God Ash: Remnants of the fallen.-Chapter 1085: Blood Rising (1).

As it turned out, his decision to leave things in the hands of the small rat had been the right choice.

Before leaving Redscale Island, Cain had constructed, a second spatial anchor, one that didn’t link to the shrine in the {Willow Direwolves} camp.

In the end,the situation had come to a resolution? Or something very close to that.

Anathe, Roc and Ambrosia had agreed to supplying him with resources for access to the spatial gates. Of course, with Blatt taking care of the logistics.

And the Mutant Beast had managed to handle it very well. As it turned out, the {Black-hide Rat} was much more capable than he had given it credit for.

With that, the spatial gates leading to continent of Aderra were always active.

Roc and Ambrosia had chosen locations across the shoreline that was close enough to th conditions of their homes, while Anathe had decided not to begin expansion just yet.

Rising from his bed, Cain huffed deeply.

Spending a few minutes freshening up, he put on his clothes and headed on out not long after.

Today was the day.

After a long time of preparations, they were finally ready...

The advance party this time was large and consisted mostly of the entire upper brass of the Golden Asura.

As he walked down the streets of Valestorm, a rather peculiar sight greeted him.

The laughter of children.

The squabbles amongst hunters divvying up the spoils of their adventures.

The sound of the hammer against the anvil as the blacksmiths pounded furiously away.

The rather annoying din of merchants trying to sell their wares and their customers bargaining for lower prices.

A subtle realization hit him.

This was slowly becoming the norm.

The air felt and smelt of magic and arcane mysteries. The streets were not just littered with humans as well— there were also Beastmen and even hulking Mutant Beasts walking amongst them, as well as much smaller ones.

Contrary to what he had originally believed, whatever sense of hesitancy or disgust, or even bias the humans were supposed to feel towards these creatures was rather low.

And the few dissenting voices were the odd ones out.

Granted, talking beasts was far from the ordinary. But at the same time, so was magic and Beastkin. And yet, there it all was.

Cain huffed as he picked up his pace.

Very soon, he arrived at the Golden Asura HQ.

The large building was the same as most of the other remnants of the old world.

It was run down. The glass planes of most of the windows had long since shattered. However, its floors were mostly intact, making it one of the very few taller structures that could be found in Valestorm.

The moment he stepped through the doors, he ran into Hunter and a few others already gathered.

Hunter turned to him, his face a deadpan,

"You are finally here."

Cain couldn’t help but think there was a faint expression of relief riding in his voice.

Cain chuckled, "What, you thought I would back out?" 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Hunter’s expression turned grim,

"No. It’s not that. Nevermind. Now that you are here, we can begin."

The dangerous feeling rolling off of Hunter was more than enough encouragement he needed to let whatever it was die there.

There was always a need to let sleeping dogs lie after all.

He sighed,

Beside Hunter and Calio, was Zeu, Lukas’ handler. Although the mage had come to terms with it, he still wasn’t very fond of Cain.

Cain gave Calio a nod then turned to Hunter.

"All arrangements have been made. There a re few more eager than others, but now that you are here, we don’t need to worry."

Cain nodded.

The details of their expedition were quite simple— they were to physically go down a few routes and confirm human occupation or otherwise in the towns that lined the way to the next big City.

Once they found human settlements, a possible physical and maybe even a spatial channel would be created, creating an avenue for movement between City Z and said location.

Cain knew for a fact it would not be easy, considering that the world was now surely crawling with wild Mutant Creatures and Devils.

However, such risks simply came with the territory.

The details of their large cohort had already been straightened out.

Regardless of pre-existing squads, everyone has been divvied up to fill in certain roles that resonated the most with their arraignment.

For instance, even though Jenny, Sue, Li, and Stan were all part of a pre-existing squad, on the grander scale, they were all separated to squads that would allow for them to make use of their abilities the best during a battle.

Mages and marksmen were often left to the rear, protecting and assisting the bruisers and fighters with the mages offering defensive and offensive spells, while the marksmen pelted the enemies with storms of life-ending projectiles.

Of course, that didn’t mean that squads were completely separated. If the need arose and missions were to be handled on smaller scales, such teams would simply be put back together.

"The transport beasts are ready with enough food, water and Mana shards to last at least a year."

Of course, with the issue of traveling across the vast swathes of wasteland, such journeys were better left to creatures built for such endurance journeys.

And those creatures came in the form of certain mutant creatures; the {Longhorn Mares}.

They were large, fairly docile creatures that could be found nesting in certain areas right outside City Z.

Not only were those creatures swift, they had rather large frames that could accommodate the ferrying of large numbers of people.

What made it even better, was that the creatures were often not the target of larger predators due to their ratehr unappetizing flesh.

Which meant the chances of them being stalked by the dangers in the wild would be much lower.

The total number of their entire entourage was close to a hundred, perhaps even more.

After all, even though the Golden Asura made up most of the entourage, they weren’t the only ones that would be going on the trip.

And of course, before that journey, there was a certain thing that had to be taken care of.

Before they would leave City Z, they would be heading to its depths for a particular reason.

To settle, once and for all, the biting thorn of the Blood Moon Sect...