestra, we’ll see what is available.”

“Do you have the flight plan to get us there?” Bella asked, and Diane chuckled.

“Sort of? Khestra’s a rather odd one. Of the various worlds that have been connected through the rift, it is one of the few that is not connected to any portals from the original realm. It’s also, sadly enough, not connected to Chimeris. The fastest route to get there would require us to traverse over half of Thalassia, which is certainly not ideal.”

“Aside from that, we’ll need to take a route through Aetheris, head to a different rift, pass into Corvessa, and wait an hour for a transfer window.”

Bella blinked at the unfamiliar name. “Corvessa? I don’t think you’ve mentioned that one before.”

“It’ss another one that we have no normal connection with at our rift. And we’ve never had any reason to go there. In truth, I’d like to avoid it if at all possible, but this time we just have to wait near the rift, so it’s not as bad.”

“Is it as bad as Thalassia and Feycross?” I asked, not recalling Corvessa among the ‘five forbidden zones’ that Diane had once told us about.

“Not really, at least not in the same way.” Diane hesitated, before ultimately explaining. Corvessa is a giant world where the continents are actually just the bodies of massive, flying birds. Each one has a wingspan of thousands of kilometers, and they nest at the peaks of giant mountains.”

“However, the rifts for this world aren’t in the nests, or even hovering in the air. Instead, they are anchored to the backs of these giant birds. This means that it is nearly impossible to schedule any kind of travel through this world, even if you possess the ability to fly. There’s simply no way to know where each rift is in relation to the others. So it’s not so much a forbidden zone for Players as it is a no man’s land for planning trips.”

“What happens if one of the mega pigeons gets killed?” Bella asked, eyes wide in surprise.

However, Diane simply shrugged her shoulders. “No idea. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to kill a creature that large. Even Drake’s biggest attacks might not register as more than a mosquito bite. We don’t even know if these birds are able to die. Some Players have followed their paths for days with various flying vehicles, and they’ve never seen them actually eating anything.”

That was mildly terrifying. If they were the size of continents, then even their smallest meal would register as the size of a city. “So, we just need to go to the rift of Corvessa and wait an hour for it to change to Khestra?”

Diane nodded her head. “That’s right. As long as we can get to that rift in time, it’s our best bet to make it to Khestra.”

Given the need for speed, I was half tempted to fly out on my own in dragon form, teleporting across the horizon to get there more quickly. Then, I could come back for the other two. However, I needed Diane for navigation, as Aetheris was a realm that I had absolutely no confidence exploring on my own.

Thus, I teleported us to Aetheris, and drove the car at high speeds in the direction that Diane pointed me. As we drove, Bella spoke up from the backseat. “By the way, why don’t we just use some sponsorship points to find clues to these dungeons? That would have made our job a lot easier, right?”

Diane gave a somewhat bitter smile at that question. “I thought of that last night. Marron’s findings with the Cromoran dungeon actually drew the attention of several sponsored Players. Some of them had wanted to get ahead of her and find exciting new story content. However, all that they reported on the forums is that the price for any hints related to Cromora cost an obscene amount of points.”

“That certainly lends some credence to the idea that Cromora is a pivotal aspect of this world’s story,” I muttered, driving through the air. As long as I avoided the floating rocks, Aetheris was one of the safest places for me to drive, so I could pay a lot more attention to their conversation than normal. “It wouldn’t be good if sponsored Players could skip through major parts of the story just by spending a few points.”

“Right,” Diane agreed, leaning over against the window. “Because of that, some of those sponsored Players have even been in contact with her to ask for any hints about dungeons that she can spare. One of them, the Wandering King, has even been escorting her around to various dungeons off and on.”

Bella’s brow twitched at that, realizing that someone else had already had the same idea as her to escort Marron around. “In that case, won’t there already be someone exploring the dungeons that she pointed us to?”

“I asked her that, too. She said that she’s mentioned the Khestra dungeons to a few people, but said that nobody showed any interest in them. Trying to find anything in Khestra is already hard enough, not to mention enduring the constant sandstorms, the heat, and everything else.”

Listening to Diane’s explanation, I simply chuckled. “Reminds me of when we went through Ilsan and got buried in the sandstorm. I don’t really blame people for not wanting to spend too much time there.”

Diane fell silent at the mention of Ilsan, her gaze focused out the window. We flew in silence like this for more than three hours before reaching the next gate. “Are we on schedule?” I asked once the gate was on the horizon. I didn’t want to fly into it before I knew whether it was connected to the right place.

Diane looked at the rift, and then checked the time on the dashboard. “We’re a little ahead, actually. The rift should connect to Corvessa in about twenty minutes.”

I parked us in the air above the rift, keeping my stealth field active while we waited. Eventually, the rift shifted to a cloudy white and blue with brown streaks flickering through. “That’s the one,” Diane said, and I drove the car through.

Almost immediately, I felt the wind buffeting the barriers I had set up around the car. Down below, the rift was moving away from us at a rapid pace, so I lowered our altitude. Once we were closer to the ground, the wind stopped pushing us along, and I was able to park next to the rift.

The ‘ground’ of Corvessa was covered with an uncountable number of brown and black feathers. When Diane first described these birds, I imagined that each feather would be as large as a skyscraper, blocking the wind for anyone on its back. Instead, the feathers appeared to be normal size, meaning that there was only about a ten meter space above the bird’s back before the wind became unbearable.

There wasn’t even a defensive base camp built around this portal, as if nobody bothered to build anything on the back of the world’s largest turkey dinner. Though, I wasn’t sure that flesh would make the best foundation for construction.

“Okay, now we just need to wait here for an hour, and we should be good to go for Khestra,” Diane said with a long sigh.

“Where do they even build cities here?” Bella asked in shock, looking around. “They can’t have built on the back of the birds, could they?”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous,” Diane smiled bitterly. “They build in the nests. Only one Player was ever brave enough to make a kingdom here, though. His taming skills gave him the confidence that he could tame these birds if he had enough time.”

“Unfortunately for him, his skills did absolutely nothing no matter how many times he tried. And due to the extreme size of the birds, anyone that wants to leave his kingdom without a plane only has a single day when they go to their nests to try and scale a mountain of feathers. If they don’t make it up to the back of the bird in time, they get thrown off as soon as it starts flying again, inevitably falling to their deaths.”

Bella winced at that comment. “I can’t imagine that his kingdom is very popular, given all of that.”

“And you would be correct,” Diane chuckled. “The only reason that he hasn’t abandoned the kingdom entirely is because he’s afraid of the penalty. Otherwise, he’d have already gone somewhere less… fowl.”

I couldn’t help but groan at that. “That was a horrible pun, and you should feel bad for making it!”

“Well, I don’t,” Diane smirked smugly. “I’ve been waiting since we left Fallcry to make a joke like that.”