117 Beginning The Long Journey Home

After being escorted around the fort like some sort of delicate dignitary Yun was quite ready to be back under her own power. She had already been taken to the nearby Logistics building and been provided a small but fast vessel to travel downstream, as well as being given a good portion of rations to keep her fed on the journey.

After all the logistical items were sorted out, Yun was finally given some time with a large regional map including the details of the waterways. After accounting for the speed of the water and the relative distance, Yun calculated that she would have to spend about 24 days on the water before she finally reached the shore of the southern lake, then another six days from there by foot to reach Myhhrwar at last.

A month was certainly longer than she wanted to spend on traveling, but she knew there was little to be done about it. Traveling by land alone could potentially reduce her travel time by nearly half, but it would also expose her to significantly more danger from various beasts that were terrestrial and not aquatic. The reduced risk was well worth the increased travel time.

After making all the plans she needed Yun was finally ready to travel. She was quickly escorted out the east side of Sylvomurkuwar and up to a small tributary that flowed past the fort and down to the river. The young Lieutenant that had been assigned to lead her for all this time was standing beside her as she finally got to take her leave and head home.

"Thank you, Lieutenant, for the help you've given me. I know you received the short end of the stick when you were assigned to babysit me, but thank you for the work you've done. It's helped tremendously."

"I wish you the best, young one. This world is not kind to those with talent like yours, guard yourself well. Most importantly, though, you should always remember to have an escape. Your enemies will not always be those you can defeat, you should make sure you can protect your life before anything else."

"Thank you for the advice. This Yun will be heading out now. A long journey awaits."

Standing firmly on the shore, the Lieutenant watched Yun bring the single-man longboat out of her spatial storage artifact and push it into the water. Soon afterward she had already boarded it and brought out her paddles to steer it downstream rapidly. With the current favoring her and the endurance and strength of a cultivator she would easily reach the maximum hull speed of that boat at around 500 kilometers per day.

Yun paddled very inefficiently for the first hour until she found the best way to push the oars through the water. After that she picked up speed rapidly until she found she was at a breaking point where her speed had caused the boat to lift too far out of the water, riding on top of it instead gliding through it, and she felt a sense of danger. She quickly stopped paddling for a few moments while her speed dropped and the hull settled back into the water a small amount.

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After about a week of steady progress Yun was happy about how quickly she was traversing this enormous distance. She was moving at close to half her top land-cruising speed on foot, but it was almost effortless and presented much less danger. Having the current flowing in her favor also aided the ease of her travel quite a bit.

The river she was traversing was quite wide in many areas, and she was nearly the only thing she saw operating on the water. Once or twice she passed by an obvious cargo vessel loaded down with scrap goods heading for the furnace to be reclaimed. As she traveled further down the waterway she began to see and encounter many more small vessels traversing the mighty river.

Suddenly, on the tenth day, Yun saw something that put her on alert for quite a while.

The boat before her was a heavy cargo vessel that could barely manage to navigate this section of river by staying in the deepest trench near the center. As the large ship passed by the resting Yun she felt something was off about it and quickly retreated the longboat from the vicinity of the larger ship.

It appeared to be just in time as well, because as soon as she turned to look behind her she saw the myriad tentacle arms of some deeper water monstrosity trying to wrap at least half the cargo boat with it's large arms.