Chapter 251
In the morning it is time to say goodbye to the hospitality of the Demons and go visit Alpha Conway up in Canada. His monster problem isn’t going away on its own, and I’ve heard that the entire northern half of the continent has basically been taken over by the monsters, with a few pockets of Titan Clan warriors attacking them.
The former human and supernatural populations are long gone, except a few pockets of resistance. Like Alpha Conway, a few other werewolf packs who have been able to cultivate fast enough to keep up with the influx of dangerous creatures and the three cities run in cooperation between the Witches and the Mages.
In fact, the witches seem to be doing quite well. They’ve adapted their spell craft to use magical beast parts in potions, creating magical concoctions that I am told are every bit as potent as the pills made by more traditional cultivators. That’s knowledge both myself and Elder Song would love to have, new alchemy recipes are hard to come by, much less create from scratch.
As if thinking about them has spoken to something inside the soul shrine, I get a flash of information, a long lost Death Cult cultivation technique, suitable for dark witches, the sort that make potions from animal parts. It should rapidly increase their cultivation level and help protect them from and reduce existing corruption.
That’s perfect, the corruption of Death Energy that they’re incapable of dealing with is the reason they go insane and get mutated and shunned from society.
That technique should also give me all the bargaining power that I need to obtain some of these new potions if I can find the ones making them.
Of course, saying it’s time to leave for Canada and actually being ready to leave are very different things in practice. Lelou and Hui’Jin are both still sleeping, and Lala insists she’s coming with us, using her vacation days at work to see the world. It’s hard to argue with that, it’s one of the few chances to relatively safely see what used to be Canada, plus pouty face and droopy bunny ears is a combination that will melt the coldest heart.
It is only a few minutes to our planned departure time when Lelou and Hui’Jin finally appear, having been caught up in the enthusiasm of the past last night and sporting deep circles under their eyes from lack of sleep. Cultivators don’t need much though, so a bit of light meditation before breakfast arrives should have them in close to peak shape.
The closest stable transfer location to where we want to go is over two hundred kilometers away from them, Alpha Conway and his pack were so rural as to be isolated even before everything changed with the coming of the portals. So Karl’s tentative plan is we will shift there and then run the rest of the distance, stopping to clear out any large packs of monsters that we come across.
Karl is fairly sure he could use his new skill at travel gates to go directly to Alpha Conway’s pack house, but that would still leave them surrounded, so if things take a turn for the worst we’d have to clear a path for them to leave anyhow. Alpha werewolves are prideful creatures, he wouldn’t have asked for help if it wasn’t really needed. Even going as far as to ask through a third party, and not keeping it secret.