It was unfortunate that Marcus failed to purchase any honey fruits, but truthfully, buying exotic produce had never been his real objective. He'd come to ask for directions, and now that he'd secured his gold back in his pouch, he could focus on that purpose.
"Can you tell me how to get to Noxus?" Marcus asked the vendor casually.
The question caused an immediate shift in atmosphere. Every nearby conversation stopped. Eyes that had been watching with greedy interest now turned calculating and wary.
Noxus wasn't exactly beloved in most regions. The expansionist empire was constantly waging wars across multiple continents, conquering and absorbing territories with brutal efficiency. They'd made themselves the target of widespread hatred and fear.
And now this strange, wealthy foreigner was asking for directions there? That suggested he was either Noxian himself or aligned with their interests.
Looking at Marcus's unusual outfit with this new context, things that had seemed merely foreign now appeared sinister. Of course only a Noxian would dress so strangely, so impractically for desert travel.
"Noxus?" The vendor swallowed nervously but answered anyway. "Just head north from here. You can take an airship from the east port, or book passage on a ship from the north pier. Either route will eventually get you there."
Marcus nodded with satisfaction. He'd been heading in the right direction after all—north would work perfectly.
Though honestly, he was more interested in Piltover than Noxus. The City of Progress lay along the northern route, and its combination of magic and technology fascinated him far more than Noxian military might.
"Alright, thank you for your help!"
After bidding the vendor farewell, Marcus turned and began walking eastward toward the airship port. Since it served as a landing area for large vessels, it would naturally need significant open space—something the cramped town with its low buildings couldn't provide.
Once Marcus left the town proper, he didn't immediately return to his hidden shuttle. Instead, he walked slowly across the open desert, a knowing smile playing across his features.
The moment he'd departed the town, people had begun following him. He could sense them—multiple individuals trailing at a distance, their intentions obviously hostile. They all coveted the gold in his pouch, were planning how best to separate him from his wealth.
"If you don't come out soon, I'm going to be very disappointed," Marcus murmured to himself.
Beyond asking for directions, he'd had another purpose in that town. He wanted to obtain a proper map of this world, something more detailed than the fragmentary geographic knowledge he'd pulled from Kai'Sa's memories.
Even if these would-be thieves and bandits hadn't personally traveled extensively, Marcus could piece together a comprehensive map by combining memories from multiple people. Collective knowledge would fill in the gaps.
Once Marcus had moved sufficiently far from the town, a group of bandits emerged from concealment ahead of him. They wore distinctive turbans to protect against the desert sun, and their postures radiated the confidence of predators who'd cornered easy prey.
These weren't just the people who'd followed from town—they'd sent signals ahead, calling in reinforcements from a larger bandit camp. Despite Marcus appearing alone and unguarded, they were being cautious. Numbers provided security.
"Boy!" one bandit shouted aggressively. "Hand over that gold you're carrying, and I'll give you a quick death!"
Though the speaker acted as spokesman, the sentiment was clearly shared by the entire group. They all knew about the bag of high-purity gold Marcus carried—enough wealth to let them live comfortably for years.
"Are you talking to me?" Marcus asked with an amused smile. A faint red glow began building in his eyes.
"Who else would we be talking to?!" the bandit responded arrogantly. "We know you've got gold. Hand it over honestly, and I'll leave you a whole corpse. Refuse, and I'll chop you into pieces and feed you to the sand beasts!"
He gestured at the assembled bandits around him—easily three dozen armed men. Even if each only landed a single strike, they'd reduce Marcus to mincemeat.
"Well then..." Marcus looked around at the encircling bandits, his smile widening. "There are almost enough of you. This should be sufficient!"
He nodded with satisfaction at the group surrounding him.
"You're asking for death!" the spokesman snarled. "Don't blame me when—"
His words cut off abruptly as searing red heat vision erupted from Marcus's eyes. The concentrated beams struck the arrogant bandit center-mass, and he simply... dissolved. In less than a second, the man was reduced to a puddle of liquified grease soaking into the sand.
