If Serenity had to guess, the demons had added the gate. It weakened the walls and meant that the ward didn’t handle the gate properly; it was probably being treated as a wall breach instead of a gate. Wall breaches were never pleasant to travel through unless you overpowered the City War’s Tier enough that you simply didn’t notice it or the ward simply let you through. It would do that for him without question, now.

Serenity suspected that, rather than overpowering it, he simply hadn’t been noticed by it. He could never be certain when [Ghost in the System] helped him, but this seemed like it was probably one of those times.

The question was if he could extend his own immunity as City Lord to his followers. Rissa, Ita, and Legion were easy; they all had recognized relationships that ought to let them pass through the ward with no issues. Blaze and Kerr were the only ones he actually needed to protect.

Thinking about it that way made the solution easy. The ward would let him and those he protected through without harm; it just had to recognize them. “Blaze, Kerr. Make sure you stay near me.” Serenity waited while they came closer, then turned and headed towards the gate. He spread his aura over them to designate them as his to the ward.

Serenity wasn’t sure why he wanted to flex his power to the demon guarding the gate, but he did. Perhaps he simply didn’t want to back down? Either way, it would definitely be easier to get a couple hundred people through the large gate than the tunnel, so it was worth it.

Serenity led the way through the gate, closely followed by Blaze, Kerr, and Rissa. Ita and Legion weren’t far behind.

Absolutely nothing happened as they walked through the gate and kept going.

The attacks from young Wrath Demons were massively annoying. Fortunately, they could see Serenity from a significant distance and always headed for him; only a few missed him, targeted Legion, and were killed.

Two days after they left Mornmot, a small army of termite-like demons attacked the traveling group. They were individually extremely weak but there were a great number of them, perfect for handling in the open with Serenity’s Zonal Evocation Mage Skills, with assistance from Legion and Ita. Even so, about a third of them made it to Legion and Kerr; Legion was not willing to leave a path open to Serenity, so he found himself surrounded by a wall of bodies. None of the termites survived long after that.

As much as possible, the group skirted the cities. Since Legion was with them, Serenity didn’t want to enter tight quarters that would cut down the advantage of having more people (or at least more bodies). This meant that they had to fight off several more swarms as they traveled; Serenity was annoyed by Legion’s insistence that he not lead from the front.

Legion insisted that Serenity was far more useful using his mage-type Skills and keeping an overall eye on the battlefield than simply acting as a front-line combatant. It was an uncomfortable series of conversations; it wasn’t something Serenity wanted to hear, but at the same time he couldn’t really argue with the idea. Legion knew everything that was happening on the battlefield, but that wasn’t really the point. All he could manage if he went into melee was to defeat a small portion of the attack; from the middle, he could potentially control the battlefield. He needed more battle-Skills to really do that, but the best way to gain them was to try.

The disconcerting thing was that Legion didn’t seem to care which body talked to Serenity. Serenity had gotten used to a particular person - no, a particular body - as spokesperson for Legion, but that was clearly because it was convenient while Serenity was on Aeon and most of Legion was on Lyka. It wasn’t true on Zon.

It was weird to have a short conversation with one person then have a completely different person pick up the conversation later. Serenity knew he’d just have to get used to it; Legion got upset whenever someone who should know referred to Legion as “they”.

The fighting as they traveled past the various demon-occupied cities didn’t do much for Serenity, but it was apparently very good for Legion. Most of the Tier One or Two bodies managed to advance their Path by an entire Tier; the ones that hadn’t were focused on a Path other than combat. Legion even gained a second Tier Four body.

Unfortunately, a few of Legion’s bodies died. Blaze was able to heal almost anything as long as he got there in time, but in larger battles that wasn’t always possible. Legion wasn’t devastated; after all, it wasn’t a loss of life, simply a loss of flexibility.

When they reached the Forest of Lost Regrets, Serenity was relieved to finally shift out of his Greater Demon form for good, or at least for a long while. It was extremely useful all across the lands infested with what he considered true demons, but demon beasts didn’t care. Despite its usefulness, Serenity was beginning to dread being angry all the time.

There was no way Serenity wanted to lead this large of a group through the region of cracked time. A few people might be a different story, but there was simply too much of a chance Serenity would miss a crack or the layout of cracks would change. It was questionable even without Legion, but Legion made it impossible. On the other hand, they weren’t in a hurry. They’d gone around the demon cities; they could swing wide around the center of the forest as well.

Legion gained a different sort of flexibility as they traveled around the edge of the Forest of Lost Regrets. The newest Tier Four gained a Path that connected in some way to Legion’s existence; Serenity wondered if it was the equivalent of a species Path. The first skill on it, in what was usually the utility slot, allowed Legion to join a defeated enemy to the Legion. That sort of substitution made a lot of sense if it was essentially Legion’s species Path; propagation of a species Path; reproduction wasn’t normally directly combat-effective so it fit a utility slot well.

