Onwards to Mons

Having met up with Lia and Aurelia at the port, we take a boat over to the island the marks the Strait of Ponte Mare. Everyone we pass by gives us a strange look and constantly glances at us from afar, but I can't tell if this is because they recognise Aurelia, or because of the floating pieces of the disassembled plane armour following me around.

"I assure you, it's not me that everyone is looking at, it's you and your floating metal objects," Aurelia says.

"Yeah, I figured that was the case."

As we make land at the island, the outpost Aurelia had mentioned several days ago come into view, but its design feels out of place. It doesn't have the same general look that most other building in the empire have, which give me the feeling that I'm looking at Rome and Europe, this looks more like a Chinese Pavillion. There seem to be traces of what was a garden, but it has since been paved over by the Empires roads.

Stepping over to the beach on the far side of the island, I begin to reassemble the plane armour. The reassembly is just as simple as it first was, nothing more than just putting each part in the right place and using my manipulation skill to merge them all into a single piece structure.

"So can we even fit in there with you?" Lia asks.

"Even if we can, it looks a bit tight," Aurelia says.

"I made sure there was enough room, but you will have to be laying on your stomach and get a good grip or you'll go flying and slam into the back end of the plane armour."

"This actually won't be a problem for me. One of the benefits of my Dragon Rider class makes it so I can't fall or be thrown off of you unless a third party forces me off and I choose to get off myself."

"This isn't much of a problem for me either, so long as I ignore the tight fit, I can just strap myself down with my own abilities. We should hurry and get ready though, the time is approaching, just a few more minutes."

Opening an entrance in the side of the armour, I enter and shift to my Dragon form, using my size modification to make sure Lia and Aurelia can enter and climb on to my back. As the two of them enter and get into position, I seal the entrance and increase my size to fit tightly into the armour, giving Lia and Aurelia almost no room to manoeuvre. And as we get everything settled, the water begins to split revealing the wet sand of what was once the seafloor.

Wasting no time at all, I create two large fire inside the hydrogen filled chamber, causing a massive explosion to echo in the air and it sends it flying straight down the pathway. The first thing I notice is the need for stabilising the armour and prevent it from leaning in different directions and keep it on a straight path. At the same time, I need to constantly create more hydrogen in the chamber as well as keep the fire going. Compared to moving around nearly one hundred Big Metal Dragons, which was surprisingly simple, managing all this is much more mentally taxing.

Even after around forty minutes, despite the incredibly high speed we are travelling at, it doesn't look like we are getting any closer to Mons. During one of my exploration trips around the city, I had looked out towards Mons and found that it was indeed a long ways away, but it's still in sight from Ponte Mare and the distance seems like something that someone with speed related abilities could run across within an hour.

{Cory, I just heard from Aurelia, she said that she found out that we've been trapped in some kind of maze that prevents us from truly looking forward. What's the situation outside?} Lia asks.

{She's probably right, it feels as if we're never going to reach the continent. Does she have a plan?}

{Yeah, she says she has one. She said that she will let you know when, on her signal, turn to your left into the column of water. I'll relay the count down, three, two, one, now!}

Right on the signal, I shift my body weight to the side in combination to with my manipulation skill, I make a sharp turn to the left entering the column of water. To my surprise, upon entering my sight changes back to the open pathway with two long columns of water on each side, but this time I can see us visibly approaching the continent of Mons as the mountains appear to get larger and larger.

Within just a few minutes the plane armour crashes onto the shores of Mons as I cut off the supply of hydrogen and put out the fire. Turning back to my humanoid form, I open an exit for us and disassemble the plane armour, turning back to my true form to eat and put it into storage.

As we look back we can see the City of Ponte Mare in the distance and right past these sandy beaches lay the largest mountain range in Grauntia. We've finally made it to Mons.

******Unknown******

"Master, I heard the bells toll, is it true? Someone has passed the first trial?"

"Yes, my student, it is true. I took a quick look for myself and a group of three has seen through the array and passed the first trial."

"These are the first visitors in several millennia. I heard the one before them was a prodigious man who eventually ascended to godhood, I wonder how these new people will turn out."

"A Human with demonic blood, a Dragonoid with an ancient bloodline, and a Spirit Dragon whose race was thought to be extinct. We certainly have some interesting visitors this time around. I'm interested in formally meeting them, but let's wait and see if they can pass the remaining trials and surpass the dangers of the mountains."