Me and Lumine as though carried by favorable winds made our way back to Mondstadt with great time. Actually, the wind pushing us back into Mondstadt may very well have been Venti's doing...
Am I going to attribute random geological things to certain gods now? Do I need to curse the Hydro and Electro Archons when it rains?
Either way when we passed through a smaller series of mountains that made the divider between Mondstadt and Liyue I noticed we were actually not that far from the Dawn Winery and the town that surrounded it.
Here in the real world of Teyvat towns like Springvale were far larger than shown in the game and were actually fairly well defended with a five-foot thick and tall wall of stone and mortal that kept out Hillichurls and other weak monsters but here around the Dawn Winery was basically a company town as the couple dozen households in the area all worked at Diluc's winery which supplied its famous wine vintages across the world of Teyvat.
"How about we take a break for lunch and catch up with Diluc?" I asked as even I was getting tired of fueling our flight with my stomach growling in discontent at being ignored for the whole morning.
"Paimon thinks Jake is a genius and didnt you say you wanted to see if you could trade that sword?" Paimon asked and I shook my head.
"For all I know we will be sneaking over to Inazuma to go poke one of the Raiden Shogun's statutes so having a sword that can make Electro powers even stronger will be useful." I said deciding to be a good world traveler and simply hoard my loot on the off chance I could use it.
That and I remembered on the way back that Beidou was an Electro Claymore user who would be willing to trade a great deal of treasures for a sword that perfectly suited her.
"Just getting a bit to stretch is good enough for me." Lumine said and I couldn't help but agree as sitting with someone on your lap certainly wasn't all that comfortable after an hour of that, so after three hours of flight, my legs were thoroughly numb.
"On the way back how about, we sit on Paimons lap?" I asked jokingly as we flew into the valley in which the Dawn Winery was, and our vision was filled with rolling fields of grape fields with a large mansion in the center of the valley.
"Hell, no you two will squish Paimon to death!" Paimon yelled lightly punching me in the shoulder as she flew away from the two of us as Lumine menacingly giggled at the thought.
Rather than attempting to dismount from my Anemo Elemental before dismissing it, I simply had it drop me a couple feet from the ground as my stiff legs didnt want to move from their sitting position.
"Well let's go see if Diluc is in." I said ignoring the weird looks I got from Lumine and Paimon for my stiff walking as I was wondering if Diluc was instead doing one of his many other tasks he liked to run, like being a bartender at a bar he owned in Mondstadt, cosplaying as Batman to defend Mondstadt from criminals, or could just be scouting the countryside for information.
"Excuse me sir do you know if the Diluc is in, we are acquaintances from Mondstadt and we were wondering if we could speak to him." Lumine asked an older gentleman who was dressed sort of like a butler.
The older man sadly shook his head before he spoke gently. "I am afraid that the master of the house is currently busy with his private affairs that took him off the grounds. Would you like me to share a message with him?"
I couldn't help but nod to the tactful reply the butler gave as he literally gave no worthwhile information about his master and it was perfectly possible, he simply lied as to where Diluc was at the moment. "Very well but no thank you, we will see him in Mondstadt in a couple days, anyway, do you mind if we eat our lunch over at that picnic table so we can return to Mondstadt well sated." I asked pointing at said table with its chairs.
"Oh yes of course it's no problem at all. I will see myself to my prior tasks then. Have a pleasant trip back to Mondstadt guests." The butler said bowing to us before he turned around and went back inside the mansion.
"He partially lied. Diluc isn't here but he knows where we could find him." Lumine muttered as we began eating our food.
"I figured he was simply denying the location but how did you know?" I asked and Lumine told me she saw the man's ear twitch as he spoke and took it as a tell.
I was once again reminded Lumine was a world traveling hobo with more life experience than my past nine generations of family put together.
"Well either way we aren't too close to him so we should just head back to Mondstadt where we can link back with the Knights of Favonius." I said shrugging.
The consequences of us actually not getting caught by the Knights of Favonius as we stole the Holy Lyre actually made it, so we weren't as close with Diluc but on the other hand with Venti pulling in the knights more officially we got their assistance, and we became closer to Eula and Noelle along with Amber being pulled into our missions as well.
I knew all too well now that my actions had consequences for how things would happen in the future as our actions in the Dragonspine mountains and clearing out the Fatui encampment domain in Mondstadt had the Fatui amass inside Liyue and a massive battle broke out between Liyue's forces and two harbingers resulting in thousands of lives lost as the Fatui obviously scattered across Liyue causing carnage.
Once we finished our food and took a quick walk out of the Dawn Winery's lands in order to exercise our legs, we quickly flew the rest of the way back into Mondstadt landing right on the edge of the large stone bridge that separated the island that Mondstadt city lied upon from the surrounding mainland.
"Oh yeah I grabbed this remember!?" I said in excitement as I pulled out the core of the Ruin Grader eye I killed. "Let's go turn this in at the adventurer's guild."
"Paimon is rich!" Paimon called out excitedly as she recalled the massive bounty that was on Ruin Graders and Ruin Guards.
"No... I am rich, I just buy our teams mascot, food for morale support." I said blandly as we approached Katheryne who was standing in the kiosk in front of the Guild building.
