It took ahree weeks of walking, two run-ins with beast men, and an enter with bandits that ended very poorly for them before Simon finally set eyes on pre-eruption Ionar. It turned out that his experience points didn’t go down on any of those days either, not even when he killed humans, which surprised Simon.
He’d expected morality to be deeply tied into that number, but it was more subjective than that. Apparently, since he didn’t have a problem killing bandits that got in his way, they didn’t weigh on his soul very much, aill gained over 122 experiehat day. That was still less than he gained when he killed the beastmen at 167 and 203, respectively, but it still poio a worldview that was slightly more subjective than he would have expected.
Those weren’t even the biggest days of the trip, though. Sometimes, when he did other things, he saw spikes, too. When he found an herb he hadn’t seen since his time in Abresse and picked a few to add to his growing colle or dried them, he made above-average progress on his score as well.
It wasn’t all violend hardship, though. Holy, the hiking was worse than the fighting, and on nights when he wasn’t fighting off men and monsters, he made steady progress on his armor. At this point, it was all down to making the engravings as nid as possible so they could stand up to the terrible strain he expected to put them under.
When Simon was finally doh the main pattern on the breastpte, he put it in his campfire, and even after it had been sitting in the coals for twenty mihe back side of the metal stayed nid cool. He was so pleased that his efforts had actually worked that his cheers echoed off the mountainside in a way that might have been embarrassing if anyone else was nearby that night as he celebrated his success.
“Well, if I make the rest of it work this well, then maybe this time I drown in va instead of getting cooked alive,” he said with a ugh.
The day, he was surprised to find that he’d gotten almost 300 experiehe night before. That made some sense, given what he’d aplished, but he was still pretty psyched.
“So it’s not what I do, but how I feel about it or what I learn?” he wondered aloud once he’d recorded the number.
That made sense. He learned a lot less from killing his thousandth goblin than he had from killing his first or sed. He was sure of that. Pity this whole thing doesn’t have achievements, He thought with a smirk. I’d love to see those kinds of stats. Goblins killed. Nights slept outdoors. Number of Freya’s dead.
That st oartled him, and he spent the hour w what dark part of his soul that had e from. He’d saved Freya and moved on. His inner demons could go take a hike, just like he was doing.
The road through the mountains was a long one, and he spent most nights w oher bits for the arms and legs. It wasn’t do, but he was sure it was going to work as long as he was slow and careful. The only plication was the sword sihe gauhat used it already had magi it, but he ighat for now. He didn’t think that the two spells would i too badly.
Eventually, all journeys e to an end, though, and this one was no different. He’d seen the lightly steaming caldera of the volo he’d e to kill for almost a week before he finally got close enough to it that he could see Ionar on the far side of it, where the he sea.
As he stood there on the rise, he had to admit that it was more than a little beautiful. On every other trip here, he’d only seen it in ruins or in the process of beiroyed. Now, he could see the beautiful white buildings standing in stark trast to the volo they ed around and the blue skies beyond. It was bigger than he remembered it, and he wondered just how much of the city had already been buried under va and ash before he saw it the first time. In the night of fire and va, he’d seen so often, there were always thousands fleeing the upper city to the harbor far below. Now that he was looking at it, though, he was fairly sure that there had to be at least ten thousand people living here, making it fairly rge as cities went.
The sprawling city spread part the volo and all the way down the cliffs, but it was the pace that was the real show-stopper. It was a building Simon had been in many times, but only as a door to somewhere else. Now, he could appreciate it as the pace it was, led among its surrounding gardens.
“This is definitely a pce people would pay to go on vacation,” he said as he eyed the cliffs and beaches.
On all his previous trips, he’d always assumed that this pce existed solely because of sea trade. While that was certainly the majority of the traffic, the overnd route he’d just threaded his way through was surprisingly well-maintained and just active enough for bandits to think it was worth the trouble to harass men traveling alone.
Simon didn’t feel the least bit bad for using them for a bit of archery practice. He was just gd that they hadn’t hurt Daisy or spooked her into running off a cliff. Some of the roads through the mountains had been perilous.
Now, though, all of that was behind him. He was here, and fortunately, the volo had not yet blown its top, which was good because it had taken him a whole season to get here. Still, even as the weather in the north turned colder, it was still balmy here on the coast, and he decided to enjoy it.
Simohose first few days rexing during the day and w on his armor at night. It was only when he’d lingered in the inn for over a week that people started to ask questions.
