Chapter 599: A Retrospection of Magic Power

By afternoon Roland had the expedition assembled and moving.

Equipment: a tent, rations for five days, and one concrete paddle steamer. Devil’s Town was coastal, which meant the route ran through Shallow Beach. Hummingbird handled the boat.

This was always a strange thing to watch. Hummingbird was, in most respects, physically indistinguishable from Nana — compact, gentle-looking, easy to underestimate. When she pressed her palms flat against the concrete hull and the boat lifted, she looked like an illustration from a fable about impossible tasks. He had read somewhere that ants could move ten times their body weight. Hummingbird managed something closer to five hundred times hers, and looked mildly inconvenienced by the exertion.

She had refined the technique since her early attempts. Rather than spending magic power reducing each item’s weight individually, she kept contact with the object and reduced the weight of the whole thing continuously. The drawback was that she had to maintain physical contact, which meant she followed the boat rather than the boat following anyone’s lead — a minor awkwardness in logistics, and easily accounted for.

The paddle steamer moved west along endless mountain ridges, arrived at Rocky Beach two days later, and put Roland on solid ground for the first time since he had surveyed the demon camp from the air aboard Cloud Gazer.

What he had seen from altitude had been: dark terrain, unusual density, no vegetation. What he stood in now was genuinely strange.

Rocky Beach was desolate in the particular way of places that have been made dead deliberately, rather than simply never having lived. Across the gravel and crushed stone, animal remains were layered into the substrate — some already fused into new rock, others in the process of becoming it. A few bones, large enough that Roland couldn’t assign them to any creature he knew, suggested that something massive had once moved through this corridor. Horizontal stalagmites jutted from the cliff faces at every angle, hooks pointing at the ceiling, completely ignoring gravitational expectation. He had not seen them clearly on the balloon survey. He saw them clearly now. The hair on the back of his neck rose and stayed there.

No seagulls. No seaweed at the tide line. No clam shells. No evidence of anything choosing to be here.

They located Lotus’s marked crack in the cliff face — a fracture, really, an almost vertical split in the rock face running straight down into darkness, with a path of one and a half meters cut through it. As Roland descended the stairs and passed through the gap, Nightingale stopped.

“What is it?” he asked.

She was looking at the darkness below the path. “There are holes down there. Round ones. In the rock.” She hesitated. “I’ve seen similar ones in the Impassable Mountain Range. Larger, but the same shape.” Her voice was careful. “Something is watching from down there. The further I try to sense into the depth, the stronger the feeling gets — and there’s more than one.”

Roland looked. Inky dark, fathomless, and at the floor of it, yes — the suggestion of circular apertures. Regular spacing. Not natural.

“After Sylvie returns,” he said, “I want her and you at the Impassable Mountain Range to look at those holes properly.” He looked at the darkness for one more moment and made himself move on. “Keep going.”

This continent had been settled by humans for a thousand years, and still — standing in Devil’s Town with the Blackstone towers ranked in their private geometry around him — Roland felt the old frustration: they knew nothing. They had never looked. Agatha had told him the Union’s surveyors had sketched the Fertile Plains in detail and produced a rough outline of Land of Dawn, but beyond that shoreline, their maps went blank. Roland had once thought he would have cartographers working every coast within a generation. Now he stood inside a demonic camp on his own territory and realized he was ignorant of what lay within the kingdom he already ruled.

The war against the church would not wait for that problem to be solved. He filed it and moved on.

Agatha and Soraya met the group at the First Army’s camp.

“Where are Lightning and the others?”

Agatha sighed. “Flying.” She gestured at the towers with a resignation that had aged approximately one week. “She has turned this entire camp into her personal exploration ground.”

Roland activated the Sigil of Listening. “Lightning. Come in.”

“Lightning landing!” — the voice was almost immediate.

She came down in a broad arc, arms out, blond hair streaming, wearing the expression of someone who has been having an exceptionally good several days. She hit the ground running and crossed the distance to Roland before he had time to step aside, and embraced him with the full-body confidence of someone who has been outside the normal social rules for so long she has stopped noticing they apply.

