Chapter 891 - On the train

Two weeks later.

I push through the halls of the moving wagons. The vibrations travel through the whole structure, and, due to their sheer size, the swaying is completely unlike a normal train, no matter how much it looks like one. After all, we’re riding along in entire milti-story buildings, swaying and rattling as we move down the ancient tracks.

We had to switch to an older set of tracks, as one of the kaiju decided to pass through the ones the natives wanted to use. Kaiju, of course, isn’t the official name for these beings, the natives have some really long names that I didn’t really bother to remember.

Though they have a few cool nicknames like apocalypse bringers, titans of the end, things like that. Cool nicknames, but I’d rather not say them out loud within earshot of the natives of this nearly destroyed world.

“Nathaniel, Nathaniel, you feel angry, I can sense it from your heavy vibrations, yes yes, I am very perceptive and worried.”

“Not now, Pip, I need to speak with one of the engineers. Those assholes are pissing me off.”

“Not so rude, younglings might hear! Yes yes, we cannot have the younglings hearing this bad language.”

Pip swiftly follows behind me as we pass through a hallway whose sides are laced over with tubes transporting water, steam, mana, and a variety of other things. As with everything on this train, they’ve been colorfully painted, often as the natives allow their children to draw all over them, and damn, if the children don’t seem to enjoy it.

I pause just in front of one of the doors, and Pip is too slow to stop and runs into my backside as I stop.

When I look down at him, he looks up, twisting his faceless head.

Pip is a member of a race that calls themselves kindred. They usually shrink to the height of an average human’s waist when they reach adulthood. The children are two to three times as big. And of course, their elders are the size of my hand.

The kindred are something like the combination of an insect and a golem. They each have a square face with a mostly smooth surface and no eyes, mouth, or other identifying features. The children like to draw on faces for them though. Then there’s their crab-like body, with four legs and two arm-like appendages, with four surprisingly nimble fingers each.

None of this makes them seem the least bit creepy, like overgrown insects. In a way, they can even be kind of cute, though I made the mistake of watching them eat once, and I’ll never do it again. Even if they are mostly vegan, meaning meat is a rarity for them.

“Pip,” I say.

“Yes yes, Nathaniel!”

“I’ve been patient until now.”

“Not at all, you complain all the time, yes yes, 139 separate complaints, I remember it all!”

After every yes-yes, Pip clacks with his fingers twice, making a soft, deep, clacking noise. The kindred just seem to like doing that sort of thing. Stomping, clacking, audibly twisting their heads, and it’s different for every member and associated with different words.

“In my case, that is very patient.”

“Ohhh, yes yes, I see! Nathaniel’s just like that! But no can do! The engineers are carefully chosen, very strict, and no one is to be allowed into the sacred machine!”

“Even if that sacred machine is going to stop working in a few weeks? Wouldn’t that be bad?”

“That would be bad, yes yes!” This time he clacks four times and even stomps with his left back foot. “But the last time we let a human into the sacred machine when they wanted to help, they stole one of the precious cores, damaged the delicate machine, and ran away!”

“One day we will have to talk about your race's overly-trusting tendencies.”

He twists his head as he probably looks at me. “Are you not asking me to trust you, Nathaniel, and for us to let you into the sacred machine?”

“Yes yes,” I say.

“Yes yes!” Pip says back excitedly and wobbles from side to side, “I trust Nathaniel, so I will talk to the others!”

With a sigh, I stop myself from continuing further into the car and look out of one of the windows at the country we are passing through. “How long until the next stop?”

“If we take route one, three days! If we take route two, seven days! If we take route three, eleven days!” Pip bounces against me with his head. “Do not worry, Nathaniel, our elders know what they are doing, yes yes, and everyone else will be working together to help!”

“Sure sure,” I say, which causes him to get even more excited, especially as I tap twice on the top of his head and he bounces against me again.

Saying goodbye to him, I reach one of the balconies and take a moment to feel the wind against my skin and listen to the rattling of the train on the old stone railings. Even here, the landscape has that post-apocalyptic look to it, but nature is starting to take over. Greenery and trees are filling craters, buildings are being covered in vines and flowers, and some weird sort of animals are moving around in the distance. It’s kind of pretty in a way, if you don’t think too hard about what led to it.

I then jump off the balcony and boost myself into the air and hover over the wagon. I locate the one where Sophie should be and boost myself in that direction, landing once I’m there. And for most of her time here, Sophie’s been surrounded by all this greenery, sitting under a nice covered terrace-like structure she grew from the surrounding wood and plants.

I think out of all of us, the kindred seem to like her the most. After all, she’s greatly helped with their gardens, all while making sure to keep to their requirements and strict rules, she, in cooperation with the kindred’s gardening guild, has been working to improve several parts of their process.

She’s also currently controlling the minds of all the humans and other races present on the train other than the kindred. The kindred have a strong mental resistance, but it wouldn’t really stop her if she wanted to.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from NovelPhoenix. Please report it.

“They refused to let you into the locomotive?” she snorts when she sees my expression.

Something in her tone annoys me, and I use kinetic energy to pop one of the tomato-like vegetables nearby, but she lifts a shield in front of her just in time to keep it from dirtying her.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she says.

“They won’t even let me in the front wagons, much less their sacred machine.” In a blink, I form a manabloc chair and slide into it.

The view of the beautiful garden, with its trees, flowers, plants, and many wooden structures painted by the kindred younglings, as well as the moving country outside, is beautiful and sure to be one of my favorite settings in the tutorial.

“Then go to Beyond and 'take a rest'? You wanted to start threatening guilds and all that nice stuff. Everyone else who could has already jumped to Beyond at least for a little bit.”

