“Finally here?” Shelika stretched, like a cat uncoiling under dawn.

She cracked her eyes open. Ahead, a mass of stone buildings rose like cliffs from a pale sea. Her gaze caught light; their unmatched craft drew her like moonlight on water.

“This is Oriel City?” Shelika breathed, wonder spilling like a spring.

“Yeah. Spectacular, right?” Pete smiled, sunlight easy on his face.

Each structure was laid from big, neat blocks of bluestone, stacked like calm waves. Every block carried fine carvings, vines of pattern curling like frost.

Many rose as pyramids or stepped temples, tiered like mountains shouldering clouds. To Fulin, used to needle spires and cone-topped towers, this felt like a new sky.

The streets carried an exotic wind. Skin-toned bluish-gray folk crossed in strange-cut clothes, lantern-bright and dusk-dark. Oriel City shimmered, foreign and gorgeous.

Yet, under grandeur and bustle, a discordant note thrummed like a cracked bell.

Their carts had barely neared the gate when they saw a hole in the wall by the gate. It gaped half a gate wide, like a wound torn by a tusk.

Two wagons could ride side by side through it; the view inside lay open like a book. A building opposite had collapsed into a ragged ruin, ash piled like fallen snow.

Crowds ringed the wreck: citizens and merchants, faces knotted like rain-soaked rope; guards and official-looking folk, brows taut like bowstrings.

The townsfolk watched, worried, voices weaving like nesting swallows. The guards listened tight-faced to a witness jabbering, his hands chopping air like blades.

Shelika’s curiosity pricked like nettles, but the distance swallowed words like fog. She had to ask, “What happened?”

Pete looked over. His easy smile hardened like frost on glass. “Probably another beast calamity,” he said, the tone heavy as wet cloth.

“How do you know?” Shelika frowned, uncertainty rippling like a shallow pond.

Pete pointed, unruffled as gravel. “Look at that mess. If no beast barged in and rampaged, would it be smashed like that?”

He was right. The house had been broken by brute force; rubble lay scattered like teeth flung from a jaw.

“I see…” Shelika murmured, still lost like a traveler in mist. In her memory, beast disasters were rare; even Shelika herself had few clear facts.

While they spoke, the carts rolled into Oriel City. Exotic air rushed up like spice on a hot wind.

Earthfolk and the Demonic Human Race mingled in the stream of bodies; Earthfolk most, Demonic Humans next. As for the Blood Clan, the streets were almost bare of them—they slept by day, like bats hugging caves.

Wide roads flanked by shops unfurled like market tapestries. Most sold daily goods; some sold weapons, steel glinting like river-ice; some hawked odd, nameless things, mystery bottled like fireflies.

As Shelika turned, eyes drinking the scene like tea, Pete reminded, “Alright, Lady Shelika, we’re in Oriel City.”

“Right. We arrived.” Her voice still carried road-dust, fatigue hanging like dusk.

Robert, the greenhorn, spoke in a gentleman’s tone he’d stitched together on the fly, reluctant as a willow to let go. “We’ll part ways here, my lady…”

Pete smacked him on the head, a clap like a palm on a drum. “Kid, Lady Shelika’s not only a pure-blood of the Dark Blood Clan, she’s a powerful mage, and she works like the tide—never stops. Don’t be a toad lusting after a swan. Show her respect.”

“Y-yes!” Robert bobbed his head like a pecking bird.

Shelika watched, smiling with a soft, knowing curve, warmth rising like steam. Truth be told, she used to stare at other pretty girls and drift. Now the flattery bent toward her. Fulin, inside the role of Shelika, couldn’t help a tide of feelings.

They traded a few light farewells. Then Pete said, “After we split, we’ll sell some goods at Oriel’s Central Exchange, then head toward the capital—around the Rozelia region.”

“I see.”

Pete asked, “And you, Lady Shelika? You’re an ecological surveyor, right? Where to next?”

“I’ll stay in Oriel for a while,” she said, calm as still water. “After that… it’s not convenient to say.”

“Understood…” Pete’s gaze lingered on Shelika’s face, beauty bright as a new moon. Passersby saw her and stopped, feet rooted like trees.

“May we meet again.” Pete doffed his hat in salute, manners crisp as folded paper.

“Mm. See you.” Shelika waved, a willow-leaf gesture, toward the two wagons.

They merged into the busy flow and vanished soon after, swallowed like fish into a river.

Partings are mostly like this—simple, like a door quietly closing.

Shelika turned. She asked a few startled pedestrians for directions; their answers fluttered like sparrows. She set off toward the inn.

After a few corners, she came to a place called the Gray Pearl, its sign glimmering like a stone washed by rain. A matron of the Demonic Human Race ran it, steady as a hearth.

If Earthfolk wore bluish-white skin like winter mist, Abyssal Demonic Humans wore bluish-gray like weathered slate. The neatly dressed matron, in face and poise, was a true gray pearl.

“Fifteen rubi a night. Long stay is ten,” the Demonic Human matron said, brisk as a broom.

“Do you have a place my servant can be parked?” Shelika asked, pointing outside at the Eternal War Armor.

To avoid attention, the armor wore a bluish-gray cloak like a storm cloud. The shine of the chassis hid, but a cloaked giant stands out like a mountain under a sheet—more secret, more conspicuous.

Seeing more and more onlookers stop, Shelika’s heart tightened like a knot. Trouble gathers like thunder. She needed to hide the big one before sparks flew.

The matron glanced outside, then back, practiced as a mill. “Blood Clan with a servant? Fine. But yours is huge. Only the stable will do.”

“The stable’s dirty, but there’s no extra charge. Okay?” she added, words fast as rain.

Shelika thought a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

“Good. Fifteen a night, ten for long stay. How long?”

“Hmm…” Shelika weighed plans like stones in a hand.

If she hadn’t misseen back in the Demon Realm Forest, that Wasteland Deity sat in the Holy City. Only there could you stand so close to the night’s ‘aurora’ and drink it in.

And that aurora wasn’t the northern kind. The colored curtains in the Dark Spirit Empire’s night were the Earth Mother’s manifested power, light sent up from the Grand Altar in the Holy City.

In short, the Wasteland Deity was in the Holy City.

To uncover its truth and cut the threat born of the Hymn Project, Fulin in Shelika’s skin had to go there, must like a pilgrim drawn by bells.

But the Holy City was the heartland of the Earth Mother’s faith on imperial soil, and a base for the Shadowspirit Legion. Ordinary folk needed to pay a hefty pilgrimage fee to enter.

The usual fee was one thousand rubi.

So, before the Holy City, she’d first gather that thousand in this trade hub, stacking coin like bricks.

Her mind set, Shelika told the owner, “Three days first. I’ll extend later.”

“That’s forty-five rubi,” the matron said, quick as an abacus.

“Huh? Isn’t it thirty?”

“Long stay’s at least two weeks. Three days is forty-five,” she replied, firm as a lock.

“But I’ll add money later—” Shelika’s voice turned soft and a touch hurt, like a reed in wind.

The matron’s seasoned cadence rolled over it like a cart. “Girl, you didn’t bring enough money, did you?”

“I did,” Shelika insisted, stubborn as flint. “Of course I did.”

“Good,” the other laughed, bright as a bell. “You’re too pretty—don’t go doing shady work just because you’re short on cash, okay~~”