"Welcome adventurers do you have materials or quests to turn in!" Kathryne said respectfully and I nodded dropping the core of the Ruin Grader and a couple notable pieces of the Mitachurl that survived it fading into darkness.
Kathryne looked through a book and nodded smiling as she explained that the Mitachurl body parts have recently had an upsurge in demand, so they were worth more so after we got good chunk of Mora Kathryne updated our Adventurer's cards stating our 'levels' had gone up.
"As we were finishing our business, I saw Kathryne sight surprisingly before she pointed towards the entrance of Mondstadt seeing our surprised expressions.
A young male teenager was literally smoking as his burnt form staggered through the gates of Mondstadt and over to us or more specifically Kathryne.
"Haaa... Please excuse me adventurers I must speak to Mr. Bennet now." Kathryne said dismissing us and as we moved away, I saw Bennet basically collapse against the desk of the kiosk as he and Katheryne were speaking, and it was fairly obvious that the woman was clearly scolding him for getting hurt as the contrite teenager began dropping a pile of monster materials in the kiosk.
"Let's get going." Lumine said pulling on our conjoined hands towards the Knights of Favonius headquarters.
After a few minutes of walking, we moved up towards the back half of the island city and we entered the Knights of Favonius building.
"Let's check in with Jean first." I spoke squeezing Lumines hand to stop walking forward to the library. "Might as well see if there was some catastrophe that happened while we gone for a day and also Jean should know what happened while we were in Liyue."
The fact that a legitimate war may break out with how the battle between vision wielders broke out into the populace in Liyue was certainly important news that Jean should get firsthand rather than wait for the news to trickle in from spies or other assets they had in Liyue.
We knocked on the door to Jeans office, we heard her loudly call for us to come in.
As we came into the office, I saw a number of Knights and other people of note consisting of Lisa Venti and more importantly Diluc were surrounding a table they brought into the office with a map of Mondstadt.
Oh, and Eula who was sitting beside Amber blushed heavily at the sight of me and I couldn't help but remember our not so innocent sleepover.
"Oh, we were just waiting for you both to get back. We have great news!" Venti said excitedly waving to us.
"What do you want tone deaf bard!" Paimon said from behind us.
But Venti completely ignored Paimon as he continued to speak "When Dvalin took the old capital as his lair when he woke back up from his deep slumber, I realized that as we killed Abyss Mages, that the barrier surrounding where the old capital was created disturbances in it! We can actually break into the storm barrier that surrounds it and reach Stormterror's Lair so we can try to purify Dvalin."
Diluc hummed as he folded his arms across his chest as he looked to the Anemo Archon. "Which means we're going to confront Dvalin? I am fine with that... Jean was the one who wanted to avoid any direct confrontation with him."
Jean shook her head as she put her hand on her chest and spoke solemnly. "No when there are no other options left, it is my responsibility as Acting Grand Master to deal with what needs to be done."
"Thankfully all we need to do is help subdue Dvalin and allow Jake, an Lumine to purge Dvalins maleficent energies." Venti explained with the rest of the room nodding in understanding.
But Paimon rightfully wasn't having it as she spoke sarcastically with her arms folded across her chest. "Oh, so not only do we need to fight monsters from the abyss, but we will also be fighting a dragon! No pressure or anything..."
But Eula who was sitting across from us finally looked over to us with a slight fading blush spoke proudly. "Humans have our own strengths and we will be able to do this!"
Well Vision wielders can in anyway because I highly doubted little Timmy the kid who is always feeding the pigeons in front of Mondstadts gate can deal with even a normal Hillichurl.
"Before we get all gung-ho and march off to defeat the oh so evil dragon, me and Lumine have extremely important information we need to tell you all about when we popped into Liyue." I said grimly and then went onto explain how we got caught up in a massive battle that occurred and how it was possible Liyue and Snezhanaya may literally go to war as the Fatui's antics spilled out into the open and killed many people.
Diluc was pretty plainly visibly being torn between rage at the news that so many civilians were killed by the Fatui but I could also tell a small part of him was ecstatic that so many Fatui members died as well, along with the massive diplomatic repercussions the Fatui would face for such overt actions.
Meanwhile the rest of the Knights frowned at the news with Jean looking to Kaeya and Amber. "Kaeya, Amber, I need you two to take out a contingent of knights and do another sweep of the countryside. If the Fatui have been pushed out of Liyue its likely they fled into Mondstadt should they have fled mostly North. Should either of you find a large encampment, retreat and get another couple vision wielders to help deal with them as there could very well be one of the Fatui Harbingers in the camp."
Jean sighed as she looked between all of us. "We need to take care of Dvalin first before we can focus on pushing the Fatui out of our lands as every day the corruption within him deepens. So let us go now as just over half a dozen Vision wielders along with Venti should be able to subdue him so long as the forces of the Abyss aren't too great."
"Ok let's get going!" Eula said after she consoled Amber on not coming with us.
"Haaa.. trapezing across Mondstadt is going to be such a pain." Lisa grumbled as she staggered over to me and Lumine before basically trust falling onto me making me grunt in surprise as I held her up. "Ohh Jake, my hero... Please carry me so I don't hurt my feet on the way!"
Lumine coughed loudly giving Lisa a gimlet look. "Hey... Don't hog my transportation, you aren't the only lady who is in high heels and don't want to walk miles in such heels."
I feel so loved.