A day had passed since Tiar had left the herkleri rebel group led by their child prince, the former Distroya’s journey through the world he was on continuing. At noon, after what had felt like an eternity in the highly unpleasant environment he was in, the Order champion finally reached a settlement.

The settlement was quite large as well, by the looks of it having been at least a middle-size city before being pillaged. At present just about all the higher buildings – the towers, the church, the fortress near the center of the city – had been brought down, not much being left of the walls encircling the settlement. One thing that had remained partially intact were the cyan-colored domes here and there that really stood out amid the white stone blocks all the buildings were made of, this being a possible hint to the Order champion’s current location.  No fires burned anymore, but smoke still rose from a number of places, the silence of death having covered this city with its shroud.

A part of Tiar even dreaded entering such a place as he was afraid of the mutilated corpses he would see in there, the ruined buildings being quite enough for him. Coming to that realization made him think again that despite being a Viktar for only a couple of days it sometimes felt as if a very long time had passed since his transformation.

When he had been a Distroya, he had always welcomed the sight of destruction, of cities, countries and whole planets burning, thoroughly enjoying the symphony of the civilians’ screams and pleas for mercy as they were tortured. If he could think of a flaw of such sublime experiences, it would be the smell of rot that always followed conquering a territory – the same smell filling up his nostrils in the present.

As a Viktar he had not yet even seen what the interior of the city looked like and was already shaking, almost hating himself for having become so weak. Though weak was not the right word for it. Rather he had developed a sensitivity to this type of surroundings.

Whether he wanted to or not, however, Tiar would have to cross the ruins for there was something here that he needed – or at least something he hoped to find in a place like this. The only option he had was to use his sensory abilities which thankfully had not dulled in the slightest since becoming a champion of Order to locate what he was looking for in the city by its energy signature. After that he would need to move through the settlement as fast as possible, grabbing the item he was searching for and then leaving just as swiftly, all the while paying no attention to the environment.

The Griffin Slayer closed his eyes, spreading out particles of the type of energy he currently used over the city and its vicinity with maximum speed, waiting for those particles to come in contact with the energy signature he was looking for. That energy signature needed to belong to the main interplanetary travel device used throughout Yut – Flexocrystals.

There were big portals made of such crystals in several locations on almost every world in the dimension, so there were certainly some on this planet, but each of those was well guarded. Not yet ready to make his move, Tiar couldn’t afford to draw so much attention to himself, so going near the portals was not an option.

The alternative was to get his hands on the smaller crystals used for travelling within the bounds of a world, the likes of which were sold in every major city in Yut. Their teleportation reach could then be increased by fueling them with his energy to provide the necessary power to achieve interplanetary teleportation. That was the safest way to get to any world of relevance as although Tiar could move much faster than normal now, he still did not quite understand the principle on which that ability worked.

Using a power he had not fully figured out carried too much risk. There was no telling if he could successfully cross such distances or if he could reach the right destination with his ability – and failure so early on in his quest to eliminate the rule of Chaos in Yut was simply not acceptable.

So now he had to scan this city for Flexocrystals and collect at least ten if he was to stand any chance of going to another world soon enough. The search took a few minutes, but eventually the needed energy signature was found, by the Viktar’s calculations the crystals he had found numbering around thirty.

While that was a welcome surprise, the location of those much needed items brought the Griffin Slayer no joy at all. They were on one of streets closest to the city’s center, most likely the main commercial street – meaning Tiar would have to cross at least half of the corpse-infested ruins to reach the crystals. And he was already well aware he would not be able to turn a blind eye to all he was about to see.

As he stood at the broken gates and agonized over what course of action he was supposed to take, an idea came to his mind that could maybe spare him further fussing over the present issue. His increased movement speed could not be safely used to travel from one world to another yet, but it wasn’t supposed to be a problem  to cross half a city with it. Testing this theory seemed far more favorable than having to walk through the ruins all normal way, so he decided to take that little risk.

When he had fought the Chaos griffins at the outpost earlier, he had felt as if he was shown in what order to attack the griffins to go through all of them in the fastest manner, meaning his ability maybe entailed more than a simple speed increase. Perhaps he was actually able to calculate the shortest route to a destination he pictured in his mind and then manipulate his speed to travel said route for as short a duration as possible, thus seeming that he only moved faster. Instead he moved in the most practical way.

The Flexocrystals had already been identified as a destination by his mind, all that was left being to find the shortest route to them and cross it as quickly as possible not by instinct, but by choice. Completely shutting out what he saw, smelled, felt and everything else in the surrounding environment, he focused only on the crystals. The street they were on. What path was the right one to take to get to them the fastest? He needed to find that path. Find it and then travel down it to reach his destination right after that. He needed to do it now. Right now.

