After a few days of walking, we eventually stumbled upon the road Sarjay was talking about. Although Sarjay called it a road, it was more of a dirt path. This road, which was probably used frequently in the past, was now deserted.

We started following a direction as suggested by Sarjay since it would inevitably lead us to a city. I got excited as I started seeing more animals around and different types of trees. The forest surrounding the mountain stronghold didn’t have much animals because of, obviously, the large presence of undead.

But as we move further from the stronghold, life began to appear again. We had not seen some of the animals for at least a few centuries so we enjoyed the sceneries more than we thought. Although, the master chef, who was in my group, was thinking something else, since she hadn’t gotten fresh ingredients since a long time ago.

Although I sent countless numbers of scouts through the years we spent inside the stronghold, the information they could gather was limited. After all, most of the scouts were mindless beasts I had created. We did, however, sent some volunteers to scout but they would usually end up dead. When they came back from the spirit world, they would go on a sour mood and refuse to go out again.

“Oh! Oh! A deer! A deer! I haven’t seen one since the Yoke of Endlers!” I excitedly pointed at the deer. It got scared by my excited screaming and ran away.

“Heh, great. Boss, you scared it.” Sarjay snickered. As he walk with the group, he would whistle some tunes that we had heard of a hundred times already. The bushes near us started to rustle.

“Sarjay! I hope it’s the deer again!” I exclaimed in excitement. I held out my orb to capture a picture of the deer. This orb was used for creating light but after studying photography through light magic, I managed to reverse engineer this orb to capture pictures. I gave one to everyone as well. Take a snap, and save it to your gemstone. Shove the gem up your skull to view, literally. Creating a camera was not impossible for someone that had lived for over a thousand years, really.

Instead of a deer, a large horse came out. An armored man rode the great beast who looked as surprised as we are.

“Greetings, travellers. Judging by your clothes, you all must be...pilgrims? Am I right?” The man inquired our group.

“Pilgrims?” I asked.

“Yes, this road leads to the Great Holy City of Aon. Are you not pilgrims? I can help lead the way, too,” The man replied.

Great Holy City of Aon? I looked at Sarjay. He gave it a thought but after straining himself for a while, he gave up and concluded he had no clues. The scouts I sent out never mentioned of such a city, either. However, I felt like I heard of that place. Like it was a very familiar place, as if I had been there. Regardless of that, since this man wanted to guide us there, we might as well have a free tour guide.

“Of course, we are! Look at our clean, fresh white robes! We are totally not the walking dead!” I said as Sarjay facepalmed.

“Eh...ok. Whatever. Just follow me.” The man, clearly confused, led the way.

I observed the horseman closely as we travelled along the dirt road. He wore no helmet, proudly showing his short blonde haircut. From my memories, the area around the stronghold had no nation whose natives had blonde hair. Perhaps, after a thousand years, demographics could change as the time went by.

On his chain armor, he wore a dirty white tabard, which indicated that he’d been patrolling lately. On his waist were a sheathless longsword and a pouch. With all these points, I concluded that his gear were not too exceptional.

Furthermore, to be guarding a road all by himself, was he very skillful? Or the nation of Aon could not afford too much guards? Does all guardsmen have mediocre equipment such as this man? My first encounter with another nation did not lead to answers, but more questions.

He was intrigued by our behaviors of holding orbs and pointing them at objects and animals. No, not intrigued. More like, creeped out. In order to loosen his tension, I struck up a conversation with him.

“So, we may have heard of the Aon, but we’ve never been there, hence why we’re on our pilgrimage. Can you tell us more about it?” I asked him.

“Certainly. There’s a lot of people that ask me that so I’m not surprised. The Great Holy City of Aon was founded by the Banisher of the Undead Saint Geraldine…” He went on and on about the history and the significance of the city but I wasn’t took interested by that.

“Oh, wow! That’s very interesting, indeed. But can you tell us more about places we should visit?” I asked the important question: Where do we tour first?

“There should be some priests that lead pilgrims around but you should try the Great Cathedral. Many priests give tours around the holiest sites of man,” The man answered.

More free tour guides! This city is absolutely amazing!

“Boss, I’m not sure if we should really be going to a place dedicated solely to the celebration of the destruction of the undead…” Sarjay whispered to me nervously.

“Nonsense. We’re pilgrims,” I answered back.

“No, it’s not about the disguise, it’s about the Gods’ and Goddesses’ power that could potentially destroy us just by being in…” Before Sarjay could finish, one of my companions excitedly pointed out a city in the distance.

We all fell silent. The great towers that almost felt like it was trying to touch the skies, the magnificent walls decorated with beautiful works of art if you don’t consider the fact that they’re depictions of the undead being smited into a thousand pieces and the beautiful golden doors.

The city was built on top of a beautiful river, with waters so clean, the reflections on it colored a magnificent blue over the streams.

“The river looks faintly familiar. Very bad memories, though,” My chef commented.

“It looks nice, though,” One of my other companions remarked. The river complemented the beauty of the city, giving it a tranquil scenery.

The man on the horse was probably used to this and gave us a few moment before continuing on. He lead us to a paved road away from the dirt road. More and more people started to come to our view, giving a refreshing feeling compared to when we were alone at the dirt road.

I could only guess that the dirt road was no longer in use due to this paved road which could be more convenient than the previous road, hence the reason for the lack of travellers on the dirt road.

“Boss, Boss. Take a photo of that side of the wall!” One of my companions said.

“Yeah! Yeah! That’s a wonderful shot! Oh ho! Look at that detail on the gate!” I commented back.

We got so excited as we took more photos that we did not notice we’ve already reached the front gate. There was a lot of pilgrims entering and leaving the city. Not just pilgrims, merchants, mercenaries, farmers and soldiers, too.

The man that guided us eventually met up with another man with the same uniform as him.

“Ah, Egbert. Guiding lost sheeps again? They really need to promote you. You seem to be the only one who is so full of life in this job,” The guardsman said to the horseman.

“Well, a job’s a job. Pilgrims, this is where I depart. This man will help you out.” He rode off as soon as he said his farewell.

“Welcome to the Great Holy City of Aon, pilgrims. Before you could enter, you’ll need to pay a small fee. Just 1 piece of silver,” The guardsman announced to us. He’s clearly experienced with handling foreign pilgrims. He showed a piece of coin.

“Er...we only have these coins.” My group gave one coin per person to the guardsman.

“Wow, the beauty on this coins with great details! Hold on, I’ll have to weigh these.” The guardsman was astounded by the coins. He weighed the coins, then checked for authenticity. He confirmed that we gave him real gold coins but he didn’t know how to go about giving us change.

We weren’t really bothered by material wealth so we just excused it as giving donations as sign of faith. We went through without trouble afterwards. The inside of the city was much more amazing!