Chapter 1289 (1/2)

A week after the bloody events of the stadium and five days after the impromptu decision to uproot themselves, Derek and Tim Moss stood below the towering form of Kharon and looked up at the massive sight with awe in both their expressions. They had heard the rumors and seen the pictures of the place, but to actually see an entire city crouching there above them… with emerald lights spiraling downward to float above the seething crowd of people waiting to get into the city…

However, some of the wonder was rubbed away by the loud group of people around them.

Because Derek was doing his best to hold onto Tim within the huge, jostling crowd that made the sights around them less important than actually staying together in the press of bodies. Kharon had now been stationary for over a week, enabling anyone curious and free enough to come to finally see the moving city of Randidly Ghosthound.

And they had come in droves. Derek and Tim had actually arrived last night but Derek had been unwilling to approach the huge mass of people without understanding what was going on. So they had camped out nearby and talked to a few people until they understand that literally everyone was here for the chance to enter Kharon.

And if Kharon itself wasn’t enough for you… Randidly Ghosthound himself was known to be on the mysterious, misty island that loomed above Kharon. Because he would be personally hosting his birthday celebration in a week’s time at a special venue in Kharon, to which all of Earth’s important individuals had been invited.

The birthday party had become the political event of the decade.

And if that wasn’t enough to draw you to the area, there was the possibility of interacting with the rapidly growing ogre settlement a few miles North of the spot that Kharon was currently located. There weren’t many amenities there, but there were a lot of rare monster parts and minerals that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Most of the merchants that were unwilling to wait in line were currently sniffing around there.

In addition to all those draws, there was also the fact that you could clearly see thousands of ogres a day walking out of the Ogre Gorge and heading North to settle the rugged mountain range that towered between Zones 11 and 7. And the ogre’s efficiency at clearing out monsters had meant that a few enterprising individuals had already started marketing the area as a safe vacation destination, where a family could view the majestic skyline without the worry of interference of monsters.

Derek personally had some doubts about how feasible a business that was, but he could definitely see how a lot of people who currently lived in the rolling grasslands of Zone 1 would be tempted to come up and see what all the fuss was about. Especially if the rumors were true that the ogres were currently shaping some high mountains to function as ski resorts.

“Well, I heard that the nominal Donny of Donnyton, one of the most powerful Classers in the world, unleashed a full-strength strike against his birthday invitation and was unable to leave a scratch,” A rather loud and overweight man was saying nearby.

Derek grimaced. For these people waiting in the queue, the talking never seemed to stop.

A nearby woman, who was carrying a backpack as large as she was, shook her head disdainfully. “Pah, you think that’s amazing? Since the reveal that Zone 7’s Xiang Le was actually three women running the Zone the entire time, you know how each of them has been under constant attacks? Well, I heard that even though the assassin caught the one woman completely off guard, she used the birthday invitation like a knife and sliced the assassin completely in half.”

“Were the edges of the invitation that sharp?” A thin man asked, clearly unconvinced. “I thought it was just a mystical metal that the Ghosthound himself invited. But why would he make the invitation sharp? It might hurt people. It’s just an invitation and it needs to be sharp to cut.”

“If it’s sufficiently hard, the invitation can easily cut through something,” The woman harrumphed. The overweight man shook his head and turned away to talk to a new group of people. The press of bodies shifted. More conversations about Kharon, about the Order Ducis, about the Nemesai, and of course about Randidly Ghosthound sprung up in every direction

The crowd shifted as the line moved forward a small amount. Derek gratefully led Tim a few steps away from the group that was still glancing away from their current conversations and glaring at the people who disagreed with them. But no matter where they went, Derek and Tim could still hear people talking excitedly about all the things that were happening in the world right now.

Obviously Derek hadn’t seen any proof of an ogre migration or ski resort, although there were monstrous humanoids that could only be ogres waiting patiently with the humans in the queue to enter Kharon. But such was the enthusiastic volume of the people around them that they couldn’t avoid slowly being brainwashed by the rumors. And honestly, Derek had quite like skiing when he was younger. He and Tim’s mother often went before Tim was born.

And the reason they had stopped was because of the fear of injury. But with the System...

“Dad,” Tim tugged at Derek’s sleeve with a confused expression on his face. “How can a birthday invitation be used as a weapon? It’s just a card right?”

“Well it is just a card, but…” Derek said tiredly. His initial enthusiasm to come here after the… strange interaction he had with Gertrude Collins had largely receded during the difficult journey North. Although there were trains that headed to the area in which Kharon had settled, tickets had been gobbled up by businesses desperate for the chance to get an advantage over the competition by trading directly with Kharon rather than relying on established channels.

The train station had been a circus that Derek had been only too happy to leave.

So when the passenger trains had been turned to freight, that meant that the only way to travel was to walk. And the System meant that the prospect wasn’t as impossible as it had been before, but it was still a far distance for a young kid. Still, Tim had seemed excited by the prospect of the adventure, so Derek hadn’t worried too much about it.

Then they traveled for three days, held back by a Tim whose education had still been rather soft, despite the presence of the System. The pace they could keep meant that it would take them almost a week to reach Kharon.

When they departed, Derek had figured the normal means of transportation would be available to them and didn’t pack much food. He was horrified to be forced to feed his own son the emergency military rations that he kept in his interspatial watch by the fourth day. It was a blow against his pride.

What made it somehow much worse was how much Tim had seemed to enjoy the experience camping. Tim tried to hide it, but Derek had noticed the plants around their sleeping spots rather quickly changing when left alone with Tim. But seeing how furtive his son was, Derek had just let the incidents pass; who knows, it might have just been a coincidence that every time Tim went to forage he came back with fresh vegetables while Derek had a hard time scraping up anything.

Shaking his head, Derek focused on Tim’s question. “It might just be a card, but if the material is sufficiently hard and the user is sufficiently strong, it could still be a weapon. A card should be pretty thin…”