"No, no, you put your foot here, first, you see? Then you step again!"
"Okay!"
"Now, step with me. A one, and a two, and a one, two, three! Go!"
Dorian smiled as he guided the young girl through the steps, carefully adjusting her movements whenever she made a mistake.
"And there you have it. That's called Country Two Step." He said aloud, spinning the twelve-year-old in a twirl.
It was the day after he saved the Aeth caravan.
After destroying Mello's last clone, Dorian had started talking with the Wizard in charge of guarding the caravan, to learn more about where Taprisha, the powers there, and any other relevant information.
The Wizard had been extremely grateful, but also a bit suspicious and fearful. Regardless, he had answered many of Dorian's questions, filling a lot of gaps in his knowledge. Assuming everything the man told him was true, which Dorian would check for when he arrived, he was much more prepared.
He also accepted that his previous form, a naked red-skinned toddler, was an extremely odd one.
Thankfully, the adaption period had finished up shortly after, though during the midst of their conversation.
He took a moment to glance at his current stage, nodding with appreciation.
–
-Titan – Growth Stage: (2/4) Titan Young Adult-
– Growth Progress – 4,058/8,052 –
–
His body was now just over 2 meters tall. Muscles bulged under his skin, making him look like an extremely strong bodybuilder from Earth. His white hair had grown down to his shoulders, smooth and wavy.
He'd explained his unnatural spurt of growth to the shocked Aethmen by claiming he'd been cursed by a Curse Wizard, and that this was his true form.
He wasn't quite sure if they fully believed him, but it hardly mattered in the end.
He'd been gifted him a set of leather pants and a white shirt, a pair that wrapped around his body snugly. The Spatial Pouch he'd tied around his shoulder while traveling was now set at his waist.
He'd also subtly taken the time to absorb the bloodline of one of the fallen bears when he had a chance.
In the end, a pair of Aeth traveling merchants, a man named Clarence and a woman named Jeriah, had exited from the wagon Dorian had stopped the Mello's clone from destroying, alongside their young daughter Sara.
As an expression of their thanks, they had gifted Dorian ten gold mints, the most common form of currency in the 30,000 Worlds.
One mint was shaped like a small, thin gold coin, but with a hole in the middle of it. Stacks of gold coins could be tied together with strings, and easily stored in Spatial Pouches or Rings.
A single mint was worth 100 silver mints, or ten thousand bronze mints.
In a popular city of a decent kingdom, a city guard would make around 45 silver mints a month, or roughly 150 bronze mints a day.
A decent meal at a restaurant cost 10 to 15 bronze mints. A good sword, for those that trained physically, would cost 10 to 20 silver mints.
Some kingdoms would still produce their own currency, and then have exchange rates with the Borrel Autarchy mints, while others simply accepted the widespread mints as the norm.
There were also larger denominations of gold mints. Instead of being shaped like a regular coin, larger denominations were shaped like miniature kite-shields, around an inch across. They were heavily enchanted and regulated with magic, specifically regulated by the gargantuan Gold Department of the Borrel Autarchy.
Each gold shield, as they were called, represented a huge sum of money, some in the millions of gold mints. The gold shields could not only be used as money but, for the ones of higher denominations, they could be used as aids to understanding and sensing the laws of magic, due to the special enchantments cast upon them by powerful members of the Gold Department.
While this might not be the most useful for Wizards at the Lord Class or above, for those below, it could serve as an immense aid.
The merchants had given him 10 of the individual gold mints, bringing him from a penniless pauper to a relatively wealthy man in an instant.
Dorian had accepted the money without a moment's hesitation, smiling at them merrily. At least the Titan's face was close to a human's, and his smile looked pretty normal.
After that, Dorian had been faced with two choices.
He could head out, back to traveling on his own, or stick with the merchants for the last leg of this journey. They were only a day away from the end of the World Bridge, at the rate that the enchanted, self-moving wagons this particular caravan used. The Aeth didn't like to use horses, or animals in general, for any type of work.
Dorian had decided to stick with the Aethmen, for one more day, after learning more about the world he was traveling towards. He'd ended up sleeping in a spare tent when they set up camp for the night.
The World Bridge to Taprisha was, according to the merchants and Wizard, the entrance to the territory of the Aurelius Family, a powerful family of vampires that controlled a large number of worlds.
Unlike the World Bridge he had left from on Hasnorth, Taprisha had a World Bridge that was actually watched and guarded.
Taprisha wasn't, technically, a world controlled by the Aurelius Family. On paper, the world was a buffer world, which neither the Borrel Autarchy nor the Aurelius Family controlled.
In reality, however, the Aurelius Family had taken over the planet, using agents and various allies to keep it under their control. They guarded the world, and wouldn't allow any outside forces like the Autarchy or the relatively close Shade Commune to gain a foothold.
