The Systemic Lands

Chapter 557: Day 5,035 (4) – Running Away

Looking behind us once again, I didn’t spot any kind of blur or the monster following us. It was incredibly frustrating to have to run like this, but I couldn’t win. I had made several mistakes, but a big part of that were all the skills the monster used. Monsters had two to four unique skills on average. I was thinking of monsters level 4 and above.

Still, it was better than losing people, specifically Michelle. We reached the West gate to the city and there was a road. There were no turn offs on the road which was surprising. As time went one, roads were layered all over the Empire of Purgatory.

They were often used as camping points, and quick ways to get to dungeons without having to try and navigate across the zones. It also made basic travel very fast. Not everyone could have a super fancy airship, which cost billions of points, and was now wrecked.

This entire expedition was a disaster. Not a full-on disaster yet, but getting quite close there. Out of four key team members, I had already lost two, and a third was injured. The number of points lost was enough to make anyone cry in despair, both in people and in airships. That was why I counted the airship as a team member, due to how much it cost.

If that beam hadn’t knocked people unconscious, and blown out the back of the airship, then everyone would have survived a crash. The number of setbacks was not going to stop me. The beam was an insane coincidence. I doubted that it was an accident or a coincidence. Hitting a moving airship at a distance like that, beyond the range of the obfuscation effect? Not possible with any known skills. Perhaps Avatar 2.0? Then the monster taunted me, and had decent combat tactics. That was highly concerning as well.

I didn’t believe in coincidences. The first time they started piling up, the Avatar was at the heart of it. She was the only known person or monster with an ability to observe long range. Sure there were tricks to sense the changes in energy, but that was only useful if there was something massive and you wanted a direction.

The smaller movements were much harder to track. It was possible, when there weren’t people everywhere. Now there were too many grinders in my empire to use that technique, and I never really trained it up anyways.

I guess we had problems on our half, and this half clearly had problems as well. That tiny bit of news, was some grim irony. But I still appreciated the fact that our half of the Systemic Lands got its stuff under control first. Sure, there might have been a lot of deaths, and suffering, but we got there.

Now we just needed to find some actual people who weren’t new arrivals and question them. I was back to being a road peasant. There were still no branches either. That showed the road system was most likely underdeveloped. The city didn’t expand the road network to the dungeons.

It was hard to say where they had been in their developmental cycle, since we didn’t get to look at all the buildings. That was unfortunate, but I wasn’t staying that cursed city any longer than I had to. We traveled through the night, the road kept going straight West.

When we hit a second level 2 zone, that meant there was another a city somewhere ahead. Thinking about the map, it was like an inverse of minesweeper in a way. With the low level zones at the city, and increasing the further you went. Having a second level 2 zone meant another city was up ahead.

Unless it was something weird that messed up a zone, like those glowing white shards. The monster and the beam attack were enough weirdness for me at the moment. I wanted answers. There was a quick meal and bathroom break. No one was allowed to go off by themselves.

With how the monster went invisible, there was a risk it was somehow following us. One thing the airship did was get people used to living close togeather. There wasn’t much privacy on one. I did check that everyone did use the bathroom, specifically the soldier that was hit by that crystal spear from before.

I wasn’t about to let one of my people get replaced with a monster and get myself bamboozled. I bamboozled others with my infiltration skills, people weren’t allowed to bamboozle me. Once our break was over, we kept traveling. There was still no sign of the monster anywhere that I could tell.

The fact it attacked while we were all awake, was what suddenly struck me about how sub-optimal its tactics had been. If it was actually smart, it would have waited more me to go to sleep. Then attempt to take me out in a single attack, since I would be the biggest threat to it. Perhaps it viewed Michelle as a bigger threat with her summons?

“A ‘T,” I muttered as the road ended, with an option to go North or South. I considered our relative position. South would be more center of the Systemic Lands, based on the size of my Empire. But North would give us an edge to work from. There was less risk of a long road going North, if it did lead to a city, which one of these two roads should.

Based on the three level 2 zones West of the city we had arrived at, there could be a city to the North or the South. It really was a coin flip. “North,” I finally decided, calling out the direction so everyone would know which way to turn.

We kept traveling North, it was getting close to evening again when we came to a level 1 zone. There were people grinding in the distance. Several of them watched us as we crossed the border. I noted they were all staying away from the level 2 zone to the South.

