City of Sin Book 4, Chapter 9

The Capital Of The Unsetting Sun
Richard had learnt a lot over the past ten days, his aura transformed by the experience. His skill in battle had advanced rapidly, but even more important than that was the strengthening of his will. He had no idea how to quantify such a gain, but it was a true harvest. After all, watching someone take apart the body of an opponent was not easy. However, the anxiety he’d been feeling over the past month or so had gradually disappeared as well.
Dusk the tenth day, the capital of the Unsetting Sun finally appeared on the horizon. This was a gigantic city that covered an entire mountain peak, the most striking building of which was a towering spire. This spire was nearly a thousand metres tall, its tip radiating a beautiful show of light.
This tower should have disappeared into the clouds, but all above the city was a huge gap in the continuous wall of grey. The blood-red light scattering down covered the entire city in a blood-like lustre. It was magnificently strange from the distance, looking like a land punished by the gods.
After ten days of learning to run properly, Richard could now match the broodmother’s flight speed without losing any stamina for a long period of time. However, it still took a full two hours from when they saw the city to actually standing in front of its gates.
Looking at the fifty-metre height of the two city gates, he felt absent-minded. They were carved out of the natural rocks of the plane, magic patterns winding all through them with no signs of being stitched together and no gaps. It was an uncanny level of workmanship. These gates could not be controlled by a regular saint; even a legendary being would face some difficulty in opening or closing them without the help of their mechanisms. This showed the power and background of the Unsetting Sun.
Four guards were stood outside the gates, all of them saints that were not lower in level than Beye herself. However, when they saw her approaching, their faces filled with reverence and they stood even straighter, not daring to breach etiquette. Richard noticed their gazes flitting across the huge sack on her back and subconsciously flashing with fervour and envy.
“Lady Beye, Marshal Whitenight, Marshal Rundstedt has been awaiting your return. He was hoping to see you as soon as you returned!” one of them said respectfully.
“I understand,” she answered dully, “I still have some things to do, so we’ll meet tomorrow morning.”
The name Rundstedt sounded familiar to Richard. As they walked up to a circular plaza behind the gates, he suddenly remembered where he had heard it and asked in shock, “Is Rundstedt the Tumon Dukedom’s Lance of Annihilation?”
Beye nodded, “That’s him. Without a legendary being in charge, we wouldn’t be able to guard the capital of the Unsetting Sun.”
He went quiet for a moment before asking a question that had been on his mind over the past few days, “Are we doing very badly in the Land of Dusk?”
“Haven’t you seen enough the past few days?” Beye shot back.
Richard grew silent once more. The answer to his question had been made very obvious over the past ten days. They had been teleported within the vicinity of the capital of the Unsetting Sun, but along the way they had to kill nearly fifty powerhouses from Daxdus while they had met less than ten friendly troops from Norland.
“There are a total of eleven strongholds that are about the same level as this in the Land of Dusk. However, only three belong to us,” she added unenthusiastically.
It was a simple ratio, but one that weighed heavily in the mind.
After crossing the little plaza, the two came upon a stepped road that was nearly fifty metres wide. It was inclined towards the gates of the second layer of walls, both sides filled with lofty stone buildings some of which were more than ten floors high. However, the entire city was lifeless. Outside of a few saints flying in the distance, there was no sense of activity at all.
Beye did not fly, treading firmly on the ground. Richard followed behind, surveying the surroundings as they went. The view wasn’t all that good, mainly because the stairs and barriers were far too high for him. He was as tall as the normal adult male, but his line of sight was constantly blocked. All he could see were rocks of various sizes, having to intentionally look up or turn his neck to observe something.
He could tell that this wasn’t built by humans at all, nor did it seem to be the style of any of Norland’s other main races. The architecture was vast, majestic, and sharp. The rocks used in the construction were solid and compact, and the occasional statues looked like they had survived millennia of erosion from wind and rain. Every storey of the buildings here was over six metres high, meaning the original inhabitants were at least three metres tall. This place actually seemed rather befitting of Norland’s ogres.
