The wind speeding by my sides is powerful as we fly above the clouds. Ember slowly flaps his wings, and we get faster and faster with every strong gust, soaring higher into the air and further into the Dark Continent.
Every few minutes, clusters of tiny lights fly by below us, and I try to picture what kind of city we're passing by.
From Fisher's descriptions, I'm picturing small towns and villages, but as we get further in, the lit-up cities get much larger.
After just under an hour passes, a straight line of bright lights catches my attention, and I take a closer look, boosting my perception skills and staring down into the darkness of night to make out what seems to be a massive wall separating the mountainous, rocky, and grasslands region of Sector 1, and on the other side, an arid wasteland of long-stretching desert leading to Sector 2. The wall looks just like the one my team climbed over to get into the Dark Continent, and with one long-range scan with my All-Seeing Eye, I can tell it's imbued with mana to keep people separated.
There must be gates, or some regulation to allow travel between sectors, but it seems like limiting crossing is a big thing in this specific section of land. However, at this height, no one's stopping us.
After crossing the border here, we'll be changing our flight path from east, to more southbound, back in the general Direction of Sector 4. However, the Abyss is the only thing separating the bottom half of Sector 2 and the top half of Sector 4, as the massive cloud of darkness sits and grows in the middle of the Dark Continent.
Once we cross over into Sector 2 territory, the smell of burning wood and other building materials begins to fill the air, filling pockets of the sky with smoke and smog.
Ember flaps his wings, changing directions and soars even higher, dodging the pockets of pollution that float up in the air, but the farther in we travel, the harder it gets to avoid them.
More towns below are destroyed, left in cinders and letting plumes of smoke into the sky while others are still half occupied with lights shining through the smog.
The large clusters of light get closer and closer together the further into the Sector we travel, and eventually, the hint of a rising sun peeks over the horizon at the same time the far tips of my All-Seeing Eye's senses pick up on an absurdly high mana reading.
Or, to be more precise, over a hundred of them.
I've fallen into a calm state, resting on the warm glossy scales of Ember's back as he glides through the sky, but as I perk up, his voice jolts me back to reality.
"You can sense those too, Master?"
I reply, nodding to myself as hundreds of dungeon portals show up in my mind's eye far down below us.
"Yeah, I can sense them alright... it looks like we're here. This is the canyon Fisher was talking about. Dive down lower, but keep your Stealth skill activated. We're a good distance from the canyon, but i still sense some life right below us too."
We dip down through the cloud line, and the orange morning sun illuminates a wide landscape view of desert.
It looks like we're right back in the Sector 4 territory with rolling hills of sand and small mountainous rock formations with no wildlife in sight for kilometers all around.
Far in front of me, there are three prominent details that stick out to me.
A settlement, a canyon, and an Abyss.
The first is the black plumes of smoke coming from what looks to be a large developed area of what used to be a city.
Tall buildings tower above the desert, but none of them compare to Valor city at all. At most, the tallest tower I see is 10 stories in height. From so high up in the sky, it's hard to see exactly what's going on, but there seems to be a 2-kilometer-wide section of village with a few high towers, densely packed lower-class housing, and the remnants of merchants' shops and restaurants.
Surrounding this central village about 5km outward connected by dirt roads, there are smaller individual houses and even little neighborhoods, but each of them is connected to large rectangular warehouses scattered all over the desert. Some are blackened and burned to the ground, while others are still silver and look as good as new, but their doors are broken into and raided with minimal exterior damage.
I do a general wide enemy detection scan and sense about 400 people scattered around the town below. None of them instantly stand out as a threat capable of seeing through my cloaking defenses, so I don't bother mentioning it to Ember.
I look up from the town and turn my gaze to the canyon visible past the city; this is what caught my senses previously, so this is what I'd like to look through first.
I point to the massive hole in the desert that's barely visible to the naked eye and speak to Ember through our link.
"The town can wait, our first order of business here is to mark teleport points for my dungeon walker perk and also..."
My gaze tracks back up to the canyon, then further into the distance to look at the thick dark cloud of dense Demonic Energy sitting stagnant in the desert.
"I want to do a quick survey of the Abyss. I haven't been around energy like this in a while."
"Of course."
Ember soars over the destitute remains of what I can only assume was the production town run by the previous Sector 2 leader. It looks like it was built around farming the dungeons in this canyon and transporting the materials to the small villages to mass produce items at scale.
Multiple roads branch out from the city through the desert and wind their way to the canyon, but once I do a full enemy detection scan to see if there is anyone nearby, the sensation of dozens of level 100-130 readings hit my senses.
I would assume it to be just rogue hunters out here trying to farm the open dungeons, but the fact that they all have body hardening skills makes me think otherwise.
As my enemy detection perk shows visuals of my enemies and Ember descends down to the edge of the canyon, I see a horde of mutant cyclops monsters violently fighting each other and trying to make their way out of the depths of the large desert ravine. Nearby, a D-Grade dungeon portal glows red and lets out more and more of these mobs.
As we get even closer, I register a few more similar bizarre lower grade dungeon break events even deeper in other parts of the 20km wide canyon that seems to dip down so low I can't visually see to the bottom.
There are rocky winding paths, and multiple levels and ledges that make for a very interesting array of cliffs, valleys, and even small amounts of plants and flowing water down in the lower regions, but the darkness and shadows hide most of these parts to the naked eye.
However, my All-Seeing Eye and enemy detection skills are able to do a full scan.
"Looks like 6 breaks, 143 Stable Dungeons, and 2 oddballs. I can't tell if those last two are just really strong dungeons or Labyrinths. I'll have to go down and check them all out for myself."
Ember and I come to a stop at the edge of the canyon, looking down into the darkness to see a few blue glowing portals light up portions with mana as the morning sun finally fully breaks over the horizon.
The hot desert sun hits my skin while I activate my item storage and let Ember hop back inside.
"Summon me back if there's an interesting battle to be fought. You don't need me for dungeon exploration and skill farming."
I nod and comment back before he disappears into the white spatial magic.
"You're right. Over a hundred new dungeons to explore... They may not all give off strong readings, but there must be some unique items and skills I haven't found yet in here. I'm about to have some fun."
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Author's Note:
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