Just to be safe, Billy activated the Mana Shield function of the armor. It would only consume mana if someone attacks or approaches it, so it was fine. In such situations, it was better to waste some mana just in case instead of taking too many risks for small rewards.
"I used a lot of my mana to increase the speed of the armor, so I need to avoid fights," Billy thought and then grabbed his glaive. "That being said, I shouldn't have a problem in cutting down anything if I were to be found."
Billy began to run across the area since it had too many obstacles for him to use Flash. He didn't take with him the magic telescope of his armor, but he couldn't feel any mana of living beings around. The only downside of that was the fact that he couldn't see the undulations of mana caused when people or monsters walk around a place. Still, the grass of the area was wet, so it had rained recently, the telescope wouldn't help anyway. That was an unfortunate problem that made him sigh, but things like that do happen now and then. Relying on luck too often would be a problem in itself as well, after all.
Although the telescope wasn't there, Billy still used Mana Dominion to look for faint traces of demi-humans or monsters, but he didn't find any. Even though he used that spell dozens of times. That was just too weird... and he couldn't help but think about it.
"That is odd, in the other places, I would have found some signs in one way or the other…" Billy thought. "The inhabitants of this area couldn't have eliminated all monsters, right?"
That probably would mess with the environment, even if it made things a bit more peaceful… Nevertheless, Billy didn't find any traces of villages either. That was one of the downsides of doing searches at night. In any case, Billy decided to return to where he left his armor since the sun was rising and he could use both of them to help with his search.
"I guess I will need to compensate for returning late… Christina and Hector will be sad due to this," Billy thought and then sighed.
Billy found his armor on the same way he left and then he didn't waste time flying around the area while invisible. Since he was pretty high, he found signs of some villages. While some of them had been destroyed, it looked like the vast majority had been abandoned for one reason or the other.
"With so few monsters and signs of battles, I can't see why they would abandon their homes… Was it because they are carnivores?" Billy thought.
In any case, Billy still had two extra hours worth of fuel to keep searching, so he had to cover some ground. Fortunately, he didn't have to wait for two hours to find anything. He saw some high levels in an area ahead and when Billy went to check it, he found some demi-humans carrying the bodies of some monsters. They had many carts filled with those and Billy assumed that the monsters would be used for the meat. As for the demi-humans, they looked perfectly calm. Some of them had a lot of fur and tails, while others were a bit more humanoid and had wings. Aside from that, the only thing worth noticing was the fact that they used spears and bows as weapons.
"There is a path that they are following and since apparently, they use it pretty often, they left some physical and magical marks," Billy thought. "I won't have to follow them, I can find their base just by following the many traces they left behind."
Since it was early, it didn't take long for Billy to find their camp. It wasn't exactly hidden to begin with, but Billy could sense and see a magic barrier around the camp. It was massive, so Billy had to fly pretty high… Also, at first, Billy mistook some cloaked figures as ordinary guards, but once he used Appraisal on them he confirmed that they were skeletons.
"Found you…" Billy thought.
That camp was as big as the capital where Billy was living and he could see many tribes living there, but since the buildings were pretty simple, it was hard to call it even a village. Even if it had thousands of inhabitants. Nevertheless, Billy finally found the base of the necromancer, but it was a bit weirder than expected… That guy apparently convinced small tribes to join them.
Billy wished that he could watch that place for a while longer, but truly only felt a peaceful place inside that barrier. Unlike the camp in the middle of the continent, the atmosphere in that part was as peaceful as it could be… Still, despite the differences in those three camps, Billy was almost certain that all of them were being ruled by reincarnated individuals.
"Well now… I found their bases, now I need something to keep them under watch all the time," Billy thought. "Making a satellite using mana probably would be too much, also, I don't know if such an object would be able to gather mana from the planet while it is so far away."
In any case, Billy could think of what he could do when he returns home and so he did it. Unfortunately, all the ideas that he had were probably impossible due to their costs in mana. Since that was the problem, Billy wondered if he should learn Energy Manipulation and then give that ability to some items and make them transform sunlight into mana… That probably would solve the problem. Billy certainly couldn't make things that work solely on electricity, he didn't have that much knowledge, after all.
"To win against the enemy, I need to know them, but I suppose I will need to learn once again the limits of my power before trying to learn them…" Billy thought.
