Chapter 251: Chapter 251 - Yunhai!
The airship hummed steadily beneath them. Due to being an international flight, the airship was significantly larger and stabler, such that even the slight instability an airship normally had was almost entirely gone. There was nothing to do but sit, and after the weight of everything discussed back in Elenora’s library, sitting with nothing to do felt almost foreign.
Lily was the one who broke the quiet first, directing his question toward Eden with careful politeness. After all, he was new to this group and dynamic. He was still learning how to interact with them.
He turned to Eden. "Excuse me, Eden, right? Apologies, I don’t know your last name, Senior. Mind if I ask you a question?"
Eden blinked. Senior? But he wasn’t old. He opened his mouth to respond, then stopped. He didn’t want to look like a fool by asking what Lily meant.
So what did Lily mean?
Because he, Eden, was part of this group first, he was considered Lily’s Senior? Apparently? Maybe?
He supposed that was it.
Eden nodded. "Of course you may. As for my last name, it is Driver. That said, just call me Eden."
"Understood." Lily nodded, then asked. "You’ve been traveling with Lumi for a while now, what is it actually like?"
Eden considered that for a moment, glancing over at Lumi, who was not paying them any particular attention. "Surprising," he said. "Constantly. You think you understand the scope of what’s going on, but in truth, we’re all smaller than what we think. Lumi has shown us the way."
Lily blinked. He didn’t expect such an answer. "Is that reassuring or unsettling?"
"Both." Eden said it simply, like it wasn’t a complicated answer. "You get used to it."
Lily absorbed that and nodded, filing it away. "Could I ask about... you’re Phoenix?" Lily continued, looking at the phoenix on Eden’s arm with curiosity.
"This is Sol." Eden responded. He perked up, sitting straighter. He looked at Sol pridefully. "Sol Invictus Caelestum. The Unconquered Sun of the Heavens!"
Sol turned to look at Lily with bright, burning eyes. "CAW!" Sol spread its wings out, the fire flaring. Lily held the look for a moment, then offered a small nod, which Sol received with pride.
"He’s judging you," Lena said cheerfully from where she was sitting against Lumi’s shoulder. "Don’t worry, he does it to everyone."
Lily turned his head immediately. "He does?"
Lena smirked. "Everyone judges everyone. Sol is no different. You passed, by the way."
"Alright." Lily was starting to get confused. "What would failing look like?"
"I don’t know," Lena said. "We haven’t seen it yet."
The conversation drifted from there, moving through lighter territory. Lily asked questions diligently, careful not to overstep but clearly building a picture of what he had walked into.
Eden answered what he could. Lena answered everything else with varying degrees of usefulness.
At some point, Lucy began to contribute occasionally, brief and direct when she did, which turned out to fit the rhythm of the group well enough that it stopped feeling like she was on the outside of it.
By the time the conversation began to slow on its own, Lumi leaned back and decided it was a reasonable time to check his stats. He hadn’t done so in a long time. It wasn’t too important given the situation, but he felt there was no harm in checking. He pulled them up quietly.
The first thing he noticed was that there were many more categories compared to before. It made sense, as the system only displayed "stats" you had. It wouldn’t show empty categories.
[HP - 2030]
[MP - 8709]
[Int - 998]
[Str - 75]
[Dex - 75]
[Magic Attack +163]
[Defense: 2075]
[Elemental Resistance +80]
[Abnormal Status Resistance +40]
[Defence Pierce +55%]
[Ignore Elemental Resistance: +10%]
He nodded silently at his own stats. If anything, it served as a comparison between him and other players. Needless to say, he was ahead by miles.
With nothing more to do and time running out for them, they logged out.
...
The next day, they were back.
The ship had landed while they were gone. That was the practical advantage of traveling by commercial airship rather than handling the journey personally. The distance covered itself while they were elsewhere, and they returned to find Yunhai waiting for them.
They gathered their things and stepped off.
The first thing that struck was the air. It had a different quality to it. To Lumi, it was already expected. However, to everyone else, it was their very first time experiencing it.
It had a strange quality that didn’t quite translate into simple description. It was clean and dense at the same time, like it had more in it than the air in Mantel Island. The sky above was a particular shade, deep and clear, and through it came light that fell differently on the architecture below.
Yunhai City spread out before them in layered tiers, built along the natural rise and fall of the land.
The buildings mostly had curved rooflines sweeping upward at their ends, with dark wood and pale stone. They had grandiose archways and passageways that marked major roads or entrances.
And it looked old.
Not in ruins nor needing repair, but it was obvious that most of the architecture had been built long ago, and thus far there has been little need to change.
Looking at the streets below, it was immediately obvious that the people carried themselves differently. They walked with a particular bearing here, not just the guards and adventurers, but even the ordinary civilians.
There was an uprightness to them, a sense of pride to them, which was visibly obvious not just in their posture, but in what they wore.
And even across the rooftops, occasionally, there were people leaping across. No one stopped them, signalling that, somehow, was acceptable behavior here.
Eden was looking at all of it with the knitted brows. "I’m unused to..." He paused, looking some more. He couldn’t quite find the right words for what he was looking for.
Finally, he decided on a more generic statement. "It looks like everyone here is strong."
"Not everyone," Lumi replied. "But the average here is higher than anywhere we’ve been. Yunhai doesn’t produce many weak people. The culture doesn’t allow for it."
"Bowmen and thieves really aren’t here," Lucy said, not quite to anyone, her eyes tracking across the crowd below. She had been told this before, but now she was confirming it with her own eyes.
"There may be a few," Lumi said, "but they don’t thrive here. The culture rewards a certain kind of strength, and if your path doesn’t fit that, Yunhai is simply not the place for you."
Lucy said nothing further, but the look on her face suggested she was filing that away alongside several other things.
Lily was quiet beside them, taking it in. He wasn’t gawking, but his eyes were moving steadily, reading the city the way he read most things, with patient, methodical attention. "The air..." he said after a moment. "I can feel it, even standing here. It’s different from home."
"It’s denser," Lumi confirmed. "Yunhai sits on a concentration of what they call spiritual energy from the earth. Well, that would be elevated concentrations of loose life energy. It’s part of why the people here develop the way they do."
Lily nodded slowly, his expression settling.
They made their way down through the port district toward the ferry line. They ignored the stalls selling food and small goods along the edges, even though Lena had been staring at them really hard.
The ferry terminal sat at the end of a broad descending road that opened up into a wide dock area. Several berths ran along the waterfront, each one marked with painted boards indicating routes and departure times. The route to the Golden Hall was the third berth from the left.
Lumi led the group to the ticketing booth. It was staffed by a man somewhere in his middle years, broad-shouldered, with an open posture, taking up unnecessary space. He looked at the group as they approached with a small smirk.
"Foreign visitors," he said. It wasn’t a question.
"Five tickets to the Golden Hall." Lumi said, passing the necessary amount of Ems.
The man looked them over once, unhurried. His gaze moved across Lumi, across Eden and Lily, across Lucy, and then landed on Lena.
Lena gave him a slow smile. The man blinked, looking at her for a moment with an expression that wasn’t quite confusion but was adjacent to it.
He returned his attention to Lumi. "First time in Yunhai?"
"No." Lumi responded, shaking his head. It was technically not a lie. He had been in Yunhai... in his past life.
That seemed to mildly recalibrate something in the man’s mind, though not dramatically. He produced five tickets from the drawer beside him and set them on the counter. "Ferry departs in twenty minutes. Third berth. You’ll want to keep your belongings close, the lower deck gets crowded with cargo transfers midway through."
