The tracking lasted for another three hours. The sun began to dip below the horizon.
Jin was entirely numb. His legs moved entirely on autopilot. He did not feel the black mud sticking to his boots anymore. He did not feel the stinging bites of the small insects that bypassed Nyx's Aether-seal. His mind retreated inward to escape the physical misery.
He just watched Nyx's dark cloak moving ahead of him. He stepped exactly where she stepped. Left foot. Right foot. Breathe in the hot, humid air. Breathe it out.
Ahead of them, the four mercenaries finally slowed down. Their loud, cruel laughter echoed through the trees. They were no longer hacking through thick vines. The dense jungle brush was thinning out.
The air changed. The heavy, suffocating smell of rotting leaves and damp earth faded. A new scent replaced it. It smelled like dry dust, burning wood, and roasted meat.
It was the smell of a permanent human settlement.
Nyx stopped walking. She crouched low behind a thick fern. Jin dropped to his knees right beside her. His thigh muscles cramped hard. He ignored the pain. He parted the green leaves with his dirty hands and looked forward.
The dark jungle ended abruptly.
A massive clearing stretched out in front of them. The trees had been chopped down and the stumps burned away for two solid miles in every direction. The ground was just hard, packed dirt.
In the center of the massive dirt clearing stood a fortress.
It was not a sleek, beautiful palace like the ones in the capital. It was an ugly, brutal structure. A massive circular wall surrounded the settlement. The wall was fifty feet high. It was built from huge blocks of dark grey stone. The stone was reinforced with colossal, bleached beast bones. Jin saw the ribcages of massive monsters mortared directly into the rock. Thick iron spikes lined the top of the wall.
The four mercenaries walked casually out of the tree line. They strolled across the open dirt toward the fortress.
They headed straight for a massive iron gate built into the stone wall. The gate was wide enough to fit a large cargo ship. Above the heavy iron doors, a name was carved deep into a bleached skull embedded in the stone.
It read: Cloud City.
Jin stared at the carved letters. He let out a dry, raspy breath. It was a terrible name for the place. There were no clouds here. It was a dusty, dirty, violent outpost. But it had high walls. It had guards. It meant he did not have to sleep on a mossy branch and wait for a giant snake to eat him.
"They are entering the city," Nyx stated in his mind. Her telepathic voice was calm and analytical.
Jin watched the mercenaries walk up to the iron gate. Two guards stood outside. The guards recognized the leader with the metal jaw. They exchanged a few rough words and laughed. The guards waved them through. The mercenaries walked into the city without being searched.
"We need to enter before the sun sets completely," Nyx said. "They will likely close the heavy iron doors for the night to keep the nocturnal beasts out. We cannot stay in the open clearing in the dark."
"Okay," Jin said. His physical voice cracked. His throat was incredibly dry. "Let's go."
"Wait," Nyx commanded. She turned her head to look at him.
The cracked obsidian visor reflected the orange light of the setting sun. She scanned his body from head to toe.
"The guards are checking identities," Nyx said. "There is a scribe sitting at a table near the gate. They are writing down the names of everyone entering and leaving. You cannot use the name Jin. The First Prince has certainly placed a massive bounty on your head. News travels fast between mercenary guilds."
Jin nodded. That was basic security logic. He needed an alias.
He thought for a second. He did not want to pick a complicated local name he might forget if someone woke him up in the middle of the night. He went with the easiest option.
"Arthur," Jin said out loud. It felt very strange to say his Earth name out loud in this alien jungle. "Tell them my name is Arthur. It means nothing here."
"Arthur," Nyx repeated in his mind. "Acceptable. I will simply use Nyx. It is a common enough scavenger name in the outer territories. It will not draw attention."
Nyx reached up. She pulled the hood of her tattered grey cloak low over her head. The heavy fabric cast a deep shadow over her cracked black visor. She hunched her shoulders slightly. She immediately stopped looking like an elite royal shadow-guard. She just looked like a dangerous, quiet drifter.
Jin looked down at himself. He did not need to act to look pathetic.
He was a complete disaster. His expensive royal silk shirt was shredded. The right sleeve was completely torn off. The fabric was stiff with dried black mud, green plant sap, and his own sweat. His pale skin was covered in dark bruises and small scratches. His hair was a tangled, dirty mess.
He did not look like the seventh prince of the Apex Empire. He looked like a corpse that had crawled out of a shallow grave.
"Follow me," Nyx said. "Keep your head down. Do not speak unless spoken to. Let me handle the guards."
Nyx stood up. She stepped out of the dark tree line and into the open dirt clearing. Jin followed right behind her.
They walked toward the massive stone wall. The sun dipped below the horizon. The sky turned a deep, bruised purple. The air cooled down rapidly.
They were not the only people heading for the gate. A small line of travelers formed outside the iron doors. Jin kept his head down, but he watched the other people from the corner of his eye.
