The city arrived.

The carriage stopped at the outer gate of Vespera.

Sebastian handled the storage before anyone asked, which was how he handled most things, and fell into step three paces behind as we passed through the gate on foot.

I had read about Vespera in the novel. Built a picture from the description.

The streets were wide enough for three carriages side by side, paved in dark stone fitted with a precision that went beyond what hands alone should have managed.The buildings on either side ran three and four stories high...

The upper floors overhung the lower ones slightly in the style of older construction, creating a continuous partial shade along both sides of the street that people used without thinking about it.

Guild halls marked every third or fourth block, their boards dense with symbols and ranking marks and announcements that had been posted and reposted.

The market quarter arrived.

The street widened and the stalls began. The smell of grilled food hit first, followed by rows of cloth vendors behind crowded stalls. Buyers moving between them with the focused distraction of people.

Lina had her hand in my sleeve and was looking at everything.

The way she looked at things she wanted to keep moving from the stall boards to the food.

A woman selling something wrapped in dark leaves. Two men arguing cheerfully over a bolt of cloth neither of them was going to buy.

"Do you want something."

She looked at the nearest stall.

"I do not have money."

"Huh, I will buy it, tell me what you want."

I bought two of whatever the stall was selling without checking the price and handed one to her. She looked at it.

She was deciding whether to accept it or not then accepted it.

We kept walking.

She ate in small pieces, still watching everything around her.

The market quarter gave way to a residential section where the streets narrowed slightly and the buildings changed character.. A cat on a doorstep that had decided the doorstep was its and was not interested in negotiating the point.

Then a church.

That had been building around them for centuries, the city having grown up to its walls on all sides, the church simply remaining.

Lina looked at it as we passed.

"I came here once. Before the forest. I do not remember why."

"Do you want to go in."

She looked at the entrance.

"Not today."

We kept walking.

"Is it strange," she said. "That I am nervous."

"No."

"You are not nervous."

"I am nervous about different things."

She looked at me.

I looked at the avenue ahead.

***

The system flickered.

[NEW QUEST.]

[Do something entertaining or kill someone..]

[Reward: 800 PS.]

[Failure condition:.....]

[Penalty: Death of someone]

I read it twice.

Then I looked at Sebastian.

"I need two masks before the guild hall. Plain and Anonymous."

"I will have them ready,"

****

The mana station was on the eastern edge of the city where the streets widened enough to accommodate what a station required.

I knew about the magic train. The novel had mentioned the infrastructure, the mana drive system, the route between the major cities.Standing in front of one was different from understanding it.

It was longer than the description had prepared me for. The surface was dark and worked beyond what metal usually looked like. The mana cores along the sides running in a line from front to back with a pulse that was not quite regular.

Lina stopped beside me.

"It breathes."

"Mana circulation system. The cores cycle."

"It looks like breathing."

I looked at it for another moment.

"Yes," I said. "It does."

Sebastian had already handled the tickets.

The station announcement echoed through the platform as the train began to move."

Ah. Even fantasy worlds could not escape station announcements.

One moment the platform was there. The next it was moving past the window. Then the station. Then the city... and the speed at which Vespera moved past the window was not the speed of anything I had experienced in this world.

Then the train rose.

Gradually, the track curved upward on its columns until the city was below us rather than beside us. The rooftops visible, the streets reduced to lines between buildings, the market quarter we had walked through an hour ago visible as a dense patch of color and movement in the middle of the commercial district.

Lina pressed both hands against the glass.

"It flies."

"Above the city, yes."

"You knew about this."

"I knew it existed."

"But not that it flew over the city."

"Not that part."

She looked back out the window.

From up here Vespera made a different kind of sense. The grid of the old district giving way to the wider planned streets of the newer quarters. The guild halls clustered in the commercial center. The church we had passed was visible as a dark patch of old stone in the middle of buildings that had grown up around it on all sides. The rail line visible from above as a thread running through all of it.

"It is very beautiful from up here," Lina said.

I looked out the window too.

Vespera from above, the afternoon light moving across it, the shadows of the clouds tracking slowly over the rooftops.

"Yes,. It is."

***

[STATUS WINDOW]

Name: Kael Ardyn

Title: Young Duke of House Ardyn

Level: 9

Class: [NONE]

Stat Grade

Strength: C

Dexterity: C

Agility: C+

Endurance: C

Magic: C+

Active Abilities: Fireball / Wind Blade / Basic Mana Pulse / Hell’s Fire / Vector Authority / Aether Step / Gale Vortex / Crushing Gravity / Remis

Blood Arts: Sanguine Pulse / Crimson Veil

Passive Abilities: Infinity Mana Breathing (Mastered) / Pain Resistance / All Elements Affinity

Traits: Mana Veins (Active)

Aspects: Ether Authority / Villain Halo (Mastered) 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Divine Skills: [LOCKED Pending mission completion]

Mana Heart: Silver → High Tier

[Title Effect: Young Duke]

[GIFT SECTION]

Gifts received from divine investors and higher beings.

Source Gift Status

— —

[Current Gifts: 0]

[Note: Divine gifts are awarded at the discretion of the investing entity. They cannot be requested.]

[POWER STONES: 2847]