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.

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.

Unless I had any solid evidence, I was willing to operate under the assumption that it was my own luck that forced the circumstances. Considering everything that happened, the current circumstances weren’t exactly unbelievable.

I needed to act, however. The Eternals were clearly going to move around a lot — whether they were looking for something, or for other purposes — and hiding in one location, hoping to stay undiscovered was not the safest strategy.

Not with my luck.

However, I couldn’t just leave my hiding spot, hoping to stay concealed. I needed to find a way to move around without being detected.

Suppressing my mana continuously was not sustainable for hours, not because of the discomfort it would create — and it would be annoying — but because if I faced any danger, I would either have to rely only on my physical combat abilities to handle it, or I would reveal my position.

Not a good solution, since my whole melee fighting abilities were based on strategic discharges of mana to deliver explosive damage. Facing against a strong enemy without that trick was certainly not something I wanted unless I had no other option.

“Maybe an old trick would help,” I murmured even as I stretched my mana directly on the ground, carefully creating a tunnel while making sure it was still under the concealment ward.

It took almost a minute for me to hit the glowing defensive ward, but that was not surprising. As much as I would have loved for them to forget covering the bottom of it, it wasn’t exactly shocking.

Breaking through the ward was not an option, but luckily, it wasn’t the reason I had come here. I was there to check one important thing, that whether the constant glow of the ward interfered only with my own wards, or interfered with their own as well.

And much to my happiness, I discovered that it actually did.

Maybe they didn’t even think someone was crazy enough to set their presence so near to their wards. It wouldn’t be the first time I abused a clear design mistake of the defensive wards.

“Finally something for my benefit,” I thought even as I started creating a complicated web of tunnels — not neglecting to add small explosives, false turns, and many other tricks to make sure those tunnels wouldn’t be tracked easily if they were discovered. However, unlike the last time I had pulled that trick in the undead base, I didn’t cover every inch of the tunnel with explosive runes.

This time, it was about staying hidden and hiding my retreat, not leaving a destructive gift while I retreated.

Tactics needed to adapt when total retreat was not an option.

Of course, I wasn’t just establishing those tunnels to escape. No, I was adding some passive detection wards, spread about a couple hundred feet away from each other, giving me a better view of what was going on. The radiating presence of the surrounding ward reduced their effectiveness, but luckily, not completely prevent it.

Unfortunately, a more complete view didn’t immediately solve my problem, for one important reason.

The more I could detect, the more confused I got.

First, closer to the peak of the mountain, there were more enemies running around — and flying around — to a point that I had to update my estimations upward. Several dozen enemies were a certainty, and maybe there were even in low hundreds.

Hundreds of level-thirty and above combatants were not something that was easy to handle.

The second confusing thing, was that they were fighting against each other, sometimes suddenly starting to fight after traveling together for a while, for no direct apparent reason or rhyme. Though whenever they started fighting, it started with a weird flare of magic from at least one of the parties.

However, the most interesting thing was the total lack of skill they were displaying. Of course, it was hard to assess such a thing accurately from the limited perspective of a passive detection ward, but every single spell they used was simple, almost as bad as my first casting attempts. Pure telekinetic power waves, fireballs, and flying pieces of rocks.

The only thing that separated them was the huge power they were putting behind the spells, turning every attempt into a deadly danger regardless of the lack of skill in its nature.

How interesting, I murmured. I was about to retreat back into my own hiding spot, when I felt another flare of magic on the edge of my recently-expanded field of detection. I was about to ignore it, as it was yet another incompetent flare of magic, but it was immediately followed by a familiar type of spell.

A familiar spell that a situational ally had used before in my presence.

An ally with a certain scaly skin condition.

[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]