Chapter 150

Under the difficult circumstances I found myself in — again — what I needed more than anything was information. And to do that, in such a large field, with mist thick enough to block anything outside a fifty-feet radius, the only reliable method to do was establishing a detection ward of my own.

A detection ward, under normal circumstances, was not exactly challenging, especially when done from an already secured base. Unfortunately, the situation was far from normal.

Most detection wards worked in the same principle, sending tightly-controlled strings of mana outside to analyze the surroundings and communicating with the main array. Unfortunately, the overwhelmingly-strong detection ward that covered the sky not only could detect anyone not actively suppressing their mana — or hiding behind a set of concealment wards of their own — but also they could detect the subtle mana from the detection wards.

They were ways to prevent that, based on the way the opposing ward was working. Unfortunately, the current ward I was facing was simply too strong, too over-compassing for those tricks to be viable.

Luckily, not all detection wards relied on sending out mana. Some of the more obscure wards worked passively. They weren’t used much because their detection capabilities were significantly lower. They were usually placed in distant locations, as some kind of outer detection, and only then, passive structures were used because their mana consumption was much lower. They were also significantly worse in distinguishing the nature of different mana sources.

Luckily, their weaknesses didn’t make them completely useless against the circumstances. Not with the potential of the people I was facing against. Especially since I didn’t expect them to waste any effort trying to stay concealed.Finnd new chapters at novelhall.com

Why should they, when they had conveniently surrounded the area with an impenetrable ward and a near-omniscient detection ward? These were not exactly the critical setup phase of a stealthy operation.

The moment I established the ward, I was able to detect two sources of mana that were passing dangerously close to my shelter, confirming my guess.

The way they radiated power passively suggested that they were strong, I tensed for a moment, thinking that my concealment wards were not enough to block their detection capabilities.

Luckily, their route was incidental, and they had disappeared from my detection field after a few seconds. However, that left me another question.

The passive detection ward only covered a minuscule portion of the mountain, barely a sliver, due to its inherent disadvantages — and the constant glow of the defensive ward that surrounded the mountain, blanketing out the detection capabilities of the ward due to the constant magical glow it created, hardly helped.

Immediately detecting two opponents, strong enough to give me significant trouble, was not a good indicator of the number of enemies around. So, either I was unlucky, or there were far more enemies than I had been expecting.

Another flash power appeared from a different direction, tangentially passing my base before disappearing from the range. And then, from another direction, came yet another energy signature, this time two of them.

There were more enemies than I had been expecting.

Much more.

“Fuck it,” I murmured.

I had one day to rest. Just one fucking day, since I had to defend two different cities simultaneously against a coordinated undead attack — and almost killing myself in the process.

There was one positive thing, one little silver lining.

With their incredible investment and the number of warriors they had deployed was completely unnecessary to capture a dragon. The dragon actually being much stronger was not a likely possibility.

That might have explained the reason for the wards they had established, but the weird movement pattern of my opponents didn’t make sense from the perspective of people trying to systemically search for one extremely strong target.

No, they had a different reason.

Of course, that raised an important follow-up question, whether the headmistress was aware of that detail and used the situation to send me to a dangerous situation, a remote execution.

Though, a bit of thinking told me that it was unlikely. I had no reason to think the headmistress could track me — if she could, I wouldn’t have been able to sneak into her bedroom to peek at her — and my arrival to the mountain was too fast for her to rely on for me to be locked inside.

Not to mention, if she wanted to kill me, she had much more efficient ways of setting up a sure-fire ambush.

[Level: 31 Experience: 493210 / 496000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 63

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6324 / 6324 Mana: 5902 / 7750 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

Expert Craft [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (1/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia - Level 22/26]

[Helga - Level 22/26]