Chapter 1289 (2/2)

“How does he do it?” Tim asked as he turned to look at the city that was looming above them. Although most of what they could see was the stone and metal base, from their angle it was possible to see the edges of a few buildings over the edge. Mostly it was the emerald energy, the noise, and the size of the city that dominated the impression. “How is he so strong?”

“Images,” Derek said grimly. His gaze went up toward Kharon as well. And it was because of Randidly Ghosthound’s insistence on images that Derek had followed through with his rather quickly hatched scheme to move even when faced with adversity. Because if he wanted Tim to grow up as best as he could, this was the place where it could happen.

That strange hug with Gertrude… while nice was just… two people bonding. Derek flushed at the memory.

“Images were actually invented by Randidly Ghosthound,” Someone in front of them twisted around to say, interrupting his brief daydream. Derek ignored the man and looked at the ground in front of him. The System is the source of all these powers… Randidly Ghosthound is just the man who hasn’t let the way Earth used to be keep him from seeing how we need to behave now.

A few minutes passed and the crowd shuffled forward once more. Derek stood on his tiptoes and craned his neck to look forward to the people in front of them. There were a few ogres that blocked him from having an excellent view, but they probably had gone halfway through the line during their four-hour weight. He settled onto his heels with a sigh.

He was just turning to Tim to ask him what he thought about the rule changes to football after the incident at the stadium when he heard a voice call his name.

“Derek Moss? Is that you? What are you doing here?”

Derek twisted around and saw a familiar man floating the above the vast crowd on one of those platforms wreathed in the emerald energy of Kharon. Very quickly, he recognized the slim Indian man as Dinesh. As the previously chatty crowd around them fell ominously silent, Derek smiled awkwardly up at Dinesh. “We… well, we believe we want to relocate to Kharon-”

“Ah, I see,” Dinesh glanced at Tim and then gave Derek a knowing look. Then Dinesh waved his hand. “Hop on up. This line is for the trader and visitors' entrance. I can move you to the other line.”

But I was told that we had to enter as visitors to apply for citizenship… Derek’s eyes twitched. He opened his mouth to ask about that, but Tim had already hopped upward, grabbed the platform with his hands. As his son wrestled with the edge of the platform and repeatedly told Dinesh that he was ‘fine’ in his struggles, Derek decided not to make a scene here. The gossipy overweight man and the woman with a backpack as large as she was were practically drooling as they looked from Derek up to Dinesh.

Instead, he leapt upward to land onto the platform and watched his son take a further five seconds to manage to do the same himself. Then they began to float quickly forward to the left, over some rugged hills as they traveled the circumference of Kharon.

“What are these things?” Tim said curiously. Several motes of emerald energy had been gathering around him since he struggled to get onto the platform so that now he seemed to be wearing a cape of them that trailed after him in the air. The effect looked positively heroic.

Dinesh smiled. “Those are moss spirits. They are the energy that drives Kharon. It seems like they like you. Which is good, because if you make friends with them, it will make your life much easier.”

After that, Tim was content to play with the moss spirits while they accelerated around the side of the moving city. Which just served to emphasize how large Kharon really was. Derek had just worked up the nerve to ask where they were going when they slowed down and descended to hover only a few feet above the rocky ground.

Dinesh pointed to a ladder that dangled from a tunnel in the side of Kharon to a meter above the ground. “This is the entrance you want. I’ll take Tim to show him the town while you go through the interview. Don’t worry about it too much, just be honest. Good luck.”

Rather stunned, Derek allowed Dinesh to shoo him off the platform and then watched the other man fly up and over the edge of Kharon with his son. It was only a few seconds later that he realized that aside from going through the fighting in the stadium together, he had literally given his son away to a stranger.

Red in the face, Derek had no choice but to try and calm himself and head up the ladder. Within was a low ceilinged passage with no doors, so Derek continued to walk forward despite his growing unease. Eventually, he arrived at a metal door and slowed down. Two people were standing in line in front of it.

One was a muscular man with a shaved head and the other was a petite woman with dark hair and grey eyes. The man frowned when he arrived but said nothing. The woman smiled and blew a kiss at Derek.

Derek’s Skills told him that both were dangerous, the woman more so than the man. With the atmosphere as tense as it was, he was content just to scan them and join them in waiting; neither seemed to want to converse with him. After a few minutes, the door opened and the muscular man walked through.

Around ten minutes later, the door opened again and the woman walked forward, stubbing her toe painfully on the door frame while she did so. Swearing quietly, she closed the door behind her and left Derek alone.

What the hell am I doing…? Derek wondered. He almost considered leaving and trying to find Dinesh, but the prospect of waiting in the regular line again to get into the city… and he would need to walk back to that location…

Plus those bastards are probably gossiping about us as we speak… Derek held his head in his hands and sighed sorrowfully.

Then the door opened again and a man beckoned him through. Rather stiffly, Derek followed. Inside was a young man sitting at a desk and another man leaning casually against the wall. Both were even more dangerous than the two people who had been waiting in front of Derek to enter the door. From a quick look, there appeared to be no other entrances or exits to the room.

But the real reason that Derek allowed himself glide mechanically forward and settle into the chair in front of the desk was that he recognized the man sitting behind the desk.

Naffur Suite looked forward and considered Derek with a serious expression. “So, why do you believe you would be an asset to the Order Ducis?”