Kai'Sa's face was still full of hostility, but she still returned to Caleb's side.
Katarina also sat obediently beside him.
She had originally wanted to test this man, only to end up being tested herself instead.
That left Katarina in a very bad mood.
But in Noxus, the strong having the final say was practically law, so even if she was unhappy about it, she still listened to Caleb.
"What do you want?"
Sitting by the campfire, Katarina got straight to the point.
Then again, that was Noxians for you.
Ambessa had used the exact same tone when she invited Caleb to be her adopted son.
Caleb twitched at the corner of his mouth, briefly speechless.
"You really are that direct, huh?"
Even in the desert at night, when the temperature was hovering near freezing, Katarina was still wearing very little, and what she did have on was tight enough to leave nothing to the imagination.
So the second Caleb looked, he immediately turned his head away.
If Janna felt like a goddess untouched by the world, someone who never had the slightest intention of hiding anything from Caleb, then Katarina knew exactly how sensual her figure was, and deliberately showed it off.
Catching sight of Kai'Sa's purple Void skin, Caleb got himself back under control.
"Haa..."
After taking a long breath and forcing himself to calm down, Caleb continued.
"Nothing for now, but you can have Noxus keep an eye on what's happening in the north."
Noxus had a massive appetite for expansion.
The entire northern part of the continent, even part of Shurima across the sea, along with a handful of islands on the edge of Ionia, had all fallen under Noxian control.
Their current landing in Ionia was happening from territory Noxus already occupied.
If not for the fact that Noxus's homeland was barren across so much of its territory, its national strength would have grown even further by now.
That was also one of the main reasons Noxus coveted Ionia and Demacia so badly.
Shuriman antiques were valuable, sure, but they weren't like grain, weapons, and other essentials needed to keep an empire expanding outward.
Ionia, known as the First Lands, had terrain and natural abundance broad enough to encompass almost everything in the world.
Demacia, meanwhile, was by and large a land of rich plains.
But neither place was easy prey.
Ionia was divided and scattered, but it produced extraordinary people in droves, and the Kinkou Order was hidden among them.
Demacia's walls, built with petricite, were just as troublesome.
After all, in the Noxian army, mages held extremely high status.
If an ordinary person angered a mage and had their body twisted into some other shape, they would still have no choice but to swallow it and keep living.
The people around them might even laugh at them for entertainment.
And when Caleb said "the situation in the north," he was talking about another region entirely, Freljord.
In that frozen wasteland, where the bitter cold never relented, demigod-level beings had been born, and Freljord didn't care much for production either.
So at times, its tribes would raid Demacian villages to seize food for the winter.
That had led to constant friction between the two.
Caleb remembered that after Sylas escaped from prison, he joined forces with tribes from Freljord and marched on Demacia.
All along the way, he freed mages and strengthened his forces.
If Noxus could move through the central plains at the same time and launch a rapid strike on Demacia,
the results would be spectacular.
Of course, with all three powers locked in a standoff, Caleb didn't want any of them having an easy time.
Demacia's treatment of innocent mages was rotten, Freljord cared for little beyond raiding and worshiping demigods, and Noxus was far too dependent on war, like it couldn't survive without fighting.
Caleb fully intended to fix the worst habits of all those places.
Just not yet.
He hadn't even reached Tier-2 demigod level himself, so how was he supposed to pull something like that off now?
So for the time being, they could go ahead and fight. Best if they beat each other bloody.
Caleb still had to figure out how to suppress the Void in Icathia.
In truth, the Void didn't exist in only one place.
In Freljord, beneath the ancient ice that never melted, the Void was trapped there too.
The coming of the Void was what Caleb truly needed to worry about, because that kind of power was practically from another world.
And then there was its connection to the brackern...
That was exactly why Caleb had agreed to Heimerdinger's request and headed deep into the Shuriman desert.
Supposedly, there was a wasteland called the Endless Plain.
No one had ever made it out alive.
Of course, Caleb intended to give it a try.
Because from the look of it, that region wasn't actually that large. Something had to be at work there.
Before Caleb could finish his train of thought, Katarina interrupted him.
"What about Freljord's movements? What else?"
"What else?" Caleb raised an eyebrow. "Then you'll need equally valuable intelligence in return."
"And bring me a copy of a Twin Cities newspaper while you're at it."
Caleb had no intention of explaining more to Katarina than that.
Sure, her clothes were skin-tight to show off that absurdly flexible body of hers, but as long as Caleb didn't look, he could pretend none of that was happening.
Yeah. That had to be how it worked.
As for Kai'Sa...
While the two of them were talking, she had simply fallen asleep. Sprawled in a way that gave Caleb a direct view of her backside.
Who designed these champions?
"You can go." Caleb said it lightly. "Spy on me if you want, but you don't touch the caravan."
"I'm not stupid." Katarina's expression darkened.
As she turned to leave, Katarina glanced back and commented shamelessly, "You don't have to pretend. You can look at my ass. I'm pretty proud of it, but damn, the one on that girl beside you looks like it was sculpted by the gods."
Caleb let out a sigh. "I guess girls always pretend not to notice when a guy is pretending not to notice..."
After several more days of hard travel, the caravan finally arrived in Shurima with the wagons still intact.
The Piltovan craftsmen planned to dismantle the wagons and turn the parts into other devices to sell to the locals.
After that, they would follow Shuriman scavengers and ride sand beasts all the way back to the lands of the Twin Cities.
"Seriously... they're even tearing apart the ride they came here on just to sell it..."
Watching the craftsmen bustling around at work, Caleb couldn't help muttering in admiration.
"And you?" Looking at Kai'Sa standing there, Caleb waved a hand and asked.
"I don't know where else to go, so I decided to follow you."
Kai'Sa looked at Caleb and suddenly smiled.
It would have been one thing if she hadn't smiled.
But the second she did, Caleb felt his heart skip.
For one brief moment, Caleb had already started naming their future kids in his head...
"Cough, cough, cough...!"
Standing there dazed, Caleb got a mouthful of sand blown straight into it.
By the time he dealt with that, Kai'Sa was still smiling at him.
"All right then." Caleb recovered his composure and continued.
"From here on, we need to keep heading west, deeper into the desert."
He pointed at the map. After the rivers flowed across the continent and out into the sea,
Ixtal still managed to hold onto enough water to nurture an entire rainforest.
But once you entered Shurima, moving from east to west, more and more of the river sources dried up.
That was something Caleb could feel clearly from the whole journey westward.
"Mm." Kai'Sa nodded.
"Icathia is in the far southwest, and Zuretta should be a little farther north."
As he spoke, Caleb drew another circle on the map.
"After we send Ziggs back, we'll head north to the Sun Disc and see if we can find someone who can help us seal the Void."
"Mm." Kai'Sa agreed again.
"...Whatever you want to buy, I'm paying."
"That one, that one, and that one."
Kai'Sa, who had been staring at the market the whole time, instantly pointed out the stalls she wanted, one after another in rapid succession.
"Unbelievable..."
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