Chapter 173: Dark Shift

As the elf indulged in the pleasant cleansing of her mind due to the unintended bout of enlightenment derived by returning to a primal state, Nisha fell into a timeless state where she comprehended more of the mysteries derived by the broken spell formation fragments.

The bracelet with the crimson gemstone and the inscription [Flame of War] as well as the cloak called [Midnight] superimposed a ghostly figure of their appearance over the meditating elf and supported her boost in cultivation.

When the bout of enlightenment came to an end, Nisha had not only reached the middle phase of the fourth rank as a warrior and magician, her understanding of space and spells vastly increased too as the two artifacts on her real body turned part of the intangible inspirations into tangible benefits.

Nisha had no idea about the changes though, her spell body remained in front of the Dharnas estate, digesting the changes in mentality after appreciating the return to a primal state and shedding the shackles of society for once.

Maybe the meditation would have lasted the whole night, but the small gate used by the servants opened behind the wolf’s figure and brought the elf out of the wondrous state.

A female servant entered the streets and hurried towards another plot of land, which piqued Nisha’s interest and pushed the changes to the back of her mind. The advances were incredibly in tune with nature and her being, hence the dragon barely noticed them even after falling into a state of deep comprehension.

The goal for executing the spell [Eye of the Obsidian Wolf] in the first place had been to get a feel for its effects and now that another venue of interest opened up, the elf directed the spell body to follow the servant and see where she was going.

Thanks to being an entirely mana based construct, the female employee failed to sense even the slightest ripple of energy behind her, most likely only experienced wizards could catch a glimpse of the spirit wolf if they were not skilled in an extraordinary ocular skill.

After walking for a short while, the maid entered a narrow alley between two estates, neither of which the elf knew the owner.

Her target approached another small gate, and a male servant already peeked through the cracked open door.

As he noticed the arrival of the female servant, he broke out in a big grin and pushed the door open. He hugged the maid close to his body and sought out her lips with his own. The pair could not keep their hands from each other and hands quickly made their way into the others clothes.

At that point, Nisha realized her random hunt had yielded nothing important and the pair emulated the behaviour she had seen from the ruffians at the Old Scoundrel’s mansion, who had evoked a faint sense of disgust towards such actions afterwards.

Seeing that they advanced towards the servant quarters, that was the elf’s guess mostly, without speaking or ceasing their behaviour, the dragon left them to do their thing and did not further pursue them.

Rather, Nisha picked a random direction to walk in after surveying the area. Several glows lit up the sky apart from the now bright darkness, an indication for strong magical energies.

With her experience operating the [Spirit Sight], operating the inferior version obtained by the spell turned out to be very easy.

Instead of seeing through all things and making energy visible, the [Eye of the Obsidian Wolf] reacted more sensitively to darkness, mana and the flow of energy.

As such, the spell body advanced towards one of the bigger glows and decided to check them out while the spell was still in effect.

To that effect, the biggest magical device in the surrounding area had to be either the palace or the walls surrounding the noble district.

The elf figured it out after arriving at the walls and made a decision to not go towards the palace, since there should be a lot of experts gathered around the king. Maybe one of them could see her in her invisible state and try to get rid of her, it was better to head outwards instead.

Her spirit wolf form had the capability to tread on air like solid ground thanks to the close connections with the dark element by the design of the spell, hence it did not take all that long before she arrived at the giant gates separating the commoners from the nobles.

Once Nisha saw the glowing patterns and precious mana stones built into the stone fortification, it occured to the dragon that the light she saw must have come from the defensive spells and inscriptions placed on it.

It made sense, the defensive structure did not only protect humanity from beasts and monsters invading their living space in the past, but also from spells, curses and other long range attacks from the more human enemies coming from other countries.

Most likely, the outer walls of Thurgau had similar enchantments applied and the project to create a new district initiated by the elf probably had to employ enchanters too in order to ensure protection in this way.

The dragon had an instinctive urge to break that barrier and the walls to prove herself both superior in mind and body. Puny creations by humans had no chance to hold back a being so lofty and magnificent as herself.

Fortunately for the city and its inhabitants, Nisha controlled the urge and inspected the formations and inscriptions themselves instead of going on a rampage.

Whether it was the [Eye of the Obsidian Wolf] or [Spirit Sight], both were especially sensitive to the changes of energy and magical flows, and were quite suited to pry into the secrets that Incscription and Formation Masters usually sought to conceal.

A perfect example were the smooth faces of the wall.

To prevent their competitors from discerning their secret symbols and methods, the enhancements were done on a cut open slate of rock, which was combined with the other half afterwards and sealed together before being used as building material.

In this way, even if the rock was cut open to inspect the array, it was near impossible to find the exact same cut again so the entire formation diagram would be damaged and therefore useless.

Many crafters employed similar tactics when fashioning gear or adding their work to provided equipment.

No one expected there to be an existence like a young and curious dragon paired with eyes that can see through solid matter to unravel all their effort with a passing glance.

The target of their unknowing resentment did not even realize what she did and delved deeper into the runes that made up the enhancements.

