Chapter 19: 22. Heights of Power Part 3

Ajax and Shaula are currently sitting on the ground in the same forest overlooking the city gates. They have decided on their next step forward. They gain nothing by waiting outside the city. They had to be so careful to avoid the violent monsters out here. In the city, all they would have to do is avoid the people.

Shaula has an idea.

“We go through the walls? I mean, yeah obviously…” Her proposal is confusing to Ajax. Is there more to ‘going through the walls’?

“I’ll show you once we find a good spot to do it. I don’t want to spoil it all, because there’s a chance it won’t work. But, if it does work, we’ll be pretty happy about it. Here, I’ll give you a hint.”

Shaula looks around the forest floor. She finds what she’s looking for: a small rock. She holds it in her palm and closes her hand around it. She waits two seconds before opening her palm again.

“Oh. I see…”

In Shaula’s hand are the dimly glowing melted remains of the small rock. Ajax touches it with his own finger. He cannot feel it, and it doesn’t burn him no matter how long he waits. In truth, this is the best plan. Ajax had first thought about hiding in one of the merchant carriages waiting in line.

The problem is that the two of them would never be stealthy enough to hop into one. Even if they did, the guards did regular inspections of the carriages. A lot of luck was involved in this plan’s success. They weren’t masters of disguise just yet.

The next thing they thought of was causing a big ruckus by running through the gate and escaping into the city. They are pretty fast and the guards might not even get a good look if they run at their full speed.

The problem with this scenario is that they don’t know how the city will respond. They would rather not be in hiding while the city starts a manhunt on the two nuts who broke into the city. Shaula had proposed hiding their faces. A bit of fire for her and an ice helmet for him. Then, as soon as they find clothes, nobody would be able to identify them.

The issue is whether they are the only ones here with their extremely powerful senses. The chance that others can see across kilometers or hear their heartbeats seems unlikely. After all, if the guards had such good instincts, they would have already been found. Possibly. But, it is a risk they felt unprepared to take.

Shaula also had the stray thought of robbing a carriage for a few coins and some clothes. The more she considered it, the less she liked the idea. Even when she was homeless, she was not capable of robbing convenience stores run by random people. Attacking a random traveler would make her feel uneasy.

Shaula’s latest idea might be the least risky. Ajax can guess that Shaula wants to melt the wall and enter the city through a spot that isn’t being closely watched. A spot far away from the gate and preferably well into the night. Where there would be nobody on the other side of the wall.

“Won’t they notice the hole though?”

“Think again, I can just spackle the melted stone back. The wall might look a bit weird up close but from a distance nobody would think twice about it.”

“What if the material of the wall isn’t something you can melt? Also, what if the wall changes color when you melt it or becomes too bright?”

“Those are some of the reasons it might not work. The next idea I had was to climb the wall at a good spot. What do you think?”

Ajax looks towards the wall. Even within this forest, he can see the beige color of it past the trees. It is probably twenty stories tall. Maybe higher. He is confident in his new abilities to some degree. He can certainly do more pullups here than back on Earth. He might as well have infinite stamina, as well as an unbelievable healing factor. But, dropping from that height would still be painful…

“Alright, let’s at least try going through the wall before we discuss going over it.”

Shaula smiles. 

They slowly move farther away from the city gates and the road. Then, with the wall in the distance, they look for a spot that isn’t closely watched. Their telescopic vision allowed them to perceive the watchers atop the high wall. There are also people looking through small windows along the wall. In some of these holes, they see what look like cannons.

There were a few candidate spots that they could cross through. At these areas, there were one or less soldiers guarding huge segments of wall. A few hours after sunset, they move closer to the wall.

Things are not so easy however. The candidate spots, while not being too closely monitored, still have people walking nearby. There are people in the plains and woods close to the walls. There are a few large monsters as well. Shaula tried to touch the wall at one spot, but Ajax heard a human heartbeat in the tall grass nearby. It could just be a random person, but it was best not to be discovered if they could help it.

Sometimes, they saw oddly built watchtowers right outside the walls. Perhaps, there were areas right outside the wall with monsters that the people here needed to closely monitor. These watchtowers shone their spotlights, but never caught Ajax or Shaula. It was still annoying for them however.

