am-books Chapter 6 Landing In the Territory
Chapter 6 Landing In the Territory
Growing up in a middle providence of his country, Aoni was no stranger to cold weather, or even snow for that matter, but as he gazed out into the expanding wilderness that was near his Territory, the Lad's mouth dried up, and a chill crept through his body.
Snow and Mountains covered every visible speck of landscape observable from the Flume. As such, with each passing second, Aoni's heartbeat accelerated because he understood that if he was seeing this while moving at considerable speed, that meant that the mountainous region covered a vast expanse.
"Don't panic; it can't be that far from civilization, right...me and my big mouth asking to have nothing nearby; I DIDN'T MEAN LITERALLY NOTHING!" Tearing at his hair in a moment of desperation, Aoni felt his forward momentum begin to slow as the crystalline walls of the Flume cleared up to the maximum potential, indicating the transfer was coming to an end, and he was about to touch down at the destination. Which...From what he could tell, would be near the top of an incredibly large mountain.@@@@
"Calm down, nothing has changed... I hope," he thought, trying to stave off panic as his momentum slowed to a crawl. His mind raced as he roughly estimated where the landing zone would be, and to his surprise, it was a little way down the peak of the large mountain in an area dotted with snow-covered trees.
With panic attempting to settle into his mind, Aoni took in everything observable, from how high up the mountain he was to anything that could become a recognizable landmark from this strange vantage point, and that...was when he spotted it.
As much of an oddity as it was to his young Terrian brain, the tip of the mountain actually housed a small cave, and although the landing zone was quite a ways away from it, maybe half to a quarter of a mile or so upward, Aoni knew that that cave was where he needed to head upon touching down.
Solidifying that thought as an objective, he took a few deep breaths to calm himself and comically rotated his body so that he would, at the very least, land on his feet.
Since there was no Flume set up in his Territory yet, the mouth of the Flume would open up in the space a few feet off the ground and dump Aoni out. This much was known to the Lad, and thus, he was cautious enough not to land face first after getting spat out.
No matter how much adversity he had faced in his short 16 years, the human body wasn't meant to endure such cold. Still, he pressed on, leaving a knee-high trail in his wake as he made his way up the mountain.
But as the minutes dragged on and hypothermia began to take hold, along with the thin oxygen at such altitude, Aoni knew he wasn't going to last much longer. Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to ten, then thirty... and before he knew it, a full hour had passed while he trudged through several feet of snow, all to reach a goal he hoped wasn't an illusion.
Eventually, he found himself standing on solid ground, no longer walking on permafrost or ice, yet he didn't even have the strength to feel happy. His whole body was numb, and he had no idea how bad the damage was; that's the danger of the cold—it can cause irreparable harm before you even realize it.
Aoni's only saving grace was that he was no longer just a normal human; he had become a Traveler. Thanks to the baptism in the Flume, his body was tougher now, even if only slightly due to the introduction of Energia.
But hey, even mosquitoes are meat, right? With only one thought in his mind—moving forward and getting warm—Aoni was completely oblivious to any potential dangers around him.
That said, worrying about danger would have been irrational anyway because this land was now considered a New Territory. For the first 30 days, there was a kind of barrier surrounding a certain distance from the landing zone.
When it was created, this barrier pushed out any living creature that could pose a threat to the new lord, providing a safe environment. So, Aoni's earlier paranoia about being on high alert for danger was all for nothing. It was more a product of nerves and all those years of survival training he had undergone in school.
As his consciousness began to fade, Aoni pressed on into the cave, where the cold was more bearable. Unknowingly, he made it far enough from the entrance that the fierce winds weren't hitting him anymore, and it was then that the Ash-Blond Lad finally collapsed.