Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Canyon

Before the whole party set out again the next morning, Roa intentionally went to speak with several of the players.
The night before, by relaying messages through players who had logged out, Roa had already reported the adventure to Leader Isse and sought instructions.
After getting her orders, Roa said Isse was deeply apologetic and that all the promised compensation would be fulfilled. As for Zhao Xu, she would compensate him with a magic item.
Isse had probably guessed from Roa’s description that Zhao was using a staff, and so she chose to give him a hard-to-value magical item. Zhao had no objection, except that Roa would likely become too cautious to ask him to draw out that money-spending staff again.

The smuggling caravan set off once more.

Youyou sat in the wagon, staring back at them, and murmured, “So that is what magic can do.”
The Poet Frog heard her and leaned forward too. In his direction, the mine shaft they had entered was gone as if erased from a map.
“But I hope one day I can do the same,” the Poet Frog muttered under his breath, though he knew all too well that, as a wandering bard, he was unlikely to ever reach that level.
He even felt a flicker of self-doubt: should he delete his account and level up all over again?
From their time in the dungeon, Zhao’s own spellcasting had been ordinary, yet the astonishing spell cast by Mage Leyn had shaken everyone to the core.

“That Leyn mage—what spell did he actually use to force-move us? It was brutally overbearing. If there had been a pitfall beside us, he could have pulled us all right into it and we would all be dead.” Rainbow the Wanderer complained.
He had only just signaled Zhao with the code phrase and the safe-arrival message when he was yanked away by Leyn.
The others, upon seeing the illusion, announced they were safe and then were carried away too.
Roa, for his part, was taken at the instant Zhao reached the endpoint, lungs burning and guard dropped.
The whole sequence had been orchestrated around Zhao. Roa even dropped a dagger, and his illusion dropped the dagger as well.
Even Roa’s initial outrage, and the fact that he was “gone” since then, had apparently been part of the same design—meant to keep him from saying too much and giving the trick away.

“That spell was likely Dimensional Drag. It can forcibly relocate a person. You all failed the will save, so you were pulled along. If you’d passed it, you would’ve seen the save result on your character sheets.” Zhao explained.
Leyn’s spellcasting was on a different level altogether, so their failure was no surprise.

“Zhongxia. This time we owe you one. If nothing else, come adventuring with us from now on.” Fengye invited him.
Zhao shook his head. “Once I’ve handed things over in Mistra, I have other tasks. I can’t go adventuring with you.”

He did not mention that he had to rush back to begin Archivist training immediately.
The others knew he still had something to deliver in Mistra, but they never expected it to be the whole reason for another task ahead.
Even Youyou, who could now officially apply for priestly adventuring after her promotion, was not usually tied down by obligations.

“It’s fine,” Youyou said with a smile. “We’ll be training in Mistra again later anyway. We’ll see each other.”
Rainbow laughed. “Then we might even get another look at Sky City. At the North Sky Merchant Alliance I’ve heard about this mysterious structure in South Capital. Zhongxia, do you know what it looks like?”
Zhao couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ll know when you get there.”

The floating city of Mistra is built as one main mass with several subsidiary sections, and Zhao had only ever stayed in the main one himself.

But his attention had already shifted to Fengye as he recalled what Leyn had said.
When Youyou once shouted out Dimo Gorgen’s name, Zhao had not taken it seriously at the time.
He understood all too well that demon lords like Dimo Gorgen are terrifying precisely because on the Abyssal Plane they are plane-born beings—the very children of that realm—and even some gods could not truly match them.
Yet when they descend into Arthur’s Prime Material World, even they have stories of being slain.
He had inferred that from Antinoiya’s tone.

Still, he had never imagined Dimo Gorgen might truly take an interest in Fengye, and to some extent because of that curse.
All the same, he could not have simply said aloud, “Old brother Fengye, to avoid any future demon harassment, it might be best if you just died and this was over.”
If he had, everyone in the wagon would have thought him a fool.

He paused, then asked quietly, “Fengye, how many resurrection stones do you still have?”
Any player who built a warrior account at launch and survived a year without exhausting all their revival stones usually sat around level four or five—a respected figure in the warrior crowd, and Zhao knew most fighter legends from hearsay.
For his own part, he didn’t even recognize the name Fengye. Perhaps Fengye’s warrior had not survived to the end in his previous run.

Fengye looked up, startled: “What? I’ve used them all.”

At his words, everyone in the wagon shifted uncomfortably.
Zhao hadn’t expected this either. The early death rate for warriors in launch months must have been outrageous.
Then he snapped out of it. A dead mage has to be re-rolled and recopied from scratch, unless he can recover a stolen spellbook.
A warrior, by contrast, only needs to show up at a training hall, pick up a weapon, and can graduate on the spot—after all, they’ve already learned the basics.
That is why even when a fighter archetype falls behind later, fresh warriors still flow in nonstop.
Some guilds even ran a “warrior wave” strategy: recruit fighters with fifteen talent points, finish first-level training in one day, then burn through five resurrection stones in combat; after the cooldown, make a new warrior account and do five more deaths.
The only loss was that the survivors had to strip armor and weapons from the fallen.

So after that answer, Zhao wasn’t truly worried.

By this method of adventuring, the chances that Fengye’s current account would last to a full year were about as high as Dimo Gorgen daring to descend again into the prime matter plane.
He decided that in half a year he would check whether Fengye had rerolled; as long as Youyou didn’t change faith this time, he would still be able to reach him.

“Adventurers,” the carter called from the front, poking his head in, “the canyon is just ahead. This stretch is the most dangerous. Why don’t you get off and go on foot?”
“Fine, we’ll do that,” Fengye nodded.

Given how easy it was to set ambushes on this stretch, staying in the wagon was far too passive.
Soon Zhao and the others dismounted, and Roa even invited them to move forward in parallel with him, effectively canceling their guard duty.

“Zach, give your warhorse to Mister Zhongxia,” Roa ordered, ignoring Fengye and Rainbow, who both stared as if they could not look away long enough.
Since tales of mounted charges had spread through the forums, many warrior players had been itching to try them, but a proper warhorse was ruinously expensive.
It was expensive enough that, even if you sold every piece of a warrior’s gear, you still couldn’t buy one fit for combat.

“No, thank you.” Zhao refused politely. He had never wanted to accept someone’s advantage at another’s expense for his own comfort.

He indulged himself in one flourish: spending a bare first-level spell slot, he cast Summon Mount using a rare precognition talent.
“Remarkable arcana,” Roa praised him at once, now a polished flatterer in his own right after much posting and practice.
Zhao paid him no mind and swung up anyway atop the summoned “light horse.” It wasn’t ideal for battle, but it was more than enough for the narrow canyon ahead.

After that little episode, Rainbow kept coming over every so often to pat the hindquarters of Zhao’s summoned mount.

“Stay alert. Increase your guards!” At the edge of the canyon Roa called out, sending several Wanderers ahead as scouts. For people from the underground factions, Wanderers were always useful.
“Wait—there’s someone there!” One scout shouted before even reaching the canyon mouth, blowing his whistle.

At once, heads rose from behind the stone mounds on the canyon slope. They had been lying in wait to intercept the party and, seeing that this was not their first step into the gorge, they chose to show themselves.
“Raid! Form a defensive formation!” Roa shouted as he gave orders.
Fengye and the others tightened their grips on their weapons and prepared to strike.
Zhao laughed under his breath, a genuine smile this time. Damn it—finally, an adventure even fit for their level.
He had been playing the fool long enough already.