After Hestia's words fell, nearly everyone present instinctively swallowed hard.
The sole exception was Betty, the girl hadn't understood a word.
Rebecca couldn't help but think of the monsters that had destroyed the family's territory. Those monsters were products of the Tide. Until now, she had assumed they had wandered over from the Gondor Wasteland, breached the Great Wall, and invaded Andraste's borders, after all, Seawright territory sat right on Andraste's southern frontier, close to the Gondor Wasteland. If a Sentinel Tower had malfunctioned and created a gap in the Great Wall, it was conceivable that some monsters might slip through.
But now, Rebecca couldn't help imagining something far worse. What if those monsters hadn't come from the Gondor Wasteland at all, but had been born naturally within Seawright territory?
What if those monsters... were the harbinger of a new Dark Tide?
"Aren't... aren't we maybe being a little too jumpy here?" Amber was the first to break the silence. The half-elf forced a smile and pointed at the notebook in Hestia's hands. "It's just a diary left by a Hedge Mage. The contents are vague at best. Are we really going to jump straight to the Tide?"
Gwayne didn't argue. He actually nodded. "Mm, it's possible I'm being overly nervous."
After all, he'd just been wildly speculating based on inherited memories. Rattling off the great historical events of seven hundred years ago in the first person had certainly been impressive, but after finishing, even he felt the conclusion was a bit alarmist.
"See?" Amber relaxed the moment she saw Gwayne nod. "You've been dead for seven hundred years, my lord. Your brain's still stuck back in the old days. I know you lived through the Tide back then, so you've probably got some lingering psychological trauma from-ow-!"
Rebecca whacked the half-elf on the head with her staff, eyes wide.
"Don't be disrespectful to the Great Ancestor!"
Gwayne eyed Rebecca's staff with a peculiar expression, thinking to himself that this girl hadn't seemed too worried about respect when she'd been swinging her rest-in-peace technique at her ancestor's hand not so long ago...
"Regardless of how credible any of this is, once we reach Sunspear, it must all be reported to His Majesty the High King," Hestia said, handing the notebook back to Gwayne. "As for how much the High King chooses to believe... that's beyond our control."
Gwayne silently tucked away the notebook, pressing his tangled thoughts to the back of his mind.
Then he looked up, gazing at the enormous "sun" in the sky.
Above the forest clearing there was no canopy to block the view. The sky was open and wide. The great sun had risen to its highest point of the day, its immense, oppressive crown of light delivering warmth, illumination, and magical power to this world.
Perhaps it was that last element that gave this world its natural laws, so fundamentally different from Earth's.
Gwayne's gaze roamed the great sun's surface. Those faint patterns were likely storms on the gas giant's face. He tried to spot any of those ominous dark red markings, but found nothing, they had probably been genuinely fleeting, and were gone now.
But the urgency in Gwayne's heart hadn't vanished. He simply pressed it down for now, quietly planning the road ahead.
First things first. establish a foothold in this world. Even if it was just a crumbling old family... having a starting point was better than transmigrating into a desolate mountain grave.
After passing through the dense forest, the journey grew much smoother.
Perhaps something like the "law of karma conservation" really did exist, the group encountered no more magical creatures or bizarre "natural phenomena."
They made it safely to the main road and even had the good fortune to encounter a small merchant caravan along the way. After paying a sufficient price, Gwayne's group finally escaped the misery of crossing mountains on foot and rode in the caravan's wagons toward Gulltown.
The caravan boss was a plump northerner who'd come down from the kingdom's prosperous heartland to trade local specialties and herbs along the southern frontier. He'd originally planned to make one final transaction in Seawright territory, but after hearing about the terrible disaster there, he'd had no choice but to turn back midway. The fat merchant had initially been wary and reluctant around Gwayne and the others, who carried an unmistakable air of battle about them. But Hestia eventually persuaded this cautious businessman with two gold coins, even getting him to hand over his own carriage.
Gold was truly the most eloquent negotiation expert in the business world.
Confirmed.
On the seventh day after leaving Seawright territory, the gates of Gulltown finally appeared before them.
This was Gwayne's first close encounter with a human settlement in this world. He had climbed a hill to look at his nominal estate when they'd first left Seawright territory, of course, but by then the entire area had already been churned into ruins by rampaging elemental forces, then blasted into an abstract painting by a blue dragon's breath of... whatever that was.
There really hadn't been much local color to observe.
