Jonathan planned on reaching the Great Farmer’s keep as soon as possible. He wasn’t going to mess around with trying to form an uprising. The slaves that made up the vast majority of the realm’s population were far too weak to be of any help, especially considering the changes that Angranor had made to the Hells. No average fighter could make themselves equal to a Circle Lord of the same level. It would take at least a Tier of superiority, something that just wasn’t feasible here.
The first landmark they found that actually appeared on the map was one of the strangest buildings that Jonathan had ever seen. It was a barn, but one that seemed made for giants. It was almost a mile high, but that wasn’t even the oddest part about the whole thing. There was nothing there other than an empty shell of a building. It was like a movie prop house, made with the expectation that only the outside would be seen. Even that was hastily built, seemingly crafted from a single slab of wood that had been painted a garish shade of red. A small crack in the towering doors of the barn let Jonathan see that its inside was just a cavernous expanse of nothingness. The only things visible were dirt and grass. The ground wasn’t even level.
“What the hell?” Eliza exclaimed. “Who made this thing?”
“Let me check the map. Shouldn’t take too long.” Jonathan pulled out the map of the Great Farm and scanned it. The barn quickly came into view. It was marked simply as The Empty Barn. According to the map, it was a failed attempt by the Great Farmer to create a citadel for himself. It was eventually replaced by the towering mountain of produce that he now called home, but a tiny fragment of the magic that preserved the Great Farmer’s current citadel also kept this barn from rotting. It didn’t look like it, but it had stood there for eons.
As it was, there was nothing important to find in the barn. It was nothing more than a simple landmark, historically significant, but worthless otherwise. The only thing that it was good for was positioning on the map.
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Jonathan looked up from his map. “Looks like we’re about two hundred thousand miles from the Great Farmer. Probably a few days’ travel, maybe a week if you want to do some leveling.”
Eliza sighed. “It’s strange how easily we’ve gotten used to such vast distances. The whole Earth was just a fraction of that in circumference. We can run faster than planes could fly, but everything seems to get further and further away.”
“When I met Angranor, he showed me his personal realm.” Jonathan had already told this story to Eliza and everyone else, but it felt like the right time to share. “I was like an ant gazing at the city of a giant. Each building was the size of a planet, and there were more than I could count.”
“One day we’ll be there,” Eliza replied. “One day.”
***
Jonathan and Eliza left a realm scarred by battle in their wake. Thousands of the demons had fallen to their efforts. Well, if they were being honest, Eliza had done most of the work. She was the one lagging behind in terms of levels. By this point she was only about a dozen levels from Tier 7.
Those dozen levels would have to wait, though. Their travels had taken them to the very heart of the Great Farm. The heartlands of the circle were densely populated, with a few dozen cities vying for proximity to their lord. Eight peaks surrounded the Great Farmer’s personal domain, snow capped mountains that seemed out of place. Apparently, the Circle Lord had transported them there over a few hundred years in order to lower the temperature around his citadel, making it easier to preserve the mountain of food that he dwelled upon.
As the two warriors stood on the peak of one of the mountains, they took in the sight of the Great Farmer’s home. It wasn’t something that could really be described by words, at least those on the map. It was something that could only exist in a world where magic and gods coexisted, where myth and fantasy were just everyday occurrences.
