Three hundred miles between Silver Spires and Mount Dread was quite a distance for most people. Luckily, I had long lost the right to be considered in the same category as most people. For me, it was nothing that I couldn’t handle in several minutes.

But I didn’t rush out immediately, and first visited the Hall of Crafting, to see my favorite blacksmith.

Unfortunately, not have some fun activities — as I lacked time — but ask her help to forge some new weapons. After the teleportation mishap, my arsenal was completely gone.

That plan went astray the moment I entered the hall of crafting, and realized, she wasn’t in her room. She was in the main area, working with the other blacksmiths to forge a set of weapons. No doubt emergency orders from the school. I couldn’t imagine her working together with the guilds under any other circumstance. Though, that didn’t prevent guild members from watching her angrily, jealousy mixing with entitlement.

Understandable, as even when she worked alone while the rest worked in teams, her weapons were clearly superior. And to add insult to injury, she was considerably faster in her production as well.

Pity that meant I couldn’t just pull her away. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I could have pulled her away, but that would mean invoking the headmistress’ authority.

I wouldn’t mind abusing that authority under better circumstances, but with the number of spies that clearly infected the school, it wouldn’t nice for Oeyne if these spies realized she had a connection to the headmistress through a mysterious agent.

Things were complicated enough in Silver Spires before stirring the pot pointlessly.

Instead, I sneaked down to use Oeyne’s forge room. With all the material accessible, it took me half an hour to forge a new sword, a dagger, half a dozen throwing knives designed to hold mana for my unique fighting style.

Also, most importantly, I crafted a large net, the kind that could capture a large magical creature without hurting it too much.

[-3419 Mana]

Not the highest quality of equipment, not in terms of the materials I had invested, and certainly not in terms of the time and energy I committed to them, but considering the time crunch I was facing, the best I could manage.

With the Eternals were already hunting for the dragon, the sooner I acted, the better. Failing my first mission from the headmistress, even a difficult one, wouldn’t go too well in my mission to gain her trust. And her trust was critical, because she was my only source of information about the truth of the System.

And if the worst happened, and my weapons proved insufficient, I could always come back to forge new weapons. The travel took much less time than the crafting required. With the decision made, I summoned another elemental ride.

[-942 Mana]

Riding the air elemental, the distance between the school and my destination melted into nothing in minutes, and soon, I was once again looking at the misty peak of Mount Dread.

That close to a possible Eternal presence, I dispelled my ride. I could have ridden it further, but it was better safe than sorry. The mount was fast, but both visually and magically, it was hardly the sneakiest method to travel. Walking, especially thanks to the constant rolling mists ready to hide my presence, was much easier.

My plan was simple. First, I would arrive at the safe house, reinforcing the wards I had set up there during my previous trip, maybe establishing a couple more wards to enhance the security, before starting a deadly game of tag with the Eternals.

I started walking. However, my plans hit a little, almost minuscule snag…

In the form of a huge, rotating ward that covered the whole mountain without a warning, locking me in the mountain.

The ward was strong, stronger than anything else I had felt in my life. The closest thing for them was the defensive wards of Silver Spires when they were raised in war mode according to the plans, but I wasn’t sure which one would win out.

“Not a great start,” I murmured even as I pulled my dagger reflexively, but somehow, I managed to keep myself from gathering my mana for an explosive spell.

The reason for it, the shape of the ward.

If I was the target, they wouldn’t have surrounded the whole mountain with the ward.

That didn’t mean there was no danger. Of course not. Like that was even possible with my luck.

No, it just meant I wasn’t under immediate danger.

“What to do?” I murmured to myself even as I forcibly suppressed my mana even below its natural condition. Not the most comfortable feeling, but it prevented my presence to be detected.

One silver lining about the strength of the ward was that I didn’t need to actively use my mana to check its nature. As it glowed stronger than the sun to my magical senses, it was easy to understand its main functions without delving into it with my mana.

And while that implied a certain sense of weakness, the reality wasn’t that kind. Huge walls of a castle were also something that could be seen from a distance, but that didn’t make it any less effective in their job. Not everything needed to be hidden to function properly.

A quick assessment was enough to reach a few important conclusions.

First, the Eternals were clearly responsible, because their magical runes had come from the same tradition as the wards I had sneaked through when I had taken down three of their members.

Unfortunately, the current ward definitely didn’t share the shoddy construction of the earlier defenses. Meaning, I was not only facing the Eternals, but also I was facing something stronger than a small, disposable team.

