Chapter 115: To the capital
Leon nodded slowly, doing quick mental math against what he now knew of his own capabilities.
"That’s helpful," Leon said. "Thank you."
The old man hesitated for a moment longer, then reached into the same pocket where he’d tucked away the gold coin earlier, pulling out a small, folded scrap of parchment instead.
"Here," he said, holding it out. "It isn’t much, just a rough sketch of the main roads leading toward Aldreth from this region. My grandson drew it years ago, back when he still dreamed of traveling there himself someday. I’ve kept it since, though I doubt I’ll ever have use for it now."
Leon accepted the parchment carefully, unfolding it just enough to glance over the simple, hand-drawn lines marking out the major routes and a handful of notable landmarks along the way.
It wasn’t detailed by any professional standard, but it would be more than enough to orient himself in a region he currently knew nothing about.
"Thank you," Leon said, tucking the parchment away safely alongside his coin pouch. "This will help."
The old man nodded, seemingly satisfied now that he’d done everything reasonably within his power to help the strange, foul-smelling player who’d saved his town from complete disaster earlier that day.
Leon glanced once more around the small, modest home, taking in the quiet, humble space one final time before making his way toward the door.
Whatever waited for him in Aldreth, whatever answers or complications the capital might hold, standing around any longer in Ratdale wouldn’t accomplish anything further.
He stepped outside into the late afternoon light, the street around him now mostly quiet, save for a handful of townsfolk beginning the slow, difficult process of clearing debris and repairing what little damage the dungeon break had left behind.
He spared them a brief glance, a small flicker of satisfaction settling in his chest knowing that, disaster aside, at least the worst of it had already passed.
He rolled his shoulders once, feeling the familiar, buoyant lightness still humming faintly around his ankles, the golden wings resting quietly against his legs, patient and ready.
Whatever Cleo and his guild connections in Aldreth turned out to mean for him, Leon decided he’d deal with that complication when, and if, it actually arrived.
For now, the road ahead mattered more than the shadow of a single, wounded rival’s pride.
He took one last look back toward the old man’s small home, offering a final, respectful nod before turning fully toward the horizon, toward wherever the rough, hand-drawn parchment map would lead him.
Leon made his way to the edge of Ratdale, following the rough hand-drawn map the old man had given him, until he reached what appeared to be some kind of transit station situated just outside the town’s main boundary.
It was a squat, unremarkable structure, its metal framework worn and weathered, clearly having seen better days, but functional nonetheless.
A single, sleek transport vehicle sat idling along a raised track nearby, its surface humming faintly with the low, steady thrum of some kind of internal engine.
It wasn’t anything particularly impressive by his own standards, nowhere close to the transit systems he remembered using back in Ranxdale.
That realization alone had settled something uneasy in the back of his mind the moment he first laid eyes on the vehicle.
Whatever had happened to him, whatever Brave Escape had actually done when it tore him away from the collapsing guild headquarters, he hadn’t been thrown into some primitive, backward country entirely disconnected from everything he understood.
Berx clearly had its own advancements, its own infrastructure, its own version of the same technological progress Ranxdale had achieved.
He approached the small booth near the station’s entrance, where a bored-looking attendant sat behind a thin pane of scratched glass, and asked, as casually as he could manage, about transport heading toward Aldreth.
The attendant barely looked up from whatever device he was fiddling with, muttering out a price and gesturing vaguely toward the idling vehicle without asking a single additional question.
Leon paid the fare in a handful of the copper and silver coins from Teon’s pouch, silently grateful he had enough small currency on hand to avoid drawing unnecessary attention by breaking one of his remaining gold coins over something this minor.
The attendant took the payment without so much as glancing up at him properly, sliding a small ticket stub through the gap in the glass before returning immediately to whatever had held his attention in the first place.
Leon boarded the transport a few minutes later, finding it mostly empty aside from a handful of other passengers scattered across the worn seating, none of them paying him any particular mind.
He settled into a seat near the back, close enough to the window to watch the scenery blur past once the vehicle finally began moving, and allowed himself a slow, quiet breath.
Throughout the entire process, buying the ticket, boarding the vehicle, finding his seat, he found himself bracing internally for the moment someone would inevitably stop him, demand to see some form of identification, some proof of registration confirming exactly who he was and what business he had traveling toward the capital.
Back in Ranxdale, that moment would have come almost immediately.
Public transportation there operated under strict oversight, every single passenger required to present valid identification before they were even allowed to purchase a ticket, let alone board.
The system existed specifically to track movement, to flag anything suspicious, unregistered players included, before they ever got the chance to slip quietly through the cracks.
Given that he was currently a fugitive from an entire continent’s Player Guild Association, with a face-altering mask serving as his only real protection, he had fully expected Berx to operate under some version of the same careful scrutiny.
It never came.
Nobody at the booth had asked for so much as his name, let alone any formal documentation proving his identity.
Nobody aboard the transport itself had so much as glanced twice in his direction, despite his obviously unfamiliar face and borrowed clothes.
He found the realization almost unsettling in its own quiet way, sitting there as the vehicle picked up speed, carrying him steadily further from Ratdale.
If a place like this operated with such glaring gaps in its basic security, gaps that would have been considered entirely unacceptable back home, then it made him wonder exactly how many other dangerous, unregistered individuals might be moving freely through this same system, completely unchecked, the same way he currently was.
Then again, considering everything he’d already witnessed since arriving in Berx, the complete absence of any real guild response to the dungeon break, the casual dismissal of Ratdale’s civilians as expendable lowlifes not worth the effort, it made sense that security measures protecting the general population would be similarly lax.
If the system in place genuinely cared so little about the safety of its own weaker citizens, there was little reason to expect it would bother investing effort into carefully monitoring who moved freely between its towns and cities either.
Security, in a place like this, apparently only mattered when it directly protected the interests of those already positioned high enough within the existing hierarchy to matter.
The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he turned his attention instead toward the passing scenery outside the window, using the quiet, steady hum of the transport to organize his own thoughts properly for the first time since everything had gone wrong back at the Roaring guild headquarters.
Excalibur weighed heavily on his mind first, as it so often did lately.
The sword remained locked behind Arthur’s judgment, its true power sealed away behind some standard of worthiness Leon still didn’t fully understand how to meet.
It frustrated him more than he wanted to admit, the idea that raw strength alone weren’t sufficient, that something else entirely, something he couldn’t simply train or fight his way toward, stood between him and the sword’s full potential.
Medusa complicated things further still. Her sudden appearance, her open hostility toward Arthur, and the strange, unsettling alliance she’d offered him in that quiet, endless field left him with more questions than answers.
He still didn’t know what she actually was beyond the spirit bound to Aegis, didn’t know the full history behind whatever conflict existed between her and the King of Knights, and definitely didn’t know how much he could actually trust the warmth she’d shown him.
The warmth that had felt, at multiple points, uncomfortably intense given how little time they’d actually spent together.
And now there was Hermes as well, an entirely new name attached to an entirely new legendary item, one that had, unlike Excalibur, accepted him completely and without hesitation.
The imbalance between the two experiences nagged at him more than he expected.
Why had Aegis’s spirit embraced him instantly, offering partnership and even open affection, while Arthur remained cold and distant, demanding proof Leon still hadn’t figured out how to provide?