Chapter 250: Chapter 250 - We found it. Found what? Burger?
"What’s Yunhai?" Eden asked.
Lumi settled back and answered plainly, because it was a fair question and deserved a proper answer.
"There are three major landmasses," he began. "You know this much, presumably."
"Broadly." Eden nodded.
"Then I’ll be specific." Lumi continued. "We are currently on Mantel Island. The western continent. It’s home to Elenora, Cerleon, Shaden City, Comedy Bay, Macres, and more. Everything you’ve seen has been here.."
Eden nodded.
Lumi continued. "Then there’s Entei. The eastern continent. It’s bigger than Mantel by a decent amount, and home to the Winds of Darkness."
Following his explanation, Eden gestured. "And the third?"
"Osyrus." Lumi spoke, with more gravitas. "The largest landmass by an enormous margin. It spans roughly ten Mantel Islands in size, running in a great arc that nearly connects back on itself on the far side. It wraps around much of the known world."
Eden’s brows rose slightly. He has heard of Osyrus, of course. Some large foreign land. Nothing to do with him. He hadn’t quite appreciated the scale before.
"On the far eastern edge of Osyrus," Lumi continued, "is Yunhai. A respected country of scholars. The population there is almost entirely warriors, mages, and freestyle users."
"Freestyle... like pirates, right?"
"While those are the most common users of freestyle, it fits anyone who doesn’t fit cleanly into a single discipline," Lumi explained. "It’s a catch-all term for those who have developed their own path rather than following an established class. It’s very common on Yunhai as they like to mix brawn and magic."
Eden asked about the clear missing categories. "And bowmen? Thieves?"
Lumi shook his head. "Practically non-existent there. The culture doesn’t produce them. Spiritual energy is the dominant foundation for how combat and magic works in that region. It shapes everything, from how people train to how they fight to how they think about strength."
Eden absorbed that. Sol shifted on his arm, "Caw caw!"
Lumi turned to Sol with a smile. "I’m getting there, let me explain..."
He began his official explanation. "In Yunhai, there is a place called the Golden Hall. If you want to establish an independent military force, one that claims land, answers to no government, and operates under its own authority, the Golden Hall is where you go to register it officially."
He let that sit, then spoke directly. "I’m establishing a guild."
The room was quiet for a moment. Lena was nodding as though this were old news, because to her it was. Eden processed it steadily, connecting it to everything else he now knew about what Lumi was building and why.
What Eden didn’t know, and what Lumi couldn’t say aloud, was that the system itself only recognized the Golden Hall as the legitimate path for forming a player guild. It wasn’t an arbitrary cultural tradition.
That was the main reason he was bothering, otherwise, plenty of natives never bothered. Of course, when they got into trouble, they had little recourse.
From across the room came the quiet sound of Merath settling back into position having reappeared at some point during the explanation without anyone noticing him leave or return.
"Before you depart," Merath said, as though he had been present for the entire conversation, "I have finished your equipment."
Lumi looked over. "Thank you."
Of course Merath had finished it. He had also done theirs before anyone else’s. Why would he prioritize differently?
Merath produced the sets without any hurry. For Lumi, Lena, and Eden, he had crafted a full set each. Hat, top, bottom, cloak, and boots, all made from the materials of the demon Currway.
There was something about one item per person that he told the top 50...
It was funny. Of course Lumi wouldn’t follow that rule for himself. One item per person was for everyone else.
As for the equipment sets, they were not identical in strength. They couldn’t be. But what was identical across all three was the appearance.
It was a mix of blood red and void black, woven together in an intimidating fashion. The black mostly formed the outside of the equipment, while the lined the inner pieces.
Eden turned his set over in his hands, looking at it with the expression of someone recalibrating their mental image of themselves. "It looks..."
Lena tilted her head. "Evil?" She smiled. "Good."
Eden: "..."
Lucy watched from where she stood.
She said nothing, because there was nothing appropriate to say. But the internal accounting was already running. The demon Currway. There was more that she missed from the raid than just levels?