And considering their small, disposable team included two assassins and a mage over level thirty. I was able to take them down easily, but unfortunately, that was less about their battle potential than the excellent ambush I managed to pull while they were in their own base.

Hardly an achievement that could be copied easily.

Second, at least in the short term, for all intents and purposes, the ward was essentially unbreakable. Yes, its strength was comparable to full-powered wards of the school, and I had half a dozen ways to destroy or circumvent those wards.

Unfortunately, the current ward wasn’t as simple.

The wards of Silver Spire were like a finely crafted mechanical toy, with many tricky bits designed to allow passage, maintain the living condition of the students, and otherwise interact with its inhabitants. And that wide range of tasks was the thing that allowed me to find workarounds, allowing me to sneak through them.

Breaking a complicated toy was a simple affair.

This ward was might as well be a sheet of solid steel, designed to do one thing, and only one thing. To isolate an area. There was no trickery against a solid sheet of metal, only brute force.

Third, trying to break out was a horrible choice. Call me paranoid, but there was a small chance that the one responsible for the ward might decide to check it out if they noticed someone trying to break out of the wards. Which, considering my expectations about their powers, was hardly a good feeling.

Not only I was woefully under-equipped — how I regretted not stopping by Aviada’s patrol to borrow her sword once more — against any foe, but also I had no idea about the number and composition of the enemy.

My only reasonable guess was that they had more than three members — maybe a few, maybe several — and I expected every member to be over level thirty, with no reasonable guess about the upper limit.

Not exactly the easiest challenge to face. Ironically, not the worst either. At least, unlike my first battle against Zokras, I wasn’t ambushed by a superior foe supported by nearly a dozen undead machines of death.

The only positive thing was that my sixth senses weren’t tingling the same way I had felt in my last visit, so whatever mysterious being that had been watching me during my last visit had better things to do.

It wasn’t hard to think about what might be the distraction.

Seconds later, I felt another ward spreading out, its feelers spreading, forcing me to pull my mana even tighter into my veins. It was a detection ward, validating my earlier decision to dispel my mount.

The detection ward was merciless. If I delayed canceling the mount until the moment I had detected the first ward, the detection ward would have picked the mana remnants.

I wasn’t able to analyze the defensive ward, because, unlike the first ward, glowing with all the confidence of shining steel wall under the sun, it was a subtler ward. I could feel it spreading over the sky, impressive for a detection ward.

It was not impossible to analyze it, to understand its strengths and weaknesses more accurately, but to do that, I needed to stay under some wards of my own, blocking the feelers the detection ward was spreading. Ironically, the detection ward itself prevented me from erecting such a ward in its confines, while its defensive counterpart prevented me from escaping.

Luckily, I had already established a perfectly serviceable hideout, with wards designed to protect me from exactly those kinds of interference.

I started walking toward the hideout, my mind drifting toward the nature of the challenge I was facing.

The only positive thing about those wards was that they were established through some kind of artifact rather than cast directly. Technically, I didn’t have any evidence to support that conclusion, other than the power required to erect those wards.

Even in my current strength, setting up a ward to cover up the whole mountain in seconds was impossible to imagine, let alone setting up two of them in quick succession, with no rest in between. Considering the Eternals were supposed to fight against gods and win, I wasn’t ready to discount the possibility of them having someone as strong.

But sending someone as strong to such a mission was completely different. If I were to guess, based on not my own progress but the more usual progress I had seen on others, someone definitely needed to be over level hundred to instant-cast such a ward, with a stat growth to actually match their level.

Not exactly someone to send out to errands.

They likely had a unique item to cast such wards. It wasn’t the happiest conclusion either, showing the depths of their treasure vault, but certainly better than having an opponent that could snuff me with a flicker of their mana.

“Finally,” I murmured even as I finally stepped into my safe house, my own wards enough to block the feelers of the detection ward, allowing me to relax the tight hold I had on my own mana, which was always an extremely uncomfortable sensation. Like trying to hold my breath, tense and uncomfortable. Almost like an itch impossible to scratch.

However, despite the temptation to laze around for a moment, I was already setting up a ward of my own to properly analyze the opponent’s defensive preparations. Because one thing was clear.

The opponent set up a deadly trap, one that was suspiciously excessive, almost overkill, to be applied against a dragon that could be restrained by a few measly liches.

[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: 6942 / 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]