Infinite Mana - Chapter 177: The Final Bastion (Thank you for your support, Lende!) (Patreon)

Skipping every town and city along the route became considerably more annoying than Sieghart expected, mostly because those settlements represented food, books, trade opportunities, information, and comfortable places where ordinary travelers could stop without hiding their carriage beneath trees.

Still, after what happened near Greymill and the roadside robbery, avoiding populated areas felt safer than repeatedly testing whether rumors about a crimson-haired young merchant driving a horseless carriage had already traveled farther than he had.

Sieghart therefore stayed on secondary roads whenever possible, occasionally leaving even those behind whenever villages appeared ahead. He bought nothing, sold nothing, and spent most evenings eating preserved food from his storage compartments while continuing toward the capital.

The decision had one major advantage.

Without stopping constantly, Sieghart covered distance far faster than an ordinary merchant caravan. His carriage maintained speeds horses could not sustain for long, and Infinite Mana meant the engine never required anything resembling fuel stops.

Two days after leaving the bandit corpses behind, Sieghart climbed a broad hill shortly after sunrise and finally saw the capital of the human lands spread across the horizon ahead. He immediately slowed.

Even from several kilometers away, the city looked larger than anything Sieghart had previously encountered. Seraphina possessed taller magical towers and stranger architecture, but the capital occupied vastly more land.

The outer walls alone dominated the landscape. Massive pale-gray fortifications formed an enormous ring around the city, stretching farther than Sieghart could comfortably follow with his eyes from a single position.

They were easily twenty meters tall. Probably taller in several sections.

Thick defensive towers interrupted the walls at regular intervals, each one broad enough to contain dozens of soldiers and high enough that observers could monitor the surrounding farmland for kilometers.

Sieghart used Magic Vision briefly while approaching, expecting the walls to be ordinary stone reinforced through Aura-era engineering.

They were not.

Mana moved through several embedded structures beneath the surface, revealing dormant defensive enchantments extending through sections of the fortification like artificial veins.

Sieghart could not understand the full design from this distance, but even the small portion he recognized suggested barriers, reinforcement, alarms, and probably several unpleasant surprises for anyone attempting to attack.

“That’s excessive.”

He paused. Then considered everything he knew about the world beyond human borders.

“Actually, never mind.”

The Firians had invaded human territory with soldiers capable of consuming fire. Orc tribes periodically united beneath monsters strong enough to turn entire border regions into battlefields.

Chimerians deliberately rebuilt their bodies from stolen biological parts in an endless pursuit of greater power, while corrupted creatures and experimental monsters appeared often enough that Sieghart had stopped being particularly surprised by them.

Inside the human borders, things were hardly normal either.

Aura families spent generations breeding stronger bloodlines, nobles treated combat potential like social currency, and magical institutions competed constantly for influence while pretending everyone else was beneath them.

The entire world seemed obsessed with becoming stronger in increasingly questionable ways.

Humans had apparently responded by constructing a capital capable of surviving the apocalypse.

Sieghart could understand the reasoning.

If every frontier collapsed simultaneously, this place looked designed to become the final defensive position where whatever remained of human civilization could gather behind enormous walls and continue arguing about who possessed the superior bloodline.

The thought made him smirk.

“Everyone outside the borders went insane chasing power, and everyone inside thinks they’re humanity’s greatest achievement since toilet paper.”

That might have been unfair. Toilet paper was genuinely useful. Several human nobles he had met throughout his life were considerably less so.

The closer Sieghart traveled, the more impressive the city became. Farmland surrounding the capital was divided into carefully maintained sections connected by broad stone roads instead of the narrow dirt routes common around smaller settlements.

Watchtowers stood beyond the walls at strategic elevations, though most looked lightly occupied. Supply warehouses, inns, stables, workshops, and entire trading districts had developed outside the defensive perimeter without technically belonging to the city proper.

Sieghart guessed those structures could be abandoned quickly during an invasion, leaving the walls unobstructed while everyone important retreated behind them. The capital itself had four primary gates positioned along the cardinal directions, each connected to a major road broad enough for several wagons to travel side by side.

Sieghart approached the western gate because his route naturally joined the road there, gradually merging with increasing numbers of travelers heading toward the city. Merchant wagons carrying grain, timber, metal, cloth, livestock, and manufactured goods filled most of the road. Couriers rode between them while travelers on horseback competed for every open section.

Several noble carriages passed with enough decoration that Sieghart assumed their owners wanted everyone nearby to know exactly how expensive being transported from one place to another could become.

His own carriage still attracted attention.

Naturally.

People glanced toward the front, noticed the complete absence of horses, and then looked toward the apparent fifteen-year-old sitting behind the controls.

Sieghart ignored them.

He had officially decided that trying to prevent every stranger from noticing unusual things about him would become more exhausting than simply accepting occasional attention.

Nobody here knew his real age.

Nobody knew his family name.

A weird carriage was relatively harmless compared with everything else he needed hidden.

The gate eventually became visible between two enormous defensive towers. Sieghart expected checkpoints, identification inspections, cargo searches, entry taxes, or at least several guards questioning anyone suspicious.

Instead, traffic continued moving.

The enormous reinforced doors stood completely open, revealing a passage wide enough for several merchant wagons to enter simultaneously without slowing beyond the congestion caused by normal traffic.

