Having four harpies join this scouting mission was a bit worrying at first. Hera wasn't entirely sure if they would be able to keep up with Nimbus and Ruby, or if it was going to be the other way around and they were the ones who were going to be holding everyone back. However, those issues quickly proved to be unimportant.
Harpies were, by their very nature, much lighter than any members of the other species. Not to mention that they were smaller, reaching a meter and a half at the most, but generally speaking they would be shorter. And since they had hollow bones, which was necessary for birds to fly, even a tall harpy such as Zephyr, who stood at 1.52 meters tall, was only about 30 kilograms. And that was counting his gear, which increased his weight by a couple of kilos.
That translated to the fact that two harpies were around the same weight as one of the people that were already being carried by Nimbus and Ruby. It had been a while since Nimbus even attempted carrying more than two people at the same time. For a long while, that was his limit. But then Hera started to interact with more people, and everything she did involved more than just a pair of friends, making it not just hard or impossible for Nimbus to carry everyone but also pointless for him to carry just three people. They would always need to move in a group, and when coming up with arrangements for an extra mount, it was generally easier to split into threes instead of just twos.
Still, right now he had the opportunity to attempt flying with the equivalent of a third person, and he managed to do so without a problem. There was a noticeable hit to his stamina, and the Sentinel understood that he wouldn't be able to fly at full speed for a long period, but unless something awful was happening, he should be able to carry everybody without having to worry about anything.
Ruby was in a similar state. But she still required a second buff being cast by Bonnie. Only then she was powerful enough for them to fly for several hours before Bonnie had to stop and recharge her mana, or what they actually were going to do before she had to start drinking some mana potions just to keep up with the mana she spent.
Everybody was more than happy with that result since, while the harpies could fly along doing most of the trip, they would struggle to keep up that speed for long periods of time.
"Why is that?" Hera asked. She always assumed that people with wings would have an easier time moving around in the sky. And she knew that harpies were faster than pretty much all the other species in the alliance, at least when it came to short bursts.
"Well," Vash tilted his head as they started to take off with Nimbus carrying Vash and Alyson while Arrowhead and Zephyr went with Ruby, Bonnie, and Alex. "It has to do with how our wings function. You know how there are some birds who can lock their wings in place and just let the wind carry them?"
"Yeah."
"For us, that's actually a skill that we have to learn. It's not something that is natural for our bodies to do. Without gear that can lock the wings up for you, going on long flights is generally like running a marathon. I think that's the best way to compare them. We can still move pretty fast without that much trouble. I mean, I could keep up with Nimbus the entire time, but I would be exhausted by the time we got there. And I'm assuming Nimbus can lock his wings when we are flying like this?" the performer explained.
Hera turned to the Sentinel, who replied in Hera's mind.
'That is correct. I can lock my wings, and that allows us to travel farther away without draining myself.'
"He say's yes," Hera nodded.
During the trip, Vash and Hera continued to catch up, having to use the communicators to talk with each other since the gust of wind surrounding them was too loud. Ever since the war ended, Vash had been working as one of the rebuild efforts led by the harpies.
He was basically going from room to room together with his team, looking for any issues that came up and couldn't be solved by the people who lived there. Then he had the option of either reporting it to Typhera so she could send people to fix whatever was happening, or they could try to fix it themselves if it was something that was within their power.
Because his team was very versatile, there were a lot of minor problems they could solve right away, including dealing with stray monsters, finding missing people, or retrieving things that were stolen by the guild and left in one of the outposts.
That was something that Vash and his team were doing a lot. They were locating the camps left behind by the guild when it lost the war. Because of course there were a good number of them that were never disclosed during the surrender of the guild.
Hera was worried that this meant the guild was working on something else to try to fight again, but Vash quickly explained what was actually happening. Apparently, most of those outposts were created by the fighters and the army that was occupying a certain region, but there was no actual paper trail of their existence. The only people who knew that there was an outpost there were the ones who saw it.
