The Guardian System: The strongest Summoner's quest to save his family-Chapter 369: Straight Lines in a Crooked World (1)

Two days passed.

Reidar walked through the badlands, following the path his Sky-Hunters carved through the ash-choked air.

The storms had stopped for now, leaving behind a land covered in shades of gray and rust-red. The visibility had improved to maybe half a mile on a good stretch, though the haze never fully cleared.

Reidar had covered roughly 120 miles since leaving his temporary shelter. His body complained, and his lungs burned from breathing the toxic air—but he kept moving forward.

The Sky-Hunters ranged ahead in expanding patterns, searching for anything that might threaten their master and luring these monsters away from him if they were too close.

Once again, the first day had yielded nothing. Rock formations that had looked promising from a distance turned out to just be natural pillars carved by wind and time.

Deep crevices promised the presence of hidden structures, but in the end they contained only more rock and the occasional nest of something that screeched when the Sky-Hunters flew too close.

The second day started the same way. More rock. More ash. More nothing.

Then, three hours past noon, one of the Sky-Hunters sent Reidar an image that made him stop walking.

Lines, straight lines cutting through the terrain at perfect right angles.

<Finally.>

Reidar changed his perspective to the Sky-Hunter's viewpoint. The creature hovered high above a section of badlands where the rock gave way to something that looked like hardened sediment.

And there, barely visible beneath a layer of ash and debris, were geometric shapes.

<This doesn't look like a natural formation. The patterns are too deliberate. I finally found one. >

Reidar dismissed the connection and checked his position relative to the Sky-Hunter. Roughly eight miles northeast. He could reach it in two hours if he ran at top speed, less if he risked flying on one of his ravens.

<What do I do?>

Reidar weighed his options. Flying would get him there faster, but it would make him visible against the sky—an easy target for anything airborne, even with all that ash around.

Walking meant safety—he would stay low to the ground, harder to spot against the terrain, and less vulnerable to aerial predators that might be circling above—but it also meant a far longer journey.

<Ah! Screw this!>

Reidar chose speed over caution, so he summoned his ravens from his Apex Menagerie and climbed onto one of them. As the creatures took off and gained altitude, he kept low enough to avoid attracting attention from anything airborne but remained high enough to cover ground quickly.

The flight took thirty minutes, and as he approached the place where the Vorathid Sky-Hunter was, the terrain changed.

The jagged rock of the badlands smoothed out into something that resembled a plateau covered in hardened sediment. The ash here was thicker, as if it had been accumulating for years without being disturbed by wind or rain.

The ravens descended in a slow spiral.

<Here we are.>

Reidar checked the area below for threats, noting that while there was no movement or sound in the immediate vicinity aside from the wind, there was no guarantee the city inside was empty, especially since the ash and obstructing buildings made it impossible to see the streets.

After landing fifty meters from the edge of the structures, he sent the ravens to scout ahead and began walking forward.

As he approached, the straight lines resolved into walls that, although only about ten feet tall and mostly buried under ash and sediment, were unmistakably artificial, crafted from what looked like black metal or reinforced stone that remained intact despite the weathering.

<I wonder what they are made of, as it would be certainly interesting to bring this material back to Earth.>

When Reidar reached the nearest wall and brushed away the ash with his hand, he found the surface underneath smooth and cold to the touch; the lack of seams or welds suggested the entire structure had been cast as a single piece, which intrigued him even more.

<It's like these were 3D printed. These guys seemed to know how to craft stuff; a pity they had all been wiped out.>

Reidar followed the wall to where it converged with another structure at a sharp, precisely ninety-degree corner, beyond which more walls emerged from the sediment to create a grid pattern stretching for hundreds of meters in every direction.

Since the place was too large to be a village, looking more like an industrial complex or a military outpost, the architecture appeared functional and lacked any decoration or artistry, meaning the buildings were designed solely for efficiency.

<At least from a human point of view. Maybe they made them like this because it was in their culture.>

Since there was no way of finding out, he just went on his way.

As he went deeper into the ruins, more structures emerged, some intact enough to show doorways and windows, while others were merely foundations. The main problem was, though, that most of them were tall enough to block Reidar's sight, and the ash didn't help either.

Reidar didn't even know what to make of the silence; it felt like it was pressing against his chest. He couldn't hear any wind or animal noises, which made the crunch of his own boots against the ash-covered ground sound much louder than it should.

The lack of noise made him uneasy because he knew it didn't actually mean the area was safe; it just meant that whatever was out there was being quiet too.

<This is starting to get on my nerves.>

That bothered him more than anything else. Ruins like this should have been crawling with creatures. Old buildings offered shelter and hunting grounds. But he didn't see tracks and didn't hear movement.

Either the monsters were avoiding this place for some particular reason that Reidar couldn't yet understand, or they were skilled at hiding themselves within the ruins, which would be an even more dangerous and worrying situation.

Reidar gripped the Void-Caller's Baton and kept walking.