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 ti.

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

The second day started the sa 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.

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 sothing that looked like hardened sedint.

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

Reidar followed the wall to where it converged with another structure at a sharp, precisely ninety-degree corner, beyond which more walls erged from the sedint to create a grid pattern stretching for hundreds of ters 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, aning the buildings were designed solely for efficiency.

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

As he went deeper into the ruins, more structures erged, so intact enough to show doorways and windows, while others were rely 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 an the area was safe; it just ant that whatever was out there was being quiet too.

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 movent.

Either the monsters were avoiding this place for so 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.