NOVEL NEXT 226. What Lies Beyond the Lake
He reached the place Mickie had stopped and pointed before the snow filled in the footprints they'd left behind. He set off down the hill toward the lake, heading past a snow-laden evergreen and a series of lumps in the snow that hid what, in summer, were leafy bushes, or so his mana senses told him. Down the slope, and around the corner, following a path he sensed beneath the snow. He hovered over the snow, using his fourth-Tier flying ability to keep from disturbing the snow, though he didn't want to fly high enough that someone else might spot him or notice the mana expenditure. He'd gone back to using his suppressed Tier-4 core and closing off his trash star down to its minimum burn. The trash star was more powerful, but he was also more used to using it. If he relied on it all the time, he'd forget how to use his original core. He had to swap between both, or else he'd use the ability to use both.
Flying was surprisingly easy, but then, he'd kinda been practicing it, moving around the void. He emitted mana, and moved in the direction opposite of the mana he emitted, just like moving in the void, except there was gravity here. On one hand, he had to fight gravity; on the other hand, gravity kept him stabilized, and was something to right himself against. It was just that at Tier 4, it was very sustainable to emit that much mana constantly, because a tiny iota of his Tier 4 mana was enough to support his body. Still, better to conserve mana than to not conserve mana, so overall, he preferred to walk. It was just that he didn't want to leave footprints in this particular case.
Around the corner, through the forest and out of sight through the trees, he dropped back to the ground and took off at a run. The other thing about flying was that he wasn't yet confident enough to fly quickly; he had to take it slow, and pay close attention to his mana regulation and his surroundings. Running, on the other hand, was running. He'd been doing it for… for a long time, and maybe not that much in his past life, but he'd understood the concept since way, way long ago. He could run without thinking, and that was what mattered.
It was a surprisingly long run through the forest to reach the lake. He drew to a halt beside it, gazing out over the snow-edged ice. The lake was quiet at this time of year. The fish swam slowly at the lake's bottom, half-hibernating, and a few small creatures lurked near the lake's edge, looking for water. There was nothing worth noting, nothing magical or exciting, but the lake was rather idyllic; it wasn't a huge lake, but it was large enough. Tall trees bordered the far side, all of them lined in snow, and the entire scene was quiet, cold, and had that crisp fresh snow scent. He walked along the edge, looking for that tree Mickie had talked about: the pale white tree with no bark, shaped like a V.
It didn't take long. The tree was, as Mickie had said, very obvious. It was bright white, without a scrap of bark, and very dead; only a few branches remained, all of them thick and in line with the tree in general. Rhys paused, looking toward the tree from the lake. Mickie said he was ice fishing when he saw them, so he would be about here. If he was looking at the tree, and they came from the inside of the tree toward the lake, then… this way.
He took out a hoop of material from the trash star and put a void opening inside of it, then buried it under the snow. That way, he could come back here immediately and retry, if the direction he took was wrong and he didn't find anything at the end of this direction.
Through the forest. On his first vector, he came up against a tall cliff. He climbed to the top of the cliff, but still found nothing. No signs of struggle, no energy. He left a loop at the clifftop, then teleported back to the starting point. This time, he went out into the center of the lake, looking at the ice around him. Most of it was smooth, all the way down as far as he could see, or as far as his mana senses could perceive, but there were a few places where the ice had circles carved in it. From the first set of circles he found, he couldn't see the V-shaped tree. From the second, he could barely see it, but couldn't see anything lake-side of the tree. From the third, finally, there was a large wedge of land visible lake-side of the V-shaped tree from where he stood by the ice-fishing circles carved in the ice. He walked to the edge of the lake and put another loop under the snow, then set off again.
The loops were easy to make, and convenient, but even where he stood now, he could sense them deteriorating. They wouldn't last long. They were disposables, and that was why he was able to make them so easily; they were meant to be thrown away, so they aligned with his path. However, they were disposables, and they were shoddily made, so they would decay before long. The loop would snap, or the somewhat tenuous connection to the void would give out, and they would be nothing bit bits of litter under the snow. If he was lucky, maybe one would last for some time, but most of them would be gone before the week was out.
Past the V-shaped tree again, and off into the forest. He quickly diverged from his original, naïve path, taking a more shallow angle relative to the lake. He reached the cliff once more, but this time, there was a fresh rent in the cliff face. A cut six feet wide and as tall as the cliff split the rocky face in two, as if a massive sword had sliced down from above and cut it open. He leaped up the cliff face and to the top of the cliff once more.
A massive battlefield spread before him. Trees lay in ruin, shattered and scattered all around the field. Sword rents tore up the earth and the trees alike. Even with thick snow blanketing the damage, it was still obvious that a battle had taken place; the cuts were too deep for the snow to fill in or hide completely.
Rhys extended his mana to be sure, and immediately felt the familiar aura of Bast's mana. This was the place.
He lowered himself to a sit and immersed himself in studying the mana around him. This mana was thrown away. It was excess in the battle, unwanted and unneeded. They tossed it away thoughtlessly, and now the remains are smeared all over this once-pristine place like litter smeared along the side of an interstate cut through what was once an old-growth forest. This mana aligns with my path.
