City of Everlight [2]

The capital of Humanity United Kingdom, Everlight. The current center of the world.

After walking for a few hours, Lucian and Rita finally reached their destination. It was almost noon.

"Wow… I-it's tall," Rita exclaimed seeing the towering wall ahead as they walked on a wider road along with other people. It was almost four hundred meters tall and made of grayish-black blocks of stone that were pilled up on top of one another.

These grayish-black stones were not common, Lucian remarked, and there was another layer made of metal in between the outer and inner face of the wall. The wall was also built while using some kind of special concrete, taking various elements into account, such as the thickness and how the stones were piled up on top of one another so that they would be extremely resistant to any kind of attack.

On top of that, there was a device next to the cannons, mostly a barrier generator. It looked like some humans knew what they were doing, Lucian thought.

"The-there are a lot of people. Wow… S-so that's how real canons look like?!" Rita turned her head left and right, her eyes full of excitement as she observed her surrounding. This was a completely new experience for her. " Th-these people have tails… What are these creatures?!"

After arriving in front of what looked like a gate, Lucian understood that there were various things they need to do before they could enter the actual city.

There were crowds of people lined in front of the huge stone gate. All of the were humans but some had different traits than normal humans, Lucian noticed.

Because of her family situation, she rarely had the chance to leave her house. That was why she was all smiling, almost like a small child, not noticing that she was talking out loud.

However, when she glanced at Lucian, he was completely calm. She felt a little bit embarrassed and controlled her excitement. She remembered his words, 'Observe, think, and learn…'

As Rita and Lucian approached the gate, they could hear people chattering in different and causing commotions.

They produced a lot of different noises, and Lucian wasn't fond of noises but he was completely unfazed.

Rita was also attracting a lot of attention, she was a true beauty after all, but also because such beauty was standing next to him who looked like a blind man.

Humans were humans, overflowing with jealousy, envy, and curiosity. From his point of view, most of the people in front of him were enveloped by a red aura.

As such, Lucian made sure to identify anyone that could potentially sneak attack him among the crowd, gauging their strength and their potential weakness, as well as how to deal with them if they were to cause him trouble.

While doing that, he also began extracting information by listening to what these people were saying.

"Are you saying that you plan to participate in that raid? Are you insane?" A man who was wearing a cheap piece of armor reacted strongly to his friend's words.

Almost everyone had seen that strange phenomenon and knew about that invitation of those who identified themselves as the Lords of the Abyss. No one could miss something that flashy and suspicious. Even Lucian who remained far from the civilization did.

"You are naïve if you think that the high-ranked adventurers will let you join them in the first place; you aren't even a hunter, let alone an adventurer. And venturing alone inside the Abyss is also suicide," The adventurer continued, adjusting his glasses with a finger, insinuating that his words were only logical.

"Yeah, it would be difficult for a rookie even if you have a relic." Another man who looked older than the two young adventurers jumped into the conversation. "You should gain more experience in real fights. Monsters out there are nothing compared to what's inside the Abyss. It's literal hell."

The man didn't intend to scare the two young men but his face turned grim as he said these words, as if he remembered something he didn't want to.

"A-and you never know what kind of power a relic would give you. You may be able to fly, but it could also turn you into a frog. There are also useless relics that would just shoot rainbows. Even for the greatest relic appraiser, the accuracy of their guess is only 30 percent." The young man wearing glasses added. "You better forget about it. You got to super lucky to obtain a high tied relic"

Listening, Lucian thought a little bit about the nature of relics. The relic itself could be anything. A random rock, a spoon, a chain, everything can be a relic, so it was hard to guess from the outer appearance of the object alone. But even after the activation of a relic, it a lot of time for some people to even find out what kind of ability the relic gave them.

A relic might give a person the ability might be related to gravity. But what aspect of it? Did it nullify the force of gravity? Or could they create a gravitational force from within their body? Or did it turn anything that the user touches into a source gravitational force? And how do they know that it was related to gravity in the first place? After all, only one authority was given to each user.

If the person wasn't intelligent enough or was unlucky, they might not find out about their power for the rest of their lives.

Only obvious effects like skin turning into steel like Dustin's could be noticed at the first activation so it didn't reflect on the intelligence of the user.

"Ah, youngsters," a rich merchant also jumped into the conversation. "Adventuring is very dangerous, I tell you. I pick up youngsters like you on this road often, but I never saw them again."

"Hmph!" Another person rebuked. "And who will protect humanity against these monsters if everyone freaks out and run away?"

Everyone had their reason for coming to this city, but most of them wanted to become adventurers and amass wealth, fame, and power. Rita's friends were the same, but not everyone was lucky enough to even return back alive from the Abyss.

Among all of the adventurers that ventured inside the Abyss, only 5 percent of them came back alive. However, humans still continued to challenge the Abyss.

Lucian wondered if they were courageous enough to challenge the unknown and discover new knowledge for the sake of progress and evolution, or if they were just stupid.

As if it was the right thing to do while waiting for their turn, the crowd continued to make noises in front of the gate.

Rita looked at some of them with a lonely smile on her face, as their conversation reminded her a little of her friends.

However, she decided to not look back for the time being. She made up her mind to only move forward.

"Please calm down. As I said, the tigers can't be allowed to roam freely around the city. If you can't abide by the city's rules, you are free to leave."

As Lucian and Rita approached further to the gate, they saw a group of women that stood up in particular because of their appearance and the giant tigers that were mounting, but also because of the fact that they were surrounded by the soldiers.

"What are you trying to say? We waited here for hours, and that's your answer?" One of the women held a battle axe in her hand and looked like she was ready to go on a massacre, glaring at the soldiers.

Behind her, a woman with scarlet hair looked down at the soldiers on top of a big white tiger. She looked like she wasn't in the least affected by what was happening and looked disinterested.

But she had a very imposing presence. There was this sort of invisible air of charisma lingering around her. Of course, Lucian and Rita recognized her but decided to say nothing.

That aside, from the look of it, Lucian concluded that this kind of situation was not rare. There were people that brought unidentified creatures with them lining there, but they seemed familiar with the rules and locked the beasts inside solid iron cages.

The problem was that these women were riding the dangerous-looking tigers and weren't even trying to restrain the beasts.

"What's the problem?" A knight wearing armor with a red cape arrived at the scene. The regular guards must have summoned him.

Swoosh! Without any warning, the scarlet-haired woman threw a pitch-black battle axe at the knight.

Clang! The knight parried the axe with his sword, directing its trajectory to the ground.

Most of the people present there didn't even see him draw his sword. It shows that he was stronger than the regular soldiers.

The crowd broke out in uproar after seeing what was happening, but the woman wasn't even fazed. She reached her hand towards the axe and it was attracted by an invisible force back to her hand.

"We walk," the woman said, coming down from the white tiger. All of the women who accompanied her bowed their heads and did the same.

After that, the tigers were taken away by soldiers and the women entered the gate.

Looking at them, Lucian was interested in the method these women used to tame the tigers.

so there were humans like that too, he thought.