Chapter 106: Chaos and Famine

"You'd better get to explaining why you and half the guard were surrounding my niece, or things are going to get ugly, fast." Aunt Ighir growled, with mom putting a hand on her shoulder to calm her.

She then turned to Endiku to air her own grievances.

"My daughter returned from a battle to save your subjects, and she arrives to a welcome of suspicion, threats, and drawn weapons. As the draconic ambassador to Kengir, I demand an explanation – you will not have the rest of the gods on your side if you trigger another war with us yourselves."

"While it is true that my men broke protocol by drawing their weapons against your daughter without due cause, your daughter thrashed them as is her right, being both the victim and a powerful classer. When the matter was brought to my attention, I arrived to solve it – no hostile actions were taken by me against your child, and thus, no further violations of her right as a diplomat's daughter." Endiku explained.

A tense silence took hold before mom glanced at me questioningly.

"He didn't do anything to harm me. He just waved the guards away and asked a few questions." I shrugged.

The Titan of Kengir chuckled.

"I've no interest in fighting a rank C creature – much less one with such a promising future as yourself. Do come again later when your much stronger; I'd be happy to take on your challenge then."

"Over my dead body." Aunt Ighir hissed.

"That can be arranged, Flame Dragon. Though you'll have to land the first blow – I've no interest in causing a diplomatic headache for Gilgemesh." The Titan grinned.

Mom scoffed.

"You speak as if you haven't already caused one."

"As far as the rest of the world is concerned, a group of low-ranking grunts causing a diplomatic incident on their own is not a big deal, as long as no lasting harm was done and the offending guards are swiftly punished – which is going to happen, since they will be court martialed at a later date. I can't imagine you'll get anymore leverage by pursuing the diplomatic incident angle; not from us, the other countries, or the Draconic Isles. Now that this matter is settled, is there anything else I can do for you?" Endiku said with a polite smile.

Mom grit her teeth but ultimately shook her head.

"I am going to remember this, Endiku. Mark my words; you do not mess with my family and get away with it. Kengir will pay for this transgression dearly."

She turned around and walked towards me and taking my hand.

"Let's go." She said curtly, and I followed after her.

Aunt Ighir gave the Titan of Kengir one last glare before following behind us.

***

As we walked home, I started asking questions about what had happened.

"I didn't know you were an ambassador to Kengir.""Since I wanted to enroll you in the academy, I registered as an ambassador to the Kingdom of Heroes, and they sent an ambassador of their own to the Isles. While you spend time at the academy, I am taking the opportunity to mend the frosty relations we have with the human nations. There might be plenty of bad blood and a complicated history, but enough time has passed for both us and them to put it aside for the sake of future generations – particularly with the coming baby boom in the Isles."

Mom then started ruffling my hair.

"None of that means anything if they touched a hair on your head – the entirety of the Isles would have come to raze Kengir City in revenge. We do not take kindly to attacks on our own." She said with a smile.

"Forget the Isles, I would have split that pretentious bastard in half if they'd put so much as a scratch on Kiara." Aunt Ighir said furiously, her face still marred with a hideous scowl.

"There, there, auntie. I am fine, and the idiots who attacked me were tossed around like sacks of vegetables." I said placatingly.

It seemed to have worked, as she began to relax a little. As we turned the corner, we finally arrived on the street where our home was.

"Would you like to stay with us? You could bring Durreg with you if you'd like." Mom asked. Aunt Ighir shook her head.

"I don't want him getting out of bed. His recklessness may have saved the humans he was escorting, but he'd wounded himself in the process. While his regeneration healed his wounds, I still want him to get some rest. If you need anything from me, don't be a stranger."

Huh. I guess that answers why Durreg didn't come to reinforce Erdu. Auntie hugged me and mom before walking past our street on the way to her own home.

I covered my mouth as I yawned again, stretching my free arm behind my head.

Mom chuckled.

"I guess talking can wait until you've had your rest. You've had a long day, sweety."

"Mhm." I mumbled tiredly.

I didn't even bother going through the fence gate, instead directly flying over to my room's window and entering it.

After closing the window behind me, I tossed my armor off on the floor and put on the first pair of pajamas I found in the closet, before crashing into bed and pulling up my blanket. In seconds, I was already asleep.

***

In the days that followed, much had happened across the continent. Mom forced me to stay home while she scouted some of the human nations to see how they fared.

Ionia and Tyr had all of their citizens barricaded in their main cities, abandoning any and all villages. Out of the few dozen villages that Kengir had, over three-fourths of them had perished or suffered massive casualties on their way back to Kengir City, with the port town of Erdu being the sole exception.

Since news didn't come out often from the Latium Republic even in the best of times, the rest of the continent didn't know what happened to it and the provinces beneath its control.

Tamery was sort of an exception, since all its cities were along a single river. People and goods could travel through it to any population center in the country, and most of the population lived on the small strip of land surrounding it. That made it easily defensible and avoid the need for evacuations, since reinforcements to any place was mere minutes away. In the end, however, the nation as a whole was still isolated from the rest of the continent, which hurt the city of Hebnopet significantly.

Outside the cities, monsters began to roam, devouring each other and laying siege to the cities. With the thick mana in the air, monsters continued to spawn and dungeons began appearing all over the land. With this constant cycle of monster birth and death, combined with the new dungeons' appearance, experienced and battle-scarred monsters up to rank A had begun to dominate vast territories of hunting grounds – killing weaker monsters and each other for a bigger slice of the pie. There was far too much land to cover for those capable of slaying these beasts, so many of them continue rampaging in the new wilds without having encountered a human.

Given the state of chaos and the sheer danger of territories outside of the cities, virtually all trade had grinded to a halt, and with it, the flow of information for most people. As the nation of trade and seafaring, nearly all of Tyr's income had dried up and each city was isolated without much in the way of farmland. From her own observations flying overhead, she saw that famine was beginning to spread through the cities, and order was hanging on by a thread as tensions between the city-dwellers and refugees were simmering beneath the surface.

The various nations – excluding Tamery – were dealing with famines as well, even if not as serious as Tyr's, though not enough time had passed for its effects to become apparent just yet. In Kengir City, at least, the academy began gathering classers with skills that can work in food

production, as well as gathering people to find a way to make monster meat edible in an efficient and reproducible manner. It was normally too mana-saturated to be consumed by regular people, and different monster meats were infused with different kinds of mana, and thus, required different methods.

Normally, this kind of research was abandoned due to its complexity and its pointlessness – if you'd wanted meat, it was far easier to just get it from livestock, rather than dragging a monster carcass from a dungeon to a butcher at the Adventurer's Guild.

But with the lack of normal food and the sheer abundance of monster carcasses, the appeal of this avenue of research shot up in value, pushing it to the top of the city's priorities.

Mom eventually returned, having brought the frozen, well-preserved carcass of the scorching phoenix on her way home from the ice statue in Erdu.

"Alright, Kiara. Now that things have begun taking a turn for the worst, I am going to give you a direct crash course on the bare minimum of casting intermediate and advanced-grade spells. Normally, I would take the time to strengthen your foundations in sorcery first, but we're out of time. I will not wait for the next disaster to hit while you're still stuck in rank C and your second advancement." She said sternly, already ushering me towards the office room where she held our usual lessons.

Huh.

Well, I wasn't going to object to that.