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I still hoped that the castle would be cleaned up and used again someday, but I didn’t see it happening anytime soon.

The first step to such a goal would be solidifying our power as the leaders of the city. It would be foolish to just randomly let people go about as they pleased or to try to lighten the mood when we weren’t sure how others would react, after all.

I stood and gave the long, dusty hall one last glance before walking out.

***

Deciding to see how the planning was going, I found Bernard alone in the meeting room, sitting on one of the chairs and looking over a few pages he had written on, tapping the pen to his mouth in thought before he scribbled something out.

“It would be a lot easier if you used an eraser, you know,” I said from the entryway.

He turned his head and looked at me before he leaned back in his chair, reaching his arms up to stretch. I noticed that he had left his sword leaning against the table next to him.

“Mmm… It always feels more satisfying to scratch things out.”

He lowered his arms and dropped the pen onto the table next to the sheets of paper.

“What happened to you, anyway? We thought you were either dead or trapped beyond rescue. We tried to go back, but there was nothing there.”

“It’s hard to explain… I was transported to a secret dungeon of sorts where time didn’t pass quite the same, and by the time I came out, you and Velle were long gone.”

“Damn… I’m sorry, Aizen. Here we are trying to rescue people and we can’t even wait for one of our own. We can hardly call ourselves rescuers at this rate, huh?”

He gave me a lopsided half-grin. I could tell he was only partly joking. Leaving me behind hadn’t sat right with him.

If I had been in his shoes, I would have felt the same way. He was a good man.

“Don’t bother yourself with it. It’s not like you and Velle could wait for me forever. You had to leave at some point, right?”

He shook his head and waved my question away.

“Ah, forget it. I’m glad you made it out safely.”

“Thanks, Bernard. How’s the planning going?” I used my chin to gesture toward the papers that he had just been scribbling out.

“Troublesome at best,” he said. “Magic is nice and all, but it still can’t produce something out of nothing. The city, quite frankly, just doesn’t have enough to supply all of the food needed. It doesn’t matter that the item bags give us nearly unlimited space to hold it all.”

Right, food was relatively easy to grow and produce with magic, eliminating the need for anything but some water when supplied with mana at a steady rate, which made “food warehouses” fairly common in cities.

“Exactly how bad does it look?” I asked, thinking that humans could actually go quite some time without food. It had only taken me around a week to get to the city from Karfana, how long would it take a group of Unawakened?

‘They might go a bit hungry, but I don’t think anyone will starve to death.’

Still, there was the chance that I was drastically overestimating the speed at which we would be going.

“Anything other than that?”

He frowned while looking over the papers.

“No, not really. The warmth stones will be easy enough to supply and even make if need be.”

He didn’t want people to go hungry. That was easy enough to understand, but there was only so much we could do in that situation.

“If that’s it, then it would be better to leave sooner than later, no? Where are the others?”

“Velle is already out distributing the item bags with the warmth stones to those volunteering to go with us at the Association building. The dwarf went with her, and as for the others… I really don’t know. I think Koise is up in the tower. I can’t say I ever imagined I would be working on a rescue quest with the Lion Guild’s leadership.

I smiled at that and let out a low chuckle. “Imagine my surprise. They were trying to kill me not too long ago.”

I left Bernard to finish whatever plans he had before heading to the tower. I wasn’t sure whether Rhil was going to go with us or not, but I could only imagine that she would. Maybe they would have a way to get rid of the collar in the inner cities, after all.

As for Lein, his decision was his own, but it didn’t sound like he really had a reason to go with us. He would probably stay behind with the dwarf and help manage the city.

The elevator’s silent rise into the tower was just as captivating each time. Rising through the darkness into a world of stars dotting the abyssal void, I couldn’t help but wonder who the original inhabitants of the tower had been.

Was it just a structure pulled from another world in the Merge? It couldn’t have been human-built, at least, because we had only been there for a few years.

The tower’s apex was much as I last remembered it, save that the dragon’s corpse had been thoroughly dismantled and removed. Koise sat on the edge of the lopsided, broken desk, looking out of the shattered glass of the tower’s huge window, seemingly unbothered by the cold.

I stepped over to him, stopping by his side and looking out the window onto the city below.

The howling wind swirled snowflakes through the air around the pillars of fire in the city, the fiery pillars melting the snowflakes in a large radius around each of them, providing what seemed to be multiple “eyes of the storm”.

Beyond the pillars of fire and the city’s walls, the numerous Unawakened teemed in camps outside of the city.

“I hope you’re ready for what comes next, Aizen.”

His voice sounded quiet, hollow in the wake of the storm blowing past.

“What, the quest to take them to Karfana? It shouldn’t be too bad, Bernar—”

“No, not the quest,” he interrupted me, “I mean what comes after, Aizen.”

He turned his head away from the window to look at me.

“We killed the dragon and discovered that demon captain. I still plan to kill the demon, but, and I hate to say this, I need to level up first.”

While he spoke, wisps of air left his mouth. My ears and hands were starting to go numb, but I stayed and listened.

“I need to go back to my guild and report everything. I’m thankful that you saved my life, especially while I was trying to kill you, but once we get back to the cities, that’s it for our little partnership.”

Of course, I knew that he wouldn’t be staying with us forever. He had his own guild to attend to and matters that he had to oversee as a scout leader for said guild.

Still, I couldn’t deny that he had been key in killing the dragon and saving Rhil. Things would be more difficult without him.

“And once word spreads of this place, you can bet every big-league guild is going to try to get their own stake in it. A city on the edge of unexplored lands? Who wouldn’t want that? You’re going to have to watch your back, Aizen. I won’t be doing it for you.”

He turned his head away from me again and looked back over the city.

After that, I headed over to the Association to check on how Velle was doing.

I could see that she had her hands full from the city’s main square alone, a line of Awakeners spread out from the Association to sign up for the quest, and many were walking away in disappointment after having been turned away.

We couldn’t just take every Awakener in the city, after all, and Velle was trying to strike a good balance between the class types that we took with us.

If we only had Awakeners who were focused on melee, then who would deal with monsters that could fly or target us from a range?

On the other hand, if we only had people who could do ranged attacks, who would draw the monsters’ attention and hold them so that they could be finished off?

It was a careful balancing act, and monsters were known to be resistant to certain types of damage as well, so she had to take into account how many physical and magical-type damage dealers we had.

I squeezed past the Awakeners crowding the doorway and headed to Velle, who was behind the Association counter with the dwarf, where they were giving out instructions and telling the Awakeners being assigned where they would go and how they would distribute the warmth stones that they were handing out in item bags.

“Class and level?” she asked as I approached and a few others gave me dirty looks for cutting in line.

“Velle, it’s me.”

It took her a moment to clear her mind from what had become a rote memory.

“Oh, Aizen! Perfect. You can help us hand these out.”

She shoved a handful of the item bags toward me.