[Ouroboros' End]
Walking toward their future base, Darganth swept his gaze across the rundown building before him and studied it. Standing at the edge of the corrupted grasslands that stood like a hole amid the protrusion of civilization that stretched onto the Hollow Sea, the building marked the border between man-made structures and untamed wilderness.
On the former side of this, small groups of rarely more than five buildings dotted the land, with large swaths of empty land stretching in between them. But unlike the expansive grasslands of the wilderness on the other side, these were orderly enough to easily differentiate them from the areas outside the settled regions of the realm fragment's planet, with long streets connecting everything from the smallest hut to the massive mansions that filled the land.
All in all, the area looked superficially similar to a more compact version of a typical rural region found on most inhabited planets. But unlike the latter, these regions were just as much part of the nearby cities as the densely populated areas were. In fact, one could argue that with the exception of the few by humanoids uninhabited regions, the entire planetoid was one singular, expansive city whose mixture of densely and sparsely populated sections gave the appearance of an area outside of it.
Part of the reason for this was that even though few buildings surrounded the street on which Darganth stood, he didn't have to look far to find a city proper in almost every direction. In the context of this ring of densely populated areas, his more open immediate surroundings more so took on the appearance of a park or a place for nobles to build their mansions away from neighbors than a truly rural region.
Additionally, on a closer look, one could notice the signs that this stretch of nature wasn't natural at all, with plants growing in orderly patterns and only domesticated larger animals being in the area. In fact, no life in the realm fragment was native, as even the true wilderness just a few meters away existed only thanks to the man-made ocean beneath it. On its own, the realm fragment was nothing but a barren ball with a rocky, lifeless surface and the occasional valuable metal beneath its surface, as everything living that might've been on the planet during the collapse of its universe had been wiped out by the energies of the astral.
Contributing to this perception was that amid this piece of nature and barely a few hundred meters away from Darganth stood a group of a few dozen densely packed buildings with smoke billowing out of them. Around them, the soil itself was darkened and grass had withered away, with massive storage halls surrounding it while literal mountains of seemingly trash littered the area in between, causing that part of the landscape to sharply contrast the well-kept grasslands and gardens that filled the rest of the area.
But with it, it also perfectly encapsulated the extent to which this area was still part of the larger network of civilization on the planet. Starting from the main group of buildings that stood quite far into the grassy landscape, the storage halls and other outlying buildings stretched for hundreds of meters and all the way to the outlying part of the city that was sprawled out around the building complex Darganth was heading toward.
Forming a small city segment of maybe a few tens of thousands of inhabitants, these buildings marked the border between the artificial nature of the grasslands that was still part of civilization and the true wilderness that was on its other side. At the edges of the small city, this separation became more direct as a wall extended outward in each direction, cutting through a fort at the halfway point in both cases before merging into the dense jungle of buildings of another part of the planet spanning city that was visible in each direction.
As he made his way through this with Neandra and Allaire at his sides and the rest of their group trailing closely behind, Darganth's instincts suddenly flared as he felt multiple gazes settle on him the moment they crossed into the settlement. Glancing toward Neandra, he immediately confirmed that it wasn't only him who felt this.
Sharpening his senses as they nonetheless stepped past the first house, he first felt hundreds of presences light up throughout the nearby houses. Consisting of more and more floors, the deeper his gaze wandered into the settlement, these buildings reached as high as a towering five floors before abruptly giving way to the untamed wilderness beyond this last row.
Just in front of this last row, right at the end of the central street Darganth was walking along, stood a tower that loomed over the rest of this city. At its top, six prongs curbed upward into the rough outline of a sphere, with a slight shimmer being visible in between the metallic frame as it held back the massive glowing white orb it contained inside it.
Positioned nearly a hundred meters above even the highest other building, this light easily illuminated the whole district. But whereas its shine filled the entire central road, on the smaller streets that branched off from this main path, shadows hued the away-facing side of the adjacent buildings and all but the last bit of the ground. And whereas the dim, soft light of the passing universes was easy to grow accustomed to and did well to illuminate the realm fragment, the shadows managed to perfectly demonstrate the difference it had compared to the light of suns on real planets.
Furthermore, as at least these initial streets curved just the right amount and the buildings along them were uniform, the shadows also stayed consistent. Together with the second main road crossing the first one at a right angle where the tower stood, this created a series of rings that encased the city's center. Though once one left this structural design, the streets were barely differentiable from any other larger district in the realm fragment, with the towers' light having dimmed enough by the time it reached them that the light from nearby universes shone brighter.
From the cover of these shadows, a couple of people stealthily spied on Darganth and his group, likely believing themselves to be undetected. Meanwhile, easily twice as many inhabitants were leaning out of windows and watching them with far less care as to whether they were noticed. As such, Darganth mostly disregarded the latter, seeing as they were nothing more than curious inhabitants of the city. The former, however, drew his attention toward them with their attempts at stealth.
"Looks like our target might already know of us." Allaire commented, finally spotting some of the hiding observers after focusing her senses on the search in response to Darganth's earlier reaction.
"They're faster than expected." Darganth answered with a nod, glad over this development.
From the beginning, they hadn't made any effort to hide their purchase of the building they were heading toward for exactly this purpose. From Talnar's recounting, they knew that the smuggler group that was active in the city had been eyeing it for quite a while. Furthermore, their new ally had also ordered an investigation into the other organization.
