The sight of Furora spread out across the plains with the setting sun lighting it up from behind was almost picturesque, and Asher enjoyed getting to see the city in such a way as Samantha slowly brought them down to the ground. The city was utterly massive, stretching from practically one end of the horizon to the next, and the fields not only surrounding the city, but going through the city, were just as large.

  From what he could tell, the city of Furora was almost like a giant, living checkerboard. There were large areas filled entirely with people and buildings, and then large, equal-sized areas adjacent to them filled to the brim with crops and farmland.

  During the flight, the last of his injuries had been healed up by Samantha’s Soothing Spring, and the wind passing over them had even done him the courtesy of drying him off. Serpent leather was also highly water resistant, which helped quite a lot.

  As soon as they touched down, Asher poked his head into his Personal Rift to tell Moxy they were there, before pulling her out. He’d had the thought during the flight over that after spending almost an entire day inside his rift, suddenly getting yanked back into the material realm would probably be more than a little jarring.

  “Thanks,” Moxy said, looking around and grunting as she took in the plains. “Not a lot to see out here, huh?”

  “We saw a herd of wild mogrants while we were flying over!” Samantha said, still excited from the surprise event about an hour back. “There had to be at least two or three dozen of them!”

  “Really? Which direction? I wonder how well I’d fare against taking on a mogrant in a fight,” Moxy muttered to herself.

  “Rulfar first, then you can go run off and fight the whole plains if you want,” Asher said, starting to walk toward the city. “Don’t forget, Furora is the largest city in the entire kingdom. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  “Do you think we’ll need to worry about the Finger stationed in this city?” Samantha asked, her fingers twitching toward her bow even as she had the thought. “What if the Head wants to try retaliating somehow?”

  “We have no way to know for sure, but I’m pretty sure we dealt the Head a much greater blow than you think. It’s probably going to take them some serious time to get all ten Knuckles up and running again. If anything, we might need to be prepared for Furora’s Assassin’s Guild to be more chaotic because the Knuckle who was here to keep an eye on their Finger suddenly vanished without warning.”

  “The Runt is right,” Moxy said, nodding as she spat to the side. “Assassins are a bloodthirsty, clueless lot. Most of them don’t have anything even remotely resembling any sort of code. There’s every chance their Finger is going to take advantage of this opportunity of a lack of oversight to go wild.”

  Asher subtly shifted his class from assassin back to librarian, glad not for the first time that Moxy couldn’t see what classes other people had. Granted, he knew he’d already earned her seal of approval just from surviving her hellish sparring for days on end, but he saw no reason to give her any additional incentive to hit him out of the blue.

  The three of them followed the road toward the city, falling in with the steady stream of people heading to and from Furora. Despite the late hour, traffic was still pretty dense, and Asher groaned as they walked.

  “Getting through the gate is going to take forever,” he said, glancing around to ensure nobody was paying them any particular attention. “…Thoughts on us just slipping in, instead?”

  “What if Furora has a similar system to Dormaul?” Samantha pointed out. “If we miss getting some sort of identification papers, we could be shooting ourselves in the foot down the line.”

  “I miss having Brant tell us everything we needed to know,” Asher sighed, settling in for the incredibly long wait.

  To his shock, there didn’t end up being a wait at all. Furora didn’t even have an outer wall, much less a guard checkpoint. All the travelers on the road flooded into the outskirts of the city without stopping, and Asher looked around, utterly bewildered as they were brought along for the ride.

  “Huh… That seems stupid,” Moxy said, looking around at the handful of covered wagons and people with large packs on their back. “People could be bringing anything into the city.”

  “I thought you’d be all for the ‘law-less’ angle here,” Samantha said, giving her a curious look.

  “What gave you that idea? I like order and rules,” Moxy said, raising her eyebrow at their dead stares. “What?”

  “You are literally the reigning champion in Vildelph’s illegal underground fighting ring,” Asher pointed out.

  “Yeah. I said I liked order and rules, not legality,” Moxy snorted. “The rings have a very clear case of rules. No hidden weapons, all poisons have to be declared ahead of time, and no forbidden elements other than Blood. Like I said, order.”

  Asher could only shake his head, turning to try and find an inn. As far as they’d been able to make out from up above, Furora wasn’t split into any sort of distinct rings or sections. He’d originally thought that the walls were just small enough that he missed them during the fly over, but if the city didn’t have an outer one, then it probably didn’t have any inner ones either.

  “Well… If the whole city is one giant section, I guess we’re good to grab any random inn we see,” he said.

  “Let’s look for one at least a good way into the city,” Moxy countered. “It’s late in the day, most of the ones out here that are even halfway decent are probably already full up. The stables might have better accommodations at this point.”

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  “Moxy…” Samantha began, clearing her throat. At this point, Samantha had grown comfortable enough to chat with the warrior, but she still hesitated when it came to correcting anything she said. “…we’re not actually going to be sleeping here. Asher is just looking for somewhere to act as a base of operations. As soon as he puts down a mark, we’re good to Recall back to the palace to sleep.”

  “Oh yeah,” Moxy said, blinking before letting out a sharp laugh. “Damn, I keep forgetting we can do that. You guys are some pretty great travel partners.”

  “We do what we can,” Asher grinned.

  They quickly realized Moxy was right about the inns closer to the edge of the city already being full. Even if they didn’t care too much about the room quality, they still preferred having an actual room to Recall in and out of and at least keep up pretenses that they were relatively normal people. Thankfully, it only took them another hour of wandering further into the sprawling city to find a tavern with a few rooms available.

