Chapter 595: Faith

Pursing her lips, Sasha took a moment to gather her wits before checking to make sure that the doors to the room were closed. Only after she was certain no one else was listening did she lower her voice and reply to her father-in-law’s inquiry, "Charles, Anna, Drake, and about 2,000 others from Redwood Town and its surrounding villages were sent somewhere far, far south-west of the kingdom. As for their exact condition and location, no one knows for sure."

"Sent far, far south-west of the kingdom?" Amalia tilted her head, "What exactly does that mean? How is that even possible?"

Letting out a sigh, Sasha shook her head, "I don’t know all of the details, as I wasn’t there when it happened, but according to what Lucas told me, there was some kind of terrible storm that somehow connected Redwood Town with a far-away place. That storm then sucked in most of the people from Redwood Town and dropped them on the other side."

Neither Edward nor Amalia was able to understand what they were hearing from Sasha, which wasn’t surprising given how absurd the whole situation was from the start.

In fact, it had taken Lucas over a month and multiple different attempts just to get Celestina to properly comprehend what had happened that night.

It wasn’t that Lucas was smarter and they were all stupid, it was simply a difference in base knowledge.

Extreme space-time stresses resulting from a warp-field induced explosion leading to a focused but unstable dislocation of spatial coordinates around a fix gravitational point might make sense to Lucas thanks to his benefactor from the other universe having studying spatial mechanics, but to the people of the Rockwell Kingdom, he sounded much more like a raving lunatic spouting off incoherent gibberish in another language.

That was why, after finally getting the most basic idea across to his Master, both she and Lucas had agreed to not disclose this particular piece of information to anyone unless absolutely necessary, and that when they did, they would only describe what had happened, while completely leaving out the how or why.

Sasha had naturally received the stripped-down version of events from Lucas, so even if she wanted to explain it more to her husband’s mother and father, she really couldn’t.

Amalia and Edward seemed to understand the predicament their daughter-in-law was in, so with a long sigh, they decided to focus on more practical matters.

"Do you at least know how far away they are? Or their general location? Anything that would help us find them?" Amalia asked.

Wrinkling her brow, Sasha nodded seriously, "On the night this all happened, Lucas, Eris, and Christina all apparently managed to travel through that storm to where everyone else was sent. Once on the other side, Lucas was able to roughly calculate their position by studying the stars."

"As for how far away they were at the time," Sasha continued, "Lucas estimated it was approximately 35,000 kilometres south-south-west from Redwood Town."

"Um, how far is a kilometre?" Edward asked with a hint of puzzlement; he had never heard this unit of measurement before, after all.

It had been a while since anyone had to ask Sasha this question as the metric system had pretty much penetrated the entire Balfour March by now, so when she was, she couldn’t help smiling wryly for a moment before replying, "1 metre is slightly longer than an average adult’s walking-pace, and there are 1,000 metres in a single kilometre."

Mulling over these numbers in their heads, and doing some very rough estimations, both Edward and Amalia’s faces soon turned pale, with the latter muttering out loud, "So, what you mean to say is, 35,000 kilometres would be about 30 times the distance from here to where Redwood Town once was, yes?"

"That sounds about right," Sasha nodded.

It was a miracle the older couple didn’t pass out then and there.

After setting out from their cultivation retreat, Edward and Amalia, accompanied by Braden, had criss-crossed the Rockwell Kingdom in search of their missing family. In the new units their daughter-in-law had just introduced to them, they figured they had traveled roughly 3,500 kilometres.

Now, however, Sasha was telling them that their youngest son was lost somewhere 10 times further away than the distance they had covered in that 7 months journey!

To make matters worse, Edward and Amalia knew that there were no kingdoms, no countries, no civilization of any kind south-west of the Rockwell Kingdom! What was south-west of the Rockwell Kingdom was the Cerulean Ocean, a body of water so vast that it might as well have been endless!

How were they supposed to cross that kind of vast distance? Was it even possible?

It may have taken them 7 months to complete their 3,500 kilometres trek, but Edward and Amalia knew that it would be many times more difficult and take many times longer to travel that far across the Cerulean Ocean.

The route they took was already well beaten, with roads to walk on and cities and towns to stop and rest at.

In order to see their son again, they would literally have to pioneer an ocean that no one in the history of the Rockwell Kingdom had ever even tried to explore!

The two tasks were completely incomparable.

"Does... does that mean, we’ll never see Charles again?" Amalia asked not really expecting an answer, as she already knew that answer was ’no’.

Sasha, however, responded to this rhetorical question in a firm and confident tone, "We will. Lucas will make it happen."

The elderly couple were taken aback for a brief spell before Edward couldn’t help wondering, "Everyone we’ve spoken to today seems to have a kind of... unwavering faith in that boy. Is Anna and Drake’s son really that outstanding?"

"He is," Sasha declared without any hesitation, "If Lucas says he can find where they are, and figure out a way to get us there, then he can."

It may have been many years since they last saw her, but Edward and Amalia understood that Sasha would never lie to them about something like this, so for the moment, they chose to believe her.

Perhaps they too were just going on blind faith, or perhaps they were just unwilling to accept the idea that their only remaining son might as well be dead.

As for whether that faith was warranted, that remained to be seen.

.....

"I know this is a bit hypocritical of me to ask this, but... should you really be telling us all this, Sasha?" Edward asked after taking a moment to compose himself.

"En," Amalia followed up, "Aunt Farah said that this information was considered a secret, which was why she couldn’t tell us about it. We are naturally very grateful you decided to trust us with news about Charles, but... will you be alright?"

Smiling lightly, Sasha waved her hand casually, "It’s alright. Lucas was given full authority to decide who could be informed about the truth of what happened in Redwood Town, and he gave me permission to disclose this information to the two of you when you arrived."

Lucas again, the old couple couldn’t help thinking.

"I take it you knew we were on our way because Tracy told you, yes?" Amalia figured.

"Yes," Sasha nodded, "I’ve exchanged a couple of letters with Sister Tracy, and she informed me about Father-in-law and Mother-in-law’s search."

"I see," Amalia relaxed back into the couch slightly as she tried to organize her thoughts.

"Did Senior Farah say anything else to you?" Sasha inquired, trying to get a grasp of just how much her in-laws knew about the current situation.

"Well..."