The Far East is much larger than El—as Jill has long said, and only now has Yuffie been able to confirm it. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Vast forests and plains stretch almost endlessly to the south and east and west, dotted with villages and cities belonging to the yokai. They had advanced a distance equal to the depth of the entire Oren Empire, and had inquired about settlements along every path, including the travelers along the way—thanks to the keen eyes of Lynn and Grace, they could see every detail on the ground from hundreds of meters in the air. But so far, no one knows exactly what is happening in the south.

As the journey progresses, the air is filled with warmth and the trees are replaced by species with wider leaves. Of course, Lily of the Valley is not a cold village, and as for the area in the north that is covered in ice and snow all year round, there may be a few youkai born there who live in seclusion, but there are usually no larger villages and towns.

In the alliance, there is more than enough warm and fertile land. After all, this is no longer the era when there is chaos everywhere, and monsters and humans are in danger.

The villages and cities they visited were not large, and few were the size of the larger towns on the El continent. Visiting each of these towns, which are inhabited by only a few hundred or thousand, imprinting their impressions in their minds, and befriending many types of yokai – this is quite an interesting "field trip" for Yuffie and Rin.

Wizards are concerned with much more than superficial knowledge related to occult arts. History, humanities, geography, astrology, and even economics and politics are all topics of study and research. According to Aaron's guru, truth is often born from seemingly inconsequential knowledge or inadvertent discoveries.

If it weren't for the fact that they were still worried about the state of affairs in the south, their pace might have been slower. It has been fifteen days since the two of them set off, and it is speculated from the information that it will take nearly ten days for the two to reach the border of the alliance at the same speed. This is already a fairly fast journey - even if the carriage is non-stop day and night, it will probably take more than twenty days to get from Lily of the Valley to the nearest border.

However, they had heard from a youkai that if the area with the 'Rune Track' was laid, it would take less than ten days to travel by train through the same length of land, more than twice the speed of a horse-drawn carriage.

Unfortunately, the youkai couldn't say anything specific, but it only succeeded in arousing their curiosity. According to Yufie's conjecture, the Far Eastern continent they came to may exist in a future relative to them. It was even more interesting than she expected: many years later, on another continent that was part of the same crystalline system, there must have been a lot of new knowledge to learn.

"Maybe on this continent, the secret art has long been more popular than in our time." One evening, Yuffie stared at the campfire dancing in front of him and muttered, "Because we pass through sparsely populated places, we feel ...... Those youkai weren't that familiar with the arcane. ”

"I think they prefer to use their powers, for learning the occult arts...... Or in other words, I'm not interested in it. Rin offered a different point of view, "Who knows, maybe the monsters in the big cities are different, right?" ”

A sharp thud suddenly descended from the sky, and Grace straightened up sharply, raising her neck and staring in the direction from which the voice came. Yuffie quickly stood up, and through the treetops, she saw a 'fireball' streaked across her vision.

The fireball whizzed through the air, looking less like a spell and more like a burning, strangely shaped ellipsoid. It was fast and equally impressively tall – Yuffie estimated that when first seen, it was even more than 2,000 meters high. From time to time, blue-green or orange-yellow arcs of light flashed from it, or some burning fragment separated from it and crashed into the forest below.

As it flew hundreds of meters above their heads, Yuffie seemed to hear a human voice. The accent was odd, but it was in the Kamal language:

"Those careless apprentices will teach them a good lesson thirty times when I go back-!"

The fireball—or the flaming metal sphere—continued to fly hundreds of meters forward, crashing headlong into the forest with an earth-shattering explosion.

"The man up there...... You okay? Lynn said uncertainly, as she hurried towards the location of the explosion, "He said, 'Wait until I get back.'" ”

Grace let out a low cry and chased after the blonde girl. Yuffie went through spells in his mind that might work, and hurried to follow.

When she arrived at the 'scene of the accident', the surrounding forest was sparkling, and a few dry branches had begun to burn. She hurriedly summoned the icy rain mixed with snowflakes with her magic power to extinguish the fire that had just been lit. At the same time, she heard the accented, neutral male voice coming from a distorted, still slowly burning mass of metal.

"Ah, it's good that the cushioning and guards at the end worked, and it was wise for me to make this part myself! But......" the voice suddenly froze, and the original smug vanished, "didn't it end up trapping me in a metal cage!" It's just stupid...... Ah, I'm not talking about myself! ”

Yuffie approached and took a closer look at the fallen object. She felt the magic circulate over the "object", in other words, it should be an occult device.

Under the influence of the freezing rain, the agitated magic in the "device" gradually subsided, and the flames converged, revealing the metal remains that were no longer visible. The inside of the wreckage seemed to be stretched open by a spherical space, and Yuffie made sure it was a solid force field—one of the secret techniques that was still a little difficult for her.

A man who appeared to be only a meter tall and had slightly gray hair sat cross-legged in the spherical space, his head hanging down, and he complained with a gloomy face.

"Do you have to use my 'secret weapon' to blow this thing up......" the man muttered, looking up and around him, only to spot the two men and a griffin watching him, "Oh, there's someone in this place!" Great, can you get a few people to help you remove this metal case? ”

The blonde girl stepped forward and reached out her hand to touch the metal wreckage that had trapped the man. The short man stared at her anxiously, as if wondering what she was up to.

Soon, his eyes widened - Lynn grabbed two slightly cracked pieces of metal with her slender hands, slowly parting outward, and with a shrill creak, the metal cage was easily split in half by her.

The man quickly lowered his head and pressed a few times on a seemingly intact instrument, causing the force field sphere wrapped around him to gradually disappear. Then he jumped to the ground and looked at Lin with envy, "You monsters are really powerful. If I had the skills, it would be much easier to assemble this thing! ”