Every other bandit froze in shock. What the hell were they facing?
But Marcus didn't give them time to process or flee. Moving with inhuman speed, he grabbed the nearest bandit by the head.
To the horrified observers, it seemed instantaneous—one moment the bandit was standing, the next Marcus had seized his skull and driven him face-first into the ground. A crater appeared in the sand, and in that crater lay the bandit's body, his head crushed to pulp by the impact.
Then another bandit fell. And another. And another.
Marcus moved through the group like death incarnate, grabbing each bandit in turn and ending them with brutal efficiency. Every victim died the same way—skull crushed, brain destroyed, death instantaneous.
Within minutes, Marcus stood in the middle of multiple craters, his work complete. He'd successfully obtained what he needed—memories from dozens of individuals from various regions, their collective geographic knowledge combining to form a detailed mental map.
"The map is complete," Marcus announced, looking at the few bandits who'd managed to avoid his initial assault. They stood frozen at the perimeter, trembling with terror.
"After I send you off, it'll be time to begin my real work."
Marcus started walking eastward again, seemingly dismissing the survivors. But the moment his foot touched down for that first step, flames erupted from the point of contact.
Fire spread outward in a circular wave. And from that spreading flame emerged dozens of spears—blazing constructs of solidified fire that shot upward with deadly precision.
Each remaining bandit was impaled through the torso by a flaming spear, lifted off their feet and suspended in the air. They hung there like macabre decorations, their bodies burning from the inside out.
This was Nezha's Divine Fire Technique—the power of one of Marcus's Warframes. As he'd continued mastering the armor systems, he'd begun accessing their abilities directly without needing to transform. He could simply channel the power in his base form.
Of course, what he could access this way was limited—perhaps one-tenth of the armor's full potential. But against ordinary bandits? That was more than sufficient.
Long after Marcus had departed, the fruit vendor crept out toward the battle site. His curiosity had overcome his caution—he wanted to see what had become of that wealthy stranger, and maybe... maybe retrieve some of that gold if things had gone badly.
When he reached the location, he stopped dead, bile rising in his throat.
It was a slaughterhouse. A field of death that would haunt his nightmares for years.
Flaming spears jutted from the sand like a grotesque forest, each one bearing a charred corpse. The bodies hung motionless, their expressions frozen in final moments of agony.
Swallowing his revulsion, the vendor approached the craters cautiously. Inside each pit lay a headless corpse, the sand around them dark with blood and brain matter.
"This... could he be a mage?" the vendor whispered to himself. "Only a powerful mage could do something like this."
Apart from magic users, he couldn't conceive of anyone accomplishing such wholesale slaughter. So many bandits, and not a single one had escaped. All dead, all killed with apparent ease.
"As expected of Noxians," the vendor muttered, beginning the grim work of moving bodies. "Just as brutal as the rumors say."
If he left all these corpses here, disease would spread through the region within days. Besides, bandits always carried some valuables—surely taking a small reward for disposing of the bodies was justified?
The vendor began collecting corpses with renewed energy. Though he hadn't made gold from Marcus directly, he'd still profited from the encounter in his own way.
Journey to the Twin Cities
After walking eastward for a while longer, Marcus finally reached two towers standing side by side in the desert. These structures served as docking platforms for airships—all passengers needed to pass through the towers to board their vessels.
"It's honestly impressive these things fly at all," Marcus observed, studying the approaching airship with technical interest. "I wonder when they'll develop Hextech flight gates? Those would be far more efficient."
He chuckled to himself and casually scaled one of the towers as if gravity was optional, positioning himself to board when the airship arrived.
The airship itself wasn't particularly high-tech by Marcus's standards, but it had a certain classical charm to its design—wood and canvas and brass fittings, all crafted with obvious care.
When the vessel docked at the tower, Marcus boarded along with the other passengers, curious to experience this primitive form of flight.
Several hours later...
