They sailed for a day and a half after that before they hit the mainland. Marco didn't know if that was less or more than it would have been if the hurricane hadn't dragged them in unknown directions. Normally, Marco's first reaction would have been elation at the sight of land. This time, land was not the first thing he saw.

The port town they were headed to was one that Kuzai said was called Waters, and Marco had imagined it as a rustic little place, perhaps a good-sized town or a very small city. Instead, it was the single tallest settlement he had ever seen. Without the benefit of big hills or cliffs, its massive spires and towers rose so far above the sea that they were visible full minutes of sailing before the ground that supported them was.

"That's something," Marco said. "Elisa, are mainland settlements in our inner sea that big?"

"I don't know," she said. "I've read stats on them and they are big, but seeing it is a different thing."

The crew gaped as the ship guided them towards the docks and kept gaping as the closing distance revealed more and more details. There were buildings that looked like they were mostly glass, shining like diamonds in the sun. Some of the buildings were banded in metal, especially where it seemed needed to make their excessive height possible.

"That's a lot of stairs," Marco said. "Why would anyone want to climb that high?"

"Those have lifts," Kuzai said. "It helps."

They made land shortly after, and Kuzai paid off a dockhand to feed the chickens for some undetermined amount of time that Marco felt could probably stretch into weeks. The team took in the city for a few minutes before Kuzai got them back on track.

"This city is a lot less interesting than it looks." Kuzai hurried them on. "It would take a lot of work to find anything worth buying here, and it's more or less pacified. We should get to the capital as soon as we can."

He got to work, hiring out a high-speed transport in the form of a wagon drawn by several huge, goat-like beasts.

"This is a rough ride," the Wagoneer said. "We give up everything related to comfort for more speed. You sure that's what you want?"

"We do. Can we do it stopless?"

"Nobody could this late in the day. We'll have to overnight at an inn. For gold-and-a-half, I can overwork the beasts and get you there in the early morning of the next day. Best I can do, though."

"Then do it." Kuzai counted out several large stacks of gold, then another off to the side. "Have someone pack us all a lunch. You too."

"Appreciated," the Wagoneer said. "Back in a few."

"He'll get better food than we could find ourselves, quicker," Kuzai said. "And we'll be on our way just after that."

The Wagoneer came back with a large-ish crate of food not long after, then they got on the road. The ride was just as bumpy as promised. Even with all his skills at riding the deck of a moving ship, Marco began to feel a little queasy after the first hour or so, a sensation that didn't let up until a few hours later when the Wagoneer stopped to let the group disperse into the bushes, eat a quick meal, and, in general, get ready for the rest of the push through.

The terrain was varied during the first leg of the trip, ranging from open enough fields to thick stands of trees that almost qualified as small forests. It was here that they scattered to handle their business and stretch their legs. Marco got back to the wagon first, feeling much better now that the incessant bouncing was finally on break. Elisa arrived next, then Riv.

The Wagoneer was setting out their food in the meantime, another local variety of food baked into bread like dozens of other versions of quick-and-easy travel food that Marco had seen that he didn't even inspect it before reaching for the meal. His hand stopped halfway, though, when Aethe finally came back.

She had brought friends.

"All right. Do you all know the drill?"

The biggest of the men behind Aethe had a two-handed sword held high above her head, ready to slash down at any time. His four companions ranged over what Marco thought of as a fairly normal distribution of combat classes. There was a large enough armored warrior, an archer, and what he figured was probably some sort of magic class. There was even what looked like a sneaky type of fighter, built kind of like Aethe's class but focusing on melee weapons.

Taken from NovelBin, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

It was a nasty configuration to deal with, relative to how strong the party was.

"Bandits," the Wagoneer hissed. "Just do what they say."

"I want you to drop all of your weapons. We will approach and take them, plus all your armor. We'll take anything in the wagon, including your food. You, there. Big guy. Stop eating. That's ours now."

The fact that Riv was still eating should have been a clue for the leader of the bandits. Instead, he completely missed the implications of what it meant when a Sturdy listened to a whole speech threatening violence while absent-mindedly picking at his food to enhance the total entertainment value of the whole thing.

Aethe looked at Marco for permission. Marco looked at Elisa. This was one of her little rules, her better-safe-than-sorry tactical plans for every situation. The idea of it was that the world was a pretty unpredictable place, and even if someone thought they could take on a whole group of enemies by themselves, there was no real reason to do that in most cases. Where it was possible, Elisa had commanded, it was better to lead them back to the group and minimize risk.

