Rider

Visiting Noth

Added 2022-12-19 07:32:42 +0000 UTC

When Seth arrived back in the city, the system informed him that King Iwan had already left with his entourage, but Seth did not need him yet.

He wanted to use another piece of information he got his hands on.

With that in mind, he returned to his inn and waited for the sun to go down. Once night arrived, Seth’s eyes opened, and his space source carried him out of the inn.

“Hey, princess Olivia.” Said Seth from the center of the room, looking at the woman gazing out the window with a lost look.

The woman in question, Olivia, quickly turned around and asked with a frown: “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

“I have my ways.” Replied Seth, moving to sit down on her soft bed. “I wondered if the princess could spare me a few minutes of your time.”

Olivia looked at Seth for a moment before calmly shouting: “Guards!”

Seth remained on the bed, looking at her with a smile. After nothing happened, Olivia called for the guards again, but there was no sign of them responding.

Starting to look scared finally, she asked: “Who are you, and what have you done with my guards?”

“They are merely sleeping outside the door. I didn’t want them to come in and ruin our chat. As for who I am, that doesn’t matter now, does it?”

Seeing that Olivia was starting to get nervous, Seth pulled a small book out of his jacket and placed it on the bed.

Sighing, he looked at the confused Olivia and said: “Consider this book a favor. I hope Miss Olivia will consider repaying this favor in the future.”

“Also, remember. If you don’t leave this place by next spring, you’ll die.” After saying his piece, he teleported out of the room.

Olivia brought her hand to her chest, trying to calm her quickly beating heart, before slowly walking up to the bed, her eyes fixed on the book lying there on the bed.

When she picked it up, she read the title and frowned.

Putting the book back down, she yelled: “Guards!”

The door snapped open, and her guards looked inside: “Anything happened, princess?”

Olivia looked at the book on the bed and thought for a second before shaking her head: “No. Can you bring me a cup of water?”

The guards bowed before leaving. Olivia picked up the book and lay on the bed, opening its first page.

Seth was already high up in the mountains, watching the scene inside Olivia’s room. When she started reading the book, he stopped watching her and turned around, beginning to rush toward the southeast.

His target was the kingdom of Wrath, far into the east of the continent, where his next target was. Still, since he didn’t want to risk passing through Curse again, he decided to go around, passing through Noth, Oath, and finally arriving in Wrath.

If he were to rush all the way, Seth figured he would reach Wrath at the end of summer, Age of the Ascended, year 677, but since the enemy won’t move until winter, he could afford to take a detour.

As he arrived at the border between Pain and Noth, a visible change could be noticed right off the bat. The paved path of the Pain Kingdom stopped abruptly, replaced with simple beaten paths.

The kingdom of Pain mainly focused on trading and ended up attracting a lot of merchants and travelers between its borders. This meant it had to focus on ease of transport and movement, so its economy was always flourishing.

For Noth, which focused on military strength, fighting a half-a-millennia-old war with Oath, all of its funds would go into sustaining that military.

Seth started following the main road, heading deeper inside the lands of Noth. As he kept teleporting the main road, another difference soon became apparent, mainly in the number of travelers.

Its situation was not that different than Oath, with bandits plaguing every road that was not close to any major cities, and that amounted to the majority of people Seth encountered on the road. Bandits.

Seth did a favor to the people of Noth and killed every bandit camp along his path.

To pass its border into Oath, Seth had to cross over half of the territory of the Noth Kingdom. This meant also passing by its capital city, so he didn’t bother moving to visit any villages, towns, or cities that he passed by, choosing to cultivate whenever he rested before continuing on his journey.

When he finally reached the capital, Seth stopped and looked at his progress.

“Even with vials. I forgot how difficult the middle sources are.”

During the entire time he traveled, Seth mainly focused on cultivating, but even with that, his progress was far from satisfactory.

‘Can you estimate how long I will need to reach the seventh shell?’

<100+ years in the current rhythm. If host only focuses on gathering energy, the time would be reduced to 70+ years. 50+ in an energy spring.>

‘It looks that once I’m done with this war, I should seclude myself for a few years….’

‘Harvesting? That would make everything I’ve been working for pointless.’ Replied Seth before dismissing the option and starting to walk towards the capital of Noth’s city gates.

It was late afternoon, and a few people could be seen passing through the city gates. The guards at the gate didn’t block his entry since Seth had already changed his looks to match an average Noth noble.

Passing through the gate, Seth was greeted by beautiful buildings made out of bricks and clean paved roads. The people passing by were cleanly dressed, and soldiers could be seen placed every few streets.

Just arriving in, one would easily be fooled by the condition of the city, but Seth knew Noth was not all that it seemed at first glance. He only had to move away from the main street and wander deeper inside the city, and after not even ten minutes of walking, the facade fell through.

Run down houses, homeless people, poverty, disease, crimes, starvation.

