Circe drew the robe of hot air closer to her body, since she could not be overtly using her powers she had to maintain a proper body temperature when you positioned yourself fifty miles above the ground—It tends to be cold up here.
This was the only type of outpost she could find where the defenses were not so powerful, thereby making it relatively easy for her to be able to make discrete observations.
She had been observing this Guardsman post of the Boreas Family for weeks which was situated by the side of a mountain, where it had been carved out, brick by brick by mortal hands over a span of millennia. Boreas was certainly fond of gestures like these as most of his temples were created using these methods.
After all the time she had spent freezing her tits off, she had deduced her preferred target from the lot. Of the 2,350 Guardsmen on this mountain post, ninety-five percent of them were not suitable due to various factors, chief among them was because they were too weak, and so they could not venture far from the outpost.
This mountain post was surrounded by jungles filled with terrible beasts, some of them were at the Third Circle, and since the border to the great battlefield was a few thousand miles to the south, there were usually dangers that came from Demons or Mages slipping through the defenses.
If her plans were to work she would need someone important enough that when apprehended would be taken straight to the head of a stronghold, but they should also be powerful enough to bear the full might of a Mind Suppression Rune crafted with the powers of an Earth god.
These criteria reduced her selection to only Dominators at the Third Great Circle, that was her limit, even though with the aid of Archimedes she might be able to battle an Earth god, it was obvious that ambushing an Earth god was still a very dangerous affair and any missing Earth god would be quickly investigated.
It was also important to note that to place the Mind Suppression Rune on the target would take weeks at the least, and she could not ensure with a hundred percent certainty that she could keep an Earth god imprisoned for that long while manipulating his consciousness and spirit.
Their powerful immortal bodies reduced the chance of subduing them for an extended period, you could only overwhelm them with great power.
To imprison an Earth god was incredibly difficult and for someone of her power levels, nearly impossible, there would be too many unknown factors she would not be able to control.
The target she ended up selecting was a Guardsman at the Pyre Lord level of the Third Great Circle.
With his bloodline potential, he would never exceed this level for the rest of his life, but it was already commendable for a Guardsman to reach this level, most of them would never exceed the First Great Circle.
A Guardsman at this power level was not always a good thing because it meant that he was saddled with a great amount of responsibility, and that made him move around a lot. It was not strange for him to be missing at his base for months at a time. He was the perfect target.
The trap was not difficult to set up, she had overheard that his Guardsman would be escorting a shipment of goods to the border of the continent. This trip would take three years, which should give Circe enough time to plan out her activity.
With Archimedes keeping an eye on the Guardsman, Circe went along the route and chose a spot for the ambush and for the next two hours, she was focused on creating various Runes, including Rune of Silence, Sleep, Drain, and so many others.
"Your work is certainly impressive, but you are wasting a lot of resources, and most importantly, you are wasting time."
The voice came so suddenly inside her head that Circe yelped aloud, chills crawling down her spine.
She looked around and could not find anyone anywhere close to her position before pushing her Spirit into her Territory. After scouring every inch of her Territory she found nothing out of place.
Not satisfied, Circe checked her surroundings once more, she flew into the skies looking around for miles, and entered deep into the ground, after a while she burst out from the ground with a perplexed expression.
Circe brought out her dozen Spatial Artifacts and went through the thousands of items placed inside of them, and she hastily destroyed any of them that seemed even a bit suspicious.
Not comfortable with the measures she had taken, she began searching her Territory once more,
"Am I going insane? Perhaps I should slow down a bit, the stress I'm under is making me hear voices," she muttered to herself, before abruptly shooting into the skies and looking around, hoping she would spot somebody.
"You know, I expected you to be more thorough. I mean you have searched your surroundings, your storage treasure, and your Territory, but did it ever occur to you to search your own body?"
Circe froze in place, and that voice came again, speaking softly with a tone of amusement, 'Why does it sound so familiar? Also, why the fuck did I not search my body?'
Her heart began to race because she knew that the first thing she was supposed to investigate was her body, but somehow she had forgotten to do this. If this voice had not mentioned it, she would never have thought about it.
Now that she had eliminated other sources of suspicion, she could easily trace the sound of the voice that was emerging from her left palm.
Slowly turning her she saw there was nothing on her palm, but not for long as a silver line like a tattoo began to emerge from beneath her skin. That line began to arrange itself until it formed a tattoo of a lidless silver eye that twisted itself until it was focused on her.
This sight was not the strangest thing that Circe had witnessed, but there was something distinctly odd about it, and she did not take long to figure out that it was because she could not detect anything from it. Not Aether or any form of energy.
In fact, she could not even "see" it with her conventional eyesight, and the only reason she could notice it was because the silver eye was letting her, it was an odd sensation, as if her eyesight had been hijacked, because if she looked away she would begin to forget the shape of the eye.
The sensation was not dissimilar to what she had just previously felt when she forgot to investigate her body.
