Death Mage with an SS-Rank Talent-Chapter 261

The Wasteland...

To the Southwest of the Alliance lands, a land far away from the City of Valora is known as The Wasteland. It was always not called with that name.

When the Age of Magic started, it was a lush region where many species of monsters existed and even many rare herbs that existed nowhere else.

Humans and monsters always fought for control over the region, but the war for the dominion was stopped by a third party, something called a meteor, actually meteors, a bunch of them that fell from the sky, devastating everything around.

Nothing in the area survived. Everything turned into ash, whether it was a monster, a human or a plant, nothing mattered. Only ash remained after the event.

It happened over a century ago, and since then it has been called The Wasteland, as life disappeared from the area, and even growing anything took a lot of time in the area.

When the forest was burned, a new life would try to sprout from the ashes, making use of the ashes that empowered the lands where it burned, but this was something else.

New life tried to return but died quickly.

Even after a century, there are some patches of grass, but most of the land is just a dry piece of the world, almost a desert, but not quite at the same time.

No one has claimed it since then. Sure, there would be some stray monsters or humans who ventured inside to see if they were lucky enough to get something, but there was never any news about anyone getting something that changed their lives.

Sure, when they gained something of importance, they might not spread about that, but their growth would have spoken volumes, but there was not much change in the people who ventured there.

So, the name Wasteland for the devastated land felt very apt, and it became its official name.

---

As per what James Turner informed the team before, the teleportation to the Rock City took longer than the ones they experienced before. This was the first time that they experienced such a small teleportation channel.

Though a few months ago, very few of these people had even known about the teleportation circles, once the war became widespread, the alliance spread the technology everywhere across major areas.

Of course, the cost for such expansion would be too much for the alliance. So, in places like the Rock City, where the chances of attack and the power invested in attacking the city would be lower, the alliance made modifications to the teleportation circle.

Normally, when a teleportation channel was activated, there would be a minimum cost that had to be paid. If there are many people or items to be transferred, the cost would increase, but not by much.

The minimum cost to open and operate a space channel accounts for most of the cost. So, reducing its width, the cost was cut, but the disadvantage is that the number of people or items that can be transferred is reduced by doing this.

Though there was a slight delay, that didn’t matter much to them.

Once they arrived, the mayor took them to the vehicles that were waiting for them outside the city, along with supplies that could sustain them for two weeks.

For normal people, two-week rations might be low, but professionals eat a lot, and all of these people are above Rank-6, which means they consume quite a lot. These two-week rations are more than enough to feed the entirety of Rock City for months.

Luckily, all these supplies are provided by the alliance. So, Rock City has only to provide the vehicles and some hunters who know the route to the Wasteland as the guides for the team.

It took two days, even though they used vehicles from the city to the Wasteland, and that was only to the borders.

Due to being far away from the war zones, this area was not developed in transportation.

After another week of straight travel with only resting at night, they arrived at the central area of the wasteland.

Now that the exploration team had arrived at the wasteland, a question remained, where to start.

The wasteland is vast, and from the information that the spy was able to get, they knew that the cult was interested in the central area. So, they decided to start there, and that’s where those nine days of travel were used for, but even the central area is too big.

It would take weeks, if not months, to fully survey the central area.

Their duty was not just to survey the land, but to find the anomaly that the cult was looking for. If the anomaly were outside, the cult would have found it a long time ago. It meant that it was hidden, probably buried beneath the ground.

So, in order to find that anomaly, it could take weeks or months, maybe even more. In that time, they are not free enough to just look for the anomaly.

As informed before, there is a chance of the Supreme appearing any minute in the area, and when that person appears, it will be war.

In addition to the possibility of the Supreme, there is a high chance that there are at least a few forces of the cults. So, the danger here is very high, and they had to pay attention to their surroundings or else they would lose their lives.

When the team arrived at the designated area, many were surprised to see the area. The outer areas had small patches of vegetation, but here, even that is absent.

No life at all.

It means, whatever they got from the city and everything that they hunted along the way is the only food available. That may not be the main problem, but water would be the main problem.

So, they need to find what they were looking for and have to leave this area as quickly as possible if they can’t find any food or water sources.

Though there was no water on the surface along the way, with the small vegetation patches around, it can be concluded that there is water somewhere underground, at least in the outer areas.

---

"What are you waiting for? Scouts find a suitable place for the camp. We may have to stay in this place for a long time. So, good campsites are important", James started to give orders.

They had are very limited time, and the issue was that they didn’t exactly know how limited that was. So, they had to make the best use of every second.

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