Elisa snapped shut her magical tactics book, the one that let her know bits and pieces of what to expect from a fight. Over their journey, it had picked up a lot of growth too, eating enhancement tokens like candy until it could do most of what their magic spyglass could in terms of assessing enemy groups. She shook her head sadly, gave Marco the soundless go-ahead, and started spinning up magic while he relayed that to Aethe.

Aethe saw the approval and vanished. Not really truly vanished in the way an illusion or a spell might have made possible, but in the way where she moved so quickly Marco doubted anyone on the team but him could have tracked her. She took a step back and to the side, then another reverse step to the opposite side so large it put her behind the enemy group entirely. When Marco heard a thunk of an arrow in the back of a skull and watched the big man pitch forward, it wasn't a surprise to him at all. He just wondered whether he'd get to the group before Aethe had them all neutralized.

Elisa held up her hand and started firing little condensed bits of lightning. She had been practicing that the entire time they had been at sea and for the whole wagon ride and was getting pretty good at it. Little triangular spikes of white-yellow power shot through the air, exploding on enemy armor into clouds of power about as big as a melon. The affected enemy soldiers gasped, but were stuck in place long enough for Aethe to get arrows in all but one of them.

Marco adjusted course to go after that one, peppering him with distracting bullets from his firearm as he ran. His expectation was that Aethe would probably put them down before he could, or that if he got really lucky, he might get a rapier into him. Neither happened. This group was so unexpectedly weak that the gun did the job, in the end, knocking the man stone-cold dead before either of them could unleash a decent finishing move on him.

"Well," Riv said. "That was kind of sad."

"How in the world did that happen?" The Wagoneer reached for his canteen and took a big swig of water, trying to wash away whatever dry-mouthed panic he was going through. "There were five of them!"

"Outer sea people," Kuzai said. "All of us, but I'm just a crafter. These young people are very high tier even out there."

"I suppose that would do it." The Wagoneer shook his head. "I just never expected it could be so fast."

"Do we get in trouble for this?" Aethe was at the wagon now, eating a bread of her own. "Killing a bunch of bandits, I mean."

"If anything, you'll get paid if you bring them along as proof. Just leave them where they are if you don't care about that, though. The rangers who keep this road clear will find them soon enough."

"Yeah, I don't feel like loading our ride up with corpses," Riv said. "Tends to stink after a while."

They were back on the road soon, and this time Marco's stomach made an uneasy truce with his brain, keeping him just on the edge of feeling bad, if not quite entirely in nausea territory. He spent the time staring at the wagon bottom, which Elisa said would help even more.

"You are thinking about something," Aethe said. "Share it. I'm bored."

"It's just how powerful we are now. Remember Frisk? I really have no way of knowing how strong he was."

"You've mentioned him before. Some sort of local powerhouse where you are from, I take it?"

"Something like that. He had a big ship with so many cannons. I still don't know if we've seen anything bigger. He was terrifying." Marco remembered that feeling really well now, having just encountered another force he could do nothing but run from. "But now he might be nothing."

"Or he might still be strong," Kuzai said. "Most adventurers eventually retire, Marco. Even outer sea people. Every year, a few of them make it back, buy manors, and settle down. They take pleasure cruises in their ships, take up hobbies, and try to have normal lives."

"I can't imagine that. Think about it," Marco said. "You'd just sit around, not using your class at all. Nothing exciting would ever happen. You'd stop growing. How do they do that?"

"Eventually, Marco, you stop growing anyway." Kuzai sighed. "You stop getting new skills. You stop leveling. You become the master of all the places you are brave enough to go, and things slow down."

"Why not go to new places? Find new challenges?"

"Fear. Old age. Obligations." Kuzai ticked off each item on his fingers. "There are a lot of reasons for it. I'm running into a few of them myself, lately."

That night they stopped at a roadside inn. It wasn't an interesting place, but it was a roof and an opportunity for the wagoneer to feed his beasts of burden. They slept for about six hours before Marco jerked awake, sitting up in the dark.

"What is it?" Aethe flopped a sleepy hand over on his leg. "Hear something?"

"No. Just thinking about Tatric." Marco lay back down and snuggled in. "I'd like for you to meet him."

"I'd like that too. But you don't have dreams about wanting your father to meet someone. There must have been more."

"Oh, it's just I have no way of knowing how he's doing. He was an old man when we left. The government wouldn't have been happy with him. Maybe he's fine, or maybe he's not. I just wish I could check."

"Well, that's easy." Aethe yawned into Marco's chest. "Just go check. After this. You already said you would. Remember?"

He remembered. Now he had even more reason to want to get this vacation nonsense over with.