At last, today we arrived at Leviathan Fort.
When I stepped off the ship, my legs stopped functioning correctly.
The ground beneath me felt soft and unstable, like walking on wet jelly pretending to be stone.
I almost collapsed immediately.
Thankfully, as usual, Uncle Kael carried me on his back.
Uncle Kael truly is the gentlest person in the world.
The crew also did not react anymore.
At this point they probably already accepted that I occasionally lose the ability to function like a proper adult after long sea travel.
Honestly fair.
Oh right.
Ryn and Spathian already made up.
I think.
Earlier I overheard Spathian casually telling her that if she still needed to punch him again for emotional closure purposes, he would gladly allow it despite still not understanding why she was angry in the first place.
Which somehow ended with Ryn actually punching him several more times.
Terrifying family.
My two older brothers are nowhere near this violent.
At least I hope not.
Ryn also started calling me “Miss DeLuna” again.
Very sad.
She refuses to call me Reine anymore even though I thought we had already become close friends.
Maybe she changed her mind.
Or maybe rich people reset emotionally every few weeks.
I do not know.
But every time she says “Miss DeLuna” now, something feels strangely far away again.
I dislike it.
Since arriving at the fort, Ryn spends most of her time reading.
Trading books.
Negotiation books.
Economic books with diagrams complicated enough to spiritually injure me.
She said she was trying to “find herself again.”
I honestly do not understand what that means.
But she looked serious while saying it, so I decided not to ask further.
Sometimes people recover in strange ways.
I write.
Ryn studies economics until her eyes look haunted.
Different methods.
Spathian also became busy almost immediately.
The engineers at the fort practically surrounded him the moment we arrived.
Apparently they requested his help improving the artillery systems.
So now he spends most of the day talking about pressure calibration, rotational stress, firing angles, and other things that sound dangerously explosive.
Which means he no longer has much time to bother me.
Very unfortunate.
I became bored almost instantly.
Thankfully Uncle Kael keeps taking me around the fort or bringing me fishing.
Today I caught an oarfish.
It was horrifyingly long.
I genuinely thought I accidentally hooked an ancient curse from the bottom of the ocean.
I finally asked Uncle Kael about the leviathan story.
Turns out it was real.
Actually real.
According to him, it was only a medium-sized leviathan.
Only.
Medium-sized.
The world keeps becoming more unreasonable the longer I travel.
I told him I genuinely thought leviathans only existed inside legends.
Then Uncle Kael looked at me strangely and asked:
“Reine… your teacher is a talking tree.”
Which feels unfair.
Master Root is not a legendary creature.
He is simply my teacher.
Very different things.
I think.
Out of curiosity, I also asked Uncle Kael about Master Roderick.
Apparently he was not born wealthy at all.
Everything Roderick Street became was built by him personally.
Back then, according to Uncle Kael, Master Roderick was one of the greatest negotiators in Sondre’s caravan.
It still feels strange hearing someone call Caravan Master by his actual name.
Sondre.
Apparently the two of them traveled together for years as equals rather than leader and subordinate.
Not employer and employee.
Just… companions walking the same road.
Uncle Kael said Master Roderick was essentially one of the founders of the modern caravan alongside the core crew.
Honestly, becoming that wealthy within a single generation feels absurd enough already.
But according to Uncle Kael, the truly frightening thing about Master Roderick was not intelligence.
It was the complete absence of fear.
And his ability to build connections.
His network apparently became even larger than Sondre’s.
Which honestly sounds impossible.
Caravan Master already seems to know half the continent.
The more I learn about the Roderick family, the more convinced I become that something unusual happened somewhere in their bloodline.
Warm people though.
Very affectionate monsters.
We also received news that several mainland trade routes became dangerous again because of regional conflict.
Apparently the road I once used toward Dunskar is no longer considered safe.
The world really never stops fighting for very long.
Because of that, the next recommended route passes through Greyharbor instead.
I do not mind.
Actually… I am a little excited.
A road I have never seen before still feels magical somehow.
Even now.
I truly thought I would rest longer after everything that happened.
Apparently not.
The road continues again.
Quietly.
Like it never stopped waiting for me in the first place.
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