It must be. How could it only give levels? She knew that.
It didn’t make the watching any easier.
She exhaled through her nose and kept her expression neutral.
With the equipment distributed and the destination established, the shape of the departure became clear. Which was when the minor logistical reality of the situation made itself known.
Lumi’s aircraft seated three people at absolute best. Best being a generous interpretation of the word.
So they were not flying to Yunhai in Lumi’s aircraft.
They were, instead, buying tickets. Five of them, for the Intercontinental Slurrentous airship line, which ran the routes between the major landmasses reliably.
That said, they needed one additional ticket. XXL cargo class. To bring the smaller aircraft along, because leaving it behind was not preferable.
The ticketing process was brief and unremarkable. The Slurrentous docks handled this kind of volume daily. Passengers bought their passage, cargo was logged and loaded, and within a reasonable window the group was aboard and the vessel was in the air.
And then there was nothing to do but wait.
This was not, for Lumi and Lena, a particularly troubling situation. They had eight hours a day in Masteria, and unused time didn’t stack. It didn’t carry over. If they spent two of those hours on an airship doing nothing, those two hours were simply gone whether they used them or not. There was no cost to passing the time without urgency.
Which meant there was nothing pressing about the next stretch of hours at all.
Lena, apparently, had decided to use the time productively.
"Okay so," she started speaking in a tone of voice the others had grown used to. Lena had something very strange in mind. She turned to Lucy. "When you think about a cheeseburger, right, what do you think makes the difference? Like really. Is it the cheese? Because I think people underestimate the cheese. The wrong cheese ruins everything. But then again if the meat isn’t seasoned properly the cheese doesn’t even matter, you know? What do you think."
Lucy stared at her.
Lily, sitting a short distance away, also stared. He had been in the middle of a thought about something else entirely and had now lost it completely. He looked at Lumi briefly, then back at Lena, and then looked over to the side. With an ear open, of course, without visibly staring.
"And then seasonings," Lena continued, gesturing loosely. "Most people don’t think about the layering. You can’t just put salt on at the end and call it done. There’s a whole process. Do you cook?"
Lucy blinked. "I..." She looked at Lena. Then she looked down at herself, following some unclear internal logic.
Was she being called fat? She genuinely couldn’t tell. Her character model was not fat. She had checked. It’s not as if Lena had directly said anything about weight, and yet somehow the direction of it made her feel like it might be, which was somehow more disorienting than if it had been direct.
"Not really." Lucy said carefully.
Lena’s eyes lit up.
"Right? See, that’s what I mean!" She turned to Lumi cheerfully. "I know how to cook. I actually know how to do it properly. Not just the basics, but actually cook. And here we have Lucy, a perfectly capable woman, and she doesn’t cook."
She gestured back toward Lucy as if this proved something. "Other women just don’t have it. But me?" She pointed at herself. "I have it."
Lumi looked at her.
He had no idea what to say to that. Lena was very obviously being extremely rude to Lucy and he wasn’t sure why. He was certain she had a real point somewhere underneath it, he just wasn’t sure what the point was yet.
So he didn’t want to intervene, but there was one thing he knew he could do. He reached and a hand, and rubbed her right cheek. "Good girl~"
"ehe~" Lena perked up at that, and leaned into his hand, purring against it. Hidden from everyone’s view, she looked at him, and gestured with her eyes towards Lucy. She silently whispered something.
"..." Lumi finally understood.
He turned to Lucy, still petting Lena. "Sorry about her, don’t take it to heart. I’ll make it up to you later."
Lily, across the cabin, had arrived at a quiet realization of his own. He turned it over once, looked at Lucy’s expression, looked at Lena, and then looked away.
It was crude. He wouldn’t deny that. But it was effective. What an... interesting way to establish dynamics. It was almost juvenile. But it worked.
It just required Lena to not care about being liked by Lucy.
He glanced at Lena once more.
She clearly didn’t care at all.
