After the prince announced he’d finished with his bath, I stepped behind the partition.
The young man was aglow with warmth, but since his hair was still wet, I decided to dry it for him with a warm wind. I had a B-tier proficiency in wind magic, which functionally made me a human dryer.
Seeing that Wald was about to put his dirty boots back on, I quickly stopped him and fetched some fur-lined shoes from my storage for him. I followed that up by conjuring him a cup of fruit-sweetened milk—the perfect treat after a warm bath.
Yup. Sounds far-fetched, but I can whip that up too.
“You...really do have everything, don’t you?” he asked.
“I kinda get fixated on weird things sometimes,” I admitted. “At any rate, it won’t do for you to catch a cold, so go ahead and wrap yourself in this. I’ll take my own bath now.”
I had some wolf pelts that I hadn’t gotten around to crafting with yet, so I pulled a particularly soft and fluffy one out and wrapped it around the prince’s shoulders.
Super warm, right? Feel free to curl up in it.
The pelt was from a C-rank snow wolf that had made its home deep in Gaelius. I’d been planning on making a coat out of it, which was well within my ability as a non-metal crafter.
The prince’s clothing had been left next to the washbasin. Upon examining them, I found—or rather, confirmed my suspicions—that they were exceptional works of craftsmanship that also allowed the wearer to self-regulate their temperature. The cape that was left on me as a makeshift blanket had been the same.
Thanks to these fine pieces of clothing, we had been able to survive the bitterly cold winter nights despite the hut’s draftiness.
After I climbed into the tub and began to wash myself, I noticed the prince had brought the chair to the other side of the partitioning screen and had seated himself there.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
I decided to break the silence. “There’s something I need to ask you, Prince Wald.”
“What is it?”
“I noticed you aren’t wearing the Royal Diadem. What did you do with it?”
“Oh, that,” he said in understanding and took a deep breath. “I’m actually wearing it on my arm right now. I thought it would stand out too much if I wore it on my head. Since it’s a piece of equipment, its size can be changed at will, so I wear it on my arm when I sleep as well. It gets in the way otherwise.”
“I see,” I remarked. Since I hadn’t seen him wearing it, I’d been curious. Thank goodness he hadn’t lost it or anything.
The prince was quiet after that as I finished my bath and got changed.
“Kariya,” he called to me. “Will I...be able to return to Tiuccia?”
“I’ll take you there myself,” I replied, not missing a beat.
I tied my now-dry hair with a leather strap, completing the mountain wanderer ensemble I once wore on the daily. I quickly dried off all the bathing equipment and returned it to my Pocket Dimension.
Swinging around from behind the partition, I flashed the prince a cheery grin as he patiently waited for me.
“I swear I’ll bring you back. It might take a while, but you’ll be able to get home, I promise. So don’t worry—please think of this journey as something like being on a cruise ship,” I said.
Now that I’d come into full view, the prince looked up at me and nodded. He was sitting hunched over in the chair with the fur wrapped around himself.
Although the wind had begun to pick up, the partition was also serving as a windbreaker. It was still light out, so I pulled a hand-drawn map out of my storage then and there. This was a map of the Central Nations I had sketched from my memory of the game. Longitudinally, it was divided into sections numbered 01 to 10, and likewise latitudinally from 01 to 15.
“Let’s spread this out on a table and take a look,” I suggested.
“Oh, should I move?” he asked.
“Nah, I’ll bring out another table. Unfortunately, I don’t have another chair, but I do have some crates.”
Wald stared at me in astonishment once more. “Transmigrators really are all-powerful.”
I shook my head no as I manifested a table—this one lower in height than the previous one—and a couple of wooden crates for us to use.
My Pocket Dimension was pretty handy, but it wasn’t entirely perfect. I couldn’t conjure just anything at all from out of its storage—the space only held things I’d once placed into it. All of the things I’d taken out today were things I’d crafted and stored in the past. And these were all things I’d amassed after seven years.
Now it was time to get down to business. I spread the map out on the table so we could both look at it.
“Right now, we’re here.”