Looking at the people, they appeared to be European. That was as good of a guess as I could make. I noted a couple of people with darker skin scatter about. They must have been sweeping out from the city and just finished. They certainly were slow, or were moving in a loop around the zone, or some other weird pattern to be finished this late.

“On me,” I said and changed directions to move in front of one middle aged man who appeared to be panicking slightly.

He pulled off his back with crystals inside of it and held it out. Other people were rushing off into the grasslands or watching from a distance. “Do you speak English?” I asked the man, and he shook his head. I gave a nod to Fiyaz who stepped up.

He tried Russian first, and that seemed to click with the man. “He says his name is Anthony,” Fiyaz translated. “The city of Meech, which means sword.” It wasn’t pronounced like a giant robot, the ‘e’ sound was much longer. I nodded along at this. I wanted to hurry up and get to the important stuff as quickly as possible, but rushing things wouldn’t help.

“They are controlled by the Indian Sultanate. Everything to the South and East is death. People take the road, but they never come back,” Fiyaz translated. The monster had a wide range and clearly enforced boarders. Or there was something else keeping it back.

“The city has a Council, that runs things. He doesn’t know anymore than that, or he isn’t saying more,” Fiyaz said and turned to look at me.

“How many other cities does this Indian Sultanate have?” The man shook his head and clearly didn’t know the answer. Well one thing didn’t add up. This man spoke Russian but was controlled by the Indian Sultanate.

There clearly was something happening here. Michelle kept her monsters out and I didn’t ask her to dismiss them, as we made our way to the city. It was both a statement and she was on edge. I wanted her to be comfortable, even with all the stress she was under. She could have easily died, but managed to avoid that fate, thankfully.

The city up ahead looked quite poor. There were only a few towers. But there were no soldiers patrolling the walls. I told Fiyaz to handle things while I focused on concealing my energy from anyone with a Sense stat and used it visually.

Coming up to the entrance, the grinders coming back to the city quickly cleared a path. They looked run down, and starving quite a bit. There were six soldiers at the gate, that appeared to be quite bored. “Excuse me,” Fiyaz asked in English. They had been chatting to themselves and suddenly looked up as he called them.

“Wait…” the soldier trailed off as he saw my entire group and the summoned monsters Michelle had brought.

“We are travelers. Hoping to spend the night and share information,” Fiyaz said again in English. The guards were noticeably Indian and began talking in Hindi. I didn’t know enough to understand any of what they were saying, but I could tell it was Hindi at the very least.

“You come from the South?” one of the guards nervously asked.

“We came here on this road. Will you let us pass, or deny us entry?” Fiyaz asked the soldier. Eventually one went running into the city after a bit more of a discussion between them.

“Follow me,” one of them said.

“Where are we going?” Fiyaz asked.

“To the Council,” the man said, and I mentally groaned. Whomever was strong in this city was hiding. I would have to find them and expose them in some way. “Um, could you remove your monsters?” he asked.

“That isn’t possible, it is for our safety,” Fiyaz instantly countered. The soldier winced but didn’t say anything anymore. We entered the city, and there were a lot of people on the side of the streets, half starving, and just sitting around half dead.

This city was in the grips of despair and a population crisis. I had no doubt that people were dying across the city in large numbers. There might even be cannibalism going on secretly as people starved to death. It felt like Truth, but with people being polite, and more mystery.

The path to the plaza wasn’t straight either. Another sign that this city was in dire financial woes. They couldn’t even do the things that improved livability. Instead they were bankrupt for some reason. It made absolutely no sense.

The grinders outside the city clearly could work. I get not wanting to risk a level 2 zone with that super monster out there. But even level 1 crystals should have been more than enough. Unless they were trapped? Was this city in a moat type situation, with the monster blocking off all escape?

That felt weird, since why would it go in one city and not another? Once the city could grind a level 2 zone, they would have more than enough points to do basic cost of living things. It made me wonder where all the points had gone and were going.

That was one way to find the strong people, just follow the points, and eventually I would find whomever was in charge. We eventually came to a wide gap and then a massive wall made of buildings around the plaza. We had to walk around to a single entrance. It was only 3 stories tall, not an obstacle for me, but I was curious what was behind that wall.

I was hoping it would be something incredibly interesting, while I suspected we would get something that wouldn’t be that much of a surprise.