CHAPTER 346: ASTRAA CAPITAL CITY

Within several minutes, we had reached the place where the teleportation network was located. And I was intrigued to find that it was in the form of a ritual circle, and not just some mages or something.

We all got on and then a mage that I didn’t see till just now activated it and we were whisked away to wherever this circle led us to.

And the feeling of this was much different compared to when I’ve moved around with my [Spatial Shift] magic.

It was like we were being seamlessly pulled through a tunnel that went upwards. Not to mention it felt smoother and less bumpy than when I did it. I suppose this is a more refined method of transportation.

It was taking a while though, so I thought back to what had happened recently and reflected on it. And then I remembered about that heinous monster of a being and what he did.

But that wasn’t what I was fixated on at this very moment. Yes, what he did was and will forever be unforgivable. However, the fact that his blood was in that vial was the thing that I was most concerned about.

I turned towards Zatyraa with extreme urgency and asked, "How much more of that blood is out there?"

She was startled by my sudden outburst but replied anyways.

"What blood are you talking about?"

"The blood that was given to the aristocrats for whatever reason. You need to burn every trace of it that exists. No. You need to give it all to me so that I can dispose of it." I raved on and explained how it was tied to the man I asked them to search for and bring to me. Not realising that I also told her about the fact that he was the one who killed my mother and why.

And as soon as I realised that, I stopped talking, suddenly feeling really uncomfortable at the fact that I told them all that. It’s not something I like to really ever share. In fact, I hate telling people because it always makes me sad having to remember.

But now, after finding out who did it, as well as how and why, I feel more anger than anything. Which just made me feel conflicted emotionally right now.

There was silence throughout the rest of this ’journey’ if you could even call it that. The mood clearly very negative right now.

Eventually though, the feeling of going up eventually reversed and it felt like we were going down instead.

That feeling didn’t last as long as the initial upwards one and within a minute, we were suddenly in another city.

And at first, I thought that it was the capital city, but no, apparently, this was just an intermediary stop.

I thought we were just going to head straight to the capital, but seemingly that was not the case. Instead, we were currently in some kind of middle ground between Kinlo and the capital.

To make things worse, I had to wait for an hour until Zatyraa informed the Sect members here of my orders.

And then we had to go through that teleportation thing again, which took another several minutes to go through.

But finally, we arrived at the Capital City. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any of it at the moment since we were somewhere deep inside of a building within it.

I kept my mouth shut, partially from my inner feelings still being a mess, and also partially because I was a little upset that I had to wait an hour longer than I thought I would have to just to get here.

Thankfully, it was only a few minutes to get out of this seemly dark and dingy building that we were in.

And to be honest? It was worth all the hassle and awkwardness it took to get here.

It was an amazing spectacle to behold.

An enormous city that was seemingly sat upon a mountain, easily dwarfing anything I’d ever seen before when it came to how expansive this place was.

Not to mention the beautiful and vibrant architecture that roamed the place as well. Manors as big as castles, towers stretching high into the sky and rooftops of the myriad colours of a rainbow and more.

Each building was different in some small way, none of them seemingly the same. And all of them were of varying sizes.

The streets stretched on into the horizon. It looked like you could probably live here for your entire life and still never see it all.

My eyes shined with a bright and bubbly emotion that I hadn’t felt in a long, long time. And it was very evident by the fact that Zatyraa chuckled at my genuine reaction.

"Come, you haven’t seen anything yet." She said with a mysterious smile, and I followed her out of intrigue.

We turned one corner and I saw that we actually were on a mountain. And the Royal Palace was placed all the way up at the top, which almost looked like it went as far up as the city went out from where we were right now.

Zatyraa laughed loudly at my astonishment.

I just stared back at her in disbelief.

"Hahahaha... Ah... If you’re worried about how long it will take to get up there, don’t worry, we have a different transportation method which will get us up there faster."

I hadn’t even considered getting up there. I think my mind just thought ’There’s no way that’s actually real.’

After a few minutes of travelling, we arrived at a fairly large building that was bustling with activity from an uncountable number of Naga’s cramming to get in and out. But as soon as they saw us, or more specifically our entourage, they parted to let us through and stopped moving.

I didn’t get to look much at the guards of this building as we moved quickly and without any impediment.

Then, we headed down a spiralling ramp for several minutes and ended up in a giant empty tunnel. Said tunnel being carved by hand, or by magic. Either way, the walls and ceiling and just overall design of this place was weird. With grooves and alcoves that didn’t make sense.

I was confused as to why we were down here, but then I felt a rumbling beneath me. At first, I thought the ceiling was going to collapse and panicked. But upon seeing both Zatyraa and the Cinder Custodians having no reaction, I calmed down.

But just in case, I made sure to have my [Spatial Shift] ready just in case.

Fortunately though, no such thing happened. And it turns out that it was just our transportation arriving.

Which turned out to be a giant Dune Worm... Or was it something else, because it didn’t look anywhere near as horrifying, or even as large.

"Never seen a Sand Dweller I take it?" Zatyraa said with a smile, clearly enjoying my pure astonishment and overall reaction to the capital city. "They’re creatures that live deep beneath the sands most of the time, but we’ve managed to come to a mutually beneficial agreement with one another."

I stared in awe as being pulled behind this Sand Dweller, which just looked like a Naga or Lamia without arms or an upper body even, were several boxes full of people that were stuck in the weird cut out sections.

’Oh! So that’s what they’re for.’ I came to realise the purpose of the weirdly shaped walls.

Zatyraa and I were ushered onto the frontmost ’cart’ as they were called whilst the guards went into two separate one’s behind us.

I stared in awe as we moved along through dark tunnels for a while, passing by and stopping at several different stops along the way.

But eventually we reached our stop and got off. And this was seemingly the last available stop as well since everyone else got off also.

Though they seemed to let us exit this tunnel system first.

We left the tunnel system and then the transportation building afterwards and were now atop the mountain, looking down on it from all the way up above.

In fact, we were so close to the top that I could see the clouds were just several kilometres above us. Not to mention the Royal Palace and even several other buildings spiralled even higher as well.

I was just stunned beyond belief. I’d never seen anything like this before. The city was bustling even all the way up here with several Naga roaming about the place, completely carefree.

Out of nowhere though, there was a sudden shift in the atmosphere as the crowd suddenly started to look in a particular direction as it seemed that someone important was coming this way.

I saw the crowd gasp and whisper in shock as they parted for her. Then all the guards and Zatyraa bowed as two individuals emerged from the crowd.

Both of them were clad in bespoke, carefully designed robes that looked ever clean.

The one on the right looked somewhat familiar for some reason and the one on the left came forward and bowed before me, making the crowd gasp in shock.

"Welcome, to Astraa city, Divine one."