Chapter 473 - The Land of the Listlessly Lethargic V

  The so-called forbidden nd was the sort of location described a thousand ways by a thousand bards. They named it as the city that flew above the heavens, the nation mirrored across the ocean’s floor, and the pce where the grass was always greener. But at the same time, it was recounted as the hellscape where no life would dare to blossom, the abyss of infinite oblivion, and the cauldron from which the living dead bubbled. So common were the myriad, conflicting interpretations that few among the masses believed it existed at all.

  Still, its name was eternally repeated. Famed and upcoming artists alike used it as a means to exhibit their creativity. They painted, wrote, and sang, twisting their brushes and words in turn to imagine the pce where none were allowed to tread.

  But wild as their fantasies were, few had ever succeeded in capturing its essence. For the scene that y before them ventured in the exact opposite direction. After all, Elysium, the forbidden nd whose nature and location remained forever unknown, was an ordinary vilge that would never have dreamed of standing out.

  Surrounding the farmhouses scattered throughout were a series of golden fields. Their ears swaying gently in the wind, the wheat stalks were primed for harvest. And in fact, many of the vilgers were in the middle of doing just that. Scythes in hand, they slowly hacked away at their crops. If there was one phenomenon to note, it was the explicit ck of groups. In an ordinary vilge, families would have worked on their fields together. But in Elysium, there were no couples, children, or elderly dependents. Only single farmers working the day away.

  The bourers in question clearly noticed when the barriers were broken. Some raised their heads, while others briefly perked up but soon returned to their business. The only one whose reaction differed, a metal rat-man with a morningstar for a tail and half his body made of metal, cursed aloud, dropped his scythe and approached the group, his lips a scowl all the while.

  “What do you want?” His words were inorganic, but not strictly mechanical. They closely resembled the groans and rumbles in which stone golems made their voices heard.

  “Hi!” Sylvia greeted the man with a smile as she jumped from her seat atop Cire’s head. “Is this Elysium?”

  The man narrowed his eyes and groaned under his breath. “No. Now go away. And put the barrier back while you’re at it.”

  “I kinda don’t really think we could, even if we wanted to,” said Sylvia.

  “We do apologize for trespassing.” Arciel, who had almost immediately recovered from the barrier’s sudden dismissal, approached with as calm a smile as she could manage. “I am Arciel Vel’khan, the aspect of stolen light and the que—”

  “Don’t bother. I know who you are.”

  “You do?” asked the squid, her brow raised.

  “He was one of the gardeners running around while Griselda was in the castle,” said Cire. “The harpy over there,” she pointed to the field to their left, “was one of the maids, and the grug in the field behind hers was in charge of arranging the tables.”

  The pointed observations led the supposed gardener to click his tongue. “What do you want?”

  Arciel opened her mouth, but Cire stopped her with a tap of the tail.

  “Why are you here?” asked the snake-moose.

  “We live here,” he said. “Now buzz off.”

  “You live here in a tiny farming vilge?” She narrowed her eyes. “Even though you’re all celestials?” Cire’s usual instinct was warning her that they wouldn’t be easy to kill, and querying the system had confirmed their levels. All of them sat around five to six thousand, with the strongest one she could find a little over halfway to seven.

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” The half-metal rat thumped his spiked tail against the ground as he snarled.

  “Let me expin.” The harpy flew over and greeted the party with an obviously forced smile. “This is where we’ve all run away.”

  Cire tilted her head.

  “Any celestial who lives among mortals is going to be bombarded by pleas for aid,” she expined. “It only takes so long to grow sick of it.”

  Cire slightly increased the angle of her tilt. “Just kill them and be done with it.”

  The harpy, whose feathers were coloured like an eagle, smiled wryly as she folded in all six of her wings. “We aren’t all like you, Cire Augustus.”

  “Then change.”

  The celestial pursed her lips. “I don’t know what you’re here for, but all you’ll find here is a group of tired old souls who just want to live out their days in peace. We would be gd to host you for a while, but we have two conditions.”

  “Let’s hear them,” said Cire.

  “The first is that you help us with our farmwork, no skills or magic allowed. You’ll have to work at least three hours today, and six on every day you stay.”

  “I suppose I find the request within reason,” said Arciel. “What would be the second condition?”

  “You agree to being removed, by force if necessary, the moment you ask any of us for anything.” said the bird.

  “What if I’m looking for a fight?” asked Cire.

  “Cire! What are you doing?” whispered Sylvia. “Didn’t she literally just say that you weren’t supposed to ask for stuff!?”

