The man at the front of the approaching group appeared to be the oldest among them, perhaps somewhere in his late thirties, with short black hair and a rough scar running from the corner of his jaw toward his neck.
He stopped several metres away. The others stopped behind him almost simultaneously.
His eyes briefly passed over Frost and the others before settling on Syrn.
"Lady Syrn."
"Just Syrn."
The man paused.
"Of course, Lady Syrn."
Syrn stared at the man with a completely blank expression, but Frost could have sworn he saw the slightest twitch near her eye.
The man, meanwhile, remained perfectly composed.
Either he hadn't noticed her irritation, which Frost highly doubted, or he simply didn't care.
"We detected your signal," the man continued. "We weren't expecting you back this early."
"I wasn't planning on returning this way," Syrn replied before glancing toward Frost and the others. "I encountered another group of otherworlders beyond the perimeter."
Frost suddenly found seven curious pairs of eyes examining him and his classmates from head to toe.
Considering their current appearance, he couldn't exactly blame them.
Their clothes were filthy and torn; several of them were covered in dried blood and tears, and most looked as though they hadn't slept in days despite everything having happened over the course of only a few hours.
"How many?"
"Fifteen survivors."
The man's eyes narrowed slightly. Survivors, of course, meant there had been more who were now dead.
"Where did they appear?"
"Near the eastern wildlands. Centikraken territory."
A brief silence followed.
Frost glanced between them.
Their shaken reactions told him more about the creature than Syrn killing it ever could.
To her, the Centikraken might have been something she could casually blast a hole through, but apparently the same could not be said about the rest of them.
"How many were originally transported?" the man asked.
Syrn looked toward the group.
"I don't know."
"About forty," Jennifer answered quietly.
Several heads turned toward her.
Jennifer hesitated before continuing.
"Maybe a little more or even less. I didn't count everyone when we first appeared."
The man's expression turned grim.
"That's unfortunate. The rest of you are lucky to be alive." The man didn't press the subject any more than that, probably sensing the somber mood. "I'll notify Linden that another group has arrived."
"Do that," Syrn replied. "They've already awakened their Evolution Systems, but they haven't been briefed yet."
The man's eyebrows rose slightly.
"All of them?"
"Yes. I came this way because I wanted to ask if we have enough resources for a one-way trip to Linden."
"We should, yes..."
'One way trip?' Frost thought.
Before he could think too deeply about it, Syrn turned back toward them.
"We'll only be stopping here briefly. This outpost marks the edge of the protected territory, and from here, we'll take a different means of transport to Linden."
'A different means of transport?'
He glanced back at Aeolus.
The massive white bird was already lying comfortably on the platform, no doubt, delighted to finally have fifteen unwanted passengers off her back.
Frost then looked toward the enormous metallic interior of the tower.
After everything he had seen so far, he wasn't sure whether to expect a carriage, a train, another magical creature, or some floating piece of technology that would make even less sense.
At this point, he wouldn't have been surprised by any of them.
As it turned out, Frost didn't have to wait long to find out.
A man with a ragged beard appeared from deep within the tower and whispered a few words to his compatriot.
The man who had been speaking to Syrn.
"Follow me," the man said, turning toward the interior of the tower.
Before following the others inside, Syrn stopped and turned back toward Aeolus.
The massive white bird was still standing comfortably on the landing platform, her enormous wings folded neatly against her sides as she watched them.
"Aeolus." The bird raised her head toward Syrn. "You can head back now."
Aeolus released a soft caw before rising to her full height and stretching her enormous wings. Frost expected her to simply take off and fly away.
Instead, Syrn raised one hand.
A small circular trigram appeared beneath Aeolus, its intricate symbols glowing with a soft white light.
Frost raised a brow.
'What's she doing now?'
Before he could wonder for long, Aeolus's enormous body suddenly began dissolving into countless tiny motes of white light, starting from the tips of her wings and rapidly spreading across the rest of her body.
Within seconds, the massive bird had completely vanished into thin air.
Frost blinked.
'...What?'
There wasn't even a feather left behind! The glowing trigram faded a moment later, leaving the landing platform completely empty.
'Did she just store the bird away somewhere?'
Frost had no fucking idea.
Every answer this world gave him seemed to create another five questions.
Syrn, meanwhile, acted as though making a gigantic bird disappear into thin air was the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Follow me."
She turned toward the interior of the tower, and the rest of them quickly fell in behind her.
Frost took one final glance at the empty spot where Aeolus had been before entering the tower with the others.
The moment he stepped inside, his curiosity only grew.
The interior was nothing like what he would have expected from something called an outpost tower.
There were no stone corridors, burning torches, wooden doors, or anything else that would have fit the increasingly questionable fantasy image he had been building in his head.
Instead, the walls were constructed from the same dull metallic material as the exterior, with thin strips of pale light running along the ceiling and floor.
The place was also surprisingly busy.
Men and women in those same tight-fitting bodysuits moved through the wide corridors, some carrying weapons while others held strange translucent tablets covered in glowing symbols.
Frost even caught sight of a few people standing around what looked like a large floating projection of the surrounding landscape, complete with tiny moving dots scattered across it.
Some glanced curiously toward the group as they passed, but most didn't.
'I guess we're not that interesting if thousands of people from Earth have already been showing up.'
That thought reminded Frost of something else Syrn had said.
If thousands of otherworlders had already appeared in this world over the past week, then their class was hardly an isolated incident.
Which only made him wonder once again what the hell was happening back on Earth.
His thoughts inevitably drifted toward his mother, but Frost quickly pushed them aside before his anxiety could start rising again.
There was nothing he could do about it right now. For the moment, all he could do was learn as much as possible.
They eventually reached a large pair of metallic doors at the end of the corridor. The man leading them placed his palm against a small black panel beside the doors.
A faint blue light passed over his hand.