Wilona's face twisted into focus as she eyed the map before her. She didn't know why, but it felt wrong—ah, this must be it; the lack of human settlements on the northern part of the hemisphere. And she meant lacked as in there's nothing there, just a blank part of the map.

  Should she ask about this? The fact that kingdoms and countries are marked at the epicenter of the continent is another thing that she's curious about, they went from east to west in a straight line, like some kind of wall that divided the north and south.

  "Are there humans in the north?" Wilona asks.

  "Not even animals are up there, doubt that anything normal manages to live on that side of the world." The old man scoffed. It wasn't just his words that warned Wilona, but his tone as well, the way he talked about it reminded her of how people treated Chernobyl back on Earth; dangerous, but normal enough that it didn't affect the day-to-day life of the common people.

  "I guess nothing then," Wilona muttered, so the north is dangerous, and everyone decided that they needed to throw bodies into it judging by how the kingdoms are placed horizontally across the map.

  Okay, so going near the north isn't a good idea. Noted.

  Wilona pressed her finger on the southern areas, next to a large gathering of shoals, wetlands, and rainforests. According to the map, this place is called Lower Reedham and from how she's been living in a swamp all this time, Wilona assumed that they must be here as well.

  "Where are we?" She asked the old man.

  "Here," after giving her an answer, he went back to eating his soup.

  "Right, thank you—" Wilona paused. Huh, she didn't really ask this guy his name, did she? She kinda just barged into his home and started acting like she owned the place, "by the way, what's your name?"

  "You finally decided to ask?" The old man chuckled, "Phocles."

  "Phookols?" Wilona held back a bit of laughter, that's some weird ass name! Now she's glad she didn't ask the first time, otherwise she wouldn't even reach the stage of entering this guy's home! She would have just been stuck outside laughing.

  "Phocles." The man corrected, emphasizing each word.

  "Yeah, Phocles, that's what I said." Wilona shrugged, this time she used a less playful tone as she repeated the name. "Anyway, your son is right here right?"

  Since there aren't any names for the villages around Lower Reedham, she decided to focus on the cities instead. These actually had labels, one of them is called Skarnov and she remembered Phocles saying his son studied here.

  "Children, but yes. They're there." The man nods, "the city is good in this time of year, I hear that with the lack of incursions, Skarnov has been enjoying a lot of gladiatorial battles these last few months."

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  "Uhuh..." Gladiators huh? She's only really even seen them in movies. "What's the place like right now?"

  "Last I heard the core at the heart of the city has been pumping out several thousand summons every day to fight the mass of people trying to make a name for themselves. Most die, but a few manage to win. Especially if they don't pick the deadlier fights,"

  Wait—Wilona frowned. That was a lot of information all at once, did she just hear that the city has a core? What the fuck even is that? And it can summon things that fight people? And these morons decide to bet their lives on it for what? Glory? Riches? Power? Are they fucking mad?!

  "Really?" Wilona steeled her resolve, she wanted to learn more about this world so that's what she's going to do. "Have you ever been to the arena before? I've only really heard of it myself, I was never interested in that type of thing, I mean, I can just study magic right?"

  "Not everyone can, so they stick to getting blessings from dungeons." Phocles shook his head, he sounded like he tried doing it in the past himself. "It's tempting, but ultimately not worth it, a lot of knights fall to the allure of being given more power than they have."

  "Can you tell me what's the arena like?" Wilona pushed, "is the core some kind of... Ball? I guess? What does it look like?"

  "That particular core looks like a giant gemstone," answered Phocles, the man was done with his soup now so all his attention is on the conversation. "It's surrounded by a giant pit with floors and walls made of stone, anyone who wants to fight has to be dropped into the pit and then left alone until they either win or die."

  "Sounds insane," Wilona nods, she's been friends with guys who played football before and honestly, this didn't sound all that different from what they did. When seen from a spectator's viewpoint at least.

  "The people who willingly risk their lives are often called that," Phocles chuckled and Wilona followed. She didn't get the joke though. "Anyway, my children are out there, hopefully they aren't stupid enough to get into gladiator fights and just stay on the sidelines. They can work as a scribe or something, that's much better."

  "Yeah, good point. If I ever have kids I'd probably like, make them into scribes too because it's easier or whatever." Wilona shrugs, having kids is not in her current goals though so her plans are only words for now.

  "Anyway, what's these other cities like?" Wilona pointed at the other areas under the kingdom of Nahlara, there's a neighboring kingdom too, both are part of a country called Fendrenia and are supposedly close allies. Too bad the other country is too far for her to fly there on her own.

  "Cielrous is the capital, it sits somewhere between Polaryne and Brashavn. The first one is a city that's reliant on Nimbustech, they have ships that fly with it too so they can transport goods much faster than the other cities." Phocles droned on, unaware that Wilona's expression changed when she heard Nimbustech. If he did notice it, he didn't seem to want to stop his explanation just to tell her what those are.

  "But more importantly, they have buildings in the skies. They use clouds to carry those things so it's safe to say that Polaryne is pretty rich, nimbuses aren't cheap."

  Right, so it was exactly as Wilona thought it was. They were using clouds to make buildings fly—ships too. There are flying ships in this world and they're in Polaryne. Wilona wondered how expensive one would be to buy, surely it's not that hard for her to own a flying ship right?

  "The city has two main areas; top and bottom. The top is where all the merchants and other nobles live while the bottom houses everyone else. I also heard that the ruling family is also at the bottom but not on the ground like everyone else, they live in a mansion floating above a giant lake, last I heard, they have gardens there."

  Wilona silently noted to make a floating house of her own.

  "Polaryne mainly specializes in trade and magic, they produce medical herbs and powerful mages." Phocles paused, giving himself time to breathe before talking about Brashavn. "Brashavn on the other hand is a city that's mainly underground, a lot of the workers there prefer to live in modified tunnels of dried out wells."

  "Seriously?" Wilona asked, she chuckled when Phocles nodded in confirmation. "Damn, that's kinda badass."

  "I don't know what that means but they live in wells because of the dangerous smoke produced by the factories across the city's territory." And... There it was. She knew it was too good to be true. "They're ruled over by a goblin who lives inside the mountain at the center of the city."

  "Is that also a dungeon?" Wilona asks, she's begun noticing a certain pattern on the designs of cities.

  "No, not anymore. The goblin killed it when she was assigned as the ruler, no one knows why. She didn't get any kind of punishment for it either so everyone assumed that it must have been another Stitch."

  "Uhuh," Wilona nodded even though she didn't know what that last one was about. Stitch. Weird ass name. "What about Rochelys? What's it like there?"

  "There? It's an ocean city, it's just like Polaryne. Most of the poor live on the edge of the beaches while the rich stay on a floating raft above the ocean, there's really nothing interesting about it other than the fact that it's out on the sea and specializes in seafood and potions."