Chapter 1649 Out of the Mist and…

--- Kat ---

Kat had to resist the urge to stop as soon as they broke out of the mist and into the more normal forest around Forest Village, Bower’s home. They were still perhaps a day out but it had been a long few days. Of course Kat was leading the way for her group so she had to keep moving to allow everyone a chance to get out. Read new chapters at empire

Kat couldn’t help but smile as she saw everyone glancing around at the sky, what little of it they could see anyway. Everything had started blending together not long after finding Kamiko’s team. The bubbles were interesting sure but for the most part Kat and whoever she managed to stick with just burned their way through.

The groups were brought together and split up multiple times. They had the full party together either once or twice depending on how you counted things. Once by luck and twice if you counted how Bower enforced it for everyone leaving the mist together. He’d got to the edge first of course, with Hunter second, Meg third, Kamiko forth and Kat’s group last.

Kat felt a touch embarrassed about that but in her defence Church had only mostly recovered and was no longer being carried because Brook now was. He’d clearly caught whatever it was Church had by sleeping in the same tent, or at least that was Kat’s best guess as nobody else had gotten sick on the journey. It meant that she’d needed to keep a slower pace to ensure Church didn’t relapse.

It was also annoying because they’d ended up on that snowy mountain. AGAIN. For the FORTH DAMMNED TIME. Kat now knew what Bower meant when he said some bubbles were more common then others. Sure Kat had seen a wide variety of varied landscapes within the bubbles… but a couple of them kept coming back with the snowy mountain being the most common, along with the jungle and a few others showing up multiple times but with slight variations.

Kat never saw the blue sandstorm again… and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. It made it very hard to investigate the oddities that she’d noticed alongside Lily in regards to the bubbles. They did try asking Bower about it when he showed up… but he’d just shrugged and said, "I’ve got no idea. Normally we keep hunting parties to a smaller size so that we don’t have to deal with getting split up all the time. Anything under ten people is usually fine and that’s always been enough for us,"

Bower’s approach was probably more sensible and from the other questions they’d poked at him with it sounded like there wasn’t really enough capable hunters to test large groups anyway. Including random people would just be asking for trouble… so that mystery went unsolved.

Kat wondered why it was the way it was, with Lily suggesting.

[What if there’s meant to be a certain number of people in a ’team’ and the bubbles occasionally try to separate us? As in give us a chance to escape? We ARE tying people to each other after all.]

*Hmmm… I guess it’s a question of how much intent there is in the mist.*

That was another thing they’d tried to work out. With physical examples to point to Kat and Lily tried to question Corela about what she knew about the forest and it’s functions… but the answer was basically nothing. The mist barrier was supposed to be a basic defensive setup apparently.

"What do you mean basic?" asked Kat.

"I mean what I said. When I asked about it myself, back when the people who set up those features were still around they more or less just said it was a standard defensive unit that got moved in. Obviously they were lying. Nothing else survived from the sounds of things so it was either a custom unit or something cutting edge that hadn’t been rolled out just yet. I really don’t know why or how things developed this way.

"Was it just a slightly advanced shield that combined in weird ways with all the power and the end of the world? It’s quite possible that the concentration of corruptive magic that caused the end of the world interacted strangely with the defences and caused the forest. Maybe there’s a big ley line that curved to intercept the facility. There’s a bunch of things it could be but I just don’t know," Corela had explained with a sigh.

Kat and Lily believed the older women. She was clearly annoyed at the lack of information, or perhaps the fact that she’d likely been lied to about the defences she’d then had to rely on for centuries while the world recovered. The fact that nobody who knew how to operate them had survived was annoying. Perhaps if they were lucky someone that was ’on the edge’ in the cryo-pods would know but Kat felt it was wrong to press Corela for that particular information. Especially when it couldn’t help them anymore.

That and the atmosphere for serious conversations was super awkward at the time. Kat had managed to catch up with Kamiko again after being separated and they’d ended up in some sort of candy dimension. It was a special kind of hell in truth. It all looked like candy, tasted like candy if you licked it even, but when Kat tried tasting some it started to burn through her throat.

Watching Kat dig into her own neck and pull out the large chunk of hard candy she’d tried eating really dissuaded other people from making the attempt, especially when the only reason Kat had tried the candy was because Pip looked like she was going to try it herself if nobody else did, regardless of the warnings about it potentially being dangerous. So Kat bit the bullet and she was very glad that she did. Things could’ve been much worse if someone else had tried the candy first.

Lily wasn’t particularly happy with Kat though.

[You really should’ve taken more safety precautions.]

*I don’t know what else I could’ve done Lily. You saw that look on Pip’s eyes, and a few other people besides. I’m sure Church would’ve tried some if she was awake at the time. I kept it in my mouth for a good while and I was swallowing it to tell everyone that it seemed fine. Good thing I didn’t get the chance to make such a claim… someone probably would’ve died.*

[Kamiko was around so she could’ve probably healed the person… but yes it would’ve been super traumatic. Still not happy you did it but I wasn’t going to bring it up again if you didn’t. I do understand why you made the attempt even if I’m not entirely happy with how it all went down.]

*Well despite me asking a few times now ’what would you have suggested I do differently’ I’ve yet to be given an alternative solution.*

[Because I still don’t have one! Clearly swallowing the candy piece was the trigger and there’s no way to know if the other bits and pieces of ’edible’ foliage had the same trigger or different ones. Heck, if we had Bower with us he might’ve been able to explain which ones were safe. I refuse to believe that everything there was deadly. That’s not how you properly tempt people.]

Kat nodded in agreement.

At least the place was really nice to look at. *A bit chilly for the others perhaps but I suppose that’s how it’s all kept in edible condition. I imagine things would start melting in there if it was too hot. Shame we didn’t have Hunter or Meg around to test with proper fire.*

[Eurgh. I’m thinking of burning some time to line some fire spells for testing purposes.]

*Was the pun there intentional?*

[Yes it was, though I’m quite serious about it. I’ll try talking to Thyme next time we meet up with them. I don’t need anything fancy, just a basic spell to set things on fire will be acceptable.]

*Fair enough I suppose.*

Kat didn’t have time to continue the mental conversation because now that everyone was out of the mist Meg was clapping her hands together. "Right, everyone. I get that we’re all excited to be out of the mists but we’re not at the town just yet. Before we can head there, some discussion needs to be finalised between Bower and Corela. At that point we may be heading into town,"

"Why is that?" asked Malt and Craunch.

Corela sighed, "It’s simply that we don’t have permission to enter the town nor a place to stay. Bower and I will need to discuss things, and there’s a good chance that I’ll need to go ahead and discuss things with the mayor before coming back to get you all,"

*Hmm… I wonder if she’s going to be rushed there by Hunter. I wouldn’t put it past her to know exactly how to get to the town now that we’re finally out of the mist.*

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