At the dinner party, the Mayor of Kankdar held a wine cup in one hand, listening to Sister Vanya's suggestions. After hearing everything, he pondered for a moment, then nodded slightly.
"Do you want to carry supplies to relieve the people of Adis? Hmm... that is indeed a good idea. It can give the people over there a good basic impression. Sister Vanya's consideration is truly thoughtful."
Robert said this. After hearing his words, Vanya spoke again.
"It's nothing... these are just some necessary considerations. After all, the people there have suffered from war, and it is precisely when they need help. This is our opportunity to show our sincerity in negotiations."
"Sister Vanya makes sense, I understand. Then your departure will be postponed for two days for now. During this time, our Kankdar city government will fully assist the special envoy group with the procurement of supplies."
Robert said this to Vanya. After hearing Robert's words, Vanya also responded readily.
"Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. Then, I will leave everything to you."
...
Time flew by, and Kankdar's welcome banquet quickly ended. Guests and the special envoy group returned to their residences. After a night of rest, the dawn of the second day soon arrived.
Early the next morning, Robert announced that Vanya's special envoy group had temporarily changed their itinerary and would depart for Adis after procuring the necessary supplies. As soon as the news was released, people from all walks of life in Kankdar came forward to donate. Coupled with the special envoy group's own funds for purchasing, various types of food, medicine, and supplies had already piled up into a small mountain in the warehouse near the station.
The desert arrow train is a luxurious passenger train specially prepared by the Kankdar Railway Company for the special envoy group. This train has some fame in Kankdar and even in surrounding countries. It is a luxury service specifically for providing travel services to the upper class. The number of carriages is not large, but all aspects, such as dining and interior, are very luxurious. In addition to normal passenger carriages and dining carriages, it also has various functional carriages like bar carriages, casino carriages, and social carriages.
The desert arrow is like a land cruise ship, providing great comfort to passengers. At the same time, because it is equipped with the most powerful locomotive and has significantly fewer carriages than ordinary trains, its speed is extraordinarily fast, capable of reaching nearly twice that of a regular passenger train.
However, the situation with the desert arrow underwent some changes during this journey. To facilitate the transportation of a large amount of supplies, the Kankdar train station had to temporarily reorganize the desert arrow train. Many of the originally luxurious and impractical entertainment carriages were temporarily removed from the train, replaced by heavy, dark cargo carriages attached one by one behind the desert arrow's train set. This luxury service, originally exclusively for the upper class, now needed to take on more of the function of a freight train.
The reorganization of the desert arrow train took half a day to complete, and then the loading of goods took roughly another half day. Due to the request of Sister Vanya, the chief special envoy of the special envoy group, many cargo carriages were added to the desert arrow. Therefore, after all the donated supplies were loaded, many carriages were still left empty.
To avoid wasting the transport capacity of these carriages, Vanya decided to make a request to the merchants of Kankdar again, inviting them to bring some essential emergency supplies useful for people in the war-torn area and board the desert arrow together to go to Adis. As long as they were willing to sell the supplies there at a fair price to the suffering people, they could all travel with her.
Due to the current chaotic situation in Adus, not many merchants wanted to do business there. Most of the merchants willing to take the risk to do business there were those who intended to drastically raise prices and profit from the war. Naturally, they would not agree to Vanya's suggestion that goods needed to be sold at fair prices. Although Vanya's suggestion was made, not many merchants were willing to respond.
In the end, only a few merchants found the special envoy group, willing to accept Vanya's conditions and requested to travel with the special envoy group, taking their goods aboard the desert arrow to Adis. Vanya quickly agreed to these few merchants.
Transporting supplies needed by war-affected civilians, while a very benevolent act of kindness, still contained certain safety risks. Over the next day, the security force of the special envoy group led by Vanya inspected the entire train and all the supplies loaded onto it. After finding no abnormalities, the entire desert arrow finally decided to set off the next day. By the morning of the third day, the desert arrow, loaded with countless supplies, was finally ready to depart.
Inside the Kankdar train station, the farewell crowd was packed along the platform, watching the iron beast in front of them spewing steam and thick smoke. Amidst a great hum, it slowly pulled away from the station, heading towards the vast inland of North Africa in the direction away from the city.
