On the endless highway, Aisling, disguised as Roy, expressionlessly carried Roy's sixty-slot oversized backpack and jogged toward the evacuation point.
Roy's physical condition was far stronger than her own frail body. Carrying such heavy luggage, if she had been using her own body, she would have struggled just to leave the forest, let alone jog forward.
Fifteen kilometers looked far, but with Roy's physical condition, it would not take long.
Aisling traveled silently throughout the morning. Under Roy's Imperio, she felt neither dejection nor fatigue and only followed Roy's orders strictly. Before long, the coastal highway marked on the map appeared before her.
This was not the rural road Roy and Aisling had been traveling along before. Cars flowed back and forth across it. Originally, patrols had been searching for Aisling and Roy along this highway, but now Roy, disguised as Aisling, had lured them all toward the coast.
With evacuation imminent, Aisling felt neither joy nor anger. She was now merely a machine that ruthlessly obeyed her master's orders. After confirming there were no wizards watching her, Aisling followed the highway, looking for a bus stop.
Before long, Aisling spotted bus stop signs on both sides of the road. A glance at the markings showed that only one bus route ran along the entire highway, and it happened to go straight to the outskirts of New York.
Having returned to her original appearance, Aisling set down her backpack, leaned against the metal pole of the sign, and waited motionlessly for the bus.
Without her noticing, dark clouds had spread across the entire sky. A thunderstorm was coming. Lightning occasionally flashed through the cloud-covered sky, followed by thunder that resounded across the land.
The strange phenomena in the sky stirred something within Aisling, who was still immersed in the Imperio.