The Aurelius Family, unlike the Borrel Autarchy, had no intention in expanding their grasp and was relatively self-contained.
Thus, the situation on Taprisha was a unique, but stable one.
Regardless, he was glad he was able to sneak in with the merchants. As long as he could subtly move past the border guards, he could just change forms and be on his way, without a worry. The merchants seemed to have far fewer misgivings about Dorian than the Wizard Lor did, so everything worked out. Perhaps his soul twisting Fate had factored in, but Dorian was pleased.
A few minutes ago, the daughter of the merchants had seen Dorian absentmindedly practicing footwork for a style of dance he knew from Earth and had asked him to teach her it, and hence here he was now.
"How is this, Master Dorian?" The twelve-year-old daughter of the merchants was a sweet girl, with short blonde hair and a young face. There were still a few hours till they arrived at the exit of the World Bridge, so Dorian had decided to teach the girl the classic style of dance from Earth.
She did a small spin with her feet, and then stepped forward twice, and back once.
"Excellent!" Dorian clapped his hands together, giving her a warm smile.
"Now, whenever you find a good tune, just wait for the beat, and step with it like that! Be sure to teach your friends!"
"Okay! I will!" The girl gave him a big smile and then ran off, practicing her footwork all the way to the wagon at the front of the line, where the Wizard and the two merchants rode.
Dorian watched her go back to her family with a small, wistful smile, his eyes glimmering. He shook his head, however, and sighed deeply.
Once he made it to Taprisha, he would be one planet closer to finding the treasure stash tucked away in the Ember Gorge, and saving William.
He called to mind the possible routes he could take to reach the stash. A mental map of the nearby worlds and World Bridges appeared in his head, compliments of the information the old Wizard had shared with him.
There were six routes he could take.
Of the six routes, four of them involved moving through more than 15 different planets and World Bridges.
The last 2 routes were much smaller. One had 3 worlds he needed to cross, and the other had 5 worlds.
Dorian focused on these two routes, deciding he would pick one or the other when he learned more about the worlds on each path.
He was on a relatively strict time limit. If he didn't successfully find the treasure stash, and use it to create a body perfect for William within a bit more than a year, Will would die.
It was a tight schedule and a huge amount of work that would involve quite a bit of danger. It was also the right thing to do.
He sighed again, and then shrugged. It was what it was. If it was hard work he needed, then it was hard work he'd do.
With that thought in mind, he settled down in the spare wagon they traveled with in case any of the others broke down, and laid back, deciding to rest till they reached the border.
..
The day quickly marched onward, and they arrived at the exit of the World Bridge in no time. Apart from the small rainstorm from the day before and the attack by those bear clones of Mello, nothing of note happened.
The World Bridge to Taprisha from Hasnorth was a fairly short one, with a pretty normal landscape. A long, sweeping savanna, with a few cliffs and small forests. It would take a normal caravan about a week to cross it.
Dorian had made fantastic time by dashing through it at full speed before he encountered the Aeth caravan.
Hasnorth was an outer planet, or a Lesser World. There were only a few small powers on the planet, nothing extremely noteworthy. The trade between Hasnorth, and the nations on it, was not extremely expansive.
Therefore, the number of caravans that would arrive at the entrance to Taprisha, on any given day on this particularly World Bridge, ranged from five to ten. Some Major Worlds or planets would have hundreds or even thousands of trading caravans move through World Bridges daily.
The Tandor Empire was ruled by an Early Lord Class power and had access to the wide resources in its two thousand miles-wide area, as well as the untamed lands around it. But it was still very much a frontier empire, according to the Aeth traders. As a Lesser World, there just wasn't too much special about it.
Lesser Worlds, Major Worlds, and Exotic Worlds. These were the three categories of Worlds in the 30,000 Worlds.
According to the merchants, Taprisha was an Exotic World, a world type with a very unusual geography.
"We're at the checkpoint, Sir Dorian." One of the guards approached the wagon he was riding in, informing him.
Dorian nodded. He then got up, stretching his arms as he left the enchanted wagon.
As he came outside, he gazed upon the enormous, 200-meter tall wall that blocked off the entirety of the exit to the World Bridge.
It was a pristine white color, gleaming in the afternoon light. He saw several long scars on it, a few of them stretching for miles, caused by the spatial storms that sometimes erupted on World Bridges. The wall itself seemed to be almost a uniform construct, raised by magic of some sort.
It stretched for miles and miles, all the way out of sight due to the curvature of the many miles-wide World Bridge.
Directly in front of them was a large, ten-meter wide gate. One of only two entrances to Taprisha on this World Bridge. They were a couple dozen meters away from it, but Dorian could still make out a large group of guards, several of which seemed to be Wizards.