Marcus jumped off the airship with obvious boredom etched across his features, immediately heading back toward where he'd hidden his shuttle.
The airship experience had been tedious. Painfully slow flight speed, cramped accommodations, nothing interesting to observe or do during transit. After experiencing proper spacecraft capable of faster-than-light travel, riding in something that traveled slower than most cars felt like torture.
"At least I figured out the route," Marcus consoled himself as he reached his shuttle. "Time to visit Piltover properly."
The shuttle, still disguised as an airship, engaged its stealth systems and shot forward at proper speeds—hundreds of miles per hour rather than the airship's leisurely pace.
"This is how a spacecraft should move," Marcus said with satisfaction. "What even was that airship? A flying museum exhibit?"
After a relatively brief flight at proper velocity, the shuttle began decelerating as the twin cities came into view.
Marcus stepped to the observation window, studying the two settlements below with analytical interest.
One city—Zaun—sat in a low-lying position, surrounded by toxic gas and wastewater runoff. It looked like a dumping ground for garbage and industrial waste, forcing its inhabitants to survive in perpetually polluted conditions.
The other city—Piltover—occupied the high ground, appearing clean and pristine by contrast. Even the architecture was aesthetically pleasing, golden spires and gleaming facades suggesting wealth and refinement.
"They're obviously one city," Marcus observed with a cynical smile. "But they insist on the fiction of separation. The upper city controlled by a council of wealthy families, and the lower city..."
His gaze shifted back to Zaun, where alchemy factories pumped toxic fog into the already-poisoned air.
"The undercity controlled by chem-barons running criminal enterprises disguised as businesses. They're all the same—exploiters and exploited, pretending they're fundamentally different. One family that refuses to acknowledge itself."
Though Marcus didn't know every detail about the twin cities' political structure, he understood the broad strokes well enough to find the situation distasteful.
"Let's go down and take a closer look."
His body dropped from the shuttle in free fall, plummeting toward Zaun far below. Just before impact, he stopped abruptly—suspended in mid-air through sheer force of will.
"Gods, this smell..." Marcus wrinkled his nose in disgust. "No wonder Piltover citizens wear breathing masks when they venture down here."
Zaun's atmosphere was genuinely awful. Toxic wastewater, chemical runoff from alchemy factories, industrial smoke laden with carcinogens—all of it combined to create an environment actively hostile to human life.
After landing properly, Marcus engaged his bioelectric field to create a barrier around himself, filtering out the worst of the contamination. He had no intention of breathing this poison if he could avoid it.
"Time to meet some of Zaun's heroes," he said to himself with anticipation.
Though Zaun itself held little that interested him technologically, he was curious about the exceptional individuals who thrived in this harsh environment. After all, he'd only encountered Kai'Sa so far—he wanted to meet more of Runeterra's extraordinary people.
Walking through Zaun's streets proved... educational. The filth and deterioration were worse up close than they'd appeared from above. It was genuinely difficult to comprehend how so many people survived in what was essentially Piltover's garbage dump.
"Let's see... which heroes came from Zaun originally?" Marcus mused, sorting through absorbed memories.
Names surfaced: Vi, Jinx, Ekko, and even the singer Seraphine in some timelines.
"Such a sewer, yet so much raw talent," he said with genuine admiration. "The worst environment producing the best people. There's poetry in that."
As he walked lost in thought, someone suddenly rushed toward him from a side alley.
Thief.
Marcus's hand shot out, grabbing the would-be pickpocket's arm mid-theft and slamming him against the nearest wall hard enough to crack the corroded metal.
"Boy," Marcus said pleasantly, "are you particularly attached to this hand? Because I can remove it if you'd prefer."
The thief struggled frantically, but Marcus's grip was absolutely unyielding—harder than steel, completely immovable. After several seconds of futile effort, the young man's panic overrode his pride.
"B-big brother! It was an accident, really! Just a misunderstanding! Hehe..."
