Queen of Rus

Like Octameteorite itself, the monster-repelling barrier around the Rus Kingdom's Quodennets was invisible. There was no visible distortion of space, no colored shell marking the barrier, or anything like that.

The boundary itself, however, was easy to identify.

Stone stakes about twice my height jutted from the ground at regular intervals, linked by ropes and clearly separating the inside from the outside.

There were vast wheat fields outside the boundary as well, along with orchards and well-maintained irrigation channels. Almost all the warehouses and buildings were inside the boundary. It showed just how safety-conscious the people were—and how much they trusted the Quodennets barrier.

Thinking about it calmly, there was no way to cram housing and farmland for 600,000 people into an absolutely safe zone with a radius of 10 km. Of course some of their livelihood had to extend beyond the barrier, and if anything was going to stick out, it would be fields rather than homes.

The people working the fields, presumably citizens of the Rus Kingdom, were busy sweating and wiping their brows. Some had horses pulling enormous seeders, some were using excavator-like contraptions fitted with huge sieves to scoop up the soil and remove Gremlins mixed into it, and others were casting fertility magic on crops nearing harvest.

Almost nobody paid us any attention as we walked by. A few people occasionally cast curious glances our way, but no one actually spoke to us.

It was a relief to find people diligent enough not to chat while working. Dali Points +1.

The border checkpoint of the Rus Kingdom, which we reached by walking along a farm road through that scenery, looked like a highway toll booth and was not much different from those in other countries.

The procedure, on the other hand, was different...