The Skill didn’t work on demons, which gave Serenity hope that it also wouldn’t work on humans or other sapients. He didn’t like the idea of erasing someone to join them to Legion. Fortunately, Legion seemed at least ambivalent about the idea. Serenity knew that there would be no way other than death to completely stop Legion from going rogue if Legion wanted to.

It did, however, work on demon beasts; in fact, that was how Serenity found out about the Skill. The group was attacked by a single Tier Three shadow leopard; instead of killing it, Legion restrained it until the Tier Four body could reach the leopard. It took quite a bit of time to work, but when it was complete the shadow leopard was simply another part of Legion.

Legion picked up a few more advanced animals as they moved around the Forest of Lost Regrets, but not very many. While they encountered significantly more animals than Serenity had, most seemed to be unsuited to joining Legion. The Skill failed on demon beasts that were below Tier Three and even on some that were at Tier Three, while the few Tier Four creatures they encountered were too difficult to safely pin down for long enough for the Skill to finish.

When they finally reached the Lowpeak land, Serenity had to decide how he wanted to handle it; it was a good distance from the border to the river. Serenity decided to follow his original plan and travel to the river. It took quite a bit longer with everyone than it had when he was alone. The fact that he’d gotten a lift part of the way from Duke Lowpeak only made the difference bigger, but he’d expected that.

He even expected to be met by Duke Lowpeak’s forces at some point. He’d planned to stop in sight of the river and wait for them, but that wasn’t the way it worked out. They were met by arrows when they were still more than five miles from the river; Serenity hadn’t seen any sign of anyone yet, but the arrows came from far enough away that he wouldn’t have seen them yet.

The only good news was that encountering the River Team this far from the river meant that Duke Lowpeak must still be on his land; otherwise, he couldn’t have sent them out to look into the force coming out of the demon lands. Serenity had worried that he might be away dealing with the issues in Zenith.

Fortunately, the distance meant that the arrows were exceedingly poorly aimed. They were probably Skill-assisted, but they weren’t exceedingly accurate. This was almost certainly the River Team, sent by Duke Lowpeak, just like the group that intercepted Andarit and Serenity on their way out of the Dead Swamp. This time, however, the group’s archer had apparently decided to engage at long range instead of waiting until he knew what he faced.

Serenity intended to have some words with that archer once he caught up with the River Team. Dodging long-range arrows was possible at Tier Three, but it still wasn’t easy; fortunately, Legion didn’t seem to be having any issues. Rissa, on the other hand, was only Tier Two and didn’t have Legion’s advantages. Her foreseeing might be enough to avoid problems but Serenity didn’t want to count on it. He hated taking her into trouble.

At Tier Eight, on the other hand, the arrows wouldn’t be a threat even at close range. There was a reason he’d planned to stop well away from the river. “I’m going to move ahead and see if I can get them to stop shooting. I expect Duke Lowpeak will be headed this way as well, but it could be a bit before he gets here.”

Rissa laughed. “You explained that the last three times we stopped. Go on, go annoy the archer.”

Serenity started to defend himself then shook his head. Rissa would just take his defenses apart the way she always did; it was fun but he really didn’t have time for the play-argument right now. “Hah, fine, you win this one.”

Serenity quickly shifted to his human form then set off towards the archer at a trot. With any luck, one of the River Team would be someone who met him during the last trip to Lowpeak; that would make them much easier to deal with.

Serenity was halfway there when the shooting stopped. He could hear yelling in the distance and slowed down to hear more of it, but there was enough wind that the words were hard to make out. He grumbled about that then stepped his speed up to a fast jog, covering ground at least as quickly as a normal Tier Zero human at a full sprint. The yelling stopped well before he was close enough to make out more than a few syllables.

He didn’t slow down again until he was close enough to make out the group ahead of him. It definitely wasn’t a normal River Team; that was a relatively small group. This was about fifty combatants, all dressed in decent but not great armor; the armor covered absolutely everything, which made Serenity think that this was a group geared more to fight undead than other humans.

They were accepting some mobility loss for more complete coverage; that made sense if what you were fighting could take you out with even a mild injury but those injuries were relatively easy to stop. It didn’t make sense for people fighting equivalent-Tier humans; humans were simply too good at penetrating armor. Reducing the damage from a hit without necessarily completely eliminating it would also usually work against human weapons; most people didn’t bother with poisoning their weapons. It was simply too difficult and expensive to be worthwhile.

What was going on here? This definitely didn’t look like a group checking on why a group entered Lowpeak from the demon lands.