Empire: A LitRPG Adventure (Unbound Book 10) by Nicoli Gonnella

Author:Nicoli Gonnella [Gonnella, Nicoli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mountaindale Press
Published: 2024-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Felix led them down the street, sticking to the edges of the crowded thoroughfare. The roads were busy and loud, but Felix found it strange that there weren't any merchants hawking wares. It wasn't an obvious change, just an awkward silence in place of the thing he'd grown used to in every city he'd visited. People talked and shouted and laughed and argued, but it was a dull roar, unpunctuated by the vibrancy of over-eager merchants.

Instead, there were a multitude of shops, each marked with statues of metal. The statues were figures, often humans, but not always, their hands lifted in complicated gestures that looked like people releasing skills. These statues always sat beside or above the door in places of honor, carved out for them in the structure. Felix asked, but Zara didn't know their function. They seemed to be signifiers of some kind—at the very least, the garb of the figures seemed to match the services on offer. Those ranged from tailors, furniture makers, and inscriptionists, of course. The latter was the most prevalent, but inscriptions seemed to be part of every craft in the city. Even the hand trucks used by workers were marked with sigils designed to increase durability and speed.

Together, they wound through slanted avenues and terraced levels as the caldera Levantier was built upon sloped inward toward the center. It wasn't a steep angle by any means, but it was noticeable. Their view across rooftops was basically unimpeded, saved by a few outlier structures that rose a bit higher than most.

Trees and gardens were planted atop many buildings, filling the caldera with a freshness Felix hadn't been expecting. The Green Wilds sang within the city—not exceptionally strong, but bright. It was an interesting counterpoint to the confusing morass of noise the Mana all around him gave off. Birds flew through the air, great flocks of them, between the floating Towers and the inordinate amount of traffic.

Small Manaships filled the skies, clearly functioning as public and private transports. Many of them were similar to the sloop he'd once stolen from pirates in the Void, meant to move no more than a handful of people. Others were like wide, flat barges that slowly trundled across the sky, ferrying what looked like people as well as pallets of materials.

"These hills," Atar groused. “I might be hale, but it doesn't mean I enjoy trudging across hill and dale. Why can't we get one of those?" He flung a careless hand toward a sloop as it weaved between the metal peaks of the tenements and the ever-present air traffic.

"We'd be moving twice as slow up there," Felix pointed out. "It's chaos.”

“Frankly, I cannot determine how no one has crashed already," Alister added. "There seems to be no rules to their movements, just a constant jockeying for position."

Darius watched the skies, his gaze serious and stern. "Seen a few places like this, though it was wagon work. But even still, drovers are drovers. They fit where they can, and you either make way, or you're in for a bad time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.