Chapter 2109: Finally Leaving Quo Town

"This guy’s from Crystal City; your enemy is from Warrior City," he said.

For the latter, although Virion hadn’t seen the whole fight between him and Garan, he actually recognized the guy.

They had met when Virion was a teenager. He had been following after his uncle like a proper minion. He had aged a lot since then, but he was very recognizable because of the birthmark on his face.

The man, defeated and crippled, looked at Virion with hate and annoyance.

"Why? You think I’m wrong?"

"This is for the greater good!" the man retorted with pride, obviously brainwashed.

This had been his uncle’s specialty. He didn’t have any special abilities regarding this, but he was glib enough to be exceptionally convincing. This guy had been following his uncle since he was a child, so the teachings he lived by were naturally Vairoz’s.

All the guy’s limbs had been crippled, and he was shivering not just from the pain, but also because Garan had frozen his body, exacerbating the pain.

Despite this, he still had the energy to annoy Virion.

"Hmph! You think you’re all that? The Lord is dead, but his bloodline isn’t!" he yelled, and then he fainted from all the agony.

The two of them frowned. On the surface, there was nothing wrong about the man’s words. Wasn’t Valhalla and Virion technically Vairoz’s blood relatives?

However, there was something subtle here. In the local language, the word for ’blood relative,’ as in any relatives related by blood, had subtle differences from ’bloodline,’ as in offspring.

Garan looked at Virion. "Didn’t you say your uncle didn’t leave any offspring?"

The two exchanged glances but didn’t look too much into it for now. This was something they could investigate later, and it was no longer Althea or Garan’s scope of interest.

Virion put this issue on hold and focused on the other guy instead. The guy was the leader of the operation. The leader was not his uncle’s right-hand man in the region, which was telling something.

Crystal City was very far from the nearest orc village, but it seemed like their claws still extended this far. They had an inkling after finding out which village Quo Town had cooperated with, but it seemed like the connection was more than just that almost-war.

Soon, they reunited with Althea and found out about her findings, which were actually more than what they gathered. Obviously, some people were just more talented with certain things than others.

From here, they discovered that the experiments actually started in Crystal City. Vairoz was just an incidental benefactor.

Virion also remembered who the woman was referred to as the former Crystal City Lord’s daughter (and the current Lord’s older sister). At the time, Valhalla was already an invalid, and Vairoz married a princess from another city. One could imagine what people thought.

However, Uncle never openly pushed for the heir position to be shifted to him. It was always the retainers blabbering about things. On the surface, he seemed uninterested in gaining the ultimate power and was completely cooperative with every policy and decision Valhalla had made.

That woman became the uncle’s main wife, and he did not take any new mistresses for years after that. She happened to be an elementalist, too. It was just that decades ago, she died of mysterious circumstances. Virion never really cared, but it looked like he’d have to investigate that a bit.

There was definitely more to this story than met the eye. Virion wondered if he had to pass by Crystal City soon?

Of course, this was just Virion. Althea and Garan had no further interest in going with him. All they asked was for him to coordinate with Alterra’s intelligence team. They wanted to be updated regarding this issue, and that was enough.

"Crystal City actually has more vested interest in this area than just the experiment subjects," Althea explained after she investigated the scientist and the laboratory. There was also a large, shared warehouse between the two laboratories that she gained access to.

Most of the important or unique contents were in her space now though.

"They were taking some resources from the area. It’s something like Fluorite found in karst mountains East."

Orcspire Mountains, according to the description, should be mostly made of granite. Granite had plenty of other minerals there, and fluorite was one of them.

Crystal City was a glass-making City. Other than the resources found in their area, the granite mountain was also rich in materials. Not just fluorite, but it should also have things like quartz, feldspar, and so on.

Crystal City was near a desert and already had an abundance of quartz, but the other things like feldspar and fluorite were still more common along the granite mountains.

Mica was also a good add-on to creating high-quality glass. Fluorite was added to improve optical quality, change viscosity, and make it easier to shape complex forms.

Other than Alterra, Crystal City was definitely the forerunner for this material, so it was not a surprise they knew these things already. It was just that their processing still had ways to go. This was unlike Alterra, which inherited generations of improvements and modernity.

Their current development would’ve been impressive. Had they not started the hostilities, Althea would’ve been happy to have partnered with them.

They remembered the war with Papell Town back then. After a bit of investigation, they found out Crystal City was its backer, effectively souring the relationship.

Not that Alterra and Crystal had a relationship at all. But after the war, they were not friendly anymore, and neither side had made a move since then.

Now, they were even involved in experimentation, so her impression of them had lowered even more.

Virion looked at them. "I’ll get to the bottom of this," he said. "You go and do your mission with an ease of mind."

Althea nodded. "I will send a post back home to coordinate with you, and also inform you if we have related news."

...

Quo Town was a town, so it naturally had its own Post Office. At the very least, it had Warrior City’s backing, so the purchase of some pertinent special buildings was imperative, and they managed to get partial support for them.

Through the Quo Town Post Office, Althea sent the instruction to coordinate with Virion regarding this issue. She also sent them updates and everything they had gathered so far.

Other than this, there were a lot of personal letters sent to the family and friends back home.

They told them that they would now be heading to the ’true’ orc regions, and there were no official territories there. They would be cut off from the world for an indefinite amount of time, so they better not worry even if they hadn’t heard from them for a while.

Anyway, they had life candles in the territory, and the token itself was in there, so Althea could at least be assured that they would not be blindly worried.

Interestingly, before they left, they received a letter in return. The first ones were personal ones from family and friends. The children also sent them letters or, well, doodles.

Crayons were now a common item in the town, and the children had a plethora of colors to choose from. Their Posts were made from crayon doodles, and it seemed like they wanted to fit all colors in their drawings.

The couple could tell which drawing was whose.

Little Meatball’s was all over the place, a splatter of green here, a circle of yellow there, a squiggle of brown here and there. It reminded them of his doodles on building faces.

The key was that the image was very spirited and vibrant, just like him.

Little Pepper’s was also difficult to comprehend, but she chose beautiful colors like red and violet, and they looked surprisingly well matched, like an abstract painting. Obviously, the baby girl already had an innate sense of beauty at toddler age.

Regardless, the drawings were heartwarming. While the drawings themselves didn’t have decipherable figures, the couple received love from their children.

They would definitely frame these drawings with the highest-quality wooden frames.

After this, they received one more post, and it didn’t bring entirely good news. It told them that Alterra had more and more mobs attracted to them.

Alterra’s Threat Assessment Team had always recorded the frequency and quality of the beast mobs that attacked Alterra on a daily basis.

It was not just to facilitate the approval and recommended minimum strength for those heading out of the walls, but also to determine the minimum number and level of guards stationed along the battlement.

Hence, they had a very clear graph of the number of monsters and their average levels over the past year or so. So, if the team said the monsters were increasing, then it definitely was.

There had apparently been a great influx of monsters lately, increasing since a week prior.

Thinking of the timeline, Althea pursed her lips.

She had a vague feeling it had to do with the Elyssian stone she planted...