According to the guild, that was an issue that was rampant across the ranks, as the guild had promised that any successfully built outpost that lasted through the war and became a city in the future would be given to the people who created them, or at least that there would be some benefits for those who created this settlement. Apparently, that was a way for the guild to expand its presence around the MAZE and make sure that it would have more places to stay in every room when the major cities were already dominated by the alliance.
And there was the added benefit that, since the guild was not actually telling people to construct something here or there, they didn't need to pay for those efforts and could only later on come back to fix any possible infrastructure issues that came up. It was a very scummy thing to do, but considering everything that the guild had done during the war, it wasn't much of a surprise, anyway.
What was a surprise was how much the people who created those places had left behind once the war ended and they realized that they were on the wrong side of history. Vash mentioned that there were even a couple of outposts he found with entire storage rooms full of gold and considerably powerful weapons. Nothing that would benefit him or his group, but they were the kind of weapons that could be very beneficial for those living in that room.
He also added another layer to his job, but he made sure to ask Hera to join a private channel before telling her about this particular task. His group was also hunting down fugitives, those who didn't participate in the war but committed awful crimes and were now trying to escape the punishment they would need to endure.
Vash was somewhat worried about approaching this topic out loud since pretty much every single person they were chasing was a human, and they had a group of humans right now with them. Hera let him know he wouldn't need to worry about that.
Bonnie and Alex fought in the war together with them, even if they were not on the front lines, and Shane didn't like what the guild was doing either way. Even if Hera didn't go too deep into why she didn't participate in the war.
It was later in the afternoon when they started closing up to the Coiled Serpent, seeing it in the distance. And that's when they decided to start looking around to see if there was any place they could find for creating their own outpost, hoping to find a decent spot to land.
Unfortunately, they couldn't locate any flat areas that would be easy to take off from in the future, going instead for places that were rough to reach but not impossible so they could rest and organize themselves. Hera then used her relic and asked Ariadne the direction which they should go to find a place that was safe. But unfortunately, the relic just said that in the city there were various places where they could probably create outposts. But the city was swarmed by undead. So, that wasn't really an option.
Then again, maybe since the monsters there were not actual monsters but effects of a spell or something, then her relic couldn't really understand that the place wasn't empty. That did make somewhat sense since Hera knew that despite seeming omnipotent, her relic wasn't actually able to tell her everything. It wasn't as if she was talking to the Guides, who literally had all the answers. Her relic could make mistakes or give answers that were not complete without some extra information.
In the end, they decided to fly a bit around the area to see if there was anything that they could use nearby. The group was getting close to giving up on having an outpost this close to the city. Sure, it wasn't that much of a problem if they were far away, but it was a balancing act. The closer they were able to make the outpost, the easier it would be to go from the city to the doorway and vice versa. The ideal place would be near enough so that reaching the doorway wouldn't take too long but far enough away so that none of the Naga Specters were able to reach them.
Not to mention, they also had to worry about being attacked by the Naga Ghosts during the night, as Hera and the others had no idea if nightfall would bring even more of those specters out.
But that's when Alyson noticed something to the west of the city. There was a mountain range there, and near the top was what looked to be an entrance. They flew in that direction and quickly got close enough to see what it was. That opening was a cave, but the most important part, it was recent.
Hera had learned how to identify stones with the dwarves and what to look for, and she could tell that the rocks were exposed maybe a few hundred years ago. Even if the mountains were here for thousands of years, the wind, the rain, or something else, maybe even an earthquake, created this entrance somewhere recently. And if that was the case, the odds of Naga Spirits existing inside here would be minimal.
The entrance was on a sheer cliff, allowing anyone who was flying here to just jump off and use the fall to gather some speed before riding again. According to Nimbus and the harpies, it was something that many flying creatures could benefit from. The idea was that if they needed to escape to the Fields of Elysium, they could just jump and fly without having to worry about anything.
Together with Alyson, Hera used her echolocation skill from Ariadne to make sure the cave network didn't have any secret passages or anything that could catch them off guard. And once they were confident that this could be a good place, they walked back to the entrance of the cave and prepared themselves to sleep.
After all, before anything else, they had to make sure that the ghosts of the Naga wouldn't cause any problems for them here.