As such, they were well aware that a not insignificant portion of the city's inhabitants were either smugglers affiliated with the group or part of the Moon Fleet Trading Company that served as the legitimate front and sales group for their operation. Of course, they weren't a majority, but they were large enough that they learned of Darganth's acquisition of the city's largest property the moment it was finalized.
Combined with their long-standing interest in that same property, this offered the perfect stage for Darganth's plan. And with the property now in their possession, they could continue to the next step and start preparing for the confrontation this was supposed to achieve.
Simultaneously, they would start scouting out the wilderness. Though there was a chance that their target would attack them without that, they hadn't done so for the previous owner. Nor had they tried to simply occupy the property despite the man's disinterest in it, so it was unlikely they'd try against them.
While he naturally couldn't be sure, Darganth had some assumptions about the reasons behind this. For one, such an open attack would likely jeopardize their position in this part of the city. As such, their existing business venues would likely take a hit in the process, something the profit access to the wilderness could bring might not be worth.
Furthermore, having to secure almost two-thirds of the city's border with the wilderness would also require manpower, meaning if such a conflict were to turn out more costly than expected, they might not even be able to start extracting resources from their newly gained access. Consequently, thinning out the monsters that were infesting the wilderness had become one of their ideas to provoke them into attacking.
Though as they circled the central tower that illuminated the city, Darganth started to suspect that there might be more factors than he had expected. Narrowing his eyes, he barely even registered Allaire's steps briefly faltering in a mix of shock and disappointment, his attention having been too focused on the building that came into view to notice that.
Before him, a noticeably narrower continuation of the main street they had been walking along continued on the other side of the tower and led up to it. To the path's sides, the five-storied buildings of the innermost part of the city loomed, the row of them that stretched along the street to the left and right, starting immediately to the road's sides and making the path appear tighter than it was.
Standing beyond this, and disappearing behind that same building row for most of its width, stood a run-down villa. A rusty metal gate marked the entrance to the property, the worn-down, vertical steel bars bent but still flickering with the mana of their enchantments. The center of the gate was decorated with a giant but faded emblem that covered easily two-thirds of the five-meter-high barrier.
Beyond it, the building itself started a mere dozen meters behind the property line. Starting as a narrow structure flanked by wide open grass gardens to both sides, it stretched further into the property before seamlessly transitioning into the actual building that stood at a right angle to it. Four stories tall and wide enough that its full width wasn't visible through the gap in the row of buildings in front of the property, the building stood in a similar state of disrepair as the gate.
All along its outer wall, cracked and outright broken glass panels were visible in the many windows. In between, cracks ran down the walls, with various plants using them to climb along the side of the building. In some spots, the bricks had even given out completely, with those parts of the wall then having broken open, while the material that had once been in that place lay in a pile on the ground below.
"You already said that it looked bad, but holy shit." Alicia exclaimed from behind him as Darganth reached the gate.
The moment he stepped close to it, the enchantment briefly flashed with new power, followed by a metallic click as the lock opened. Hidden behind the metal plate where the emblem of the owner, now past owner, was once displayed, it survived the passage of time slightly better than the rest of the estate, allowing the gate to slowly open to the sound of metal scraping against stone.
Connected to the rest of the fence that separated the property from the small backyards of the adjacent houses only through a dense flow of mana that closed the ring of protective barriers around the estate, the massive structure was only held up by anti-gravity enchantments. But due to years of abandonment, these were already partially faded and thus slowly failing, causing the aforementioned sound as the gate scraped across the stone pathway.
"It'll certainly be quite some work. Though before we start taking a closer look at it, Neandra?" Darganth said, turning to the woman in question as he addressed her.
"With pleasure."
By the time those words left her lips, Neandra was already rising into the air. Catching the small crowd that was watching her from the various windows of adjacent buildings or from just outside the property, she theatrically crossed her arms before her chest as her mana became visible as strands of energy while she gathered it for a massive display of magic.
Not in any hurry, it took a few moments before Neandra then unleashed the gathered mana in a burst of pure magic. Cascading outward and spreading over the estate in moments, the burst of energy harmlessly passed through the rest of their group. Similarly, it left every still-standing part of the building untouched. But as it passed through debris and the plants winding up the wall, red flashes erupted as elementally charged mana completely removed the unwanted matter from existence.
Though the effect of her actions weren't limited to physically cleaning up their property. Behind her, the wave of energy slammed into the barriers that stretched up from the fence, causing these spells to flicker into reality due to the sudden influx of mana. Similarly, enchantments and spell formations that were inlaid into the stone wall with a metal fence on top that marked the property line also glowed with power as energy surged through them.
Many of these had lain dormant for years before that point, causing some to literally explode as mana flowed down from the barriers into them. But for each that did so, ten others activated without trouble. Soon, this returned at least the edge of the property to something resembling its old appearance, with easily thrice as many barriers as before protecting the estate and numerous spell formations linked to them that would retaliate against any attacker. Though the masterpiece in this was an enormous illusion that surrounded the entire property, hiding it and making any outside observer see only how the land had been before the villa was built.
"Now then, let's see what we can do with this place." Darganth said before slowly walking toward the front door that was already beginning to open in response to his presence.