One would have guessed they wandered into the city slums, but it was simply the condition of 90% of the city’s population. The nobles all lived decent lives, having decent mansions all along the city’s main streets, while the citizens were forced to make due into the hidden shadow of a great city.

All the soldiers around the main streets were not there to protect the city’s citizens but to stop them from ever wandering close to the main road.

The poor rations that ordinary citizens received barely managed to allow them to live to the next day, and they had to work themselves tirelessly for it.

What was worrisome was that most women did the work since most men were taken to train before being sent to war. The armies of Noth were considerable, second to none other Kingdom in the alliance, but they all lived in garrison cities, away from the capital.

The women were left behind, forced to work jobs like tending to the fields, making clothes, armor, weapons, and so on. But even with all the work dumped on them, they were kept from even using the city’s main gates. Smaller gates had been built on the sides of the city wall so that the Kingdom could maintain its empty facade.

As Seth was about to leave the high-class area, as people called it, a guard placed a hand in front of him and said: “Sir, it’s dangerous to go in there so late.”

Seth gave the guard a look before continuing forward, passing right through the guard’s hand. The guard scoffed and said after him: “I tried to warn you. If you’re seeking death, suit yourself.”

Seth ignored his words again and started walking through dirt-ridden streets. Just as he had remembered, there were primarily women. Most of them were coming home late from working the fields.

They were skinny, mostly skin and bones, covered in dirt, and their eyes were sunken and dead. Some of them even had small crying children strapped to their clothes.

As Seth was dressed as a noble, he kept attracting everyone’s attention, the loud voices turning into shushed whispers as soon as he came close.

There were few reasons nobles would ever come into that part of the city, the most frequent one being if he wanted to release some stress, but even then, guards were always accompanying them.

Seth walking in alone looked like suicide to everyone who was watching. There were not many laws in that place, and even the few rules that they had started to respect as a society only applied to them, low-class people.

Not long after walking in, Seth discovered precisely why the guard had warned him. A small group of thugs, carrying weapons crudely made out of wood, barred his path. They were looking at Seth, not like one would look at a human, but how one would look at a pig for slaughter.

A large opening had formed around Seth and the group of four men, and everyone that remained close started cheering, not for Seth but for the thugs.

Seth placed his hand on the sword at his waist and shook his head: “Move out of the way. I will kill you if you don’t.”

One of the thugs whistled and started laughing: “You heard that, brothers? The pig will kill us.”

The other three also started laughing, and some women watching joined in mocking Seth.

Seth ignored their words and said: “I only want to see your king, and I’m not looking for trouble.

The men stopped laughing and looked to be insulted by Seth’s words. Hitting his stick against the palm of his hand, the man from before said: “Listen here, pig. We were only going to beat you up and see if you have everything of worth on you, but mention the king again, and you might not leave here tonight.”

Seth sighed and said: “Then forget about it. I know the way.”

Seth then acted like the thugs were nothing more than air and started walking forward again. The men began to get even more annoyed and moved to attack him.

Seth released the sword and caught the first bat aiming for his head with his bare hands. Using his time energy, he slowed down the other three enough for him to take the bat from the man’s hand and hit everyone in a swinging motion.

As they groaned on the ground, Seth threw the bat to the side and continued forward. The men who had slipped between the cracks and weren’t forced into the military were even weaker than the women who were compelled to work men’s jobs inside the city, so beating them up was as easy as breathing for Seth.

A few more groups appeared to bar his path here and there, but Seth effortlessly took care of everyone, attracting even a large crowd that started following him.

This went on until Seth finally reached his target.

A middle-aged man, missing one of his legs. He was sitting on a small boulder, surrounded by children who were listening to his stories as he used his hands to wrap a few threads around and make what looked like a straw hat.

The moment Seth arrived, the man sighed, placed the hat over a little girl’s head, and said: “I’ll finish your hat and the story tomorrow. I seem to have a guest.”

The kids started complaining, but the man convinced them to leave by making a few promises. Seth didn’t hurry and just waited for the kids to be gone. In the meantime, a beaten-up man arrived and whispered something in the middle-aged man’s ear while keeping his angry eyes on Seth.

“It’s fine. You all go.”, said the middle-aged man, his eyes also getting fixed on Seth.

“But - “the beaten-up man wanted to say something when he received a sharp look, and the middle-aged man interrupted him: “And what are you all going to do here? Go and be useless somewhere else.”

After getting rid of everyone, the middle-aged man looked at Seth and said: “I would get up to greet you, but as you can see, I seem to have lost my leg.”

“No need. I’m not too fond of customs anyway.” Seth chuckled and moved to sit on another boulder far away from the man.

“I need to apologize for the kids acting that way. They get defensive when someone comes to our home. I hope you can understand.”

“No need for that. They were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.”

The middle-aged man nodded and said: “Now that we got that out of the way, what would someone of your status probably want from someone like me.”

Seth shook his head and said: “General Torious, I do indeed have no need for a man like you, but you have something I need to see. I came seeking your daughter.”