The Abysmal Territory

[62]

“Ohh! I can see the river that you’re talking about, Saki,” Silica said.

“Wait, is that thing really a river?” Teiko asked.

“Yeah, I cannot see the other side of the river. It’s more like a sea for me, so this is not it or are we lost?” Akeiko asked.

“Nope, we’re not lost and yup, that’s the Great River of Mihiceo, being true to its name, its great width is very overwhelming that you can compare it to a lake,” Saki replied.

“It’s just me or that water in that river is rushing violently?” Akeiko asked.

“Yup! You’re not just seeing it, Akeiko-nee. It’s one feature of the Great River of Mihiceo,” Saki replied.

“Okay, here we are again to the things that you should have said before. We spent two months travelling from that Mist Forest up until here and you didn’t say a single thing about this river,” Teiko said.

“Well, you didn’t ask,” Saki replied.

“Of course I thought that the Great River of Mihiceo you’re talking about is just a normal river. Anyway, what are the other features you’re talking about if the way it flows is one of its features?” Teiko said.

“Dangerous monsters live in the water as we cross the bridge and also, we cannot just simply fly over the river,” Saki explained.

“That’s really something you should have told us sooner. So the reason we can’t fly over it is because of its great length that we would drain all of our mana before we could reach the other side?” Akeiko said.

“Any being would really drain all of their mana by flying through it, but the reason is not about its width but because of the atmosphere above the river. The atmosphere contains a dense amount of energy that makes the gravity in it to be fifty times greater than normal, so it’ll be too hard to move in the air. Well, you can fly to a certain height but the monster could still reach you so it’s still not considered as flying over the river,” Saki explained.

“Okay, so the first thing we should do is to find the bridge, right? Since I don’t think that swimming in this river is a good idea,” Teiko said.

“Yup, there many sturdy bridges here but what we wanted to cross is the silver bridge so we would just need to walk straight ahead so we can go to the Mountain of Viergovel,” Saki said.

“Okay, so we’ll just stay near the river bank and find that bridge, right?” Teiko asked.

“Yup! That's what we're going to do!” Saki said.

“Won’t the monster from the river attack us if we walk close to it?” Akeiko asked.

“Nope, they only attack the people that cross the bridge, they are not considering the river bank as their territory and we could still take a bath on that river, just make sure you wouldn’t step to the shallow part of the river, maybe we can use at least three meters from the river bank,” Saki replied.

“So how does the monster in the river eat?” Silica asked.

“Either they eat each other, wait for some animals to lose their way and end up in the river or feed to different creatures or beings that cross the bridges,” Saki replied.

“So as we close that river, we’ve become a candidate for their meal,” Akeiko said.

“I’m confident with our strength and if Saki could do her job properly, we will be able to know a lot of information about monsters that live there,” Teiko said.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know much about them. They couldn’t see me so they wouldn’t just attack me, right? And since I’ve only passed this river once, I didn’t really need to know many things about the monsters that live here,” Saki explained.

“So as usual, we should learn about our enemies ourselves,” Teiko said.

“That’s normally how a party does, right? So we cannot blame Saki on this,” Akeiko said.

“This is an adventure after all, it wouldn’t be enjoyable if we do things perfectly,” Silica added.

“You guys got a point, so let’s just proceed on finding the bridge, I just hope that we’re on the right direction or else we need to go all the way back here,” Teiko said.

“So what would be it, would we go north or we go south?” Akeiko asked.

“You got detection magic, right, Saki?” Teiko asked.

“Yup, but I couldn’t the detect the bridge so it’s not that close to us, we really need to explore and hope that the direction we chose is correct,” Saki said.

“Okay, so let’s pick on what direction we will take, everyone points to what direction you wanted to go in a count of three, 1, 2, 3!” Teiko said.

Everyone points to the north.

“At least we’re not going to regret not choosing another, let’s continue our journey!” Teiko declared.

They walked for several hours and couldn’t find a single bridge on their way.

“Hey, Saki. Do you know how much distance we should travel before turning back and starting going back?” Teiko asked.

“Nope!” Saki replied.

“Okay, it’s still fine, we have been traveling for many months already so doing this would just be normal for us. Maybe we could spend five days then we let ourselves ride the flow of the water so we could go to the south faster,” Teiko said.

“That’s an extreme idea, we need a very sturdy boat and we also need to fight the monster of the great river if we do something like that,” Akeiko said.

“I’m just kidding, why not go fishing while we are at the river bank?” Teiko said.

“We’re gonna eat freshwater monster fish? Is that what you want?” Silica asked.