It was almost dawn when I left Avaida’s room, leaving her exhausted in her bed, her arm wrapped around Carla, who had joined us later in the night, only to collapse earlier than Aviada, her experience and her lack of endurance showing themselves.
Aviada was rather competitive, after all.
She had a faint smile on her face as I closed the door, leaving her alone, not that it was a shocking thing. After all, not only she had experienced a spectacularly enjoyable evening, but also she had managed to gain four levels in one evening, which was a rather considerable boost to her strength, helping her to progress her swordsmanship potential significantly.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of sleeping for half a day, as I still had two girls to visit, Marianne and Titania, not to mention I still wanted to go and check up with Helga and Cornelia just in case.
Infiltrating the faculty to discover their mission location hadn’t been particularly difficult. A simple disguise, assisted by a couple of illusion spells, and the domineering attitude of a commander, I was able to learn their location as well as some of the latest reports about the monster horde movements. Luckily, it turned out that they were in the same location, reducing my travel obligations by one, which, at this point, I appreciated quite a bit.
However, not all was well, because according to the reports, Titania had just managed to destroy a horde while they had discovered a second horde that was traveling toward her location. It didn’t take a genius to understand their plan, trying to tire her before ambushing. However, despite being such a transparent ploy, it was likely to work due to her direct approach to combat.
With the air elemental mount, it didn’t take long for me to arrive at the city Titania was posted in. When I came near the town, the sun was just rising, but it wasn’t the only bright thing on the horizon. Occasional bursts of bright explosions littered the horizon as well, familiar applications of light magic.
The reason for it got clear the closer to the walls. The town was surrounded by a monster horde, one that was several times bigger than the one I had to deal with. Still, it wasn’t enough to take down Titania when she had the advantage of a well-fortified location, not even if she had already had handled a previous horde.
As I got even closer to get a better idea about the composition of the horde, however, I realized the enemies using a smarter approach than I had expected. The horde that was facing the city carried a mixture of elemental natures, but a great number of them were bulky animals, thick-hide elephants and rock rhinos in particular. I wasn’t able to detect the leading monster, but the skewed nature of the horde suggested that it was planned. Very few of those animals had the ability to climb over the walls or take down the defenders, which made their initial assault less dangerous, but also, meant that exterminating them required a great deal of magical power.
It wasn’t like ignoring them an option as well. Ultimately, those monsters could breach city walls —despite all the enchantments that protected it— in less than half a day, forcing the defenders to expand their full capabilities.
They were trying to tire Titania rather than trying to take her down, which meant they had already planned a tertiary assault to take her down, and just waiting until she was exhausted. A nice tactic, strong in its simplicity, because even if Titania noticed that, there was little she could do against it. She couldn’t just abandon the town to her fate, as without her, there was no chance for the defenses to hold, and while calling reinforcements was an option, considering the distance between the town and the school, it would have been too late for the reinforcements to arrive.
Curious about a possible undead assault, I used biomancy to check the immediate surroundings of the town, only to find no sign of an undead presence. Unfortunately, that was far from conclusive. There was a limit to my biomancy detection, especially since I want to stay hidden, meaning I had to limit the impact. Also, the defensive wards of the town were fully activated, interfering with my spell greatly. If there were any undead inside the town, it would have been hard to detect.
Since there was no immediate follow-up assault waiting for the defenders, I was tempted to rush forward, a dagger in hand, calling infernos with every breath, but that would make our mysterious opponents abandon the last leg of their plans. Plans that I was yet to discover.
However, I couldn’t just slip inside the town easily this time. While the defenses might be weaker than Silver Spires, it was rather hard to sneak into a city when the walls were filled with citizen-militia, armed with bows, javelins, and the occasional siege weapons, while the wards were currently at full activation.
Not impossible, though. Just hard.
A simple earth spell pushed me fifty feet below the ground, and I started traversing toward the city —and destroying the tunnel behind me, as there was no need to alert my opponents— slowly and steadily, making no crack.
The walls were not the only protection of the city, of course, the defensive wards spread below the city as well, to protect it from the underground threats of giant worms and other underground threats. Luckily, while those defenses were strong, they were not exactly elegantly crafted, allowing me to bypass them after a minute of fiddling —and that was only because those wards were in full alert state, forcing me to expand more focus than necessary, mostly not to alert any mage that might be observing the performance of the wards.
