Flat Mount City

The trio consisting of Deon, Shi, and Terros, set out secretly, not informing anyone of their departure aside from Admiral Adbar, Terros's trusted aide who would maintain things in the kingdom whilst they were away. Apparently, Terros had made this arrangement with the admiral multiple times before, so they did not have anything to worry about.

Not that either Deon or Shi actually cared about what happened to the kingdom anyway.

Before long, they left the kingdom walls, heading towards the mountain range which spanned for countless miles to the West.

In truth, Deon felt somewhat expectant towards the journey, not just the destination. Would there be bandits? Other shamans who tried to battle them? An organisation attempting to prevent their passageway through? Demonic beasts? Something else new and interesting?

Deon was thoroughly disappointed, as reality was simply more plain than his imagination.

The strange feature of this giant mountain range was that the spiritual energy, whilst dense and rich higher up each mountain, was actually extremely lacking and poor in quality within the lower canyons between the mountains.

This was actually fairly typical though; when a massive number of natural mountains were gathered together like this, the naturally dense spiritual energy on the mountains drew in the spiritual energy from down below. This movement of spiritual energy caused upwards flows from the canyons towards the mountain peaks.

Because of this, the upper regions of these mountains were extremely rich in spiritual energy, but the canyons were actually a worse environment than most mortal nations.

This caused the journey to be somewhat gloomy. The atmosphere lacked any colour or signs of life, only rocks and mud could be seen along their trek. No animals inhabited this barren region, so naturally, the demonic beasts didn't bother to descend into these canyons.

There were no mortal humans living here either. Mortals would suffer from ill health if they spent too long in this dreadful atmosphere, though shamans were fine. That said, a shaman would never spend an extended period of time living in the canyons, the mountains and their peaks were an infinitely superior training environment.

As such, Deon didn't so much as encounter a mouse or a bird, no matter a demonic beast or shaman.

Five giant clouds that were filled to the brim with origin energy, each supported by a 2-Star origin fountain and five 2-Star one hundred enhancement spirits, drifted through the mountain range behind three people on horseback. Day turned to night and then night turned to day, and before long, they arrived at their destination uneventfully.

"We really encountered no trouble…" Deon muttered, feeling slightly disappointed that he hadn't experienced any more of the greater shaman world during this outing. Even though Shi had said that everything would go smoothly, he assumed that she was only comforting him…he should have known that she would never bother doing something like that, the journey really was completely safe.

"You really expected to encounter something troublesome from a two day journey through the outer border of a mountain range?" Terros looked at Deon speechlessly.

"Well, maybe…"

"If shamans encountered danger every time they stepped outside, then nobody would ever travel." Terros rolled his eyes.

Deon ignored this snide remark, turning his attention towards the city.

Flat Mount City was quite literally a city that spread across the 50 mile wide flat peak of a mountain. This mountain was much lower than those around it, and the flat peak was so smooth and parallel to the ground that Deon felt some doubt.

"Was this mountain cut by a sword?" He muttered to himself.

"What the hell are you talking about, how could someone cut a mountain in half with a sword?" Terros stared at him like he was stupid. "It's just a fortunate coincidence."

Deon looked down at the perfectly smooth ground below his feet which was almost shiny due to the smoothness of the surface. After examining this surface carefully, he believed in his speculation even more.

Who could cut a mountain? Well, Blood God could definitely do such a thing, and probably many other powerful shamans. Of course, someone like Terros could never comprehend such a figure.

To Terros, the peak level elites were those old monsters at 4-Star whom he had caught glimpses of by chance during his young years of exploring throughout the lands. He had never even seen a 5-Star shaman, let alone someone like Blood God, the supreme demonic power of an entire generation.

Even 4-Star shamans were mysterious figures to most shamans, they did not understand the power wielded by those higher ranked shamans at all.

"Toll is three 1-Star drop spirits." The guard stated expressionlessly as Deon and company arrived at the gate. The guard wore a red and white robe with an emblem depicting a large temple building on his chest. He was quite well dressed for a mere city guard, but then again, he was also a 1-Star shaman, as were the other guards!

Deon looked past the guard, curiously examining the golden arch, one of four entrances past the city walls, into the open city.

They were quite early compared to most, the city still hadn't become lively like it would be one week from now. Of course, the occasional person going in or out could be seen, but apparently the que would reach well over a mile long a few days from now.

