The Journey to Mifis

Leon finally stopped crying and tearing up after half an hour on the road. Currently, his horse trotted on the cobbled road. Since Verin was still a city, even though it wasn't close to the level of a stronghold, there was a path that jutted from the main road system. In Partha the road system was relatively simple, the main road was eight roads that went in different directions and originated at the capital of Pelv, from there a series of mini roads jutted from the main roads like spider webs.

The main roads were made of nice flat cobbled stones like the one Leon was on, while the qualities of the mini roads were decided by how important or populated the place it led to was. This allowed Verin to have a decent quality road, which was the same as the main road but had dirt instead of cobble.

Leon had just entered the main road that was closest to Verin and needed to go along the road until he met a bridge road which was a road that connected each main road and formed a circle shape. There were two sets of bridge roads, one was closer to the inner parts of Partha, while the one Leon was headed to was on the outer parts of Partha.

All Leon had to do was take the bridge roads and go southeast until he reached the main road that was directly connected to Mifis. Logically speaking, the journey sounded easy and quick, but in actuality Partha was huge.

Even though Partha was only classified as a medium-sized country, it was still huge and would take Leon around a month by horseback to reach Mifis. The distance of going from Verin to Mifis was about 800 miles, by foot it would take perhaps months or even a year. However, the horse Leon rode was a horse breed that was above average and had hoofs engraved with basic magic like a stamina boost.

So for Leon, it was the fastest he could get there with his current means as more advanced options like teleportation or by other transportation was out of the question as those were usually expensive and required one to be in at least a stronghold.

However, Leon didn't mind the time it took to reach his destination because he saw the journey there as an adventure itself. Long journeys were often unsafe as there were a whole variety of dangers. The most common ones were bandits and monster attacks, as some of the roads crossed into wild territories or well-known monster zones.

Monsters weren't confined to underground spaces or dungeons, but a lot lived on the surface and ruled the wild before humans established empires and banded together. Some places had such a diverse ecosystem, that it was more worthwhile to leave some places be so occasionally monster corpses could be gathered, rather than to expend an exorbitant amount of troops, time, and lives.

The route Leon was thinking of taking, as he looked at the map he took out from his pack, did not lead directly into any monster zones. However, there were some that were nearby, so he wasn't completely in the clear as monsters sometimes wandered out of the supposed zone they lived in.

-In an underground fortress somewhere in Partha-

Lilith had been sitting in her office for the past month as she managed the search to find Leon, but since she has made the mistake of not asking Leon basic questions as she had thought they would be able to take him quite easily. She had no clue about any of his information besides all the ones she could see and maybe guess from their conversation, so she slammed her fist into her reinforced table which shook under the force.

"Dammit! How did it come to this? We even had two silver agents helping…"

However, too many factors had worked against them. The fact that the target had somehow stationed himself in the Medici family mansion was something unexpected but manageable which is why she had sent the two closest silver agents to assist. However, according to the remaining survivors, the main reason the attack had failed was because of a huge man that had killed one of the silver agents like he was playing with a toddler.

After a month of searching parts of strongholds, the capital, and surrounding villages near Orsini, all of the agents had come up with nothing. This meant that Lilith had nothing to report to Lan besides the fact that they had not come up with any leads, which she wasn't looking forward to. Therefore she adopted the strategy of not reporting at all unless she absolutely had to.

Lilith leaned back as she thought of other ways to look for the target until she suddenly heard a beeping noise from parchment with an enchantment on it. When she looked at which parchment had received a call, she turned even whiter than when she faced Lan.

By no means was Lilith weak, she was at least a step into A-Tier when compared to adventurer's, however it was more likely that her true abilities had pushed her into the category. In Partha, she would be an existent akin to a noble in terms of the power dynamic in the country, however the moment she saw the parchment light up.

She looked like a normal person who saw a murderer walking up with a knife. Seeing as the light and beeping noise wasn't going away, she took the parchment back to her desk and poured her magic into it.

Suddenly an enchanting voice spoke with an enthralling aura.

"Lilith my dear are you there?"

The entire time this was happening, Lilith had been thinking of possible responses, but they all left her throat when she heard the voice. After a few seconds of silence, the voice spoke again.

"Lilith darling, I know the connection is fine, do I need to get Lan to knock on your door?"

Seeing as her attempts to brush the call off were failing, Lilith spoke up as she didn't want Lan to enter the equation as well.

"No mother."

Although the parchment didn't transmit a video or picture, it was obvious that the owner of the voice suddenly smiled with eyes of mischief and anger.

"Good. Now there are some things, I must speak with you about…."