Nolan stared into the glowing glare of the rabid grey wolf that had just trotted out of the forest to eye them down from the middle of the ancient roadway, fully aware that there were many others lurking within the surrounding shrubs. More than half of the beasts were demonized, including the alpha male, which made him wonder how they were able to function as an ordinary pack.

“Aw, come on!” Esteban looked up at him with reluctance. “Do I have to?”

“You ask the same thing every time. Let me tell you, bud, the answer will always be the same.”

A disapproving sigh drifted over from his left. “Come on, kid. I’ll take the lead again.”

“Let Esteban go first.” Ian stood at the back of the group, arms crossed in a calm manner. “He needs to learn how to handle the heat of battle.”

“He needs new toys and friends his own age, is what he needs.”

“Yeah, well, we’re way past that point.” Nolan gave the kid a light prod. “Try using the dagger I gave you. You need some practice using its Essence Fusion effects. Remember what happened when you thought you could punch that bear to death?”

The boy began to quiver as he touched a hand to his abdomen, which the creature in question had torn open with a savage swipe of its foot-long claws. Nolan’s barrier arrayment had been shattered in an instant, which almost resulted in Esteban’s death.

“How could I forget?”

“That’s why you need to do this stuff. I know it’s fucked up beyond imagining but that’s life these days.”

The wolves began to close in on them as they continued to bicker, though the one in view didn’t move an inch.

“I just washed my hands from the last fight!” He gave his head a rough shake and withdrew a pale blue dagger from his spatial bag. “Fuck! I hate this!”

He jumped forward with a rustle of wind, green robes flapping as he stabbed the dagger directly towards the wolf’s face in a straightforward manner. The beast evaded the strike with a quick shuffle to the side, though Esteban didn’t let up with his lunges. He did the same thing that he always did, stabbed and hacked at his opponent without any grace or cunning. Despite this, he still outclassed the creature in both strength and speed, and was able to kill it after burying his knife deep into its gut and then dashing backward with a grimace.

“Not bad,” said Nolan as he watched the wolf disappear into the woods with a dying whimper. “Your dagger’s still stuck in its stomach though. I’ll go grab that for you.”

“Ow!” the boy cried. He touched his hand to his shoulder where he’d suffered a savage bite in conjunction with his attack. His hands came away clean. “Fuck, fuck fuck! Ow—it hurts so bad!”

“This is why I told you not to swear around him all the time. He’s only nine!”

Nolan shrugged and then made a whipping motion with his hand, which prompted a loud whimper from somewhere close by. A moment later and Esteban’s dagger flew out of the forest and landed gently in his hand, the spiritual energy around it dissipating as he handed it to the crying child.

“Listen, I could have stopped it from biting him, but he needs to know how to deal with pain or he’ll definitely die somewhere down the road. Shit, maybe even—sorry, maybe even this road.” He produced a barrel from his spatial bag. “Here, soak him in there if you’re so worried, but I’ll tell you right now he didn’t break any bones or anything. He’ll just have a wicked bruise for a while, that’s all.”

The injured wolf’s aura suddenly vanished in tandem with a vicious growl. A few moments later and the other fifteen rushed off into the forest, the alpha carrying the fresh corpse as he led the pack westward.

Once his tears had dried Esteban surprisingly refused to soak in the Divine Spirit Fountain water. “I think I’ll be okay. Sorry for saying the F-word, it just hurt so bad. When the bear cut me I fell asleep right away, but…”

“It’s not your fault, I totally get it.” Stowing away the barrel, Sean said, “And I told you to call me Mr. Pham.”

Once Esteban gave them the okay, the group resumed their travels and continued to head north. Nolan had to admit that the constant winces and grunts that left Esteban’s lips stirred up a bit of guilt in his gut, enough that he signalled for another break just an hour later to give him more time to rest.

Everyone busied themselves with siphoning energy from superior spirit stones in order to replenish the inner essence that they’d invested into their intensive sprint. They were nearing the last sizeable settlement that separated them from the Northern Wilderness, a vast valley that coincidently held the title of the largest state within the entire eastern region of the Dragon’s Tail.

According to Ian the territory was known as the Kingdom of Ridgerock, the only kingdom for thousands of kilometres up until the population of the valleys around the Red Mountain began to experience an unexpected boom. This small kingdom should have a total population of around half a million people, though he admitted that the situation might differ drastically from the information that he’d learned as a child. After all, his father had told him that Smolen was a tiny backwater village, when in reality it was much larger than Lowen, the capital of the Three-River Valley.