Where was he going? Was he waiting for a ship? How much longer would he be here? The innkeeper didn’t seem inhospitable, per se, and was happy to keep taking Simon’s silver, but the longer he stayed, the more fortable the ma being nosy, apparently.
As bothersome as that could be, even that daily nuisannoyed Simohan the seafood, though. For the first few days, he’d lived off mutton since fish domihe menu of the city. There were some other things he hadn’t had in a long time, too, like feta cheese and white wine, which helped liven things up. He avoided the fish but found that octopus, scallops, and cms weren’t so bad once he started to get tired of mb. That was ironic, of course, since his dislike of fish was making him tire of everything else on the menu.
Simoually found a vil overlooking the sea near enough to the volo to rent out not too far from the market square and hung a shingle above the door, calling himself an apothecary and healer. He had plenty of herbs from his trip across the ti, and much of what he didn’t have he could buy.
That, along with some bandages, some basiowledge of sterilization and wound liness, and the occasional minor miracle, was all he really he locals were skittish of an outsider for the first few weeks. That was especially true for one who seemed fluent in their nguage but still had what was described as a strong at, but Simon couldn’t hear it.
Still, after a couple minor miracles that might have cost him a week or a year of his life and a few sick kids that walked away from death’s door in one piece, he ted by almost everyohat was about the time he’d finished his armor after almost a month in Ionar, which was fortuiming because o was plete, he had to test it. The very st thing he wao do after all this preparation was to put it on after the eruption and find that it didn’t work.
So, once he was ready, he took a brief trip into the mountains with his reliable mule, Daisy. He told his regur patients that it was to collee herbs, which he would also do, but really, it was so he could stand in a bonfire where no one could see how crazy he was.
He hiked until he hadn’t seen a living soul for a day, w the whole time that the volo would pick that moment to erupt. It didn’t, though, and once his bonfire was burning brightly, he finally got all dressed up in the armor he’d worked on for so long.
Even though he was certain it was going to work, it was still with great apprehension. That wasn’t enough to stop him, though. If I fuck this up, all I’ll have to face are burned feet and injured pride, Simon told himself, and I heal my feet.
The worst would actually be if the volo exploded, and after all this, he wasn’t ready to stop the mohat came out of it. That would be far worse than any injuries he might get from testing. It was that thought that made him close his face mask and step into the raging inferno he’d built.
The result was nothing. He ged for a moment, waiting to feel the fire’s sting through one of the parts of the armor, but it never happened. Instead, he stood there, dang around in his armor while the fire burned around him. This time, he didn’t cheer quite so loudly as he had st time, but he was still thrilled, and in the m, whearted back to town with some slightly charred pte mail, he pronou a plete success and had almost 200 experieo show for it.
That night, wheurned, he treated himself to a small feast and decided on his goal. He was going to iigate the caldera itself. Why shouldn’t I? He thought as he made his way through some pan-fried camari. It beats waiting around waiting for this to happen.
Still, he put it off until his first m without patients waiting to see him. As much as he wao climb the volo, he had to bahat out with more menial tasks. After all, his travels had rgely exhausted his funds. Without paying ers, he would eventually be forced to start fishing again one day, and that was the st thing he wanted.
The hike to the rim took almost all day. It wasn’t just steep; it was that there was no real path to go that high. There was a shrine half that was decorated with wilted flowers and other trivialities, but there were no inscriptions he could find. Past that, the st three hundred feet of the trip was more rock climbing than hiking, which was not something he had any practice with.
Ultimately, when he reached the very top anyway, the view was disappointing. Part of him had expected to see bubbling hot va or something simirly cool. He was disappointed. Instead of bubbling magma, there was only cracked bck stone, spotted here and there with small geysers of steam. At least, that’s all he saw at first.
After a short break and a long drink from his water skin, before he headed back dowiced something else: fire elementals. Well, at least something that looked like them. They weren’t bzing with fire, though. Instead, they seemed to be made out of smoke and steam, which made them halfway invisible as they wandered around the floor of the caldera.
That blew him away, aayed up there until an hour before su before he hurriedly started climbing back down. Part of him wao stay until after dark to see if they lit up, but he khat was a terrible idea. Even if they did, it wasn’t worth staying up here until sunrise, which was how much longer he’d have to watch them because if he tried to climb down in the dark, he would break his neck for sure.