Grand Foreigner (Chapters 1- 200)

Chapter 188

It didn't take long for Ainz to travel to his destination. Unlike ordinary caravaneers, who had to navigate through the sand with imprecise maps and had to rest in oases to escape the heat and sandstorms, Ainz could travel in the most direct line. Plus the occasional teleporting, it turns weeks of travel into minutes.

The only problem was that... traveling in a straight line is harder than it sounds, especially somewhere without landmarks like a desert.

"I wonder where exactly I took a wrong turn?" Ainz, keeping his expression calm as he stared at the melted black desert ruins and the black ash that had turned solid in front of him. He had definitely gone past the desert, he just hadn't arrived at his destination.

According to the information he had gathered, this Singularity was divided into several zones that could be conventionally called states. The Holy Land, Egypt, Assyria, the Crusader City, and the Land of the Old Man of the Mountain – but that did not mean that the entire Singularity consists entirely of these states.

Nor did it mean that there was anything outside the Singularity.

As far as Ainz could see, there was no sand, or dust, or even any dirt. The was just an endless expanse of black crust of melted ash and embers that still, in some places, glimmered dimly with the burning remnants of a fire. In some rare places, the remnants of the fire still burst out in small flashes, completing the picture of desolation before his eyes.

Even the sky above wasn't blue, but was almost completely obscured by black and red viscous clouds, through which the sunlight barely penetrated. It actually almost reminded him of the sky back home, in his desolate future, it just needed the acid rain to complete the picture.

Unlike the last Singularity – and Ainz was glad he took the chance to travel then – everything that was not under the control of whatever entities control the state was a desolate hell. It was even more depressing than the one he had encountered in the last Singularity.

Turning back slightly, Ainz glanced at the desert behind him.

No, by no means was the desert, especially for ordinary people, an alluring destination, but compared to the black wastelands before him, it looked almost heavenly with the open clear blue sky and the rare white curly clouds floating slowly.

The contrast was so stark that if Ainz was still in YGGDRASIL he would have said something like 'the developers are so lazy, where were the game designers looking?!'

But because it wasn't YGGDRASIL, the feeling of wrongness was even worse...

However, what frightened Ainz at the moment was not the emptiness, but his need to complain, and his inability to do so since he has the Servants with him.

'How did I ever get lost?! I wasn't even turning anywhere and just kept going north!' Ainz took a deep breath, then exhaled, calming down without the aid of his skill, showing his gradually growing self-control.

'Though, okay, I had no compass with me and the caravaneers' directions weren't exactly so direct... I could have veered off course just a little at the beginning, or just moved further than necessary, teleporting, adding some more chaos to the equation. I did talk about that sort of thing before, about teleportation, didn't I?'

Haste makes waste... is that how the saying goes?

'The only problem is that I'm absolutely nowhere near where I wanted to go! I sent Sita and Medb out to scout, but I ended up going somewhere else entirely – what's the point of scouting if the main force goes somewhere else entirely!?'

Ainz exhaled again to calm himself down. Luckily he hadn't told the Servants with him where he was going, if not, he had to come up with some random excuse as to why he was not actually lost.