A/N: New month again! Midway through 2026! GOSH. Thank you so much for staying with the story! Hopefully, we can finish this by this year lololol.
Special mention to May 2026’s top 3 golden gifters Prosperity_Jones, CircleO, Angelica_Franco_0220, and MinXiLang! HUGSSS
Love you, everyone!
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Warrior City was just beyond the scope of their mercenary level, so the mission they took was not there. Fortunately, the Town was a subsidiary of Warrior City and was just several hundred kilometers away. In the standards of this world, that was fairly close.
The task was also impossible to complete immediately, so they could only walk to Warrior City directly on foot as soon as they exited the Town’s Mercenary Hall.
For safety, they joined a caravan heading the same way. Since it was a subsidiary, caravans heading to and fro were not uncommon. They were lucky that there was a caravan that day, so they joined in, though they had to pay extra.
The next one was already 3 weeks away, so they had no choice but to use this one. This convoy was official, so it was very professional. They already had a set path, SOPs in every situation, and so on.
They were also quite amicable, and Althea found teams to give Alterra taxes again.
Otto would be establishing a trade route to this area after Misha gives birth. It was good to lay a bit more of a foundation before that.
They arrived at Warrior City just over a day later, and this was already including the battles. They were lucky not to have encountered excessively strong monsters, only mobs led by level 30s at the worst.
This was partially because Warrior City had a robust hunting culture. Those who were above level 30 actively look for monsters at their level. Even if Warrior City had its own aether crystals, most Warrior City elites refused to be completely dependent on them.
Among cities, Warrior City could be said to have the least amount of supermonsters because of this.
The couple, after arriving at a new city, took their time to explore the place, study the region more for their two missions (i.e. the trip to the orc region and the mercenary hall mission, respectively). They had just come from another city, so they could compare the two of them.
In terms of vitality, Bleulle was quite active as any other city, but Warrior City was on a different level. One part was that most people here seemed more active in the physical sense of the word.
There were more muscles, more fighters, more people walking around with their weapons. It helped that, not long after the couple arrived, they saw two half-orcs walking around like normal citizens. Outside Alterra, this was an impossible sight.
Other than this, the aesthetics, the people’s appearances, the clothing, and so on varied enough that they could clearly feel that they were in a totally different place.
Basically, there was an aether barracks near every gate of the city. It felt very safe.
Althea could see Garan’s envy, too, and she wondered whether to use the remaining raw materials they had for aether blueprints on it. They still had a few, and their current allocation was some Minister’s pet projects, at least those that couldn’t be made with the current technologies.
They also had a Training Hall, which was really indicative that they had invested in the territory’s strength fairly early on.
The two of them also went through the market and bought the new things that they could see, as always. It had pretty much become a tradition at this point.
As they shopped, they also found out more about the situation of the city and also that of the outside. They heard a bit from the intelligence team and from Otto, but naturally, the gossip from the bottom was no less interesting.
Even if some were just rumors and hearsays, gossip could show the common people’s point of view.
Further, many rumors had their roots in the truth, and figuring out which was which was also fun. In fact, many people from the intelligence team had this as a hobby.
Most of all...gossip was fun.
As wise men say: Gossip is just unofficial history.

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