Chapter 11 : New City : Tarnova – The City of Fire and Steel

Tanorva, known as the “City of Fire and Steel”, is world-famous for its industrial production of weapons, machinery, and cutting-edge Arkion technology.
The city floats at an altitude of roughly 10,000 metres, sprawling across 620 square kilometres. Far below it lies the “Mist Abyss”—a bottomless chasm whose sheer cliffs, hundreds of metres high, are blanketed in vivid green moss.
The Mist Abyss earns its name from the extraordinarily thick fog that never lifts. Combined with its twisted, labyrinthine terrain that offers no escape, and the ferocious, terrain-savvy Arcanus that roam its depths, stepping foot here is little different from signing your own death warrant.
“…”
“I hate places like this.”
Muttering under his breath, Rin flopped backward onto the plush mattress, stretching out luxuriously to savour the gentle comfort he hadn’t felt in far too long.
“That damned organisation… Why the hell did they send us on an aerial holiday of all things…”
“Urgh!”
A sudden, nauseating wave surged up from his stomach. Rin dropped his phone onto the bed and clamped a hand over his mouth. With one arm he awkwardly crawled off the bed, staggered into the bathroom, dropped to his knees in front of the toilet bowl and let out a series of dry, heaving retches.
“I… I hate this so-called compensation!” he groaned.
Finally he stood, flushed the toilet, shuffled back to the bed and collapsed again, one hand rubbing slow circles over his churning stomach.
Everything had started just over half a day earlier—the day the “gift” arrived.
Two round-trip tickets to Tanorva.
5 a.m.—the hour when, on any normal day, Rin would still be blissfully buried in the soft paradise of his own bed. Today was anything but normal. Today he was crammed into economy class on a plane, surrounded by a level of noise that only the truly exhausted could sleep through.
“Too damn loud… If you’re going to compensate us, why not spring for business class at least?”
“Come on, Kamiyama-san. It’s a trip, right? Try to relax a little…”
All around him: screaming children, pig-like snoring, loud conversations that refused to die down. The racket hammered at Rin’s temples. All he wanted right now was a decent sleep on his beloved mattress.
“Is the noise level directly proportional to altitude or something?”
“Next time we go anywhere, I’m blacklisting this airline,” he grumbled, turning to Annie with a sour grimace. She answered only with an awkward, apologetic smile.
The flight dragged on for hours—possibly the most tedious hours of Rin’s young life. His friend list consisted of exactly one person: Annie. No offline games to kill time. No peace and quiet for sleep. And Annie, the polar opposite, had already dozed off with her dark hair spilling over the headrest. All Rin could do was stare out the oval window and let time crawl by.
Beyond the glass lay a world he had never truly known—a separate realm. Thick clouds stretched like a gentle layer of honey across the sky; the black of night dissolved as flocks of birds winged past, heralding the slow golden dawn.
His eyes followed those birds—soaring free, living in a domain he could probably never touch in his entire life. Up there among the clouds it really did look like the heaven people always talked about: vast, beautiful, serene. The only problem was, if such a place truly existed, it almost certainly wasn’t meant for humans.
Rin kept his gaze fixed outside, from the first blush of sunrise until the sky settled into its usual bright blue. Not once did he look away from that thin pane of glass that separated him from paradise.
“Hello!”
Without warning, something white hurtled past the window—moving so fast Rin couldn’t make out details. In his peripheral vision he registered only a humanoid figure, head to toe in blinding white light, features completely obscured. And most unnerving of all: its voice was identical to the one that had echoed inside his head during the escape from Igor.
Before he could react, a hand punched straight through the glass—impossibly long, reaching toward his eyes. Rin jerked backward, face drained of colour, cold sweat soaking his shirt.
Then it was gone—vanished so abruptly he had to rub his eyes several times to convince himself it had been nothing more than a hallucination.
“Would you like an eye mask and earplugs to help you sleep, sir?”
“Hm?”
He turned toward the voice. A flight attendant stood in the aisle, dressed in a black vest and knee-length black skirt, red wine-coloured belt, light-green neck scarf, pushing a service trolley.
“Ah… yes, thank you very much.”
In one smooth motion she handed him a simple black eye mask and a pair of foam earplugs.
“We wish you the most pleasant flight experience possible.”
She bowed politely, straightened, and continued down the aisle with her trolley.
“Huh… Guess this airline isn’t completely awful after all…”
“And she was pretty cute too. If only I had… Nah, forget it. Sleep first.”
Even as the thought crossed his mind, heat rose to his face. He shook his head sharply, slipped on the eye mask, plugged his ears, relaxed his body, and slowly drifted into sleep.
10:20 a.m. – The plane touched down, bringing the fourteen-hour ordeal to an end.