'There seemed to be quite a crowd,' I thought as I flew close to the city gates.
There are thousands of people flying through the gate every second; I had expected a lot of Emperors to move toward the treasured palace but did not expect their numbers to be this much.
It seemed like there is going to be quite a bloodbath this time, and even I don't know whether I will survive or not, the Grimm Monsters are not the only danger I will have to watch out for.
Soon, I flew through the gate with thousands of other people. A few minutes later, I was in the forest, where Ashlyn sneakily came out and flew away.
The forest is vast and adds suppression to that, which will increase with deeper I go; I will need more than a day to reach the middle region of the forest where the Treasure Palace had appeared.
It is a good thing; the Treasure Palace is not too deep in the middle region of the forest, otherwise it would have taken days for me to reach there.
The suppression is huge in the middle region, and I know how much my strength will be suppressed there; it is different for everyone; it completely depends on their strength.
Still, I think my strength will be suppressed by around 70%; it could little more or a little less.
The middle region is for 'Monsters,' the above-average will find all of their strength suppressed. So, I will have to travel according to the strength of Sam Duffy; if I show too much strength, people will suspect.
It is a good thing, in the past six weeks, I had shown my strength bordering to 'Monster,' it brought me more scrutiny from the Tyrants of the city, but it had turned beneficial to me.
Now, I could go to Treasure Palace without attracting too much attention; though there will be some scrutiny, I am sure I will be able to handle it without a hitch.
I moved at Sam Duffy's highest speed which good, but I used my real strength; I could have gone much faster. I wish I could just burst out with my real speed, but it is too much of a risk; it will waste all efforts Ive made in creating this identity.
Time passed by as I traveled through the forest; the more distance I covered, the greater suppression I would feel and have to reduce my speed according to it.
Twelve hours had passed, and I had covered quite a distance, but there is still more I have to cover, so I continued.
Two hours later, I had gone furthest in the forest, I had gone before, and now the journey forward would be completely new, and I am looking forward to it.
Soon, a whole day had passed, and I have reached very close to the boundary of the outer region. If I continue with my current speed, in two hours, I will reach the middle region.
I am lucky; I have Ashlyn as a guide; without her, I would not have such a clear path without any monsters or Grimm Monsters wasting any of my time.
Two hours and some more minutes later, I reached the middle region, and suppression had sudden increase; for a moment, I thought as if Supression Tide had hit me.
It is just a sudden increase in suppression, and it is not just suppression that hit me; the soul destabilizing waves and energy destabilizing waves have also hit me.
These two waves had hit me during the Tides, and now like Tides, I have heavy suppression hitting me and also have all the destabilizing waves crashing into me.
I couldn't help but feel pressure when everything had hit me; I rested for few minutes, got everything under control before continuing with my journey with much decrease speed.
As I entered the middle region, the suppression and three energies increased at a faster rate, that I had to reduce my speed continuously.
The others around me had also been affected quite badly; some of them had directly collapsed that a few minutes later, they begin their return journey toward the outer region.
It is happening more and more; people kept collapsing. Most of them decided to return, while some of them stubbornly forged ahead.
Sam Duffy had not collapsed, yet it won't be long before he has to land and continue to journey on foot.
Thud!
Three hours later, Sam Duffy landed on the ground and began to run through the forest like the others.
Now, most of the people are running on the ground; there are very few who are flying and fewer who are flying very fast.
I had spotted few people who are flying so fast that I could not match their speed even if I wanted to. Those are the very powerful people; if I come across them, I will have to run away as fast as I can.
I continued running for six more hours before I had finally stopped as I reached my destination.
The suppression at this place is very heavy; Sam Duffy's 95% power had been suppressed here.
I am too heavily suppressed; about 72% of my strength is suppressed, except for the three tides I had experienced, my strength had never been this suppressed.
In front of me, I saw thousands of people, all of them are Emperors, and if I were to guess their number, it would be around three thousand, which had blown my mind.
These people are no ordinary Emperors; they are all monsters, only those who reached the monster level could come here, and this is just beginning; I am there will be more people in a day or two.
Opposite of humans are Grimm Monsters; their numbers are more than double than humans, and like humans, they are staring at the square building with a huge gate that shimmering in blue light.
It may be called a treasure palace, but it did not look like one; it looked like two hundred meters long and one hundred and fifty meters wide block of Marble which had a huge shining blue gate attached to it.
