A gloomy mood permanently followed the merchant caravan as they treaded a well-known path leading to the nearest fortress-city capable of withstanding the terrifying beast tide.

Still, commerce didn't stop. Merchants were selling necessities to other merchants and townspeople, and one who sold preserved food made a specially big profit.

The ones who had carts also charged the ones who didn't for carrying them. Most did it by the hour, serving as rest time for the people who had to walk.

Of course, that didn't apply to Al and his friends, who had saved the whole group from impending death. Al even managed to borrow several books and manuscripts from an old trader, all on interesting topics.

He did this not only because he needed to inform himself, but also because since he didn't have to worry about imminent threats anymore, his mind would wander if he had nothing to do, and he would start thinking about all the people that died because of the beasts.

Not only Baolao and Caexiu, but all the captured girls at the gang's headquarters, along with the tens of thousands of inhabitants the city had.

Then there was that nice guard who led him to the lord's mansion, and the family that ran the inn... it made Al want to punch something, so he went out of the car and threw a jab at the nearest tree, toppling it.

In any case, he spent the next few days pouring over books to avoid that kind of thing happening again, and learned a bit about inscriptions and arrays, though nothing about how to make them. That information seemed to be banned for some reason, but it didn't really bother Al that much since he was only reading about it out of curiosity.

He also learned a bit about geography of the area, and they were apparently citizens of a pretty weak country called the Daomah Kimgdom, that posseses a lot of land, but it isn't very valuable due to how low the mana concentration is, so the stronger forces mostly ignore it.

The forest the orphanage was in was considered the boundary of the kingdom, and over yonder are just mana-depraved terrains with apparently little to no worth.

As expected, there are also powerful entities that don't have big territories but are located in specially mana-rich spots and take in talented people as disciples, thus although they didn't have armies they are full of powerhouses.

Al decided to call them sects in English.

Most sects don't have clear inclinations, but there are sects that follow a 'righteous' path and strive to help people 'I think...' and others that are 'evil', and often use cultivation techniques rely on stealing cultivation from others, sucking their lifeforce or the like.

But apparently after one breaks through to the rumores seventh realm (Meaning past A Rank Core, maybe S?) they become too powerful to be tied down with sects and the like, so they mostly fly solo, other than maybe a few close subordinates. There are at least eight such people throughout the continent, though it isn't confirmed if they're even alive.

Apparently there are four 'apostles' of light, called the Sky Apostle, the Life Apostle, the Sea Apostle and the Purification Apostle. The last one's name is very long in English, but they're all nice and concise in this world's language.

There are apparently also four 'lords' of darkness though, called the Poison Lord, the Undeath Lord, the Curse Lord and the...the Demon Beast Lord. 'Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.' As he read this, Al thought 'Well, our target is clear. We're gonna kill that seventh Realm bastard.'

Al's goal was now set, but he knew that it would be a long time until his group was throng enough to take on that psycho, his cronies and his army of black pets.

Al read books on various other topics, such as cultivation and alchemy, but although there was a lot of useful information, nothing would be really useful for him at the moment. He did read that dual cultivation was not very popular though, since it made the mana of the two participants become a bit more like the other's, making dual cultivation with anyone else practically impossible or extremely inefficient after a certain time.

Surprisingly enough, it also decreased the speed of regular cultivation, which meant that if one of the two people who performed it died, the other would take much longer to reach higher realms. Well, there were artefacts to reverse the effects of dual cultivation, but Al just skimmed over that part. 'It's not like I'm ever gonna let Yuly die anyway.'

She also spent most of her time reading, and they usually gave each other the books they'd found interesting after hey were finished with them.

After a few days there were no more books to read, and Al and Yuly started doing some repetitions and physical training along with Koro, who'd been doing them since they fled the city.

It was annoying because they had to take care not to fall behind the caravan too much, but it was manageable. The real issue was that ,ana concentration was still pretty low on these areas, so the training didn't give that many results.

Al trained his skills too, but he didn't get any upgrades in proficiency during the whole week. Yuly had also been weirdly distant during the whole trip, barely saying anything through her blackboard. Al hadn't tried to actively start conversations or anything either, but she just seemed kind of...grey.

