Chapter 841 — The New Delegation
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
A black-robed figure flew in from the direction of the Shadow Marsh and landed at the Typhon checkpoint. Soldiers and the resident officers immediately converged on him, asking what this mage had come for—mages who had mastered flight were not the same as those mass-produced, drilled "battle mages." They came from the Royal Mages' Association, educated systematically and tempered over many years, and ordinarily they were stationed at places like transmission towers or branch offices of the Association. For someone like this to come in person clearly meant something important was afoot.
"You should have stopped that train just now!" The moment the black-robed mage landed, he stared in vexation at the arcane-energy train that had already crossed the border—it was not in a state of full acceleration but rather gliding along the rails, yet the national boundary was an invisible wall, and once across, even if that train moved slower than a snail, it was something the Typhon people could no longer catch. "Damn it... there could be people secretly crossing the border on that train!"
The knight stationed at the outpost stared wide-eyed, immediately glancing back toward the train, then turned his head again: "We've already inspected it. The train carried nothing but goods matching the manifest and a registered crew."
"You inspected it yourself?"
Meeting the mage's stern gaze, the young Typhon officer showed no fear. He straightened his chest: "I inspected it personally. The soldiers went through it once, and I went through it once myself."
"...Very well, let's hope you made no mistakes," the mage sighed. "Listen, orders have come from Aldernan..."
……
The train came to a stop at the Cecile-side checkpoint. The soldiers began inspecting the cargo according to regulations and exchanging the necessary clearance documents with the person in charge of the train. They carried it out meticulously, and nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
A commander, a standard-issue molten-cutlass at his waist, stepped into the carriage and glanced toward the very back.
Between the crates were many silent figures.
The commander gave a slight nod and turned to leave.
The carriage door closed once more, and darkness returned to the freight car.
"We're safe," a voice came from the darkness. "This is the Cecile checkpoint..."
"We still need to hold on a little longer," Yuri said in a low voice. "We can only get off at White Sand Station—there we'll blend in among the employees of the White Sand Mining Company, and only then will we truly have set foot on Cecile soil."
Wendy's voice rose beside him: "You just used mental interference on the knights and soldiers who boarded to inspect. Won't that give you away?"
"It won't. That knight was only low-rank," Yuri shook his head. "As for the battle mages stationed at the checkpoint... mages mass-produced like that can't see through high-grade mental spells. But once Aldernan's orders reach these border outposts, the situation will be different—they'll certainly send out stronger, formally trained mages to inspect the checkpoints."
"Then that's none of our concern," a cleric muttered under his breath. "Let's just hope the compatriots crossing after us get through smoothly..."
Wendy glanced in the darkness at the cleric who had spoken last, closed her eyes slightly, and said nothing.
After this train... how many more compatriots would cross this border, heading into Cecile under the rule of the "Otherworld Wanderers"?
As Yuri had said... perhaps many of them would remain in Typhon.
The Otherworld Wanderers were powerful, but in the end, the only ones who had truly understood and faced that power were the few of the Pale Order. And apart from within the world of dreams, what the Otherworld Wanderers displayed in reality was nothing more than an earthly emperor—and moreover, the "loyalty" wrought by the deterrence of power... had always been fragile.