As we left Matty’s dungeon, I instinctively looked to the west. Celeste reached out and grabbed my arm, stroking it soothingly.
“Miki is in that direction,” I stated a fact that we both knew.
I still didn’t know exactly where she was, but she was somewhere in Dioshin. Unfortunately, Dioshin was generally hostile with Aberis. This stemmed from Aberis’s tendency to enslave the citizens of Dioshin. After the war against the Demon Lord Aberis, the country had grown a tendency to favor human supremacy. It seemed like Prince Edward was working toward undoing a lot of that, but after twenty years the damage was already done.
“It’s okay, Master. I’m worried about Miki as well.” Celeste told me. “What’s the plan?”
“The men mentioned Miki’s family. It might have nothing to do with them, but it might be something involving them. Either way, as I understand it, the foxkin are close to the border, so they would be a good first stop. At the moment, I’m not able to portal into Dioshin, and even if I could, I don’t know where her family is.”
Anyone could draw a map, but the maps of this world were made by those with the calligrapher job, which I had. A calligrapher infused the map with magic, giving it an imprint of the mana from the location being drawn. This is sufficient that when I look at such a map, my Map skill would update with the details from the map. Just because I could see it on a Map didn’t mean that I could target it with a Portal. Perhaps there were high-level maps that were created with enough detail that such a thing was possible, but in general, a location needs to be within range of my mana sense, which was usually about as far as I could see.
I could find a drawing of the basic layout of Dioshin, they weren’t sufficient to give me more than a basic understanding of Dioshin. There was no such place called foxkin village or something obvious like that, so I couldn’t guess where they were. Heading over there now would just be asking for trouble.
Sure, if Celeste flew me up into the sky, I could probably get a distant view and make several kilometer-long Portal jumps, like I had once done while dealing with the bandits in southwest Aberis. I might even be able to get past their border this way, but if I wasn’t careful, they’d see Celeste lifting me and come to suspect something.
“What do we do then?” Celeste asked.
Celeste had once been impulsive and childish. Since her evolution, she had grown much more even-tempered. I missed her youthful naivete, but as the only party member I had recovered thus far, her steady and reliable nature helped me keep my heart calm. I had lost everyone, and saying I was going to get them back didn’t mean I wasn’t worried about them. I reached up and stroked her head with my finger where she was perched on my shoulder.
“It’s not a problem.”
“M-master…” She grew flustered as I rubbed her, her incandescent wings fluttering.
“We know someone who knows about Dioshin,” I explained. “We need to talk with him.”
It had been a while. It was time I spoke with Figuro once again.