Roland endured this with moderate grace.

Then Maggie arrived. She touched down with a boom that nearly threw Summer from her back, transformed back to human, and flung herself forward in the same fashion.

Lightning was fourteen. Maggie was an adult witch. Roland was working on a theory that Lightning’s behavior patterns were contagious, and that prolonged aerial cohabitation had transferred the condition.

“Since everyone’s here,” Roland said, looking at Summer. “Are you ready?”

Summer was still visibly shaking in her knees. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

She walked to the edge of the great cavern and closed her eyes.

The air changed. The hole in the ground was replaced by a massive black stone tower rising through suddenly thick Red Mist, almost blood-dense in the reconstruction, and the camp materialized around them to its former state — towers standing, mist flowing — exactly as it had been twenty-six days ago.

Roland stepped back involuntarily. He was holding his breath.

“This is the moment before the incident,” Agatha said. Her voice was controlled but barely. “Summer holds the reconstruction for nearly an hour on a single trace-back at this distance in time. That’s long enough to see everything that happened.”

Tilly was already scanning the tower above them, shielding her eyes against the reconstructed light. “Where was the Eye Demon? The one that would alert the camp if it saw us?”

“At the top of this tower.” Agatha pointed upward. “Summer’s reconstruction radius is roughly five meters. The top of the tower is beyond it.”

The stone beneath them shook.

“Here it comes,” Agatha said, quiet and intent.

Chapter 599: A Retrospection of Magic Power

Translator: TransN Editor: TransN

By the afternoon, Roland was prepared to head to the snowcapped mountains.

The equipment he would take with him included a tent, adequate food, and a concrete paddle steamer. Since Devil’s Town was coastal, he must set off from Shallow Beach. As usual, Hummingbird would be responsible for transportation.

He had to admit it was a pretty queer thing that Hummingbird, who was as petite as Nana, could hold up the entire concrete boat above her head. The scene reminded Roland of an ant moving rice ten times bigger than its own body. If Hummingbird happened to be on the other side of the boat, he would see a boat silently shifting by itself on the shore like a “ghost ship”.

As long as Hummingbird kept her hands attached to the boat, she could help with the transportation continuously. It was a much more efficient way to move stuff compared with her earlier method, with which she had to spend a great deal of time reducing the weight of each item. The new method also saved Hummingbird a lot of magic power. The only drawback, however, was that she needed to follow enchanted goods, which meant she could only move two items at a time.

The paddle steamer heading to the west passed endless mountains and ridges. It arrived at Rocky Beach two days later.

Last time, Roland took a bird’s-eye view of this land from a distance on the “Cloud Gazer”. Now when he finally set foot on the beach, he found it was nothing but a vast and desolate wilderness.

Rocky Beach, merely ten miles apart from Shallow Beach, was a completely different world.

There were animal remains embedded in layers of gravel and crushed stones all over the place, some of which had corroded due to exposure, while others were in the process of turning into new rocks. A few bones, which Roland failed to determine their owners, were quite big, almost in the same size of an adult.

The steep precipice was also bizarre and mystic.

Numerous sharp stalagmites grew out of the rock surfaces. Unlike the ones suspending from the top of the cave, these stalagmites, which looked like countless hooks hanging upside down at first glance, were all sticking out horizontally with their tails pointing to the ceiling. They were totally unbounded by the gravitational pull. Roland did not see them clearly last time on the balloon; but now, as he was personally on the beach, he felt the hair on the back of his neck all stood up at the sight of this disturbing view.

No signs of life could be found on the long beach. No seagulls were nesting in the vicinity, and no seaweeds or clams were discovered either. Even at the rear of the rocks was an endless expanse of open country, as if demons’ Red Mist had taken away all the lives on this land.

Roland and the others located the narrow crack leading to Devil’s Town with the help of the marks left by Lotus. It was actually more of a fracture than a crack. As the gap, fathomless and confined, almost split the whole precipice in half. Lotus created a narrow path of one and a half meters wide at the opening.

