Chapter 264: Narrow Navigation

In the end, there were no assassination attempts made through the night. When the announcement came, Erani, who was the last one on watch, woke everyone up so we could read it.

CONQUEROR’S TOURNEY OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Thank you to all participants so far. As of the writing of this announcement, a total of ninety-one individuals have officially been entered into its running. With two more challenges to be offered, we predict a tourney with a first round conducted as a free-for-all to cull off the proper number of participants such that proper one-versus-one rounds can be conducted for the following days.

A large number of individuals have been disqualified due to turning in counterfeit crystals. As such, please see the bottom of this document to find a list of all officially entered names and check if you are there. Additionally, we wish to remind all participants that, while the combat rounds of the Conqueror’s Tourney do consist of fighting against your opponents, fighting other participants outside of officially sanctioned rounds is still a crime. Due to the competitive nature of the previous challenge, we understand that there may occur heated disagreements, but theft, assault, and murder are still crimes that will be punished as such. A large number of individuals have been disqualified due to crime, and will be notified of such by the town guard.

All individuals who have completed a challenge will be entered into the tourney, and are not required to participate in further challenges. However, if you complete two or more challenges regardless, you will be given benefits to assist you in rounds of the tourney. For this challenge, if you are able to complete it in addition to the first, you will be given the ability to skip the first round of the tourney, automatically passing to the second (reminder that, if there are greater than one hundred and twenty-eight entrants in the Conqueror’s Tourney, the first round will be conducted as multi-person free-for-all, rather than one-versus-one.)

Challenge two of the Conqueror’s Tourney will be announced below, with both challenges three and four being announced at the same time tomorrow.

CHALLENGE 2: Turn in a full, undamaged coat of feathers taken from a Thunderbird. Find them in the Lightning Fields east of Precipice.

I read through the announcement and its challenge alongside Erani and Sylvie, while Ainash sat on our room’s bed, idly kicking her legs as she looked around.

Sylvie scoffed. “That’s a difficulty spike.”

“Oh, are those things super strong, or something?” I asked.

“You don’t have them in Koinkar? Well, anyway, yeah, they’re pretty tough. But that’s not even the main problem. This thing doesn’t tell you, but when it says ‘east of Precipice,’ it doesn’t mean just a couple hours away. It means at least two or three full days of travel for a normal person. And that’s just to get there—double that time to go there and back.”

“Ah,” Erani said, nodding. “So if the first challenge was supposed to measure our ability to travel a short distance quickly, this second one is supposed to measure our ability to travel long distances in a short time.”

“Well, that, and our ability to kill and skin a flamin’ Thunderbird.”

“Yeah, so what’s the problem with that?” I asked.

“They’re about twenty feet in length, to start with,” she said. “A full coat of feathers has got to weigh about as much as all four of us combined. So hauling that back is going to be even worse than getting there. Plus, they are very strong. Fly high up in the air and spew off electricity constantly, so it’s basically impossible to get close to one. I’ve seen one or two, but never been to the Fields of Lightning. Judging by the name, it’s probably chock full of the damn things.”

“So supply won’t be a problem like it was with the crystals, then?” Erani asked. “If there are plenty of them, and it sounds like most people won’t even be able to get there in the first place.”

“Probably,” Sylvie said. “But, isn’t that kind of begging the question of whether we’ll actually be able to get there?”

“Oh. I…guess I forgot to ask myself how we’d do that,” Erani said, looking down in a sort of confusion. Then she looked at me. “Maybe I’ve spent too much time around you—I just kind of assumed we’d be able to.”

“And that was the correct assumption to have,” I said, patting her on the back. “We’ll be able to make it there and back easy. You said it was a two days’ walk for a normal person? We’re a bunch of very not-normal individuals, so it’ll be fine. And I think it’s worth doing, if it means being able to skip the entire first round of the tournament. I mean, in a free-for-all, even if you’re the strongest there, a few people could still easily team up to take you out. No reason to risk that if we don’t have to. Plus, fewer rounds fought means less information for our opponents.”

Sylvie rolled her eyes. “Okay then, little miss assumptions and mister confidence. What’s your grand plan?”

“Well,” Erani said, “beyond the fact that we all have boosted Stats, I assume my partner here is also talking about a Spell of his.”

I nodded. “Expedite. It’s perfect for this sort of thing. Increases the Dexterity of anyone I’m touching, plus restores a bit of Stamina over time. That means we move even faster than anyone else, and take fewer breaks.”

“So a buff Spell?” Sylvie asked. “How often can you keep it active on four separate people?”

“Probably wouldn’t be necessary for Ainash, since she already has higher Stats than the rest of us,” I said. “But for three people…”

Index chimed in. “If you wore Light Plate—which, Sylvie already knows your identity, so that wouldn’t be a problem as long as other people don’t see you—it’d be 42.7 Mana per person for a fifty-one point two-second duration, which is about 2.5 Mana per second in total cost for all three. You naturally regenerate 2.15 Mana per second, so—”

“Uh, Annor?” Sylvie asked as Index spoke. “You just stopped in the middle of your sentence. Are you okay? Did you randomly die and are now sitting perfectly straight because of post-death muscle rigidity or something?”

“—that’s a total cost of 0.35 Mana per second, accounting for Mana/Minute,” Index continued. “With a maximum Mana of 2.19k, you’d have close to two hours of full coverage on each person before your Mana bottomed out, and then afterward you’d be able to have it active on each person eighty-six percent of the time. And, of course, that’s really just three total casts of the Spell. You could stack two on one, one on another, and leave the third untouched if that’s what the Dexterity distribution favors.”

“I can keep it active on all three of us for the majority of the trip,” I said once Index was done.

