The End of Eternity

Emerald Dawn

These undead are even more and more pestering. We are unable to shake them off. They cannot possibly be advancing at this pace." Rhaska thought aloud.

"This is because," Davena jumped off of Mei. "these teams are not conquering all of it. I noticed it before. I do not know the purpose of this tactic, but they have two lines. The second line is the extermination line, they kill every living intelligent creature behind it, the first line is some sort of intelligence gathering, the first line rushes forward like crazy. We won't probably be able to outpace it."

"They might be searching for something." Rhaska said. "How fast is the second line?"

"Slow, they are quite thorough and it depends on resistance, number of cities in the area and terrain. I would say about five kilometers a day. The faster line goes roughly thirty times faster maybe more, but just as I have said, they are just scouts."

"Yeah, we have seen." A tremor ran through Zaza's body.

"So, in a month of travel, we have gained roughly a year on their main force? That is not bad.." Claw pointed out. "Rhaska, how far ahead do you know the area? Where should we go next?"

"Well, our deepest scouting mission was about one month of flight deep. That is a bit over fifty thousand kilometers. "

"What??" Everyone gaped at Rhaska.

"What what? A dragon can fly day and night and can even sleep in the air, one month of continuous flight can take you very far. Unfortunately, we have just a wild guesses from so far ahead and no maps. The properly mapped area was up to ten thousand kilometers away from the Skyrock Castle. We are still well within that area."

"Is there some advanced kingdom in our direction? We need to buy armor." Claw continued to question Rhaska.

"There are many, if you want one of the strongest kingdoms in the area, it is probably the Emerald Dawn empire. It takes months to cross it on foot, definitely one of the most powerful players in the region. It is two months of travel away."

"Does anyone have a better destination?" Claw asked, but heard only silence.

* * * *

They decided to omit unnecessary stops and headed directly to their destination. Food was not an issue. One of the new principles of this reality was, things simply came into being if the conditions were right or at least had a chance to do so. This phenomenon was not restricted to dungeons, even monsters, places, buildings, trees or whatever else could appear, almost anything. Manifestations was a common term for this principle. The nature of a manifestation and the frequency of the phenomenon's occurance was influenced by environment, terrain and history of the place, but these were just the few known factors. Most common manifestations were various creatures. Thanks to this new phenomenon, food tended to be abundant and roads dangerous. Thankfully, all the manifastations of creatures seemed to be of level one. The most powerful manifestations they had heard of yet were vampires and trolls. There were rumours of more dangerous beasts, but one could not trust gossip too much.

They continued their journey, with no complications, apart for ever complaining Zaza about his single cauldron being not enough for his research. The two months flew like the wind and soon, they were on the border of the Emerald Dawn empire.

The empire was huge, it would have taken them more than two months to cross it. Apparently, it was bigger than some small continents. It could be said, that all the elves from the most eastern part of the continent migrated here and bolstered its power. The Emerald Dawn was an empire of elves, their last stand in the east. Though the power of elves was not as crushing as before, they still held considerable influence in the region. Eyes of all proud elves were gazing upon the Emerald Dawn, with hope their lost superiority over all the other races on the continent would return and the undead threat would be stoppoed for good.