  “If they try to remove me, I get my fight either way,” she whispered back. “And she meant that she didn’t want us asking for anything along the lines of divine assistance. Fighting doesn’t count.”

  The harpy ughed awkwardly. “That isn’t exactly wrong, but most of us are done with fighting. You might be able to convince some of the old fools in town to the occasional spar, but I doubt anyone would accept a deathmatch.”

  “That’s fine,” said Cire. “A spar is better than nothing.”

  “Really, Anvi?” grumbled the rat. “That was the perfect excuse for you to give them the boot.”

  “If they haven’t asked Aurora for anything, I doubt there’s much they’d want from us.”

  “I can assure you that none of my companions shall be permitted to make any requests for divine aid,” said Arciel. “I shall personally evict any who dare to break the rule.”

  “See?” said the harpy. “It’s fine. We could really do with the extra hands.”

  The rat-man sighed. “Fine, but I’m not having any part in this. You’re in charge of handling them.”

  He spun around and started walking away before the harpy could raise her voice in protest. He shamelessly started to whistle as he got back to work, starting in the middle of a song to make it seem like he was as busy as possible.

  The harpy didn’t seem too happy with the development, but shaking her head, she reluctantly craned her neck back towards their guests whilst ruffling her feathers. “Alright, round up your friends and let’s go.” Her tail twitched as she made her way deeper into the vilge. She grumbled as she passed the fields, compints about the others on her lips all the while.

  “Now, I do believe that it would be in our best interest to collect ourselves,” said Arciel. She returned to the others. Lana had taken a few curious steps forward and started inspecting the wheat, and Chloe had taken a few tentative steps, but the others were still exactly where she left them. “Quickly, before they lose more patience than they already have.”

  “Yeah, I dunno about this one, dy,” said Jules. “They wanted our asses out. We’re probably better off turning around and going the other way. We literally just broke into their goddamn vilge.”

  Krail stroked his beardless chin. “I don’t think they mind nearly as much as they let on. The harpy, at least, even seemed a little hopeful. Granted, it seemed like she was more interested in the prospect of free bour than she was in any of us.”

  “They seem to be talking about a welcoming party as well,” said Allegra, her ears raised overhead.

  “Guess the one guy’s just an asshole then,” said Jules.

  “Are we sure this is a good idea? This pce is supposed to be forbidden, isn’t it?” asked Chloe.

  “It’s probably not as forbidden as people have made it out to be, seeing as how they’ve simply welcomed us in. This reminds me of the time my old party and I got wasted with a group of horizontally-gifted but vertically-challenged gobli—”

  “Not now, Krail,” said Jules. “Anyway, I’m on Chloe’s side. This whole thing seems like a gods-awful idea, and I dunno how it even pys into our shit. The whole reason we’re up here in the first pce is to get our asses trained, yeah? Partying’s just gonna waste our fucking time.”

  “Maybe, but it’s hard to pass up the chance to study a pce as legendary as Elysium. At the very least, I’d like to stay a few years so I can compile a series of reports,” said Allegra.

  “Motherfucker. Did you just say a few years?”

  Arciel stepped between the rabbit and the cm. “Jules, I understand your reluctance. However, I must raise the point that, if Cire’s judgement is correct, then we face the opportunity to be trained by a group of celestials. It would be an invaluable opportunity.”

  “Dunno. Seems like a pretty big if.”

  “They didn’t really seem that strong,” added Chloe.

  “That’s just ‘cause they’re not trying to look strong. I’m pretty sure the bird dy has like a hundred times my mana,” said Sylvia.

  “They’re celestials,” affirmed Cire. “All of them.”

  “It really begs the question of how there are so many unknown celestials in the first pce,” said Allegra. “We don’t exactly have any examples to look at, but the scriptures state that it isn’t possible for an aspect to ascend much further without ample divinity and the ability to use it. You would think that they would be much better known.”

  “We need only ask them,” said Arciel. “Now let us be off.”

  Jules clicked his tongue. “Well, can’t say I didn’t expect this bullshit, but it looks like my opinion doesn’t mean jack.”

  “I do believe that enough of our members have cast our ballots in the opposite box to ascertain a majority.”

  The cm was still hesitant, but seeing that all the others had already started down the main road, he shook his head in defeat and set out after the harpy.

  Walking through the settlement did little but confirm the extent of its normalcy. Most of the farmers grew high-yield crops. Tomatoes, beans, and all sorts of squash littered all of the pces where wheat was nonpresent. They had fruit trees and small domestic animals to go along with their rger operations, with only a few eccentrics focused on meat production.