To the dragon’s surprise, the letters were borrowed from the dragon’s language.

An instance of that was the wall guarding the inner region of Thurgau, where the runes for [Protection], [Guardian], [Repel] and [Concentrate] were grouped as one inscription, while the magical arrays had the same meaning.

Only, the positioning and connection between each rune followed no logical course, the excess energy lost in the process made up the majority of the energy glow in the air, which had attracted the spell body in the first place to come here.

Nisha could think of at least three more ideal ways to connect the runes and smooth out the energy flow and improve the array as a whole, and one combination that had the potential to combine the magical effects with the physical changes brought by the aura inscription.

If the original creator in charge of the inscriptions and array could hear her thoughts, who knew whether he would praise her as a genius or faint in anger due to his work being picked on by a complete novice.

Of course, the elf had no fault in not recognizing the fact that humanity borrowed the dragon’s language to do their enchantments and inscriptions so far, as most weapons had round hilts and folded blades from the process of manufacturing, which vastly warped the final picture into a round and overlapping diagram following the surface structure of the weapon.

Furthermore, her own weaponry mostly relied on superior materials and very few of them had any enhancements, so even if she observed one of them with her [Spirit Sight], she never associated the lines of power glowing on them with a combined set of runes from her inherited language.

In that way, the connection between the two never occured to Nisha.

On the spot, the dragon decided to pay more attention to the subject of enhancing gear and placing down arrays and inscriptions in the future.

As a topic of study, the academy would surely hold lessons about that too, hence it might not even take that long for the elf to learn more about the circumstances behind the runes.

Most likely, the dragon had seen these designs before, during the daytime, when she moved through the districts and passed the gates in the process.

But at those times the external stimuli from having a goal in mind, passing countless humans clamoring and working right next to her and the daylight covered up those traces, so they failed to make an impression on her.

Nisha had a very good memory capacity, yet there were thousands of things she needed to keep in mind or pay attention to, so some things had to be assigned a lesser priority.

Now the patterns on the walls rose on that list, since they stood out so much more when nothing covered their presence.

She sat in silence in her ghostly wolf spell body, following the flow of energy among the runes and deducing their applications and strengths for at least one or two candle lengths worth.

During that time, the urge to conquer the obstacle before rose up in the young dragon. She might not be able to tear them completely down or disable the shielding effect of the enhancements, yet at the same time they were not enough to trouble her.

The idea that a flawed product had the ability to prevent her from going where she wished to irritated the elf, even though the intention of building a wall in the first place was exactly that.

A powerful warrior and magician employed by the royal family should recharge the storage of energy contained in the stone walls too, according to the dragon’s estimation anything below the seventh rank did not have even the slightest chance to forcefully break through the wards.

Nonetheless, the thought of breaking through the arbitrary border that just dared to appear before her still existed.

Nisha had rationally agreed that breaking apart the defensive wards meant to keep the capital’s inhabitants safe due to a feeling of annoyance was not the right thing to do, the dragon also wanted to prove that restrictions set by man held no power over her.

Nevermind that the mana and aura of a seventh rank warrior and magician were needed to sustain the wall and the materials used to build it would most likely not even suffer a scratch in case the elf struck it with her most powerful blow.

She only needed to remind herself of her rapid growth speed and an unlimited future as a daughter of the dragon race to know that the currently insurmountable barriers would be nothing worth mentioning sometime in the future.

A small victory now is better than nothing I guess.

Proud in nature through and through, Nisha justified her idea before herself and scanned the energy flow once again with a different perspective this time.

Each rune had a meaning fused with a symbol to contain the magical power and fulfill their purpose.

The same symbol situated differently in another context by different words could potentially have great changes to its final meaning and effect.

During the construction, four different words had been inscribed by the artisan responsible for inscribing them.

Furthermore, the secret technique to conceal the words itself in the stones itself did not always follow the same angled cut, which would not matter much overall if the creator had any knowledge about the inherent meaning hidden inside the runes.

Sadly, it seemed like the artisan only knew about how the words were supposed to work and not how to arrange them.

Hence, the minor spatial distortion accumulated through the variation in placement and the insufficient care when arranging four different meanings into one block gave birth to several weak points in the barrier established by the wall.

If the elf had to compare the aura and mana flow from the way she saw it with her [Eye of the Obsidian Wolf] to something else, the best description she could currently come up with would probably be a stretched patch of fabric, with many tiny tears occurring with a high frequency when the tension of the entire area shifted whenever one of the breaches got fixed automatically by the barrier.

In that way, rather than a permanent breach which a dedicated spell, magician or spy would want to exploit, the protective arrays and inscriptions on the stone wall separating the noble and common district failed to effectively circulate the energy it needed to be sustained and wasted a lot of power to fix itself in a continuous cycle.

Taking advantage of the lapse in the window where the barrier detected the flaw and worked to eliminate it, Nisha judged it should be possible to charge through the protective screen.

Suddenly, one of the small insights she had yet to properly digest from breaking the rigid structure of her spell surfaced in her mind and she instinctively performed the teleportation method the elf usually used to traverse the vast areas of her inner world.