The road leading to the capital’s gate wasn’t all too busy. 

Within Leo’s field of view, there were only a handful of carriages and several, small groups of people walking in either direction. 

The fields sprawling all over every tiniest patch of arable land contrasted with the near-solid wall of trees encapsulating the whole area. Only to the left of the city wall the small plots of various crops suddenly expanded, turning into massive and uniform arrays of various cereals and vegetables, turning the narrow pass of arable land into a massive, open field. 

To all the other sides of the city, though, the forest remained the dominant force, finally forcing Leo to accept the truth that this world hinted at him quite generously thus far. 

‘In this place, humans have yet to take proper ownership of the land, huh?’ 

Such a scenario, Leo only heard about in legends. The myths of the past that were so old, one should even question their legitimacy. 

To have nature as the actual apex being of a world that’s yet to be properly tamed and reined by humans to their advantage…

‘It feels weird,’ Leo thought, staring down at the peaceful fields basked in the rays of the morning sun. ‘It feels… restraining.’

When compared to the wasteland sprawling all around the cities Leo knew, the forest appeared like this impenetrable wall, splitting the rift world into some rare, hospitable plains and then an overwhelming enormity of the hostile nature. 

It was oppressive and yet, at some strange frequency of his soul, liberating...?

Leonard never got the chance to fully discover this strange feeling, for while he was pretty much taking a dive deep into his soul, the group had already arrived at the gates. 

“Pass,” the guard nearby called out, and the queue moved up a bit. 

“Pass.”

“Pass.”

“Stop for a second.”

When the guard broke his routine, to the annoyed looks of his compatriots sharing the same fate of the gate guard duty, a small commotion followed. And a mere moment later, everything turned back to normal. 

“Pass.”

The queue moved. 

“Pass.”

Leo’s group neared the gate, now only a few people separating them from the city’s entry. 

“Pass. Pass. Pass. Stop!”

This reaction Leo has yet to see from when he reached near enough to hear the guard. 

“Who are you? State your purpose and affiliation!” 

There had to be something within Leo’s group that ticked the guard off.

Maybe it was the clothes that Leo supplied after ‘buying’ the masking suits from Camila and her retainers? Maybe it was Leo’s own looks, quite similar yet visibly outside of the local, native norm. 

Or maybe it was the fault of the three oversized dogs calmly accompanying the group. And even now, as if completely innocent, they were giving the guard confused looks. 

Camila moved up half of a step, only to stop when Zion grabbed her by her wrist and took to the front himself. 

“Man’s hubris is the source of their greatest arrogance,” Zion spoke out with the straightest of faces, staring at the guard as if they were discussing the prizes for grain on yesterday’s market. 

“What?” the guard leaned to the back, his weirded-out expression showing a proper reaction to such gibberish. 

“Pass,” a guard hiding deeper into the gate called out, taking both Leo and the guard at the front by surprise. 

“You’ve heard him,” Zion summed up with a small smile and restrained shake of his shoulders before braving ahead as if it was the most natural thing for him to do.

Urk followed after his junior with no hesitation, soon followed by Carol. 

By the time the girl, or rather the duchess, moved, Leo caught the drift and moved in to follow after the girl, closing the whole group and with an added escort of the massive hounds casually following behind him. 

The guard was flabbergasted as Leo’s group passed by, even going as far as to turn towards the depths of the gate and throw the other guard a confused look…

In the end, contrary to how things would go in any of those ancient stories Leo would consume in his attempt to escape the sad parts of reality that littered even the earliest years of his childhood, they’ve passed through the gate without any further disturbances. 

‘Is my fate finally taking a turn for…’ 

Leo cut the useless chatter of his soul a bit too late… 

Or so he, taught by the intense experiences of his first rift dive, thought. Yet, even after raising an obvious flag, this reality stubbornly refused to add any sort of an interesting event to their passage. 

And on the way, all the way to where the narrow road squeezed between tight lines of two and three-storey buildings suddenly expanded into a huge, open plaza littered with simplistic tents and small sheds, the greatest event of the trip hid in Leo’s uncertainty of when the next misfortune would come from. 

A dreary perspective that didn’t come to fruition when they stepped into the open, flea-market-like, area. A threat of fate and Leo’s predictions that haunted him, made him look into every corner and narrow pass, even as the whole group went around the marketplace, giving Leo the chance to study the local wares. 

Fate’s stubbornness to stop anything from happening prevailed all the way to the point where the group finally left the market and took a break in one of the streets that one could access it from. And then… 

And then, Leo finally stopped counting, taking a moment to properly digest all that he saw on his extremely recent trip. 

‘Is it shiny? Can it burn? Is it some unknown material? Does it have a great value locally? Is it related to magic?’ Leo repeated all the rules of rift appraisal, all conveniently included in the leaflets. A set of rules that every rift walker would know by heart, for it related to the very purpose of diving into rifts - making a profit. 

It was the end of this quick assessment of the reality surrounding him, that finally forced Leo down one of the many paths for his future he was considering. And with how his choices ranged from instantly selling whatever he could grab his hands on to gain enough funds for emergency evacuation to plotting for ways to become the sole ruler of this world some years down the line…

Leo went with the conservative choice that his decisions thus far appeared to benefit the most. 

“I think it’s going to be worth it for me to cooperate with you,” Leo suddenly dropped a bomb, before the rest of the group could even figure out how to shake him out of his dazed state. 

Before Camila would get her shot at trying to convince Leo and enlist his help, the young man… already agreed. 

“I’m sorry, what?” The duchess asked, once again showing the face of a normal girl rather than an extremely high-ranking noble. 

“I’m going to make you the ruler of this place, the queen or whatever,” Leo spoke out as casually as if he was discussing the current weather. “And in order for me to do that, I will need your full cooperation from this point onwards.”