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Things continued this way for an hour and a half. But, finally, they found their spot.

This area of the wall was hidden by a small group of trees. There were no watchers on the wall, no people in the area nearby and no monsters. On the other side of the wall, Ajax heard nobody. Not a single heartbeat for a few hundred meters. The wall itself is about twenty meters thick. It was now or never. Shaula touched the wall.

The wall quickly started to glow. It got brighter and brighter. Since she came to this world, she learned that her fire can get very hot, very fast. She could create heat on par with the surface of the sun within a few seconds. The rocks she found melted between one or two seconds upon contact with her skin.

The wall in front of her melted fairly quickly as well. Luckily however, the viscosity of the liquid wall was very low. It changed its shape at the pace of extremely thick molasses. She could enter the liquid rock as if walking into a wall made of very dense quicksand. But, thanks to her enhanced strength, she could wade through as if it was table syrup.

Not easily, but easily enough. 

“Ajax, let me enter first and test this out a bit. You start freezing the wall if there’s someone nearby.” If he froze the wall while she was still inside, she would be stuck inside a rock shell for a brief moment. She would see that something was happening outside and then just melt things again.

“...Alright. This feels like it really shouldn’t work, but alright.”

Shaula walks into the liquid rock tunnel. Even as she enters the wall, it doesn’t explode or break open. She keeps the heat at this level as she moves forward, no more, no less. The wall swallows her up. As soon as her body disappears, Ajax uses his hands to patch up the wall. He spackles up the wall while carefully hardening it so the liquid wall doesn’t spill out. 

Shaula has thought about this. She cannot feel heat and heat cannot harm her. She also needs no air. As long as she just keeps walking forward while melting whatever’s ahead of her, she will eventually reach an endpoint. As she wades through, she applies heat forward to melt what’s ahead of her, and stops applying heat behind her. As a result, the wall behind her solidifies faster, preventing too much shifting in the inside of the wall.

Her eyelids remain closed. Molten stone tries to sneak up her nostrils, but she pinches them shut with her right hand while keeping her mouth closed. The liquid wall is a bit too dense to get into her ears luckily. She is walking blind, but her sense of balance remains intact. She can feel out her path and ensure she still walks straight.

Fifteen minutes pass as she continues wading through the wall. All of the wall behind her has already solidified with minimal internal shifts. With this, the integrity of the wall is maintained. Her head carefully pops out into the city. There is still some molten rock on her face covering her eyes, but she applies a little bit more heat to her head. The rock slides off like water.

Her face must already be several thousands of degrees Celsius. But, she can still produce more heat if she needs to. This new body feels limitless.

She takes a quick look at the city with only her face exposed to the air. This is only the test run though. Thirteen minutes later, she returns to where Ajax is. The way her head pops out looks frightening. 

“Jesus Christ, Shaula! Are you alright? How was the… swim?”

“It’s a bit annoying but not as difficult as I had initially thought. It just feels like I’m walking through thick soup or something. The tricky part is going to be getting you through. Keep your eyes and mouth closed and pinch your nostrils. Let’s go.”

“...Fuck.”

Twenty minutes later, Ajax and Shaula both pop out on the other side of the wall. While both of them were wading through, Shaula had Ajax absorb some of the heat from behind them so that the wall would not shift too much as they moved through it. The process was definitely slower with two people.

As soon as they got deep enough, she made the liquid wall much hotter so both of them could comfortably swim through it. She was constantly holding onto him so he wouldn’t get lost in the wall. The heat did not affect him at all. He was careful not to let the liquid wall into his eyes, his nostrils or his mouth.

As soon as they get out of the wall, Ajax freezes it up while Shaula melts the rock still remaining on his head and his body. It was certainly a weird experience. But now, they’re in the city and nobody saw them. Shaula takes a good look around to make sure of that. She confirms that they are safe.

If either of them had been informed that this was what they would be doing a day after their English Exam… walking through a solid wall…

Ajax sighs in exasperation.

“Well, we’re here. Now what?”

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