No. More than that. He was already there. He needed to picture already being on the location he was aiming for and then make that thought a reality. Reach it. It was right there. Just reach it. Reach the crystals.

‘-REACH THEM!!!’

Taking the risk of being heard by any enemies left in the vicinity, his roar coincided with the one heard upon the successful execution of his technique due to the release of so much power. A mixture of white and dark blue energy absorbed him inside itself, feeling as if the very space around him was restructured. First it was broken apart into cube-like pieces and then reassembled, but just like with restructuring objects his environment no longer had the same appearance as before.

He now stood on the lime-colored circular cobblestones of the city’s commercial street, the text ‘Magic Crystal Shop’ still being readable on the partially burned and cut sign hanging above the broken door in front of him. Both objects being made of the same light brown wood, the two-floor building they were a part of having a similar design to many of the surrounding structures – white stone exterior, a small cyan dome serving as a rooftop and small almost square windows.

If there was a difference, it was the glass still left on some of those windows – that glass was made of crystals of multiple colors that housed shapes the full image of which could no longer be grasped due to the damage done. The crystals sought by the Viktar were beyond those windows and with that in mind, he stepped toward the entrance while completely ignoring anything the surroundings had to offer his five senses.

That was so at least until a sound drew his attention as it stood out very much amid the silence – someone was crying. The weeping sounded as if it came from just around the corner on the Magic Crystal Shop’s side, Tiar going there to inspect the source with the hope of finding a survivor in the middle of all this death.

The Griffin Slayer’s prayers were answered, finding a young woman who had thrown herself over the corpses of two men – one not much older than her and one considerably older, the thing all three of them had in common being the race they belonged to. Looking over at some of the other corpses around and taking the city’s design into account, Tiar was finally able to pinpoint where exactly in Yut he was.

This was the planet Almeya, its people being called Almeyas – tall and slim humanoids with skin in different shades of pink, all of whom had snow-white hair. Judging by the climate and the architecture, this city was located in the lowlands of the only continent of the world’s Northern hemisphere that covered much of that hemisphere’s territory – Gilad.

Its territories were under the control of the single most insane and unstable of all the generals serving in the Chaos griffin forces of the Air Beast Division – Yelez. Both Yelez and his men constantly thirsted for battle, death and destruction more than anyone else in their Division, that explaining why they had decided to attack a city that was already under the Chaos forces’ control.

What worried the Order champion was not knowing the exact location of the griffin general’s main base in these parts, there being a high probability to be found by him if he stayed on Almeya for much longer.

Needing to make haste, he leaned by the young woman’s side, putting a hand on her shoulder to make her look at him rather than the corpses – an action that didn’t lead to any response whatsoever.

‘-Child, listen to me. I am terribly sorry for all that has befallen you and your loved ones. They are dead, however, and from what I’ve seen, there is no one else alive in this city but you. If you want to honor their deaths, you must leave this place and live. And you have to do it now because the longer you stay here, the more dangerous it will be for you. Please, come with me.’

The Almeya woman still didn’t turn to look at Tiar, but she did at least talk to him, meaning she was not consumed by grief to such an extent that she had not even registered his presence.

‘-There … there’s no point in going anywhere. I too will die soon. With everything else being taken from me, I at least want to die with my family.’

Her words confused the Viktar at first, but then he got a better look at her, only now noticing the large stain of very dark purple blood on her dress. The cause for the blood was the deep cut in the side of her stomach that kept bleeding even in the present moment. It was actually a miracle she had survived this long with  a wound like that, but without a doubt the time of the woman’s death now drew near.

That was, unless someone saved her. Someone who could restructure her body to make the wound go away. The only question was: did Tiar have the necessary mastery over Order energy to heal a wound as grievous as that?

Trying something was better than leaving the woman to her fate, the Griffin Slayer pulling her to himself now and forcing her to look at him.

‘-What if I can help you survive? What if I can save you?’

Since she had never seen a being like him, she was struck with shock almost as great as her grief upon looking at the Order champion. This distraction allowed him to move her a bit further away from the two corpses and lay her on the ground to get a better look at her wound.

‘-You … who are you? W-what are you?’

The last thing this female Almeya needed was to hear her life was in the hands of the former supreme commander of the forces that had decimated her city and killed her family, so Tiar had no other choice but to lie. And lying was also something he was not very experienced with. Despite being an utterly depraved being up to the point when he had become a Viktar, one principle he had always stood by had been to be truthful and honest, both to his enemies and his friends.

But in the present he needed to be as convincing as one possibly could because if he did not make this woman feel at ease, the surgery he planned to perform that was plenty risky either way was going to fail for certain. That failure would lead to him murdering yet another citizen of Yut and he had had enough of slaughtering the peoples of this dimension.

‘-My name is Arit. I am a Viktar, one of the servants of Order sent to help you.’