The style of the statues and other architecture showed that whatever race had left these things behind were both cautious and magnificent, with the blood of steel yet no less meticulous for it. They had travelled far on the road of civilisation. Their glory was evident everywhere he looked.
And yet, this city so large it could house a hundred thousand people was nothing more than a ghost town now. Even despite the long river of history separating them, the destruction of this race made him feel suffocation and despair. He understood Beye’s intentions in walking. Only on foot could he truly understand the silent desolation of this capital.
It wasn’t long before the two reached the second layer of walls, past which the city grew a little more lively. Powerhouses could now be seen walking or flying around every once in a while, with stalls opened at the sides of the path. However, most of the stalls were closed, and the other buildings that lined the path were mostly empty as well.
“The owners of these shops are people like me,” Beye explained, “They’re likely outside hunting, or they’re already dead. If a shop is closed too long, you can just break the door open and take it for yourself. Of course, there’s no point to it. The closed shops don’t have anything inside, and there are plenty of empty places on this street.”
The capital of the Unsetting Sun did not have any regular people, only lunatics like Beye. There were those who wanted to make a fortune, others who were tired of life or felt they had no chance of going further and here to feel that deranged bloodlust one last time. Some wished to seek a breakthrough on the brink of death. Thus, the population of this city was dismal. All gathered together, it had only a thousand residents.
In such a situation, it would be impossible to find someone to watch a stall on one’s behalf.
Beye suddenly turned and entered a shop by the road. The place had no merchandise, its wall empty and a thick layer of dust accumulated on the wooden counter. An old man in mage robes was sitting behind, completely focused on a tattered magic tome in his hands. There was an old table and two chairs in front of him, likely used to entertain customers.
“I’m here again, old man,” Beye tossed her sack onto the table. The mage looked up, revealing a face full of wrinkles and a messy white beard that fell all the way down to his chest. The crystal spectacles perched on his nose were covered in fingerprints and oil, but he seemed to lazy to wipe them off.
He stood up unsteadily, speaking with a voice like an owl’s, “Beye? You’re not dead yet? That’s definitely something I cannot celebrate.”
“There are many who feel the same way,” Beye answered nonchalantly, “And there will be many more in the future. Just see what my stuff is worth.”
The old man walked out from behind the counter and pointed at the ground, “Do you actually want me to help you move the items?”
Beye just picked up the bag and tossed it on the ground, holding it by a corner and shaking lightly. All sorts of materials were thus strewn across the ground, including the organs that she had frozen in a dark green ice to keep fresh.
The old mage made no move at first, eyes flitting across the materials on the ground before then focusing entirely on her. His gaze kept shifting between her waist and legs.
The scene left Richard quite confused; this fellow might have been a terrifying grand mage once or some such thing, but now he seemed to only be level 12 or 13 with his aura very weak. He was obviously dying. Given Beye’s temper, one didn’t even need to speak; just the wrong gaze alone could convince her to kill. The fact that she was enduring this old geezer’s lecherous gaze meant there was a story behind this.
However, it was a story he did not know; he naturally wouldn’t stick out on her behalf. He instead stood silently at the side; the waters were too deep in the Battlefield of Despair, and he did not yet qualify to participate.
Beye turned a blind eye to the old man’s gaze, standing peacefully where she was. However, that only made him increasingly brazen; his eyes were beginning to show an unconcealable desire.
At this point, Richard was slightly shocked. Beye was incredibly tall, much taller than himself as he was now and able to match most male powerhouses. Her face was rather unique, her eyebrows and pupils so white they could not be seen at all. She had great features that would make her a beauty; long legs, slender waist, perfect curves… and no breasts to speak of. Still, all that wasn’t important; the key fact was that she was fierce and peerless, possessing a strong aura of blood. Getting in bed with a goddess of murder like her required a strong mind. He believed his own was strong enough, but without a good reason he wouldn’t attempt to seduce her even if he hadn’t felt a woman’s touch in a year.