Stretching as far into the distance as his eyes could see a row of relatively small mountains cut through the open space of the desert. With the highest peaks reaching at most three thousand feet, while this natural barrier looked menacing, it wouldn't really stop anyone determined enough from crossing it.
Yet, standing defiantly to the mindboggling length of this natural barrier, a roughly one-mile long valley cut straight through the mountains. And right across this mile-long entrance to the other side, a monstrous construction laid.
Stretching as far as thirty meters into the skies, a respectable wall blocked the entry to the valley. With many towers and sprawling soldiers on top, it was clear that anyone wanting to go through the wall could only accept the situation and use the single gate in it.
"See? This is the camp." Pointing her healed hand towards the magnificent gate, Irea looked at me with a peculiar look in her eyes. Then, as her eyes moved towards what seemed to be the destination of the group, she glanced at the rags that covered her body in places where her old outfit burned away.
"Eek!" Shuddering as if someone splashed her with a bucket of icy-cold water, she quickly turned her eyes away.
'Strange…' Letting the weird reaction of the girl go past him, Layn focused on the huge defences instead. With modern technology, an enormous number of workers and even greater funding… Only if everything aligned perfectly would the modern civilisations be able to construct such an enormous complex. But ancients did it without any of that!
"Don't you feel anything? Like, rage? Fury? Anger?" Suddenly appearing in front of the archmage, the leader of the ancients asked him before turning his head towards the Irea. From the looks of things, she was supposed to serve as some kind of translator for me.
Putting a delicate smile on my face, I moved my eyes from the impressive walls in the distance on top of the face of the ancient leader.
"Awe? Impression?" Summing up the situation with just those two words, Layn straightened on his legs before moving forward. Caught by surprise with this kind of reply, the middle-aged man only stood in a daze for a moment before following suit. Soon, the entire group picked up the pace.
Step by step, they marched towards the long line of the walls. From up closer, they turned out to be even more impressive than what Layn saw initially. Because rather than being made out of a huge but single stone wall, this piece of fortification had it all.
From the earthy ramparts sprawled with sharp pieces of glass, metal and wood in front of them, through a deep ditch separating the earthwork from the proper walls, all the way to another layer of the stone construction hidden several tens of meters deeper into the valley.
"While we will be passing through the gates, it would be best if you could remain silent." After conquering the shaking of her body, Irea approached Layn before throwing another piece of advice.
"Sure thing, I wouldn't want to offend anyone by an accident." Nodding in response, Layn moved his eyes back towards the enormous walls. Between bothering with people like any other and sightseeing the places that the modern world would be deprived of, the choice was simple.
"Good. Let go then." Quickly escaping from Layn's presence, the girl rejoined her previous position in the group's formation. Soon, Layn learned that they weren't the only ones hurrying towards the gate.
The closer the group got to the only passage leading behind those magnificent walls, the more people appeared from literally all sides of the desert. As if this wasn't a place where only monsters roamed, what seemed like a desolate area quickly turned to be a quite busy gathering place.
By the time Layn reached the end of the queue stretching for about half a mile, the sun finally started to set. With its slightly more orange rays than what Layn was used to decreasing in density and intensity, they had now less than one, two hours tops to cross the border.
Because if Layn's idea about what changed over the ages and what did not was right, then spending a night in the desert would be the least advisable course of action.
When the land was deprived of the warm rays of the local star, monsters didn't suddenly gain power. As beings created purely from the huge concentrations of mana gaining a limited degree of sentience, lack of sunlight had no way to power them up. What the darkness could do though, was limit the fighting strength of the humans.
Thankfully, the queue was moving relatively fast. By the time Layn and his group of ancients managed to reach the gatehouse, there was still at least two-quarters of an hour remaining of the daylight.
"Group name and token." As their group approached the guards, the same leader that asked weird questions to Layn earlier on, stepped forward.
"Here you go, sir." Passing on a strange-looking piece of parchment and a carved-out magic stone, the ancient leader stood his ground, waiting for the guard's assessment.
"Wild wolves… The number of people is right, the token is right. Welcome back to the civilisation." Glossing over both of the tokens of identity, the guard simply waved them away, allowing the group to pass.
Contrary to Layn's initial belief, passing through the first set of walls didn't mean the end of the checking. Once his group emerged from the long, underground passage of the gatehouse, they appeared on a huge plain.
A huge plain that was completely filled with people, all forming a huge, sneaky line, leading towards another set gate far off in the distance.
"Uff, we made it." Instead of whining at the notion of waiting in yet another, this time a massive queue, the ancients of Layn's group moved to the end of the queue before plummeting to the ground.
'We made what?' Confused about the sudden change of the situation, Layn looked at the now relaxed faces of the group. For some reason, they didn't seem to care about at least another day of waiting in the queue!
"Your ma… You are Layn, right?" Before Layn could make any sense of the situation, Irea approached him again. This time, the archmage could clearly see all the efforts that she put to stop her body from trembling.
'Just what do you take me for, some kind of monster?' Pretty sure about the source of the girl's fear, Layn could only shake his head in as this annoying question popped up in his head.
"Yeah, that's one of the few things that I remember. Or rather, that's one of the many things that I do remember, but one of the few that are of any use." Even though the words of the people all around them were muffled and mixed together into nothing more but a noise, it wasn't a problem for Layn's translation spell. Now that his rope was providing him with a constant influx of mana, and as little as it was, Layn could at least properly power this critically important spell of his.
"Good. Then, Layn… If you really don't remember anything, you should watch the gate with all your focus. It will be a sight you won't be able to forget."