[+1 Arcana]
The resulting improvement was rather welcome, confirming that the skill improvements were still not affected by the snag I had been dealing with. I didn’t have a whole lot of skills to maximize at this point, but still, every single bit counted on the road to supremacy.
A couple of minutes later, I burst out in one of the basements after using biomancy to make sure it was empty. Most citizens were on the walls, doing their best against the horde, and the people with limited combat capabilities were in the emergency shelters, leaving most buildings empty.
The streets were similarly empty, allowing me to walk toward Titania with no issues.
As I moved closer to her, I was simultaneously using my biomancy to detect any possible undead presence. A hidden assault from inside the walls just as the defenders were on the peak of the exhaustion would have given the best result, but surprisingly, I could detect no undead presence.
However, they wouldn’t waste a second monster horde to exhaust Titania if they didn’t have any ulterior motive. The question was, what was their aim. Maybe they were trying to force me to come out, as after killing several death knights of Zokras the Eternal, I likely earned an important position in their list of people to get rid of. People who became liches were not usually known for their saint-like patience and forgiveness, and I doubted that after staying in that state long enough to be titled Eternal, Zokras’ mentality had developed in a positive direction.
The lack of undead was not a proof against their involvement either, as they clearly have more than one spy in the faculty, and the recent betrayal of the ranger I had watched was another evidence of their long reach. It was hard to guess their exact plan this time without knowing the full extent of their tools.
However, as I walked closer, I started to feel the familiar presence of chaotic mana, giving me a familiar feeling, coming from a nearby building, even stronger than the one carried by the ranger that had been tragically killed by the monsters he had been summoning. I assumed that it was stronger because they wanted it to be effective through the walls.
As I paid attention, I could feel several subtle alert wards layered on every door and window of the building, even the ceiling, suggesting that they would be able to react if that was discovered. The wards they used were significantly more complicated than ones around the town, revealing the presence of at least one master arcanist among them.
Interestingly, the wards themselves were quite unfamiliar, most of them not matching anything I had discovered in the library. It might be a creative innovation, like Helga creating completely new work immediately, but that didn’t seem to be the case. The more I examined it, the more structured it felt. It was hard to pinpoint the exact reason, but I could feel my brain itch, like a painter taking the first glance at a counterfeit painting.
“Hmm,” I murmured even as I continued to examine the structure. A minute later, I realized the exact reason for my suspicions. While the individual nodes were built to perfection, all the flaws were concentrated on the merger points, suggesting that the mage failed to perfectly assess the environmental details of the building perfectly. It wasn’t a huge flaw by any means, but compared to the perfection of the individual pieces, it was very noticeable.
The problem came from my utter inability to recognize the theoretical basis of the nodes. It didn’t resemble anything I had seen in the library, or around the school even the slightest bit. And it wasn’t just a slight difference. Some of the fundamental mana principles were completely different, to a level that I wasn’t able to deduce their implications with a glance. I actually had to sit down and work for hours to decipher the structure if I wanted to slip inside those wards.
Considering my stats, it was rather impressive.
Moreover, none of the defensive wards in the necromancer base had anything that matched it, suggesting that whoever constructed it might not be directly related to Zokras and his ilk. After all, if they had access to better defensive structures, they would have used them in their base, at least to defend their most sensitive locations. If their ritual to destroy the dragon had relied on those arcana wards, I doubted that I could have broken them with the ease I had displayed.
I felt that I finally had the tail of the mysterious third party that gifted the necromancers with their monster hordes.
Since it was such a big issue, I decided to infiltrate the location. I moved a bit, sinking underground as I did so, a smile on my lips. While the defensive wards they had established were spectacular, it seemed that they stopped after touching the city’s defensive structure, relying on it to defend the basement. A defense that I had bypassed with absolutely no challenge earlier.
I was more than willing to abuse their oversight…
[Level: 30 Experience: 447193 / 465000
Strength: 41 Charisma: 53
Precision: 35 Perception: 37
Agility: 35 Manipulation: 40
Speed: 34 Intelligence: 44
Endurance: 34 Wisdom: 46
HP: 5370 / 5370 Mana: 3123 / 6600 ]
SKILLS
Master Melee [100/100]
Master Tantric [100/100]
Master Biomancy [100/100]
Master Elemental [100/100]
Master Subterfuge [97/100]
Master Arcana [95/100]
Expert Speech [70/75]
Advanced Craft [50/50]
PERKS
Mana Regeneration
Skill Share
Empowerment (1/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Cornelia - Level 21/25]
[Helga - Level 17/21]
