Chapter 437: Vance, The Idiot

He smiled. "In return for doing this today, you can keep ten kilograms of meat for yourself."

She immediately nodded happily but before she could even say anything, Percival chuckled.

"Why don’t I do this task for you? I will do it for completely free. Consider it a token of our new friendship."

Adrian grinned. "Well, sure then."

He turned to look back at Karina. "The Elder will take care of the inspection of the items, and you take care of the rest of the trades. You can still keep the ten kilograms."

He looked back at Percival. "How do I get to the other continent right now?"

"Well, this child will guide you to the pathway," Percival said. "And then she can come back here to finish the trading."

Karina nodded quickly. "Yes, it will be my pleasure to guide you."

She looked at Percival and bowed respectfully. "I will take my leave now, Grand Elder." ℴ

Percival nodded. He looked at Adrian with a serious expression.

"Even if you might not get the thing that we sent you there to find, make sure that you do not die. After all, what you can provide for us with this meat is of just as much importance as the information that we might get from that continent. Honestly speaking, we don’t even know much about the target information anyway. So we can’t really tell how important it might or might not be in the end."

Adrian nodded calmly. "I will take care of myself. You do not have to worry about me."

He turned towards Karina and followed behind her as she started to head back towards the hostel where Adrian’s team had slept.

Soon, the whole group was gathered outside the living quarters. Karina led them away from the hostels and took them to a large, massive church-like building.

Once inside, she guided them down a series of long hallways towards a particular, heavily guarded room with had four mages standing at the entrance right beside the door.

Once Adrian walked inside, he couldn’t help but ask one single question.

"Why did you bring us to a pool?"

He looked down at the massive body of water in the center of the room, and then looked at Karina.

She smiled. "This is not a pool. It actually is the pathway to that continent. The reason why we are using this specific method is because it only allows one-way travel. Unlike the portrait method that I used to bring you here yesterday, which could be used both ways."

She pointed at the water. "If I opened a pathway from here with the portrait, someone on the other side could easily use it to come into this area and we cannot risk that."

Adrian nodded. "Oh. That is interesting."

Aria looked at Karina, tilting her head slightly.

"But if this pool is strictly a one-way travel method," Aria started, "then the coordinates on the other side cannot be set in place to a particular, exact point. The targeted area on the other side should be massive. Which means that the teleportation might go completely awry. We might land anywhere on the continent, or anywhere within the broad area that has been selected for the teleportation."

Adrian just stared at her, unable to understand what she just said.

While he did vaguely understand what she was getting at, he didn’t really understand the mechanisms of how teleportation actually worked. Even though he had access to a lot of knowledge and spells from the royal library that he looted in the past, it didn’t have any information about teleportation. And even now, after so many trades with the people of this Magic Tower, he still had not received any books that had information on it.

But Aria somehow knew the exact mechanics of it. Adrian just stared at her, wondering where she got that from and at the same time, wondered how Crestwall managed to build teleportation gates without having any knowledge. But the answer was right in front of him.

Meanwhile, Karina looked at Aria and blinked.

"Well, I don’t really know how the it really works," Karina admitted. "But the Headmaster did tell me that if you do not go into the pool as a group, and if you jump in one by one separately, you will most certainly be separated on the other side. If you all wish to land in the exact same area together, you will need to jump into the pool at the exact same time, and you all need to maintain physical contact."

Adrian nodded slowly. "Okay, I understand."

He looked at Aria one more time with quite a few burning questions in his mind, but decided to save them for later.

Instead, he looked at the others. "Okay, everyone. Let’s hold each other’s hands and then jump in at the count of three."

Everyone nodded. One by one, they grabbed each other’s hands tightly and formed a long, sturdy chain.

Adrian looked at everyone and slowly walked over to the edge of the glowing pool.

"Okay, get ready to jump on the count of three," he said and began counting. "One. Two. And..."

Just as he was about to say three and right before the word even left his mouth, Vance inhaled sharply. It was almost like he was hesitating or desperately trying to control himself.

And right at the exact moment Adrian finally said "three," Vance violently sneezed.

The sneeze was so aggressive that Vance instinctively yanked his arms towards his mouth. Octavia, who was holding Vance’s hand, watched as he let go of his grip like an utter idiot.

The chain instantly broke into two.

One side which was the side on Vance’s left, stayed where they were because their reactions were a bit slower than the other group. And the side on the right had already committed to the jump.

Adrian watched in horror as he managed to stop himself from falling in, but the two S-rank knights, along with Draven and Sigrid, were already in the air.

All four of them disappeared beneath the surface of the pool in an instant and Adrian didn’t see them come back up again.