  “It’s so weird seeing such a flat, sprawling city,” Asher muttered as they entered their room. The tavernkeep had given them a bit of a strange look when they’d only taken one room for all three of them, even after informing them the bed would be a tight squeeze for two, but hadn’t questioned them when Asher handed over the shards. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen any buildings larger than two stories since we got here.”

  “I guess when you have the land to basically build outward as much as you want, you don’t really need to worry about building up,” Samantha shrugged. “Though I wonder how they decide when it's time to tack on a new section of the city.”

  “I wonder how we’re going to find Rulfar in all this,” Moxy said, bringing their focus back to the matter at hand. “We’ve got a few hours before night actually hits, and finding Rulfar isn’t going to be easy. We might as well get started.”

  “Let’s start by trying to find out where people like seekers and bloodhounds actually hang out,” Asher decided. “Alternatively, maybe we should hit up a library? That would at least help us figure out the ins and outs of this city and make sure we don’t do anything dumb enough to get arrested.”

  “Wings and I can take care of seeking out seekers. You go play with the books,” Moxy decided, grabbing Samantha’s shoulder and tugging her toward her side of the room with a grin. “You’ve got your mark on her, so this way, we’re all functionally sticking together.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Asher said, nodding slowly as he looked at Samantha. “Does that work for you?”

  “I’m fine with it,” Samantha shrugged, holding up her sending stone. “Just call me if you learn something important. Like if we’re not allowed to be wandering around at night without a permit, or anything like that.”

  “Bah. I think if they have any rules like that, the guards are just asking for a fight,” Moxy said, steering Samantha out the door and muttering to herself all the while. “…Though I wonder how strong the guards are here…”

  Praying Moxy wouldn’t get the two of them into trouble, Asher began by removing the mark he still had in Talon’s now-empty penthouse in Vildelph and moving it to their room instead. As nice as the penthouse had been, he doubted it would remain empty forever just because Talon had died, so it wasn’t like he could treat it as a summer home. Removing the mark did mean they weren’t able to Recall back to Vildelph any more, but he didn’t really have any other choice. All of his Eternal Marks were in use, and he wasn’t about to get rid of the one he had on Brian or Samantha, which meant he had to pick and choose what cities they had easy access to.

  At the end of the day, if they desperately needed to get back to Vildelph for whatever reason, Samantha could fly them there from Whikoga in only a few hours.

  Once his mark was down, Asher used the second tier effect of Eternal Mark to check on what Rosh was doing. Once he’d confirmed the man wasn’t in the middle of shaving with a straight razor or practicing sword swallowing, he triggered Recall and teleported from one end of the Noala Kingdom to the other in an instant.

  At this point, Asher had figured out how to ensure where he ended up relative to his mark, so he made sure to pop into existence behind Rosh, rather than appearing immediately before him and giving the poor man a heart attack. Rosh was reading in his room before bed, snacking from a bowl filled with what looked like a mixture of popcorn and tiny chocolates. Other than the soft-looking rug that had been added to combat the chilly night floor, the tavern room looked pretty much the same as the last time he’d visited.

  Damn… Part of me is kinda jealous about the peaceful life Rosh lives.

  Having appeared behind Rosh and his desk, Asher did the polite thing. He was highly tempted to just reach over the man’s shoulder and help himself to some of the popcorn, but rather than scare Rosh half to death, Asher slipped into the astral and stepped outside. Turning around, he then knocked on the door.

  “Asher!” Rosh smiled as he opened the door a few moments later, before his entire body went rigid and his eyes wide the moment they landed on him. Taking a shaky breath, Rosh managed to snap himself out of his strange paralysis almost as quickly as it had hit him, and he cleared his throat and continued as if nothing had happened. “...It’s good to see you again! How have you been?”

  “Pretty good,” Asher said, chuckling as he wondered what Rosh’s reaction would have been if he’d shown up in the clothes he’d been wearing just a few hours ago. He’d already swapped out his stabbed and slashed up clothing for his second set, and dropped the damaged one off at the tailor in Poltar. He felt a little bad for the man who had sworn his serpent-leather outfits should last a lifetime without needing repair, seeing as it had barely been a few weeks and he’d already taken them in to be fixed up three times now.

  He was certainly getting his shards’ worth on the free-repair policy, that was sure.

  “I take it you picked up on the number of shards I’m carrying?” Asher asked, curious what his newfound millions of shards had to feel like to someone with a Shard element.

  “Yeah… yeah, I picked up on that,” Rosh said, clearing his throat again as he slowly shook his head. “And as curious as I am about precisely how you managed to get your hands on so many shards, honestly? I don’t think I want to know. Did you swing by for a social visit, or is Brian lying on the ground somewhere unconscious again?” Rosh asked, motioning for Asher to come in and sit down.

  “Half social visit, half trying to figure out if there are any rules we need to know for visiting Furora,” Asher admitted, deciding not to torment Rosh any further and let the topic of his newfound wealth go. “I could have just gone straight to the library, but it’s been a while, and I thought this was a good excuse to bother you with.”

  “You don’t need an excuse to come say hello,” Rosh scoffed, shaking his head as if the idea were ridiculous. “I said I don’t want any more part in gang life, or anything particularly dangerous like it. I didn’t say I didn’t want any part of you.”

  Asher couldn’t help but grin as Rosh grabbed his bowl and, after scooping up a handful for himself, offered it to him to snack on. It was nice to know that one of the very first friends he’d ever made in this world still cared about him, and Asher was glad Rosh had found a new life for himself he was happy with.

  “Anyway, you said you wanted to know about Furora?” Rosh asked, popping a piece of chocolate into his mouth and holding up a finger. “I know a good bit from a research article I wrote a few years back regarding how they handle their logistics when their storage is so spread out and decentralized. One of the most important things to know is how the different sectors handle transportation. You see, when dealing with the flow of goods…”

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