He looked up, noting that he could only see the huge wall, and not the world beyond it. This particular World Bridge approached Taprisha at a slant, and he was therefore unable to see the planet past the huge wall cutting off his sight.
Despite the relatively little trade between the two worlds, there was still a decent sized line, with perhaps two dozen different groups of people ahead of them. There were a few people in wagons or carriages, a couple on horseback or riding some type of large, scaled lizard, but most of those waiting seemed to be individuals that traveled on foot.
He asked one of the caravan guards about this and was told that some warriors ventured out from Taprisha onto the World Bridge seeking certain breeds of beasts that could only be found here for their bloodlines.
Taprisha was a world under the reign of the Aurelius, and largely as a result of that, Blood Magic Wizards were commonplace here.
They quickly moved through the line, the process for checking over each group long since streamlined over the years.
In no time at all, it was the merchant caravan's turn.
The guards standing at the gate were all human, with the exception of a single creature that appeared to be made entirely out of some type of grey rock. Dorian was taken aback when he saw the guard move, staring at the creature.
'A member of the Pyrite race, intelligent beings who possess a unique Soul Spell Matrix and even more unique constitution. This one appears to be at the Sky Class. This creature does not possess blood, and therefore if you wish to absorb it, you will need to first kill it and then absorb its Soul Spell Matrix.' Ausra came to the rescue, sharing information about it.
When Dorian absorbed the bloodline of a creature, he was essentially absorbing all the information about that creatures Soul Spell Matrix, the object that defined what a being was.
If a creature had no blood, then the only method he had to absorb it would be to kill the creature and then use the energy in his soul to absorb any nearby Soul Spell Matrix. He would need to carefully preserve the corpse if he wanted to enact this method. If a body was destroyed or damaged too badly, the soul and Soul Spell Matrix would quickly dissipate, leaving him without a chance to absorb it.
It was similar to how he managed to pull William's Soul Spell Matrix out of his corpse and store it next to his soul. Soul Spell Matrix's were normally invisible and impossible to detect, but the unique powers given to the Flock allowed them to access them. If William's body had been damaged further, he might not have been able to save him at all.
"And who might you be? What is your purpose for coming to Taprisha?" One of the guards spoke up, a surly looking human with short brown hair, and a large potbelly. They'd already worked through most of the merchant guards.
"A simple warrior looking to work for the Aurelius family." Dorian smacked his chest as he spoke, his muscles straining in the confines of his skin. It was the excuse he'd decided seemed most reasonable. He had the physique of a warrior, after all.
"We can vouch for his character and strength. His actions saved us from an attack by some Great Black Bears." One of the two merchants leading the caravan, the male merchant named Clarence, spoke up and walked towards the guard. The man was lean, with short blonde hair and a delicate complexion.
"Oh?" The guard's beady eyes glanced over Dorian, and in particular over his powerful looking body with a frown.
"Yes, his valiant efforts are why we are still here today." Clarence walked up the guard, holding out a hand.
"I hope we can avoid any trouble over my friend." A glint of gold could just barely be seen as the two shook hands.
"Of course, of course. How could I fault a brave warrior like yourself?" The frown disappeared from the guard's face as he gave Dorian a warm smile, and waved him forward. Internally, Dorian gained a frown of his own. It seemed petty corruption happened in this world just like it happened on earth, but even more blatant.
"Welcome to Taprisha!" The rest of the caravan quickly moved forward, making it through the gate.
Leaving Dorian to have his first gaze on this Exotic World.
Taprisha, the legendary Archipelago without a Sea.
He blinked as he looked down the length of the World Bridge. It landed down on the rest of the planet, about six miles away, the widespread savanna turning into a smooth, rolling plain. A huge, at least twenty-mile wide city could be seen just a mile off from the base of the World Bridge, a large collection of white spires shooting off from several palaces within the confines.
Long strips of farmland could be seen surrounding the city for dozens of miles.
But what most interested Dorian was what was beyond all that.
Tarpisha was known as an Archipelago without a Sea. This city, and the farmland around it, was located on a giant island spanning about ninety miles. From up high, Dorian could make out the edges of the island, off to either side.
However, instead of an island surrounded by water, the mystical islands on Taprisha were surrounded by nothing but sheer, gaping cliffs.
Enormous, huge and vast oceans of nothingness that stretched for dozens, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles downward. Legends had it that some exposed areas even led to the core of the world itself.
He blinked as he stared at the horizon, where he could make out one of these oceans of nothingness, with a few other visible islands in the distance. Just staring at it was incredibly unsettling, and instantly made him come to a decision.
He needed to snag the bloodline of a beast that could fly as soon as possible.
.
