The carriage wheels rolled over the ground, no longer making crisp clattering sounds, but a sticky squelch that set their teeth on edge.
The atmosphere inside the carriage was peculiar.
If Oathbound City was silk sprayed with expensive perfume, then this place, the Abundant Forest Sea, was a pot of thick soup simmering over a roaring fire with far too much honey added. It was cloyingly sweet and pungently fragrant, yet beneath that rich fruity scent lingered a faint, persistent stench of decay.
"Veylin, please close the window. Sorry for the trouble." Caroline covered her mouth and nose with her folding fan, her delicate brows drawn tight. "Why does it smell so strange here?"
Veylin did not oblige.
Instead, he pushed the window halfway open, letting air thick with the mingled scents of life and death pour into the carriage.
The scenery outside was utterly absurd.
Enormous vines coiled like giant pythons around every inch of land. The pumpkins hanging from them were as big as the carriage cabin, their skins stretched taut as though they might burst at any moment. The ears of wheat in the fields were not golden but a strange purplish red, drooping heavily against the ground. Every grain was so plump it seemed ready to drip oil.
Yet no one was harvesting them.
The overripe fruit simply hung from the branches until their stems gave way and they crashed to the ground. Countless wild rabbits and field mice, fat as pigs, roamed unchecked between the rows, gnawing on food that had not even had time to rot.
"This is just... such a waste."
Caroline watched through the gap, her merchant's instincts making her heart ache.
"In Sea Land, two villages could fight to the death over one of those pumpkins. And here, they're just fertilizer?"