Chapter 111: The Seal
"My private study," Elric said, gesturing towards a small, sturdy door behind the bar. "It’s secure. No one will disturb us there."
The room was small and cluttered, filled with shipping manifests, old account books, and maps of trade routes pinned to the walls.
It smelt of old paper and spilt wine. They gathered around a small, sturdy table. For a long moment, they were silent, each man contemplating the enormity of their task.
"Where do we even begin?" Elric asked, rubbing his tired eyes. "The world is a big place."
"We begin with what we know," Gregor said, taking charge. He was a man of order, and he approached this problem as he would a battle plan. "We each have a piece of the map. We just need to put them together."
He looked at Tyren.
"You, captain. You’ve spent more time in the Unclaimed Territories to the south than any man alive. You’ve seen things, heard stories. Tell us everything. The ruins, the beasts, the legends. Don’t leave anything out, no matter how crazy it sounds."
Tyren nodded. He closed his good eye, his mind travelling back to the wild, dangerous lands he knew so well. He began to speak, his voice low and steady, a storyteller recounting a lifetime of survival.
He spoke of the Whispering Mire, a vast, ancient swamp where the trees were so old their roots were like tangled mountains.
He told them of the strange, multi-headed hydras that lived in its black waters, and of the legends of a Dream City, a place of silent stone towers that was said to be visible only on nights with a full moon.
He described the Crimson Caldera, a land of fire and lightning far to the southeast. It was a place where the ground itself was a living volcano, and the beasts were made of magma and obsidian.
He had never been there himself, but he had heard the stories from a mad old prospector who claimed to have seen rivers of liquid fire and mountains that breathed lightning.
He talked of the Boneyard Desert to the southwest, a place where the sand was white as salt and the skeletons of colossal, long-dead creatures lay half-buried, their giant ribs forming arches against the empty sky.
Gregor listened intently, making notes on a large, blank piece of parchment. Elric brought out his own collection of maps, trying to match Tyren’s descriptions to the vague, uncharted areas on the southern edge of the known world.
When Tyren was finished, Gregor turned to Elric. "Innkeeper. You hear the stories of every merchant and traveller who passes through this city. You know the lands to the north, the civilised realms. Tell us of the great powers. The sects, the families, the empire."
Elric leaned forward. He spoke of the three great sects that held the north in their grip. He described the Azure Sky Palace in the northeast, a sect of powerful elemental cultivators who lived high in the mountains.
They were said to be arrogant and proud, looking down on the rest of the world from their homes in the sky.
He talked of the Golden Sword Sect in the northwest, a martial clan of deadly sword masters who lived in a harsh, windswept land of red rock canyons.
They were disciplined, ruthless, and they believed that strength was the only law that mattered.
He spoke of the Serene Moon Nunnery, a mysterious, all-female sect hidden deep in a vast, ancient forest in the west.
They were masters of spiritual arts, and they rarely interacted with the outside world.
He then told them of the power that sat at the centre of it all: the Tianlong Empire. It was a vast and ancient kingdom that controlled the fertile central plains of the continent.
Its emperor was said to be the most powerful cultivator, half a step into ascension.
Finally, he spoke of the Five Ancient Families, the true, hidden rulers of the world. They controlled trade, politics, and secrets. They were the puppet masters who pulled the strings of the entire continent.
Gregor continued to write, his pen scratching furiously on the parchment. The map of the world was beginning to take shape. It was a world of gods and monsters, of empires and hidden powers.
When Elric finished, Gregor unrolled his own contribution. It was an ancient, brittle map from the city’s archives. It was a map of the entire region, and on its far northern edge, it showed something that the other maps did not.
It was a thick, dark line that stretched from the western mountains to the eastern ocean. It was labelled with a single, archaic word:
"The Seal."
"The old legends say that our land, the Mainland, was once connected to a larger part of the world," Gregor said, his voice low. "But a great war was fought, long ago. A war between gods. We won the war, but our ancestors at that time willingly sealed ourselves in...."
"Wait... sealed ourselves in? Why?"
"I don’t know...."
They worked for the rest of the day. They compiled all their knowledge. They took Gregor’s old map and added to it, drawing in the locations Tyren had described and the territories Elric had spoken of. They wrote down the names of the sects, the families, and the beasts.
By the time the sun set, they had created a new map. It was crude and full of question marks, but it was the most complete picture of their world that had ever existed. They rolled up the map and the scrolls of information carefully.
Tyren was chosen to deliver it. He was a mercenary, a man who understood the nature of power. He walked up the stairs of the inn, his heart pounding in his chest. The two guards Gregor had posted stood aside for him without a word.
He knocked softly on the door of Rhys’s room.
"Enter," a calm voice said from within.
Tyren opened the door. Rhys was sitting on the edge of the bed, his grey cloak on the chair beside him. He looked up as Tyren entered, his pitch-black eyes seeming to look right through him.
Tyren did not speak. He simply walked to the table in the centre of the room and unrolled the map and the scrolls.
"This is what we know," Tyren said, his voice rough. "The south is a land of monsters and legends. The north is a land of powerful sects and ancient families. And we... we are in the middle."
Rhys stood up and walked to the table. He looked down at the map.
"Good," Rhys said. It was the only word he spoke.
Tyren bowed his head and left the room, his mission complete.
Rhys was left alone. He unrolled the map again, his fingers tracing the lines of the unknown continent.
’System...’
[Analysing...]
Rhys frowned, leaning back in his chair. After arriving on the Mainland, he had learned a crucial detail about the world. There was a great war thousands of years ago; no one knew against what they fought, but what everyone knew was that they had won.
However, they had willingly sealed themselves in... that was the reason there had been no natural ascensions in the mortal world for thousands of years.
Only by the help of the God of Karma could one ascend to immortality.
’What a joke...’
That made Rhys, someone who had erased an entire province to kill a blood demon, ineligible to ascend.