In a compartment of one of the passenger carriages slowly accelerating, Dorothy, wearing traditional North Africa robes and a headscarf and veil, was currently sitting in the compartment, looking out the window from a comfortable seat at the rapidly receding city scenery. As the train accelerated, the town's houses and buildings became fewer and fewer, replaced by dense green vegetation.
As merchants, Dorothy and Naifnis boarded the desert arrow together and went to Adis with Vanya's special envoy group. Dorothy and Naifnis's ship arrived two days earlier than Vanya's. Taking advantage of these two days, Dorothy manipulated corpse puppets to purchase various supplies in Kankdar. Then, when Vanya proposed accepting merchants willing to sell at fair prices to travel to Adis together, she decisively signed up. After bringing about seven hundred pounds worth of supplies, she and Naifnis are now on the train as merchants. During this process, Vanya provided a lot of cover for Dorothy and the others, successfully avoiding most of the special envoy guards' inspections. Now they can travel all the way to Adis on the desert arrow, well hidden under Vanya's cover.
"It still feels incredible... that Sister Vanya, she's actually become a big shot now, and even a special envoy sent by the Church to Adus. I remember when I saw her last year, she said she was just an ordinary Sister in a Church in the North District. Now she can even be on the front page of newspapers..."
Sitting opposite Dorothy, Naifnis, also wearing a similar robe, spoke with a sigh of emotion. She and Vanya had met in Tivian last year. At that time, when she was fleeing the pursuit of the Eight Point Nest, it was Dorothy who notified Vanya to rescue Naifnis. At that time, Naifnis had a deep impression of that Sister who seemed weak but had somewhat excessive combat power.
"Haven't you changed quite a bit too? Last year you were still a college student, and now you're a legendary great thief. In terms of the number of times you've been in the newspapers, you're not much less than Vanya, right?"
While drinking tea, Dorothy said to Naifnis in a half-joking tone. Hearing Dorothy say this, Naifnis couldn't help but pause, then spoke softly with a slight urgency.
"Don't talk about that anymore... Miss Dorothy, that's not exactly good news for me. I really don't want to be famous..."
"Alright, alright, I won't talk about it anymore..." Seeing Naifnis's slightly anxious expression, Dorothy replied with a smile. Then Naifnis let out a long sigh and shifted the topic back to Vanya.
"By the way, Miss Dorothy, this time Sister Vanya is going to Adus for negotiations, and you are also secretly following. Could it be that among Adus's affairs, um... there is the influence of the society? Could Sister Vanya's trip to Adus this time not just be a mission from the Church, but also have some other will involved?"
Naifnis asked Dorothy curiously. The society she mentioned in her words was exactly the Rose Cross, which she believed she belonged to.
Naifnis also knew that Vanya was a member of the Rose Cross. Now Vanya was sent to the country of Adus, which was in civil strife, for negotiations, and Dorothy also followed. Does this mean that the situation in Adus has some connection with the Rose Cross? Is the Rose Cross influencing the situation in Adus to some extent? Is the current chaos in Adus deeply involved with the Rose Cross?
At this moment, Naifnis felt a little excited inside. Although she had known that the Rose Cross was very mysterious and not simple before, she had no intuitive feeling on the corresponding mundane level. But if the situation in Adus is really related to the Rose Cross, it proves that the Rose Cross has the ability to secretly influence the political situation of a not-so-small country. Is this the power of a large society?
Naifnis said with slight excitement. After listening, Dorothy rolled her eyes at Naifnis while drinking tea, thinking that Vanya was tricked into coming this time by people within the Church, and she chose to travel with her just for convenience and care, there was nothing complicated about it, and Dorothy herself was not quite sure about the specific reason why Vanya came to Adus.
"Behind Vanya's trip to Adus this time, there are indeed some deeper reasons, and these reasons are not only with us, but even more so within the Church..."
"Factors within the Church? This matter is actually involved so deeply? Then the specific reason behind this matter is..." Listening to Dorothy's words, Naifnis immediately continued to ask curiously, while Dorothy waved her hand in response.
"The secrets within are not something you can know right now. By the way, you haven't read your secret transmission today, have you? I think the light is good now, why don't you go back to your compartment and read?"
