It had been more than a week since the human and his cats left the mountain range. Walking through an endless sea of grass wasn't the most fun thing one could do, but they played games, chatted, and hunted to pass the time while they walked.
They counted the birds, and different kinds of grass, played word games, invented new games, and played them. When they grew tired of fooling around, they traveled in silence, or with the occasional conversation. When they grew bored of walking, they either stayed in place to train their mana a bit or went out to find prey.
They had a lot of food stored in Toz's pockets, but it's nice to switch it up with newer game sometimes.
Since Mindle had just been born, she wasn't as strong or skilled as the others. But with her strength approaching the second level, and lacking the proper way to use her firepower efficiently, she had set the grass on fire more than a couple of times.
Thankfully, Toz, who decided to stay close to Mindle, controlled the wildfires and put them out before they grew out of control.
Despite Mindle's natural advantage when controlling fire and her closeness to fire mana, Toz had more experience using magic and mana overall. His pure firepower might not be as destructive as Mindle's, but he had better control.
While Mindle was busy practicing her magic on live targets and the grass, Lucy found a tunnel system belonging to some kind of rat, covered in a layer of dust. They weren't that strong, barely strong enough to heat the dirt. The dried dirt was moved out of the way or applied to their fur like a protective coating. But Lucy continued bringing up an endless amount of them.
They were tiny and suitable for both fire magic practice and as something light to snack on when walking. Lucy kept bringing them up out of the ground, Nil peeled the dirt off some of them and Toz and Mindle worked together to cook the rats.
The ones with their coat of soil, still on when cooked had a softer more roasted kind of texture once the coating was removed, while the peeled rats had a crisp surface. Although they had a slightly earthy flavor Toz didn't have an infinite amount of spices and it would be a waste to use them on something so trivial so the four of them, mostly Toz since it was easy for him to eat while walking, at them without any extra flavoring.
Shortly after Lucy discovered the swarming rats underground, the four realized they had reached the other side of the sea of grass they had been crossing.
At first, the lush, green grass got shorter, sparser, and duller as if lacking nutrients and water. Then slowly, it began dying completely before the ground was cleared entirely of any plants, leaving only rocks and solid earth. The flourishing grassy plains had turned into a wasteland.
While it would be easier for the cats to walk beside Toz, it was an abrupt change in the environment, and it didn't seem to be because of a naturally occurring reason.
As Toz and his cats progressed further, Lucy still finding and picking up rats, they saw the ground change from flat plains to a more chaotic landscape. While it wouldn't be incorrect to say it was uneven, that didn't begin to describe it, as ravines, canyons, and hills, of all sizes spread out in front of them.
Some of the ravines looked like old dried-up rivers, others like the earth had just collapsed in on itself. With the ground not looking as solid as before, Toz asked Lucy to tone down the rat-hunting, down in their tunnels.
The rat hunting had lost its newness, and Lucy readily agreed. Instead, he wanted to explore the large scars on the ground. Toz wanted him to be careful with that, so after a short exchange, Nil agreed to follow Lucy. Safety in numbers and all that.
While Nil and Lucy were busy exploring their immediate surroundings, Toz and Mindle focused on finding a way to get past all the ravines in an efficient manner.
Most of the time, the ravines and furrows weren't too long and could be circumvented, but at other times they had to climb down and then crawl back up or jump over. When they had to jump Toz would either throw Mindle over first or let her ride along in the familiar space when he jumped over himself.
Nil and Lucy had no trouble keeping up with Toz as they moved around, down into the ravines, looking for something interesting. They didn't find a lot, almost nothing in fact. No weeds, no corpses, or signs of any other wildlife.
The four of them had unwittingly entered an area without an iota of life in it, except for the rats that Lucy still occasionally brought back to Toz.
Toz didn't know what to think about it, but he didn't sense any immediate danger, and his instincts had always been reliable. Aside from continuing to pass through the wasteland, the only other option was to turn back and find a way around it or take an entirely different route. Since they would have to agree on what direction to take if they decided to not continue straight ahead, it would be easier to just continue. Toz had his pockets full of water and food, and there are still rats to be found.
Eventually, as the quartet traversed the wasteland they encountered a ravine that dwarfed almost all the others they had seen. They could barely see to the other side, and it stretched past the horizon both on the left and right.
Their only option was to go down and cross it. Thankfully it wasn't too deep and the climb was easy.
When they were down in the ravine Toz noticed how it had become a perfect air funnel. At the bottom the wind was almost strong enough to lift Lucy off of his head.
The strong wind combined with various crevices and holes along the walls filled the ravine with a symphony of eery howls.
It might have been nothing more than a hallucination created by the howls, but Toz got a feeling they were being watched as they crossed the bottom. He kept a watch out for any suspicious movements but didn't see anything except for a lot of stone and soil. He saw gravel fall down the cliffs a few times, but that could have been the wind, not necessarily some lurking beast, eyeing them.
Mindle didn't have the same keen senses as the other three, but Lucy and Nil also felt uncomfortable. Aside from the howls they were also very exposed and in a vulnerable position. It was a great opportunity for an ambush.
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