“That was a long time to think up a sixteen-word sentence,” Sylvie replied.

“Well, excuse me for doing the math.”

“You didn’t do it; I did,” Index said.

We’re a team, aren’t we? I thought.

“So, anyway,” Erani cut in, “that’d be our plan on how to get there and back in a reasonable time. Sylvie, if you know the roads…”

“Well, I’ve never been here before, so I don’t know the roads, but I do know the lost, forbidden art of reading signs at crossroads. I’ve even learned the dark technique of asking people for directions. So I can help find the way there.”

She looked at her, deadpan. “What a great help you are.”

“It’s always a pleasure!”

I cleared my throat. “Well, we may as well get on our way now. I know we probably won’t be racing anyone there, but we will be generally racing against the clock to get back here within twenty-four hours for the next announcement. Let’s grab some food and supplies, then head out.”

In little time, we left, heading down the eastern road with backpacks on our shoulders, walking through the desert dunes.

Or, rather, we jogged. Even if it was a long-distance trip, the natural Stamina regeneration offered by our boosted Stats meant we could move at a quick pace almost indefinitely. And, when you added on Expedite’s Stamina regeneration features, normal concerns like getting tired suddenly become much easier to ignore. As long as we didn’t strain ourselves, we’d be capable of keeping a pace that would be impossible for any normal person. With that, we’d be able to turn what would normally be a several-day trip into one that would only take a few hours.

The roads in the desert were clearly low-quality, made of a sort of sandstone material that crumbled easily and left them narrow and bumpy. Presumably, this was so that normal travelers could move across them just fine, but any armies coming through the teleportation circles wouldn’t be able to use them, instead being forced to take their massive numbers through the dunes themselves, which were much more difficult to travel across and rife with the Sand Hive. A very interesting method of defense. And also pretty annoying for us.

At walking pace it wasn’t a problem, but jogging along these low-quality roads quickly became uncomfortable. For people with our Stats, a ‘jog’ was more the speed of an Unclassed person’s top-speed sprint, which meant I regularly felt little pieces of the road come undone underneath my foot from the force I exerted on it, or stumbled and had to catch myself from falling because I stepped in a hole someone that came before us made. 

“How have these roads not crumbled to dust already?” I asked as we moved, taking care to manage my breathing between words. Our Stamina might’ve been able to keep this pace indefinitely without bottoming out, but it still put a strain on the body.

“This whole city is basically redone on a monthly basis,” Sylvie responded, running alongside me. “At least, I know the roads are. The outer slums that we’ve been staying in probably are, too, considering how they’re more recent additions.”

“What? Why remake a whole city every month?”

“Like you said, it degrades. The wealthier areas are more traditional, but the idea is, high-Level magic can produce materials out of thin air, but they have shitty quality. So, if you’ve got a bunch of high-Level Classers living in the city anyway, why not use their services to just make a bunch of buildings for people who can’t afford good ones, and then when they inevitably collapse, just magic up some new ones. Only works if you have the high-Level manpower to spare, but when you do, it does just fine. Especially in a place with less easy access to stuff like wood.”

“Is that why the outer circle of the city is so nonsensical in its layout? They literally just conjure up a bunch of buildings wherever they want?”

“Dunno, I’ve just heard about this stuff in passing. But that makes sense.”

Ahead of us, I spotted a group of four people walking at a slower pace down the road. We moved to the side and ran right past them. I’d swapped to Light Plate once we were out of sight of Precipice, that way I could cast Expedite at its discounted price, but hopefully it wouldn’t be an issue to be seen by one or two groups of people along the road.

The chances of the few people we saw taking any note of the appearance of random people passing them—much less recognizing me in the few seconds we were next to them—was extremely low. And we were only next to them for just a second or two, quickly dashing straight by the people slowly meandering along the road.

“Guess they don’t plan on being here to see challenges three and four,” I muttered.

“Actually,” Index said, “one of them had a mid-range teleportation Spell that’ll let them get to the fields around the same time your group does. It just costs a lot of Mana, and the user was too low to activate it. So they were probably just walking while they waited for it to regenerate.”

I pursed my lips. Oh.

A noise sounded above us, and I glanced upward to see someone soar through the clouds at ridiculously quick speeds, like they’d been flung by a catapult.

“And that’s just the famous flight Spell Wizards get at Level 23,” Index said.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. We’re traveling like a bunch of losers while everyone else gets to use their awesome magic methods.

“If you want, I can also tell you about the methods non-Magic-Types are using. There’s a Martial Art that lets you leap a great distance in a single bound, and Cavalrymen obviously get the ability to—”

No, I’m sure I’ll be fine, I replied.

But then, as if on cue, I heard the sound of hooves on the sand behind us. Glancing back, I spotted a pair of black spots growing as they approached—two dark-furred horses with riders wearing…

“Oh, shit,” I said, slowing down and grabbing Erani and Ainash, who stopped and turned to see what I was looking at.

“They look like your Dark Plate,” Erani said. “So then, they’re iron titans?”

Sylvie stopped and turned around, too. “Damn. Well, Arlan, looks like you were right. The iron titans came to kill you before the Peersguards did. Did we ever end up betting money on which it would be?”

I frowned, still staring at the approaching people on horseback. They were moving much faster than we were even at our running speed, so trying to flee would be pointless. “No, we didn’t literally gamble on my life. Do you normally do that?”

“Hey, I was just trying to pay you any winnings while I still can.”

“Well, don’t go giving me any money just yet. We’ve still gotta see what they want.”

The two horses stopped in front of us, and the people wearing Dark Plate stared down at us silently.

“So,” I called up to them, “what’s up?”