Since I didn’t have any formation pieces to designate our position on the map, I decided to make do with a metal bead meant for crafting instead. Given the prince’s observation of the number atop the portal entranceway, I placed our position at 02:03. The way the map was numbered, we were two segments down from the top and three over from the left. That put us at pretty much the westernmost edge of the Central Nations.
“Tiuccia’s at 07:04,” I said, then placed another bead southwest of the Gaelius Mountains, which had been drawn near the center of the map.
Seven from the top, four from the left.
The quickest way to get back there would be to travel east for a short while and then head straight south. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be that easy.
“The enemy nation of Khrasiel is at 05:04, meaning we can’t take a direct path from here back to Tiuccia.”
Of course, the enemy had to be directly in our path as the crow flies. Trying to cut through there would be a death wish. And if we happened to run into those two transmigrators again, my B-tier combat proficiency would get me murdered in an instant—again.
“I’m sure you’ve realized by now, Your Highness, but right now, we’re in the Northern Bloc, which Khrasiel is affiliated with. Since we’re in enemy territory, I can’t use Return. All of the teleportation portals are under the guild’s control too, so if we try using them, we’ll be caught instantly.”
Wald thought about it for a moment. “If we escape the Northern Bloc, you’ll be able to use Return, right?”
“That’s right. Return will send us back to my home point in the Gaelius Mountains, and from there, I’ll be able to use Jump to get to Altiuccia.”
Wald took a deep breath. A pale hand slipped out from the fur as he extended it to point at the area directly north of our current position.
“We won’t be able to cross the Northern Ridges,” he said. “That land is under dwarven dominion, and they’d never let humans cross their borders. It’d be impossible to get into their mountain lands.”
“Then how about we go west? If we pass through Godhaven at 02:02, we’ll reach Raghion,” I suggested.
Wald shook his head. “Godhaven won’t allow passage to people who don’t share their religious beliefs. As Tiuccian royalty, I cannot convert to their religion; if I do, Tiuccia will fall under their control. We simply can’t go that way.”
In the polytheistic framework of Golden Dawn, Godhaven was unique for being draconian in its beliefs. Since all of their citizens were members of their faith, trying to sneak through would be an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, task.
Since we couldn’t head west either, that made the options of north, west, and south all closed off to us. Heading east was our one remaining route.
“Our position right now is at the westernmost edge of the Northern Bloc. If we go east, all the way to latitude 08, I’ll be able to use Return there.”
The prince slid his fingertips from our position across the map as I indicated. “That’s so far...” he muttered.
“But it’s not an impossible distance,” I said. “We’ll have to walk, and if we can take advantage of a stagecoach, we’ll do that. But we won’t be able to rely on Jump in any spaces where people might see us... If someone happens to witness us teleporting and report it to the guild, they’d be certain to send transmigrators after us, and I won’t be able to win against them.”
Wald was silent.
I continued. “If we work to blend in with the locals, it might take years, but I swear I’ll bring you back to Tiuccia.”
“How many years do you think it’ll take?”
“Considering our only means of travel and the fact that I won’t be able to use my transmigrator abilities, I estimate it’ll take about...” I trailed off, doing some rough calculations in my mind. “Two to three years.”
Wald sucked in even more air.
“It’s fine,” he said eventually. “There have been kings in history who roamed the world for many decades. If it only takes a few years to get back, then that would actually be quite favorable in comparison. Besides, were I to perish, my death would be reflected on the Right of Rule. So as long as I manage to survive, Catharine and Lucian will know that I still live. They will protect Tiuccia in my place until my return.”
Oh, right. I’d nearly forgotten about the Right of Rule.
If a member of the royal family passed away, their engraved name on the Right of Rule would lose its light. As long as Wald’s name continued to shine, his family would know that he was still alive.
And that was how we decided on our immediate plan: to travel to the east.
We’d cross laterally through the Northern Bloc, and once we made it through, I’d cast Return to get us back to Gaelius. From there, we would travel back to Altiuccia. But since we couldn’t use the modes of travel I had used back in Golden Dawn, we were in for a long journey.