And Gulltown... honestly didn't give him a great feeling either.
Disappointing, even.
Gulltown was large, according to Rebecca, at least. Situated on a plain with fertile soil and adjacent to a river, it was one of the most populous towns in the southern region, with close to ten thousand people living on this triangular stretch of flat land.
The White Water River flowed in from the west, splitting in two before the town and running along its northern and southern flanks. It irrigated vast farmlands nearby and served as a vital transportation artery.
To the east, the town abutted a mine, the single most important source of its economy.
But despite having both fertile fields and a mine, plus a navigable river, a location that looked like prime real estate from every angle, what Gwayne saw most of upon entering the town were gaunt, sallow-faced commoners, countless low and decrepit wooden shacks, and filthy streets reeking of various odors.
Since this world's civilization was far from advanced enough for humanity to dominate nature and consign every magical beast to a zoo, and since the border regions were prone to conflict, the entire town was protected by a ring of low walls.
The run-down common quarters piled up inside those walls, layered upon each other like moss and festering sores. The ramshackle hovels had no aesthetic value whatsoever, at most they kept out wind and rain. A broad avenue ran from the gate to the town center, but the view along it was no better.
Gwayne sat in the caravan's wagon, watching the streets outside. He saw impoverished people in short shirts walking along both sides of the road. Only a small fraction wore shoes; most had rags wrapped around their feet, and some couldn't even afford that much. Those walking down the center of the road were noticeably cleaner in dress, and all had shoes.
They didn't interact with each other. There wasn't even any conflict. They simply walked their own paths in silence, as though separated by an entire world.
Living in the same town, walking on the same road, yet divided as clearly as if they belonged to two different realities.
Wayne searched Gwayne Seawright's memories but found surprisingly little to reference.
The original Gwayne Seawright had been born in the splendid Gondor Imperium, raised in a prosperous region, neither that era nor that place had such scenes.
Later, when the Dark Tide erupted, Seawright had led his people in carving a bloody path northward, everyone sharing hardships equally with no distinction of rank. After that came the founding of Andraste, where the pioneers built a kingdom from bare wilderness. Everything started from zero; even the founding Grand Dukes and the High King himself had set down their swords to take up plows. When would he have seen anything like this?
And after that... after that, Gwayne Seawright had died in battle on the Southern Frontier. This hero who perished at thirty-five had simply never lived long enough to witness the wealth disparity that would emerge in the nation he'd helped create.
So he could only turn to "his own descendants" for guidance, asking about the customs he was seeing on the road.
"Those walking along the sides of the road are smallfolk, and slave laborers from the mines," Hestia explained. "There are also impoverished freemen from the outer areas. They aren't permitted to walk on the main road, because they couldn't contribute money when it was being built. Those walking in the middle are respectable 'citizens,' along with merchants or mercenaries from outside. These people can afford to pay the various taxes, so they're allowed to walk down the center."
Gwayne recalled the coins the fat merchant had slipped to the gate guards when the caravan entered, that must have been the entry tax.
Then he thought of the soldier who'd been buried in the forest, the smallfolk's son.
The fact that he'd been allowed to take up a sword and die for his lord was only thanks to Rebecca's decree of mercy. But even having died for his lord, he couldn't be buried as a warrior, because he hadn't yet redeemed himself. He hadn't even finished paying off the debt on his own sword.
"Great Ancestor, is something wrong?" Hestia noticed the shifting expressions on Gwayne's face and asked with some confusion.
Gwayne withdrew his gaze from outside the wagon and shook his head slightly. "No, nothing."
He was simply reacting with a transmigrator's instinctive resistance to these things. But now wasn't the time for him to critique or "correct" any of it.
Because he didn't yet understand this world well enough.
After a brief moment of thought, he turned to Hestia. "What's the plan from here?"
Hestia clearly had one already.
"First, we find the local lord. Viscount Andrew is a fairly approachable man, and through him we should be able to contact Ser Philip without much difficulty. If things went well on Philip's end, we'll be able to locate the people who broke out that day. After that, depending on the situation, we either settle the displaced subjects here temporarily or proceed directly to the capital. What happened in Seawright territory isn't something a messenger or two can convey, Rebecca will need to appear before the High King in person to explain."
Gwayne saw no issues with this. (Mainly because an "ancestor" who'd transmigrated from the modern era and had a seven-hundred-year generation gap couldn't really think of any better suggestions.)
"Then let's go with that."