When they stepped down the stairs and passed through the crevice, Nightingale involuntarily burst out an exclamation.

“What’s the matter?” Roland asked.

“Look over there.” She pointed to the bottomless crack. “There’s a hole in the rocks.”

They all stopped and took a peek. Close to the inky bottom, Roland spotted several round holes, which seemed to be manually drilled. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve seen similar holes in the Impassable Mountain Range, except the ones there are slightly bigger.” Nightingale hesitated for a moment and then said, “I feel something is looking at me deep down there. The deeper I probe, the stronger this feeling is.”

“…Something?” Roland was a bit surprised.

“There is more than one.” Nightingale nodded. “In the valley on the way to the camps of the Witch Cooperation Association, there’s a path leading to the bottom of the ground. I’ve never been down there.”

“Take Sylvie to the Impassable Mountain Range after she’s back.” Roland took another look at the bottom of the fracture, managing to suppress the desire to explore. He then ordered the team to continue to marshal forward.

Although this continent was a part of Land of Dawn, on which human beings had settled as early as 1,000 years ago, they had a very minimal understanding of the world, as if mankind had deliberately forgotten to explore the outside world. Roland once told Agatha about drawing a map of the whole continent but was informed that the Union had done so for Fertile Plains. They had very roughly sketched out an outline of Land of Dawn. As to the land beyond, they knew nothing about it.

That was why Roland fully supported Thunder to explore lands overseas. He had thought it would be a matter of time to understand the whole world, but now he realized he was ignorant of even his own territory, the Kingdom of Graycastle in the Western Region.

Unfortunately, he had to leave these thoughts behind for the time being, as the war against the church was pressing.

They soon found themselves in an open field after passing through the crack. The First Army who garrisoned there led them to their camps at once. Roland then saw Agatha and Soraya.

“Where are Lightning and the others?”

“She’s flying around with Summer.” Agatha sighed. “She’s too perky to be quiet just for a second. Devil’s Town has almost turned into her playland.”

“It really would be a national park that you need to buy tickets to enter in the modern world,” Roland exclaimed.

“What did you say?”

“No… nothing.” Roland coughed to conceal his embarrassment. “I’ll use the Sigil of Listening to ask her to come back. Now take me where the collapsed stone tower is.”

When the group of people reached the center of the relics, Lightning, Maggie and Summer arrived just in time.

“Lightning is landing!”

The blonde little girl slowly came down to the ground while stretching out her arms to the sides. She turned around and gave Roland a big hug.

Roland did not know whether to laugh or to cry since Lightning had reached puberty.

“Aw…!” Next Maggie joined, who stretched out her wings in the same way. She fell straight to the ground, almost shaking Summer off her back.

Roland understood that Lightning was one of the youngest witches in the Witch Union. So, it kind of explained why she was always so airy and jaunty. Maggie, however, was an adult witch. It did not make sense that she still acted like a child. There was only one plausible explanation: Lightning’s fluttering manner was somewhat contagious.

“Since everybody’s here, let’s get started.” Roland eyed Summer, whose legs were still trembling.

“Yes… Your Majesty.” Summer stumbled to the hole and closed her eyes.

In a second, the large hole in the ground was replaced by a giant black stone tower. Meanwhile, the air was permeated with red mists as thick as blood.

Roland stepped back involuntarily while at the same time holding his breath.

“This was what it looked like here 26 days ago, right before the incident,” Agatha explained, “If Summer traces back the time only once, she can maintain the illusion for nearly an hour. It thus allows us to see what exactly happened from the beginning to the end.”

“Where’s that Eye Demon that you talked about? The one with eyeballs all over that will attract the demons’ attention once it sees you?” Tilly asked curiously.

“At the top of this stone tower.” Agatha pointed to the high sky above. “The stone tower is too high for Summer to reach. We can’t see it now.”

Roland looked up and found the space above the tower was blank, as if it had been chopped off. It appeared that Summer could only reconstruct the area within a radius of five meters.

Just then, the ground started to shake.

“It’s coming!” Agatha shouted in a low voice.