  Those who raised beasts primarily chose livestock that affirmed their partially divine status, for it was from the Langgbjerns that they had domesticated their companions. One-legged dogs guarded fields full of grazing, miniaturized muscle-fish while bird-faced cats swooped in from above and caught the tiny many-armed turtles that pgued the fields. One particurly ambitious farmer had a swarm of honking fmingos, each of which bore a colr to suppress its magic.

  A systemic query confirmed that the domesticated monsters were just as powerful as they were in the wild. And yet, they were perfectly obedient. The fmingos even stood in line so that they could have their feet milked—the liquid in question was coloured in just the right way for one to imagine the taste of strawberries—and their beaks polished.

  The harpy named Anvi didn’t say much as she escorted the mortals into the vilge’s square. Just like everything else, it was perfectly ordinary. The ck of visitors had left the settlement without any inns, but there was a small outdoor tavern next to the smithie and the butcher. All three shops doubled as the homes of their owners, a distinction made clear by the structure of their upper levels. The final ndmark was a church. Though the rgest building in town, not even it was truly single purpose. The door carried two symbols, one belonging to the goddess of the frozen wilds, and the other the goddess of order.

  Venturing through the vilge had also revealed that not everyone was working. Some of the residents were sitting around drinking themselves silly while others bartered and argued over the resulting payout. The only individual engaged in any sort of active leisure, the stag beetle who sat on the bar’s far end, was strumming at a guitar and putting random notes together. One had to wonder if he was simply devoid of skill, or if the smoke drifting from the pipe at his lips was at fault. Its iridescence was impossible to overlook; the noxious green fumes shone with all the light of a forlorn star.

  Though he was offensively bad, they had little choice but to listen to his inebriated howling. The individual that Anvi approached was seated right beside him. She was just as intoxicated as all the other drunks present, but so too was she among the most productive, for unlike her half-conscious peers, she was actually working.

  The thin gecko dy had a needle in hand and a half-made dress sitting in her p. She worked on it between swigs from a mug whose contents never quite seemed to drain.

  She eyed the party suspiciously as it approached and grabbed her things when she realized that they were headed straight for her. She tried to leave right away, but Anvi grabbed her by the shoulder before she could.

  “What?” she croaked.

  “I was just looking for you,” said Anvi.

  “I’m busy.”

  “I know you are,” said the harpy, with a sigh, “but we’ve got some guests, and I’d like you to help me entertain them while I go looking for Aleksej.”

  “Guests?” The gecko scrunched up her face and looked over the bird dy’s shoulder. “Why the hell do we have guests?”

  “I think we’re looking to get some training done!” said Sylvia.

  The gecko cocked a brow. “Wait, you want me to train them? Absolutely not!”

  She immediately started backing away, but the harpy got out in front of her. “Wait, hear me out. I’m not going to ask you to train them. I just wanted you to keep them busy for a few minutes while I went off to grab Aleksej.”

  “That’s just as bad.”

  “Mira, please. It’ll just be a few minutes.”

  Mira hesitated for a few seconds before returning to her seat and colpsing into a pile. “Alright. If it’s just a few minutes.”

  “Thank you,” said the harpy. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She leapt into the sky with a fp of the wings and headed straight north. Despite her cim, her speed was leisurely at best, only a little bit faster than walking.

  The gecko she left behind breathed a sigh as she leaned on the open bar’s counter. She looked briefly at her knitting project before setting it down, taking another swig, and turning her eyes on the so-called guests.

  “So you’re here for training?”

  She sized them all up as she scanned their lines, the frown on her face only deepening as she did. “Don’t see why you’d come up here of all pces. The monsters near Aurora’s pace are stronger than the ones that live this far up north, and it’s not like we have much to teach you.”

  “I needed someone to spar,” said Cire.

  “Spar with your buddies.”

  “Someone I don’t mind accidentally killing.”

  The demigod spent a few seconds blinking before slowly turning away. “Anyway, her being a total psycho aside, the rest of you have no reason to be here. You, shadow mage… actually, wait.” She pulled up a few boxes and cross referenced them with the individuals in question. “Arciel, that was your name. Arciel, your spells might seem somewhat efficient, but your control over your magic is awful. Jules, you take too many shortcuts. Allegra, you think too much and have horrible instincts. Lana, stop holding your points and throw them into agility. There’s no reason for you to have almost a hundred thousand on hand.”

  So on and so forth, she listed their weaknesses and watched over the brigade as they shifted to a practical exercise. She even demonstrated some of the improvements herself, and identified the precise nature of their errors. It was only roughly thirty minutes ter that she realised that Anvi had lied about fetching Aleksej, and that she had been left with the job, but by then, she was too invested to abandon her post.