"You were accidentally caught by me?" Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Interesting interpretation. Tell me—if you'd successfully robbed someone else instead, would it still have been an 'accident'?"
Seeing that Marcus wasn't going to release him easily, the thief became increasingly desperate. He wanted to act tough, to maintain street credibility. After all, Marcus clearly wasn't from the undercity—his clean clothes and healthy appearance marked him as an outsider.
But Marcus's physical strength was terrifying. The thief kicked against the wall with both feet, trying to push away or at least move his captor. Marcus didn't budge a millimeter.
What kind of monster is this? the thief thought frantically.
But outwardly, he maintained a pleading smile.
"Brother, please! Spare me this once! If you need anything—anything—just tell me what you want!"
"Excellent suggestion." Marcus's smile widened. "Take me to the best tavern in Zaun."
He released the thief, who stumbled and nearly fell. The young man was so weak that if Marcus had actually wanted to kill him, it would have required less effort than swatting a fly.
Go to the best tavern?
After being released, the thief stared at Marcus in confusion. Here was this obviously wealthy, well-dressed person asking to be taken to a Zaun tavern? What was wrong with this guy?
Marcus ignored the thief's bewilderment. He knew exactly what the young man was thinking, but it didn't matter. If Marcus's memories from another life were accurate, the heroes he wanted to meet frequented Zaun's most prominent establishment.
After a long moment, understanding seemed to dawn on the thief's face. He looked at Marcus with sudden recognition.
"You're here to see Vander!" The thief laughed with relief. "You should have said so from the start! If I'd known you had business with Vander, I never would have tried to lift your purse."
He studied Marcus's confident bearing and expensive clothing with new appreciation. Anyone who could approach Vander so openly, dressed like money personified, must be a trusted friend.
A friend of a friend is a friend. That was the philosophy the thief lived by. You didn't steal from friends.
"Then take me to him," Marcus agreed easily.
"Didn't Vander tell you where to find him? Maybe you're an old friend from before he settled down?"
The thief chattered as he led Marcus through Zaun's labyrinthine streets, weaving between rusting structures and toxic puddles with practiced ease.
Soon they arrived at a district that seemed subtly different from the surrounding devastation—still run-down, but somehow more maintained. Like someone actually cared about this place.
"Welcome to the Lanes," the thief announced with obvious pride. "This is Vander's territory, and it's the only real safe harbor for undercity folks!"
They approached a tavern that was actually bustling with activity—music and laughter spilling from inside, warm light glowing through grimy windows.
"This is the Last Drop—Vander's place," the thief explained. "We're all counting on him to finally wake up from his retirement and lead us again!"
Having delivered Marcus to his destination, the thief immediately scurried away, disappearing into the shadows.
"Vander. The Lanes. I guessed correctly."
A smile spread across Marcus's face. This was the tavern run by Vander—adoptive father to Vi and Powder, who would eventually become Jinx. The Lanes under Vander's protection provided genuine sanctuary for Zaun's most vulnerable residents.
Marcus pushed open the tavern door and stepped inside. His appearance immediately drew every eye in the establishment. Compared to the patrons in their stained, patched clothing, Marcus looked like he'd stepped out of a Piltover fashion catalogue—too clean, too well-dressed, too healthy.
The atmosphere reminded Marcus of old times—days spent as a mercenary alongside Logan, when they'd blow off steam in exactly this kind of rough establishment. Loud voices, cheap alcohol, violence always simmering just below the surface.
"I really do miss those days," Marcus said softly.
"What do you miss?" a deep voice asked. A large man approached—muscular build, weathered features, eyes that had seen too much violence. "If I remember correctly, you've never been to my tavern before."
Looking at the newcomer, Marcus smiled and raised an eyebrow in appreciation. "You must be Vander. The Hound of the Underground. Though these days, you're more like a hound who's pulled his claws in and learned to play nice."
Vander's expression remained neutral, but his posture subtly shifted—not quite threatening, but definitely more alert.
Marcus's smile widened. This was going to be interesting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~