As the players had anticipated, after adding Rios to the party, defeating Gosoythoth became ridiculously easy.
You fly outside the field? Rios's charged bow can aim and shoot from outside! After holding the Elemental Skill, you don't even need to aim.
Your damage is particularly high? The Ode of Resurrection directly revives characters from death—die and revive again, easier than reviving people with Dragon Balls.
Your HP bar is thick? Super-Nightsoul, defense shred, attack boost—got it?
[I get it now.]
[Mihoyo is truly insidious.]
[He deliberately made us only able to use the Traveler to fight Gosoythoth, just to show off how strong the Pyro Archon is.]
[If he can carry even the Traveler, what character can't he carry?]
[Cyno: Really?]
[Really really—I bet Cyno without Burst, just Normal Attacks, would still deal decent damage.]
[Successfully solved Cyno's pain points of hard Burst uptime and lack of good off-field Dendro after Burst.]
[The solution is to not use Cyno's Burst.]
[No wonder the Pyro Archon is a healer—he really is a divine doctor.]
After beating Gosoythoth, the players successfully unlocked the weekly boss.
They could come to this weekly boss every week to farm Gosoythoth's coins, and each time they entered, the Pyro Archon Rios would be in the party.
The players were overjoyed upon hearing this news—didn't this mean they didn't have to wait for the next version to keep playing with the Pyro Archon?
They didn't even need to wait for guide creators to test and evaluate; they could try themselves which characters the Pyro Archon could support.
While the players were tirelessly testing team comps.
In the world of Genshin.
Rios returned to the victory banquet, discussing future itineraries with Mualani and Kachina.
Ever since resolving the threat brought by the Abyss, the people of Natlan could finally travel far like those from other nations.
In the original work, this required repairing the Ley Lines, possibly even inviting "The Captain" to sit down, before Natlan people could travel freely.
But after beating the Abyss, Rios had asked the system for a technology to convert Abyss monsters into Ley Line nourishment.
All the Abyss monsters that died fighting the Natlan people earlier—whether they left corpses or not—had all turned into fertilizer to repair the Ley Lines.
Even that Gosoythoth had now become part of Natlan, trampled underfoot by everyone.
With so many Abyss monsters contributing to Natlan, the Ley Lines could be said to be fully repaired—no issues for centuries or even longer.
However, when announcing it externally, Rios didn't make it so complicated; he just said the Abyss was solved, and Natlan's Ley Lines were back to normal.
In short, it was all the Abyss's fault.
When Mualani heard this news, she immediately wanted to run off to play, even picking her destination.
"After leaving Natlan, let's go to Fontaine first," Mualani said excitedly. "I hear there's an endless ocean there—I really want to see it."
"I want to go to Liyue," Kachina said. "I hear there are lots of really tall mountains; I want to check them out."
"Rios, where are you planning to go?" Mualani blinked, looking over expectantly.
"I'm planning to check out Liyue too," Rios said. "I hear there's a restaurant called Wanmin Hall with great food—even the Geo Archon Morax says it's good. I want to give it a try."
"Ah..." Mualani opened her mouth, her brows furrowing slightly. "But doesn't Fontaine have that whatever, Hotel Debord? It should be delicious too, right?"
It was clear Mualani had done some homework before going to Fontaine—she even knew about Hotel Debord.
"Why are you getting so worked up?"
Rios said with a smile, "From Natlan to Liyue, we have to pass through Fontaine and Sumeru anyway. Whether it's Hotel Debord or Wanmin Hall, we can stop by and eat on the way."
"Is that so? Then that's good..." Mualani breathed a sigh of relief.
Hearing their exchange, Kachina scratched her hair and muttered softly, "To go from Natlan to Liyue, don't we only pass through Sumeru?"
When she looked at the map, Fontaine was quite a distance above Sumeru.
Logically, they shouldn't pass through it.
However, Kachina didn't voice her thoughts.
After all, she was going to travel with friends—if her friends wanted to go to Fontaine, then they definitely had to go together.
"Speaking of which, Rios, don't you still have the monument to deal with? Does that mean we have to wait a bit before setting off?" Mualani asked.
"Those things can be handled by a clone," Rios said. "The designers I brought in are especially invested in this, and the workers are willing to forgo Mora just to get the monument right—I believe there won't be any issues."
"Oh wow, so you're the one who's least invested, huh."
Although Rios and the others wanted to go to Fontaine or Liyue, they first had to reach Sumeru.
And because entering Sumeru from Natlan first brought an endless desert, Rios and the others accidentally got lost and ended up in Fontaine instead of Sumeru.
"So that's how we're taking the scenic route."
Kachina had been carried by Rios the whole way, flying.
From her perspective, it was like suddenly growing a pair of flame-made wings on her back, then flapping uncontrollably and flying up.
Then, amid Mualani's "Woo-hoo" and "Takeoff" cheers, Kachina moved quickly through the air, following Rios and the others as they flew rapidly from the Stadium of the Sacred Flame to the Children of Echoes tribe, then from the tribe to Sumeru's great desert.
Rios hadn't looked at the map the whole time, just kept flying them forward relentlessly.
When they encountered a sandstorm midway, Rios raised his hand and shot an arrow that turned the sandstorm into just sand.
"Didn't they say Your Excellency, the Pyro Archon, was injured and couldn't bear the power of the Gnosis, so that's why he stepped down from the position?"
"But why does it feel like Your Excellency, the Pyro Archon, doesn't seem injured at all—his strength hasn't changed from when he ascended to godhood?"
Kachina's heart was pounding like a fawn, full of a thousand doubts.
But she looked down at the Fontaine scenery below, then at the flame wings behind her, and figured some things were better left unasked—lest it affect the Pyro Archon's performance and accidentally drop them all.
"Rios, I see Hotel Debord!"
Mualani pointed to a spot in Fontaine: "Right there!"
Rios thought for a moment and remembered that next to Hotel Debord was the Steambird newspaper office.
He'd heard from the Traveler earlier that the matter of someone continuing his novel had become Fontaine's top headline.
He ought to see how the Steambird had reported it.
"You guys go to the restaurant first; I'll go buy a newspaper to read."