Since she herself didn't know the specific reason why Vanya was sent to Adus, Dorothy simply dismissed Naifnis like this. After hearing Dorothy's words, Naifnis thought to herself that she seemed to have asked something that a low-level member like herself shouldn't ask, so she stopped asking and directly responded.
"Hmm... In that case, I'll go read first. Goodbye, Miss Dorothy."
Saying that, Naifnis stood up from her seat and left Dorothy's compartment after saying goodbye. For a moment, only Dorothy was left in the compartment.
After seeing Naifnis leave, Dorothy breathed a sigh of relief. Then she turned her head to look at the scene outside the window. In her sight, the green vegetation outside the train window was rapidly becoming sparse. Large patches of withered bushes appeared on both sides of the railway and quickly swept past. Not long after, an endless yellow desert gradually began to appear before Dorothy's eyes.
'We're slowly reaching the desert area... This also means the train has finally left Kankdar and is slowly entering the interior of North Africa...
'According to Beverly's intelligence, Vanya's trip to Adus this time carries considerable risk. After being involved in significant disputes, a large number of people will want her dead. Assassination is a high-probability event.
'However, the good thing is that the Church has provided sufficient security forces around Vanya. Three Chalks and a pile of Black Earths. With such security forces, even if Extraordinary from a regular stronghold came, they wouldn't be able to get close...
'The entire train has been screened by Vanya's security, and there are no suspicious points. All purchased supplies have also been carefully checked, and even meticulously detected using the "Lamp", and no suspicious places were found. There were no other strange things hidden. I wasn't at ease, so after they checked it once, I also checked it myself with small Corpse Puppets, and indeed found nothing.
'As of now, everything is safe, so there should be nothing to worry about on the way to Adis. The focus should be on what happens after arriving in Adis.'
Looking at the endless desolate scenery outside the window, Dorothy thought to herself. To ensure the safety of the train's journey, Dorothy also specifically arranged for a bird corpse puppet to stay on the roof of the train. When reaching sections prone to ambushes, it would fly into the sky to check the situation below and confirm if there were any ambushers hidden somewhere. For example, that bird corpse puppet is currently circling in the sky.
Using the bird's-eye view perspective of the bird corpse puppet, Dorothy overlooked the vast desert on both sides of the train. Under Dorothy's gaze, the uninhabited desert was silent. Within the wide field of vision, there were no traces of any living creatures, and no sign of any ambushers could be seen.
Seeing no hidden dangers under the sunlight, Dorothy decided to retrieve the bird corpse puppet after passing this section. Just then, a flash of light on one side of Dorothy's field of vision attracted her attention.
"Hmm... This light is..."
Attracted by the flash, Dorothy made the bird corpse puppet look in the direction where the flash originated. However, due to the distance, even an eagle's vision couldn't clearly see what was there. And if it flew over specifically, it would miss the train that was continuously moving forward, causing the bird corpse puppet to be unable to return later.
Fortunately, that distant flash was not seen by Dorothy alone. In one of the compartments, a guard from the delegation sent by the Church also discovered the flash while being vigilant of the surroundings. Thus, he used the Extraordinary vision of the "Lamp" to look into the distance and finally saw what the flash was.
It was a man standing on a small stone hill, wearing a long robe and a headscarf, in traditional North Africa attire. At this moment, he was standing on top of the stone hill, holding a long telescope and carefully observing the high-speed train in the distance. A camel was tied beside him.
One person, one camel, one telescope, that was the scene of the flash. The flash was actually the light reflected by the telescope lens under the scorching sun. This light looked like it was flickering when seen from the train.
Upon discovering someone observing the train, the guard who found the flash immediately became alert. He used his super vision to continuously observe the man's actions. However, after observing for a long time, he did not see any suspicious movements from the other party. He just held the telescope and silently watched the train moving in the distance, and there was no unusual movement until the train went far away.
'Perhaps, he was just a curious ordinary person.'
Seeing the man gradually move away and become unclear, the guard on the train thought this to himself, then shifted his gaze and stopped thinking about other things. In Dorothy's eyes in another compartment, however, a trace of doubt emerged.