"I do not know, but I quite like training here for now, and I still have enough time. I can even challenge Nyssa if I time it well."

“Just say that you’re still annoyed that your head nearly exploded and yet you still couldn’t even wound one of the Kaiepochjiu.”

“I forgot that name the moment you said it. They’re kaiju. And yes, it slightly annoys me that it didn’t even bother to look my way.”

“How does it feel to be directly countered for once?”

“Fuck you, Soph, you know very well that barrier they have is bullshit. But yeah, whatever, I’ll just try to copy it and improve my own.”

“Black mana? Primordial energies? Just use them.”

“This is personal.”

“You can be so childish sometimes.”

“It's one of my charms,” I wave it off. “How are things in Beyond?”

“One to two more weeks and we’ll be attacking one of the Champions. I already let Lily know, and she’ll be going to Beyond soon to inform Tacita.”

“Well, if you need help…”

“There is no need. We can’t always rely on you.”

“That’s okay, but at some point I’d rather you guys act like a bully calling in their big bro to finish the fight for you, rather than have any of you die.”

She nods, “That much is obvious. Are we switching tracks again?”

“One of the kaiju damaged one of the main ones, so we swapped them. These aren’t in as good a state, and that explains the quality of our ride, but in a few weeks we’ll probably be switching to one of the main ones. Somewhere around then we should meet to trade with one of the kindred's floating bases and cities.”

“Is the floating city one of the main communication nodes?”

“I think so? Pip said they needed to fix some of the communication systems here on the train, but they don’t have the technology, so the kindred from that floating city is going to help out in exchange for some fuel.”

“Kindred do not think like that, Nat. Pip probably said they’ll be helping the city, and the city will help the train in turn. These naive, cute little things would do it all for free,” she sighs.

I nod seriously, “I know. Is Izzy still planning to stay on this floor until the end of the tutorial?”

“She… she does, and I can’t come up with a single thing to change her mind. I cannot imagine the relief it puts on her mind to not have to deal with all those toxic emotions she’d constantly have to sense.”

“Just tell her this is the tutorial. She has to use the opportunity to train.”

“I can’t.”

“Goddamn siscon.”

“You are the last fucking person I want to hear that from. And fuck you, Nat, you tell her.”

"Maybe I will! Maybe I'll adopt her into the Gwyn family, or into the clan that Vic, Vega, and I will create together."

“What are you even blabbering about?”

“I don’t know. It’s been two weeks since I had a decent fight. The kindred are too nice, but their kids hunt me down, Soph. I swear they Hunt. Me. Down. They’ve been using some secret method to track me down and communicate their savage attacks on me. Why me, Soph? Why? I call them little shits all the time, I even give them the cold shoulder. When they wanted me to draw on them, I searched through my mind to come up with the most despicable paintings possible. Yet these jerks kept walking around and wearing them proudly.”

“You and Min-Jae almost disconnected the last wagon and nearly caused it to float off into the sky with your training. You and Min-Jae nearly made a hole in one of the wagons as you attempted to make a high-gravity zone for training. You and Maya almost triggered the old automatic defenses of this train just by fighting outside in your war armaments, even the kindred didn’t know about them. You and Izzy almost set three wagons on fire while experimenting with her fragment and blood.”

“See, I’ve noticed a certain tendency, it is always someone else having a bad influence on me.”

Sophie sighs, “Just go to Beyond.”

“But I kind of like it here. I have time to train and work on my megaconstruct. My newest crafting arc is also going well with the help of kindred… and kaiju.”

“Then stop complaining to me.”

“But I like to complain. Surely you haven’t forgotten the good old times when you were an intruder in my mental space.”

“It is one of my most terrifying and humiliating memories. But I know what might get you to stop aching like a hyper puppy on zoomies. Go and check on Lily.”

“Is she done with her 10 day long closed door training?”

“I… you could say that.”

I look at her after that, twisting my head to get a better look at her and narrowing my eyes in response. Sophie returns my gaze with a blank face. That mindblender is getting better and better at hiding her emotions, and her poker face is probably among the best in Group 4, though she still can’t compare to Tess's lying face.

Still, I stand and boost myself into the air to land on one of the wagons further back.

There are some kindred kids already playing in the garden. They look more or less the same as the adults like Pip, except they tend to be as tall as, if not taller than, me. Naturally sliding into sneaky mode, I mask my presence and especially the vibrations of my motions, which they seem to be extremely sensitive to.

Passing beneath the trees, I watch them and only move when they move themselves, or when they’re talking and playing with each other. Slowly, I reach the door that, like most of the doors here, is round. Interestingly, inside that door there are smaller doors… for adults.

Entering the hallway, I boost myself towards the ceiling and hide between the tubes as two more kids pass through, tapping and clacking as they enter the garden. Once they are gone, I land back down and walk carefully through the colorful hallway.

Lily's room is thankfully near the top and on the outer wall of the wagon, with a balcony to the outside and a lot of natural light.

Stopping in front of the door, I pause, look around, and only then do I knock out a signal Group 4 set for ourselves at the start.

Lily calls for me to enter, and I quickly open the door and slide in, closing the door behind me.

“Sophie said-” I start, but my words get stuck in my throat.

I think this is the first time in a long time I want to scream.

Or squeak.

From sheer surprise, shock, and a hint of terror all at once. Mostly terror.

The arm that I left with Lily is gone, and that by itself is okay. The problem is the little 5 or so year old girl sitting in one of the armchairs, opposite Lily. That girl stares blankly in front of herself and doesn’t seem to be reacting to my appearance, nor Lily’s, for that matter.

She has strikingly wavy, almost curly golden hair and looks almost ethereal as she sits there unmoving with her beautiful violet eyes.