Chapter 281 - 046 - The City Walls

The carriage wheel cut tracks into the mud roads as the down pour continued.

It had been raining for several days now, making the squads return to the little town of house Kurt slow down.

It was at around noon that the city walls came into view, thick walls of stone that rose 40 feet into the sky, it was said that 400 years ago Lord Rupid Kurt hired the dwarves of 'The Hillcove Hills' to build the outer walls and the great gates, that were operated with great mechanism's, requiring several people to work strenuously to open the gates.

Outside the city their seemed to be a small rundown city, but Lirian knew that this area was actually the open marketplace, where many farmers from the nearby village would come to sell their extra produce.

The peddlers would usually hang around in these parts and haggle with buyers and sellers, throughout the day.

But currently the area was completely packed with people in every direction, despite the endless downpour that made the world feel miserable.

The arrival of the squad of fifty, was instantly noticed by the crowds and the people all gathered around, when they saw the uniforms of the soldiers they all bowed respectfully and put some distance between themselves and the group.

But their eyes kept darting to the cart that was being pulled by four massive horse's, they looked on with curious gazes, but they couldn't learn anything as the gigantic steel cage was covered up by a tarp.

Lirian could hear the soldiers chatter about the packed open market, "Never seen this place so full in my entire life," a soldier was saying in a glum voice.

The excitement that they were feeling at finally returning home was no where to be seen, "With all this crap about invading orcs no one wants to stay in their villagers and wait for death, so they are coming here to seek out sanctuary,"

The soldier scanned his surroundings confirming his thoughts as he saw entire families standing together holding each-others hands as the rain completely soaked them.

"If this keeps up we might end up with a plague running through the inner city," Reyna said as she heard several people coughing within some of the tents that were pitched outside the walls.

As the group got closer the gates a sentry who was busy performing his duty of patrolling the walls, when he noticed them approaching, at first he wanted to curse out, there were to many people trying to push their way into the city in the past week.

But when the group grew closer he was finally able to make out what they were wearing when his gaze landed on captain Reyna he froze in terror at what he had almost done.

---

When the squad reached the gates, they could vaguely get the smell of blood in the air and as they looked at the ground they could see what looked like blood and mud mixed together in a puddle.

"All of you commoners stay back unless you want a repeat of yesterdays events," a loud shout rang out from the top of the walls as the soldiers looked up they saw the head guard glaring outwards at the masses.

The soldiers could guess what happened, some one must have entered the city and at the time the commoners must have tried to push their way through.

The city had its limits, as things stood it was already filled to capacity and they couldn't afford to take in anymore, unless it was someone with an important status they had no chance of entering and staying alive.

A few minutes later the huge steel plated gates started to rise up at a turtle's pace, and after a full ten minutes the group started to move into the inner city.

The inner city spread out far and wide, every road was properly cobbled and almost all the homes were built of sturdy wood and as one went deeper in the buildings were built from stone.

The inner city was home to several hundred thousand people, yet a city of this size was considered tiny in this world it didn't even qualify to be called a city.

Once the group entered the city the gates started to lower, on the outside many people were eying the entrance with looks of desperation but ultimately they didn't make a move, the previous events had left a mark on their minds.

No one wanted to lose their lives trying to get into the city, after all the entire reason they came to house Kurt was to have a chance of survival.

The squad moved into the city without saying much to the guards, asides from confirming that all of them returned the guards didn't ask anything, they could tell that the group was impatient already.

They didn't even bother to check inside the cage, since it was covered they believed that captain Reyna would have her own reasons, who were they to question the intentions of one of the 42 Adapts of House Kurt.

Even amongst the other Adepts she was highly respected, not only was she a spell caster, but her father was the Lord's brother and a real mage.

A short while after they escaped the eyes of the guards and pulled to halt in a back alley , due to the rain there were very few people moving around, once they found an empty area they opened up the cage and carried Lirian out dumping him on the alley floor.

While captain Reyna was telling the few members of the squad that were going to take Lirian to one of the black market auction houses where to find the place, Lirian was dumped in a puddle as the water washed over him.

"I grew up in a place like this," Lirian muttered softly while facing the sky, no one heard what he said, but he was merely speaking to himself.

Of course he wasn't speaking about his current life he was actually speaking of his very first life, the life in which he starved to death as a two year old child.

From what Lirian had been able to piece together about those memories, his mother was homeless, and she lived in the alleys, picking up what ever filth she could find in order to survive.

And she died giving birth to him.

He grew up in those same filthy alleys, eating whatever dirt and filth came his way, even to this day Lirian had no idea how he survived at first, he was completely unintelligent, he didn't know a single word during that entire life.

All he did was scavenge through filth for food all day and the rest of the time he slept, he didn't even eat enough to be able to take a dump or pee.

At the time there was a single man who had discovered him, every time he saw Lirian he would kick him around like a toy, when he was done he would throw the left over filth from his food at Lirian and laugh as he watched him hungrily put what ever was thrown at him into his mouth.

But during one winter the man stopped coming, Lirian had no idea why but during that winter Lirian remembered dying, he didn't know if it was the cold or the hunger that had killed him, but that was the first time he remembered dying.

And for Lirian's first few lives the memory of that man that used to use him as a venting tool, was the warmest memories he had, in fact there was one very warm memory he remembered vividly when the man peed on his face, and Lirian desperately drank it with wonder.

It was the first thing he ever tasted that was warm.

In one his lives when Lirian learned about the concept of burial's he built a shrine to honour that man.

It wasn't until much later after watching people and trying to understand them, that Lirian understood that what he had perceived as kindness was in fact just a disgusting man venting his frustrations on him.

It was one of the greatest humiliations Lirian had ever experienced, he could still picture that man laughing wildly as he happily drank pee.

Just the memory alone was enough to get Lirian's blood boiling as he sat there in a puddle of water unable to move.

While most of his wounds were healed, his legs were still broken, just an ordinary walk would prove impossible for him.

A short while later captain Reyna left after casting one last glance at Lirian, then four members from the squad quickly approached him, one of them slung him over their shoulder and began to walk through the dark ally's.

Lirian briefly considered killing the lot of them, only one of them was a cultivator but he was extremely weak, so Lirian felt like it was possible even with his broken legs, but he quickly shrugged of the idea.

If he killed them he would undoubtedly become the first suspect of Reyna.

If that were to happen posters with his face would rapidly spread around the city, in the end of the day even if he could escape these soldiers, and he didn't think that he'd be capable of getting very far with his broken legs.

Beside the main point of coming here was to find a way into a cultivation room, he couldn't flee when he was so close.