It was a rough crowd. He saw a merchant pulling a wooden cart loaded with glowing blue fungus. The cart was pulled by a heavy beast with three eyes and thick grey scales. Behind the merchant stood two wounded hunters. One of them was missing his left arm below the elbow. A dirty bandage was wrapped tightly around the stump, soaked in fresh blood. The man did not complain. He just chewed on a piece of root and waited in line.
This was the reality of the Zenith planet. It was a meat grinder.
Jin and Nyx joined the back of the line. The queue moved slowly.
They finally reached the front.
Two massive guards stood on either side of the entrance. They wore heavy iron chest plates. They held long plasma rifles casually across their chests. They looked bored, but their eyes were sharp. They scanned the crowd constantly for threats.
Between the guards sat a wooden table. A thin, older man sat behind it. He wore a dirty brown robe. He had a cybernetic right eye. The mechanical lens whirred and clicked loudly as it focused. He held a metal pen and a thick, leather-bound ledger.
He was the scribe.
Nyx stepped up to the table. She stopped exactly two feet away. She stood perfectly still.
The scribe did not look up immediately. He finished writing a line in his ledger. Then, he slowly raised his head. His cybernetic eye clicked as it focused on Nyx.
He looked at her dark grey cloak. He tried to see under her deep hood. He could only see the smooth, featureless black glass of her visor.
The scribe paused. He was only a Foundation Level 8 cultivator, but he had survived at this gate for a long time by reading people. He felt a cold, heavy pressure radiating from the woman in the cloak. Nyx was suppressing her Divinity Realm Aether completely, but her sheer physical presence was intimidating.
The scribe sat up a little straighter. He decided not to push her. He respected the danger she represented.
Then, the scribe shifted his gaze. He looked past Nyx. He looked directly at Jin.
The mechanical eye zoomed in. It scanned Jin's torn, muddy silk clothes. It scanned his pale, exhausted, dirty face. It scanned his slumped shoulders and his trembling legs.
The scribe wrinkled his nose in disgust. He looked back at Nyx.
"Is this beggar with you?" the scribe asked. His voice was loud, coarse, and incredibly annoyed.
Jin froze.
A beggar.
On Earth, he was a senior logistics manager. He commanded a massive department. People wore suits when they came to his office. In the Apex Empire, he was a prince. He had a private bio-sanctum and servants.
Now, he was standing in the dirt outside a crude fortress, and a low-level scribe was calling him a beggar.
Jin felt a sudden, hot flash of wounded pride in his chest. He wanted to straighten his spine. He wanted to tell the man exactly who he was.
He bit his tongue hard. He kept his head down. Corporate logic took over. Pride was completely useless here. Survival was the only metric. If acting like a beggar got him inside the walls, he would be the best beggar in the city.
He stayed silent. He looked at Nyx's back.
Nyx stood perfectly still.
But then, Jin saw it. Her shoulders trembled. It was a microscopic movement. It was just a fraction of an inch.
Jin narrowed his eyes. He watched her closely.
She turned her head slightly away from the scribe. Jin saw the line of her jaw clench tight beneath the edge of her cracked visor. Her chest expanded. She was holding her breath.
She was trying not to laugh.
The cold, emotionless, Divinity Realm shadow-guard who slaughtered assassins without a second thought found the situation incredibly funny. The mighty seventh prince of the Apex Empire had just been officially classified as a street beggar.
It took her exactly three seconds to regain her absolute, perfect composure. The tremor in her shoulders stopped. She slowly exhaled the breath she was holding.
She turned her head back to face the scribe.
She gave a single, slow nod.
"Yes," Nyx said out loud. Her real voice was cold, flat, and completely serious. "He is with me. He carries my bags."
Jin glared at the back of her head. He had no bags. He was carrying nothing. She just insulted him on purpose.
The scribe grunted. He did not care. He just wanted to process the line. He picked up his metal pen.
"Names?" the scribe asked.
"Nyx," she said. "And Arthur."
The scribe scribbled the two names quickly into the thick ledger. He did not ask for identification. He did not care if they were fake.
"Entrance fee is one low-tier core for the two of you," the scribe stated in a bored tone. "Or you both go clean the beast stables tomorrow morning at dawn."
Nyx reached into the small pouch on her belt. She pulled out the small, dull Aether core she took from the giant rodent she killed in the jungle earlier that day. She tossed it onto the wooden table.
The core clattered against the wood. The scribe caught it quickly. He inspected the dull glow for a second, then shoved it into a lockbox under the table.
He waved his hand dismissively toward the open gates.
"Go in," the scribe ordered. "Keep your weapons sheathed. Don't start any fights in the taverns. The guildmaster hangs murderers in the central square, and he doesn't care who you work for."
"Understood," Nyx said flatly.
She walked past the wooden table. She did not look back.
Jin followed her. He dragged his heavy boots across the dirt. They walked under the massive, bleached skull archway. They stepped through the thick iron doors.
They crossed the threshold. The sounds of the jungle disappeared entirely behind the thick stone. They were replaced by the loud, chaotic noise of hundreds of people, the clanking of metal, and the smell of roasting food.
They were inside Cloud City. The first stage of their escape was over. Now, they had to figure out how to survive civilization.