Chapter 402 – Ruins
The journey through a hole in space was sickening. Parts of Damion felt like they were going to be ripped off, and other parts felt like they were being crushed. However, after it was over, he found himself lying on the ground looking at an unfamiliar sky.
He knew it was wrong since Nerotath had three moons and as he lay there, trying not to vomit, he could see five. Not to mention the rings that were visible. Wherever he was, it was not on Nerotath.
‘System, where am I?’
For the first time in his second life, he received no answer from the Magic System. He was not sure how bad things were, but if he was without his most powerful asset, he was in trouble. Worse, what if he could not cast spells because he did not have access to the System?
Damion reached out with his palm and called to mind the magic seal for Ice Shard. A moment later a razor-sharp crystal of ice sprang from his hand and shot into the distance. He still had access to magic, or at least some of it. There would be time later to test all his spells, for now, he needed to focus on his wilderness survival training.
Once Damion got to his feet, and once the world stopped spinning, he began looking around. The best that he could tell, he was in the ruins of a city. There was not much he could discern about it, a few stone pillars remained standing, bits and pieces of walls and roofs half buried, but there was very little that remained recognizable as a city.
There were no trees, no mountains, for as far as he could see were the remnants of this city, and worse, no water. If there was no water, it was unlikely there would be wildlife or any civilization. Though, judging by the extent of the destruction of the former city he was in, there might not be any civilization anywhere.
In his immediate area, there were a few curiosities, such as what appeared to be four graves and a number of rotting plants that looked somewhat familiar. The parts of the ground also appeared to be soaked in blood, and he realized that much of it probably traveled through the hole in space with him. Aside from those few things, it did not appear that anything had disturbed this place in a long while.
After activating his Belt of Purification to rid himself of the grime of battle, Damion turned his attention back to the Magic System.
‘System, Inventory.’
Nothing happened. Which, while not wholly unexpected after not getting a response from the Mage System before, was a bit frustrating since he kept his auto-mapper and tablet inside the Inventory. Since he had been fighting a beast wave, most of his artifacts had been on him, including his canteen backpack and his spatial stretching pouches on his belt. So, he had food and water, at least for a while. Unfortunately, his adventurer backpack, that had his extra rations, his tent, shielded fire pit and all his potions, were all trapped in the Inventory.
What he missed the most at the moment though was the auto-mapper. With it he would be able to see everything around him for 50 kilometers and not have to worry with scouting nearly as much.
Damion began to walk and search through the remains of the city for anything useful. Mostly he found curiosities. Such as an unusual number of seashells and skeletons that seemed to belong to sharks or whales. This led him to hypothesize that he was on the bed of some dried-up ocean. Perhaps an island city had once fallen into the sea, victim of an earthquake or a volcanic eruption and then sometime later, the sea had dried-up.
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Although, as much as he would have liked to keep guessing and imagining what this place had been like, he had to figure out where Exile had sent him. And how to get home. Since he had already confirmed he still had his magic, Damion decided to try something.
Focusing on picturing the area in front of his house back in Atlantis, Damion channeled the mana needed to cast Portal. For a moment he could feel the mana drain out of him, as if it was stretching out to try and open a gateway home, unfortunately, no Portal formed, and he suddenly felt extremely tired.
The world around him blurred and everything went dark.
When Damion began to wake again, he had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He was not entirely sure what happened, but judging by how his body felt, he was fairly confident he had experienced mana exhaustion. Evidently, trying to open a Portal from wherever he was to back home was not possible with his current amount of mana. But that did not mean it would always be impossible, it might just mean he simply needed to grow stronger or increase the rank of his spell.
Since he had no better idea of how to get home and since he did need to start moving and finding shelter, Damion cast Portal as far as he could see and walked through. He then opened another and another. In a few minutes he reached the outskirts of the ruined city and looking back, he could see it was in a slight depression. It really was at the bottom of a dried-up ocean.
Damion continued to Portal climb his way further and further from where he first appeared. When he finally spotted a tree, he felt his chances of finding civilization were going up. If there was a tree, there was water, and if there was water, there was a good chance of civilization.
Walking up to the tree, he put his hands on it and felt the rough bark. It was real, now he had to make a choice, how far should he go?
Survival training told him to stay in one place to await rescue, unless it was necessary to move. But was there even a chance at rescue? He was tossed through a tear in space by an SS Rank mage. As far as he understood Exile, no one knew where it led or even if people could survive going through.
Damion decided to at least mark his passage. If someone did come after him, it would give them an idea of where he went, and it would also help him know if he accidentally started going in circles.
Using Manipulate Earth, Damion carved a message into the ground. With an arrow pointing in his intended direction of travel.
Damion Wells Day 1
He then cast Portal and returned to the place where he first woke up and created a similar marker with an arrow pointing roughly in the direction he had traveled. It was not a clear set of breadcrumbs to follow, but it was better than leaving no trace at all.
Once Damion returned to the tree via Portal, he set off in the direction his arrow pointed. As Damion continued to travel, he began to realize the sun was moving much slower than he was used to, which meant there was a good chance the day and night cycle of this place was different than Nerotath.
Just as Damion was beginning to try and calculate how long the cycle was by measuring how far the sun dropped on the horizon, he sensed a magical presence near him. Looking around quickly, he did not initially spot the source, but after double checking he located the source, a goblin.
When the creature realized it had been spotted, it began to run. Damion did not want to scare the goblin, especially since it looked to be an adolescent, but he needed information, and the goblin was the only source of information he had encountered so far.
Using Blink Damion quickly closed the gap between him and the young goblin. Then he used it to appear directly in the fleeing creature’s path. The young goblin was busying looking over its shoulder to figure out where Damion was and only realized the mage had passed him when it crashed into him.
“Please don’t eat me!” The young goblin pleaded it is own language, shielding its head from an expected attack.
“I have no interest in eating you,” Damion answered in Pangan. “I’m hoping that you might tell me where I am and where I might find a city.”
“You are lost?” the goblin asked, still afraid, but a bit less apprehensive since Damion spoke its language and was not attacking.
“Yes. I am lost.”
“Where did you come from?”
“It’s hard to explain. I woke up in the ruined city, down in the basin.”
“You came from Atlantis?” the goblin asked in disbelief.