They payed the somewhat extortionate fee and entered.

"I thought there's no centralised power, how come there's an entrance fee?" Deon asked curiously.

Terros was more familiar with this city than Shi, so he took it upon himself to explain these things to them both.

"There usually isn't an entrance fee. They start charging this fee two weeks before the main auction, all the way up until the day of the auction. The Trading House, the group in charge of the main auction, takes this fee, using the excuse that they are maintaining order within the city by preventing too many travellers from entering. They claim that it's their responsibility to do so, since the city only becomes so lively due to their auction."

Deon nodded slowly. Whilst this was a bit shameless, the profits definitely made it worthwhile.

He continued looking around as the group made their way through, past the gates and into Flat Mount City. Behind them trailed five clouds, these were the clouds created by five of their cloud soul mule spirits.

Deon had bound one of these spirits, this was already his limit which he could only sustain by using 2-Star drop spirits now and then, whilst Shi and Terros each bound two.

Whilst there were many interesting transportation methods used by shamans, whenever a new such method appeared, it would always attract attention. As the thinly spread population within the city saw Deon and his group walking through, they glanced at them briefly in curiosity before looking away. However, even this much attention really wasn't desirable for them.

"Let's quickly find somewhere to stay, we can disperse the clouds and bring out all of the spirits." Terros looked around and became hurried. He was all too aware that showing off your wealth carelessly could easily attract a calamity.

Before Deon had the chance to look around, he could only agree to follow Terros's lead. He wasn't familiar with shaman society yet, though he naturally understood something so basic like not wanting to get robbed by greedy opportunists.

They hastily walked past the various smaller shops and buildings located in the outer region of Flat Mount City. Whilst the inner city was generally much more lively and thriving, accommodation was far cheaper in the outer city, and the attention drawn to them would be lower.

Deon also voiced his thought that if needed, it would be much easier to flee from the outer city, though Terros and Shi glared at him for saying something so unlucky.

After finding a temple hotel, which was apparently a fairly typical type of accommodation found throughout this entire mountain range, the trio quickly made their way to the 4th floor.

The temple was much taller than Deon had expected of a simple outer city building, it actually had nine floors! A single floor was a single accommodation, with the top floor being reserved for a single resident and this 4th floor suiting 4-6 people…

Or three people with a massive number of spirits.

After settling in to their rented accommodation, Deon began considering his plan of action for his stay in the city.

He knew that there should be many refinement materials for sale in the city, materials that he was unable to obtain in a mortal nation like the Kingdom of Restari. Deon was excited to buy many of these refinement materials so that he could refine a large collection of high value spirits. He would keep some of these spirits for himself, but most would be sold over the coming week.

Shi wasn't involved with Deon and Terros's business plan, but she obviously knew that Deon, an expert spirit refiner, would choose to refine and sell some new spirits whilst he was here.

"I expected you to bring some refinement materials along with you. Since you didn't bring anything, you'll need to go out and buy all of the basic things too…" She noted doubtfully.

Shi did not know about Deon's spatial ring, but since he would be living with Shi for the next week or so, there was no way that he would be able to hide the fact that he had actually brought multiple tons of materials with him.

"I have a storage type spirit which can store inanimate things." Deon lied, then withdrew a random unidentifiable spirit from the transportation cloud. He pretended to bind the spirit, before waving his hand and summoning the stacks of materials from his ring.

Whoosh…

Shi was startled and quickly jumped back as a pile of materials appeared before her. Soon after, Deon returned these materials to the ring, having satisfied Shi's curiosity.

They spent the next hour quickly sorting out all of their transported spirits, rebinding their own spirits whilst placing the spirits they planned to sell in crystal jars filled with the food or environment they needed to survive. This sort of storage was fairly typical since it was cheap and easy to set up. The downside was that it took up a massive amount of space, making it inconvenient for transportation.

Luckily, since this was a common need, and since the city would soon be filled with travelling shamans in need of such crystal jars, Terros was able to find a couple of hundred jars for sale from a nearby shop.

Before long, they had finished making their arrangements. The trio decided that, in order to protect their valuables, at least one person would stay behind within the rented accommodation whenever possible.

With the mundane tasks now sorted, Deon headed out into the city to explore true shaman society for the first time!