After the Gold 3 depth, everything else had been quite easy.
When they broke through to the surface, the first thing that struck Hagen was the silence.
"Where are we exactly?" Bloodwyn asked, his enhanced senses scanning the horizon.
Hagen consulted his mental map, cross-referencing their emergence point with the landmarks he could see through the near forest and the plains.
"Near the edge of the iron forest, at the end of Goldcrest territory," he admitted with slight embarrassment.
The war had indeed emptied this area. Where normally there would be patrols, border guards, or at least some signs of human habitation, now there were only the natural sounds of the forest.
They had emerged quite near Ren's old house, but they didn't know it.
"The new abyssal formations confused my navigation more than I expected. But we're not too far off course..."
"But you the 'best explorer' got lost down there," Bloodwyn finished, though his tone carried amusement rather than anger.
