Aside from a few islands deep in the oceans, nearly cut off from the rest of the world, and small stretches of land that existed almost solely in legend and had never been set foot upon, the Mother Continent was the only known, thriving continent on this planet. It was roughly an irregular oval, stretching across the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, though it extended farther north—the northern reaches plunged deep into the frozen ocean of ice and snow, while its southern end barely crossed the equator and did not even reach the temperate regions of the Southern Hemisphere. Thus, for a long time in history, scholars of the Mother Continent believed they lived in a world where cold and heat ran in only one direction: the farther north one went, the colder it became, until even the sky froze; the farther south one went, the hotter it became, until even the earth melted. That was why the old myths of the Mother Continent spoke of an Ice King of the Far North and a Lava Tyrant of the Southern Abyss.
Lilina had told us all that when she was bored.
Our destination lay in the northern part of the Mother Continent, practically bordering the frozen wilderness. Without using a Teleportation Gate, an ordinary person would have to cross the northern duchies, then countless scattered settlements carved up by barbarian tribes across the Northern Mang Plains, all the way to what was more or less the final frontier that intelligent races in this world could occupy for any length of time. Here stood a loose nation called Gudell, a country with almost no clear central authority. City-states and even towns of every size declared themselves kings, yet strangely, this was not the result of endless wars of division. Rather, it was