The city I arrived at in Dolbogarde, known as Neldania, was situated where the river flowing south from the Alliance emptied into the sea. Apparently planned from its inception, the city had been built around its harbor, fanning out inland around the river. Multiple large canals were built off of the main river, with smaller channels connecting them.
As such, the main form of transportation in the aquatic city was by boat. The boatmen who led them were surprisingly well-informed. Beyond just the people of Neldania, merchants, travelers, and even adventurers often made use of the boats to get around. Having contact with so many different kinds of people, the waterways became a breeding ground for rumors.
On top of that, the boatmen likely exchanged information among themselves as well. That was the conclusion I reached after spending about two weeks in Neldania, at which point almost every boatman I encountered already knew about me. They had probably shared that an elven stranger was asking around for information about the region.
In truth, getting information from the boatmen went far, far smoother than any attempt I had made in the past to gather information by visiting bars. The money I traded for information from the boatmen was considerably less than what I spent treating people to drinks in the past and got me considerably better information too.
I was quite thankful for that, but it also taught me a newfound respect for the boatmen. They had open access to plenty of information both about the situation within the city and outside of it, enough for all of them to be well-informed about me after only two weeks. At the same time the boatmen served as legs for the people of the city, they also served as the city’s eyes and ears.
With legs, eyes, and ears, I had to assume the city also had a head somewhere as well. There had to be someone organizing the boatmen, collecting the information they gathered and putting it to use. Whether that was the official ruler of the city, a powerful and influential merchant, or some underground organization, I couldn’t say yet. If I had been interested in spending any length of time in the city, I likely would have taken an interest in this person.
I had felt something similar to this before... Ah, probably from my experience in Saurotay, the city in Vilestorika. It seemed Dolbogarde and Vilestorika shared more in common than just benefiting from sea trade. The brightness of a prosperous society was matched by the darkness of those who maintained it in the shadows. The strength of humans was matched by their ability to inspire fear.
I felt one of the strengths of the human race was born from its limited life expectancy. The shorter a race’s life span, the quicker they matured and reproduced. But humans still had plenty of time to learn new skills, refine them, and pass them down to their successors. In short, it felt to me like the length of the human life cycle was positioned perfectly for future development.
Another strength they possessed was their limited social consciousness. As far as I knew, the most socially integrated of all the races was probably the fairies. Even without going to such extremes, elves were considerably more socially bound than humans were, not counting rare outliers like the elven caravan and me. That led to change coming slowly to them.
Human social structures were much less involved, leading to the development of many varied societies that could adapt flexibly in the short term. They didn’t live entirely separately, but they did not have a particularly strong sense of harmony, coming into frequent conflict with others of their own race. That led to their own prosperity and made experiencing the societies they created stimulating and exciting.
The juxtaposition of light and darkness in humanity that was on display in Vilestorika and here in Dolbogarde was symbolic of their strength as a race.
Two weeks after I arrived in Neldania, I left the city behind, walking north into the Alliance. The normal method of traveling would be to take a boat up the river, and as I had experienced many times by now, walking on my own two feet would take considerably longer than taking a boat.
But in the end, I chose to walk anyway. I had two reasons.
The first was the desire to go hunting that I’d been nursing since I first started traveling by ship. For a high elf like myself, walking a wild, untamed forest was as easy as walking down a well-maintained highway. I could find myself in the forests simply by diverting slightly off the main roads to the Alliance, and the experience of spending my days surrounded by trees would be a good way to keep my thoughts and feelings in order.
The second reason was that a boat would take me north, all the way to Lake Tsia. I would end up in either Folka or Luronte. A boat from Luronte could take me to the magic city of Odine, but even if I chose another path, the rivers leading off of Lake Tsia could take me more or less anywhere in the Alliance. That was what made the river route the most popular.
But I had already decided where I wanted to go first in the Alliance. There wasn’t any particular meaning behind my decision. When I had left on my journey to the East, though, I had avoided this place. Unable to bear the thought of stopping there, I had hurried past.
But now, with all the changes faced by the Alliance, or rather the changes it was in the middle of facing now, if I was going to be reacquainted with the Alliance, that was the first place I wanted to see.
The Duchy of Travoya, the city of Janpemon. Was that stone ship still afloat in the sea of wheat? There wouldn’t be any humans I recognized still alive there, but even so, I wanted to revisit that city for myself before I went anywhere else in the Alliance.