In any case, the caravan maintained a steady lead of a bit over a day over the ever-advancing beast horde, and eventually they spotted a mighty dark gray wall on top of a hill. Al had been told that this was the fortress-city Kondaolao, one of the cities with the sturdiest walls in the kingdom, but seeing it first-hand was still hella impressive.

The population wasn't that big, barely higher than Duyan city, but there was pretty much no low-income class in the city at all. Mostly populated by craftsmen and merchants, it got almost all of it's food through trade with the many nearby villages in exchange for processed goods.

The caravan soon arrived at the city, and Al left the explaining to the merchants, who had a way with their tounge. There was also one who claimed to be friends with the city lord, so they had left it to him to explain the situation once they managed to get an audience.

The merchant who was allegedly a friend of the Lord soon went inside the city along with a couple of others escorted by one of the guards, and Al took the time to appreciate the architecture of the walls.

They were easily 10 meters tall, and by seeing the inside of the hole that contained the heavy-duty iron door that had barely opened for a moment as the merchants entered the city, the walls were also like 2 meters thick.

It was also decorated all over, with squiggly lines that ran throughout the whole wall, seemingly in chaotic patterns, but that also instilled a weird sense of calmness.

'Wait, those are inscriptions! Are they designed to make the wall tougher?'

As Al observed the lines, he weirdly lost his sense of time, but he was forcibly pulled out of that trance-like state as he heard the sound of many, many footsteps coming from inside the city.

Suddenly, bow-wielding guards appeared all throughout the top of the walls, and the caravan moved into the city through the iron doors that opened again, this time fully.

When they got in, Al looked around. He was surrounded by tough looking, two storey stone buildings, with small windows and supported on each other.

'Damn, this city really is perfect for defending against sieges. There's not much wood to be caught on fire if they fireball the city, the buildings are hard to topple, and before that the wall itself seems like it can withstand quite the beating. I'm starting to think we have some real chances of winning this.'

A guard came up to Al and told him "The lord wants to ask you about the types of beasts that will be coming. Please follow me."

He said goodbye to Yuly and Koro, ignoring Misty who was sleeping, then followed the man. The building they arrived at wasn't at all ostentatious, but it was like a dark stone castle clearly meant for defense, it's outer walls filled with thin windows for archers to shoot out of.

They passed two different gates to get inside, and Al was led through a web of almost maze-like hallways, eventually arriving at a room Al guessed to be dead-center of the fortress.

Waiting for him was a muscly old man with soldier-like short hair and a mean-looking scar that started right above his right cheekbone, went down diagonally through his mouth reaching to the left of his chin.

He gestured for Al to sit in front of him, on the other side of his desk, so Al complied.

He finally opened his mouth and asked. "My friend Hantao has already briefed me on the.. situation. I hoped that, since you experienced it firsthand, you could give us some insight into what types of monsters we will be facing, since every bit of information could be crucial."

Al resolutely nodded and started talking first about the Tusk Tanks, telling them approximate size and strength, along with how tough their hide was, and advising them to somehow find throwable objects capable of either piercing it, or simply smashing their inner organs with brute force from atop the walls.

He continued by telling them about the Spinegolins, saying that crushing them would probably be the easiest method to kill them, and that they should beware their single-use attack, since it could easily reach the soldiers on top of the wall, even if it wouldn't pierce the wall itself.

Next he talked about the black birds, saying they would be the most fearsome opponents if the city was made of wood, but that they shouldn't pose to much of a problem this time. He also volunteered to help in exterminating them, and he showed it by accurately launching three spines on the same spot of a stone wall 10 meter away, with an error margin of a few milimeters. The spines also embedded themselves several centimetres, which was proof of the destructive force behind them.

He was running out though, with barely 20 left, so he asked for similarly sized pointed objects to be delivered to him.

He then talked about the Hareth Collapsers and advised them to have peop,e on patrol checking for holes that suddenly appeared beneath the walls on the inside, and to make sure to mow them down with arrows before they got close.

Finally, he told them the little he knew about the snakes, such as them using illusion magic or the like, and that they seemed to have moderately high intelligence. He advised the lord to also make sure to kill them before they got close.

After about an hour Al went back out of the room, and was escorted to an inn that had been reserved for the people that came in the caravan. When he reached his room his three party members were already sleeping there, so Al just crashed onto the crude bed and nodded off.