There were guards nearby, but none stopped anyone.

Several soldiers stood beneath shaded positions near the walls, talking casually while watching the road. Others walked between nearby supply stations without examining individual travelers.

Above them, archers occupied sections of the wall.

Sieghart counted more than twenty around the gate alone, though most were sitting, talking, maintaining equipment, or simply watching people enter and leave.

Nobody looked particularly tense. That was almost stranger than heavy security would have been. Sieghart examined everything with Magic Vision while keeping his face relaxed.

The archers possessed reinforced bows, several enchanted arrows, and enough magical equipment nearby that the gate could probably transform from peaceful entrance into fortified kill zone within minutes.

Several soldiers below also carried Aura signatures recognizable indirectly through their physical posture, although none appeared exceptionally strong compared with the bandit leader Sieghart had recently fought.

The security was present.

It simply was not interfering with ordinary life. That made more sense.

Searching thousands of people entering every day would create enormous delays while doing little against anyone powerful enough to conceal dangerous intentions through magic or influence.

Instead, the capital appeared designed around responding quickly once something actually became a problem.

Sieghart approved.

Mostly because nobody asked him questions.

He guided his carriage through the gate without anyone demanding a name, merchant license, noble identification, travel documents, cargo manifest, magical registration, or explanation for why his vehicle lacked animals.

One guard glanced toward the engine noise.

Another looked at Sieghart.

Neither moved.

Sieghart crossed beneath the enormous stone arch and entered the human capital without speaking to anyone.

“That was suspiciously easy.”

The city beyond immediately made Greymill seem tiny.

Broad stone streets stretched between buildings reaching three, four, and occasionally six stories, creating entire districts far denser than anything Sieghart had seen outside Seraphina.

The architecture looked newer as well.

Instead of centuries of mismatched expansion, many streets followed deliberate patterns with consistent widths, drainage channels, stone sidewalks, lantern posts, and carefully divided commercial areas.

Sieghart suspected large sections had been rebuilt repeatedly as the capital expanded, replacing older neighborhoods with increasingly organized construction rather than preserving everything simply because it had existed first.

Water channels ran beneath several major roads, while raised stone pathways separated pedestrians from wagon traffic. Public wells appeared frequently enough that nobody needed to walk far for water.

Even waste management looked better than expected.

Sieghart appreciated that considerably more than decorative statues.

The largest avenues radiated inward from the four gates, creating direct routes toward a distant central district filled with towers, government buildings, noble estates, and one enormous structure visible above almost everything else.

Sieghart assumed that was either the royal palace, national administrative center, or something equally expensive constructed specifically to remind ordinary citizens who possessed authority.

Markets occupied entire streets instead of individual squares.

Blacksmiths worked beside armorers and weapon merchants in one district, while another section contained warehouses stacked with imported goods from every accessible region of human territory.

Sieghart passed several bookstores within his first ten minutes.

That immediately improved his opinion of the capital.

He also saw signs advertising magical equipment, monster materials, alchemical ingredients, dungeon expeditions, mercenary work, Aura training, specialized maps, and several things he could not identify while driving.

That improved his opinion further.

Perhaps coming here had been worthwhile after all.

Sieghart slowed enough to avoid a wagon turning across the street while looking toward a building decorated with a carved symbol resembling a mountain split by a sword.

Several adventurer-looking people entered carrying monster parts wrapped in cloth.

That place might have dungeon information.

A little farther ahead, another shop displayed maps across its front windows.

Definitely worth checking.

Sieghart began mentally organizing his priorities.

First, find somewhere safe to park the carriage.

Second, obtain an updated national map containing dungeon locations.

Third, investigate magical bookstores for Barrier Magic, Poison Magic, summoning, Beast Taming, Ocular techniques, and anything else Lunar Arc either lacked or had never considered worth showing him.

Fourth, determine which goods became cheaper here than elsewhere.

Fifth, avoid accidentally getting involved in another kidnapping, invasion, robbery, dungeon collapse, corrupted experiment, political dispute, or unrelated disaster.

Sieghart paused mentally at the fifth objective.

That one probably deserved first place. The problem was that capitals concentrated people. More people meant more information. More information meant more opportunities. More opportunities historically meant more ways for Sieghart to end up fighting something while wondering how the original problem had become his responsibility.

He had barely entered the city and already wanted to leave before anything noticed him.

That instinct might have sounded paranoid before recent events.

Now it felt practical.

Sieghart looked toward the enormous avenue leading deeper into the capital while crowds continued flowing around his strange carriage.

Somewhere inside this city were the dungeon maps he wanted, books he had never seen, techniques he had never learned, and probably enough magical materials to consume every silver coin he currently possessed.

He wanted all of that. He simply wanted it quickly.

“Find what I need, buy what looks useful, update the map, and leave before someone decides I’m conveniently available for another emergency.”

The carriage continued farther into the capital.

Sieghart glanced toward the immense walls now behind him, noticing how reassuring they probably looked to ordinary travelers arriving from dangerous regions.

He experienced the opposite reaction.

The walls were enormous.

The gates were heavily defended.

The city contained more people than anywhere he had visited.

If trouble somehow started here, escaping would become considerably more complicated than simply driving away from Greymill.

Sieghart sighed and followed the traffic deeper into the largest human city he had ever seen.