All throughout the rest of the run Nolan’s mind was filled with thoughts of Nyla. If the old man that they’d met in Smolen had spoken truthfully then they were likely to encounter the girls somewhere within the valley’s capital, which resided on a vast plateau that overlooked countless cities and towns in the countryside below. His time in Redfox Village, their flight to Verdure, the week or so in Greenwall, the year within the glade on Nia and the countless life and death situations that followed. As he recalled all of the experiences that the two of them shared, his heart began to flutter. While he’d met many people since their unwilling separation, present company included, she was still his closest and most valued friend.

The seemingly infinite roadway eventually led to a guarded checkpoint where a dozen armoured soldiers engaged in idle conversation along the empty roadside, their helmets discarded onto the nearby grass. While the air beyond them appeared clear and calm, Nolan sensed a subtle fluctuation of energy that pervaded throughout most of the area.

The guards wore thick coats of jangling chainmail covered with mustardy hauberks that bore the likeliness of a barking hound at their centres. Each person was at the first level of the Integration stage, a hidden tension slipping into their expressions as they realized that they were unable to sense Ian’s cultivation stage.

A balding man stepped forward, his pockmarked face covered with peppery whiskers that wriggled while he spoke. “Do you lot plan to enter the valley?”

“That’s the hope,” said Nolan.

“Lemme guess. Here for the festival?”

“What festi—”

“The Summertide Festival?” Ian looked as if Christmas had come early. “No way. Is that actually going on right now?”

The man gave his companions a brief glance. “You really didn’t know?”

“We’d just planned on passing through. How many days are left?”

“This is the last night.”

“Then we don’t have any time to lose!”

Admittance into the valley cost five spirit stones per person, an exorbitant price for most people, though this was inevitable considering the scale of the celebrations. They had arrived in time to catch the tail end of the grandest festival of the decade, an exaggerated celebration known to millions of people for thousands of kilometres around.

The road began to dip a few hundred metres beyond the checkpoint, the afternoon sunlight growing in intensity as more space opened up between the gargantuan trees. The forest abruptly died off as the base of the nearest mountain continued to trail downward beneath a coat of breezy bluegrass, and a gorgeous landscape came into view. Unlike what they were used to seeing the healthy fields that filled the space between the monolithic mountains were relatively flat. Dozens of cities and towns acted as nuclei for the countless communities that surrounded them, each settlement connected by the neatly ordered network of new-looking roads that spanned the majority of the valley.

“Would you look at that? This sort of reminds me of a big city with some suburbs. Well, a really underdeveloped city.”

Nolan couldn’t help but agree with Sean as he drank in the sight of countless horse-drawn carts kicking up dust along the lesser roadways and the hundreds of people that ran to and fro amidst them.

Homes were made of wood, grey stone or dark steel, or any combination of the three. Most of the bigger towns and cities were arranged in an orderly grid-like manner, the open countryside dotted with energetic villages and healthy hamlets where hundreds of locals filled the streets from end to end. Whether it was the tiniest and most out-of-the-way sprawl of farmhouses or the largest towns and cities, streamers hung from strings that connected buildings like the webs of a peculiar spider to form a ceiling of shivering felt replicated in hundreds of different locations all throughout the kingdom.

Most eye-catching of all was the small mountain that resided within the central region of the valley, this one on the same level as the larger ones from Earth, or it would have been were the upper half not missing. The kingdom of Ridgerock’s capital city resided upon this vast plateau, which provided an expansive view of the entire territory for the eighty thousand or so residents that called it home.

Even from a distance of several kilometres, Nolan and his friends had no trouble picking up on the countless sources of music that flitted through the fields to create the most serene of sceneries.

“So what’s the big deal with this festival?”

Nolan looked over at Ian as they appreciated the spectacular view afforded to them by the sloping base of the mountain road.

“Every ten years the king of Ridgerock hosts a crazy festival to show off the wealth of the kingdom. For a whole three days and nights, food and drink is made free throughout the kingdom and famous musicians and dancers are recruited from all around.”

“And we’ve come here on the last day, huh?”

“If only we’d gotten here sooner,” Sean sighed. “Look at all the people out there.”

“The population of the valley is said to double during these festivals. People immigrate here just to open up inns for these three days. Most of the elders back home have attended the festival at least once, though I wasn’t allowed to tag along with my father because he didn’t trust me not to get into trouble.”

“You? No way.”

Ian gave his golden eyes a roll. “We’re lucky we got here when we did. They usually hold a martial gathering on the last day, and that’s where all of the most powerful groups in the Dragon’s Tail pit their most talented cultivators against each other.”