Chapter 21 Climb, Unpreparedness, and Watcher

Looking around he found a woman sitting behind a desk reading a floating book with pages spinning faster than should be possible, reaching the end of the book in seconds the book floated onto a stack to the left while another book floated into her view only to begin going crazy.

Walking up to the desk he had a few questions but he threw them aside and prepared to ask the librarian about books on staves.

"Name," she asked, in a heartless, soulless monotone voice.

"Zhāng Huangdi Caesar".

"Here you go" She replied with a twinkle in her eye "I was told to give you this".

she stood up and bent over the large desk reaching for Zhāng's hand before placing a piece of paper in it.

"W-what is this?" He questioned, "Well it is a piece of paper, of course".

Opening the folded piece of paper Zhāng found nothing so he rubbed the sides of the paper for any second folds but again found nothing, "Wrong side". Staring at the librarian who once again began looking at the speeding books, with a bit of annoyance he turned the page over only to see the word climb.

Leaving the library Zhāng made his way to the shop that sells food, called the Kǎlùlǐ Emporium, he found the section with packets of dried jerky, dried fruit, nuts, and chocolate. After paying a ludicrous four Huang, he left the shop feeling slightly taken advantage of before going to the horse pens. With horse leed in hand, he began towards the exit down the main avenue, at the time everyone was heading to the next class people were slightly shocked that a year one would be leaving so soon.

At every one of the exits was a guardhouse to the side, instead of a single group of people it was these guardhouses that you reported any leaves, fortunately for Zhāng the lanky man who had taken him to the courtyard a few days back was leaning out of the window facing the road.

"Ahh, what a pleasure Mr. Zhāng, don't tell me you are already leaving" his face lit up before turning to surprise at the horse being at his side.

"Unfortunately yes, I'll be climbing that, so can you put me down as on leave for a few days".

"A few days kid, it takes a week at the very least and that's with a skilled magic user, do you even know the path?" He asked.

"Path?, no I'm not aware of any path" Zhāng replied in confusion.

"So brave, so-so brave indeed," he said while walking to the back of the guard house to a few lockers, opening the locker a smaller man fell out of it "Alright, you've been punished enough for eating my lunch, you will be taking over till I come back from the mountain" he finished talking before walking out the back door and unhitching his horse from the post, it was like Zhāng's being black but it only had purple thrumming runes on it.

"Right kid ill take you halfway up but that's as far as I go," He said while motioning for Zhāng to get on his horse after which he kicked the side of his horse and it began to bolt around the city closely followed by Zhāng.

For minutes they ran along the plane getting closer and closer to the towering mountain, once they did get into the mountain proper and began to ascend and the flat terrain turned into a thick forest, yet even then the forest seemed to part ways before them allowing passage. Looking forward at the back of the man, although a bootlicker he knew more than his immature personality would make people believe.

Soon the sun started to descent into the horizon and snow started to litter the ground and trees, just as the sun was setting the man spoke up "Alright, this is the halfway marker and the farthest ill go, get off your horse, you won't be needing it anymore" while it was a bit of a stupid thing to do, Zhāng still got off the horse with the mindset of if he wanted to leave him in the middle of nowhere then he would have to lead him farther.

"Ohh and here, I doubt you have any yeti bait, this may save your life if you run into one of those damn things, just throw and run like your life depends on it because it does," he said while throwing a paper sealed piece of meat you would see at a market "It's like a drug and they will chase it to the ends of the earth, yet let's hope you don't have to use it".

Watching the man almost run away with his horse he kinda regretted this whole trip but he was already a day or two walk away and he was not going to be going back without that flag. Thus he began to walk the path that he was shown by the man, and for an hour he found nothing but snow, trees, and rocks.

Seeing the stars in full glint Zhāng decided to find a flat clearing with minimal snow for his tent, an item he decided to jack from his house in case he needed it. After what seemed like minutes to the exhausted Zhāng but was actually seconds he found a clearing that wasn't entirely flat nor snow free but it would work.

Kicking the snow away he took the tent outside of his ring and began to set it up, for minutes he tinkered with the metal tubes passing through the loops and up to the top of the tent. Despite the easy steps to construct a tent, Zhāng still hated doing it.

Only taking off his shoes he began to lay down on the trench coat that was strung out, showing his utter unpreparedness for this hike, a mistake that he would rectify in the future. Unbeknownst to the sleeping human, all manor of creatures found his tent, while curious they seldom went close to the man-made structure, especially the smarter ones who again and again saw humans perform feats of magic that rendered them not scared but respectful of the humans.

One creature didn't get the memo and began to stare inside the tent through the see-through plastic window, with purple eyes it looked as if it could learn something by staring at the human for a second longer. Sitting up the creature walked to a tree and stood up like said human that it was watching, rubbing its back on the bark of the tree fur stuck to it like glue it did this for minutes before walking back to the tent, this time it laid in front of the door and fell asleep like Zhāng.