He repeated that over and over, half-hypnotizing himself with the words, and sunk into a trance. The deeper he sank into the trance, the more smeared, leftover mana he could see in the battlefield. Bast's was obvious to him; he knew what Bast's aura felt like, so he could easily track his friend's motions. He needed to determine who the other people in the conflict were, though, if he was going to understand what had happened in this fight.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
One of the auras was vaguely familiar. After a short time, he decided that one belonged to Luc Sion, the Sword Saint. He didn't recognize the remaining aura, if it's one aura. It might have been one, or it might have been two. It changed at times, becoming strongly different here and there, but merging back together into one aura at other places. It was an exceedingly strange aura. Rhys couldn't say for sure that it was one aura, or for certain that it was two. Either could've been true, or there could've been an even stranger explanation.
He touched his stomach. Like me. He had two cores, and if he swapped between them in battle, it would probably look something like this afterward. But he didn't know if that was what was happening, or if something else, something equally abnormal, had occurred—either in the course of battle, or in the opponent's cultivation.
If it's one person, it's one strange, but extremely powerful person, since that person was able to counter both the Sword Saint and Bast single-handedly. If it's two, then they brought the same number of people to the battle. That intuitively makes more sense, but mages are weird. The way power scales means that one Tier 4 can easily crush two Tier 3s, and so on. A Tier… what, 7? Luc is 6? Or 5? Well… either way, a Tier 7 would be so powerful that Bast's power is irrelevant. A Tier 6 would make Bast's presence almost irrelevant, but if he was evenly matched by Luc, perhaps Bast could play a part. No… even then… I think what makes most sense is that there were two opponents.
I'll go ahead with the assumption that there were two opponents, but keep in mind that it could be a singular strange opponent.
He rose, keeping his eyes shut and navigating solely with his mana senses. As sensitive as his mana senses were, it wasn't a difficult task; he could still 'see' the contour of the ground and the shape of the snow thanks to the faint mana imbued in everything, including the air. If anything, the struggle was in how much he could see… but while he could see the natural world, he could also sense the mana more clearly like this.
From where he'd sat, he could already sense the mana smeared all across the battlefield, but getting closer to the source helped him see the details of the mana left behind from the fight. The lines stood out in his senses like neon lights against a backlit landscape, bright as the sun. One stretched in front of him, running parallel to a sword rent in the ground, full of the aura he'd identified as the Sword Saint's. It was a bright white, almost painfully pure. He lifted his hand to it, watching how the light played over his palm. Just like visible light, mana streaks emitted weaker mana auras, so that his dim, background-level hand with its bright veins of neon blue-green was lit yet brighter by the streak.
Experimentally, he waved his hand around. A thin aura followed behind it, but it quickly dissipated. If someone came by in an hour, they might've been able to detect his presence, but two, three hours later, there would be no residue. The mana would be washed away with the wind, or absorbed back into the world. The fact that these streaks had lasted so long—not just days, but weeks or months—spoke to how brutal a battle it had been. The Sword Saint, Bast, and whoever else was involved in the conflict had put their all into their blows, and seriously fought with their lives on the line.
About what I expected. If the Sword Saint was mentally injured that badly, he wasn't going to have been in a light battle that he could easily handle. What he didn't know, was whether the mental incapacitation was a direct result of this battle, or if the Sword Saint had been injured here, retreated, and then someone else had taken advantage of his weakness to put some kind of spell on him.
It didn't answer why the northern region's citizens were acting weird about someone looking into the Sword Saint, either… unless the other half of the conflict was a member of the northern region, but if that was the case, it seemed like an extremely dangerous diplomatic situation, for the member of another region to seriously harm the Sword Saint… And I might've just unlocked why they're acting so weird about it. But who would it be? Or rather, who could it be? People at the Sword Saint's strength level weren't just walking around all willy-nilly. People at the Tier 5 and up level were running schools, acting as envoys, important people who were doing important things, not people who'd randomly come to the border to beat up the Sword Saint.
A clash at that level wasn't just something that happened, and perhaps more importantly, a clash at that level wasn't something that got covered up casually. There would've been lights and mana visible for miles; the entire town would've seen their fight, and everyone should be talking about it. Instead, no one was talking about it, and the few who were, were bullied into silence by the other people in town.
Rhys pinched his chin. He sat back down beside the sword rift, just thinking through it. It couldn't be someone at a low level. It was someone with a lot of strength and a lot of political power, who had the clout and the capability to take on the Sword Saint—and win?—at the very least, severely injure him. But on the other hand, they hadn't bragged about it, or rubbed it in the region's face that they'd beaten the Sword Saint, or, in the most severe case, invaded his region because they could beat the strongest member of the region, so why hold back? No, the only thing that made sense, was that the Sword Saint won the fight. Then it was logical that the northern region wasn't making a big fuss out of it, since it was humiliating—at the very least to whoever had lost, and since that person was strong enough to go toe-to-toe with the Sword Saint, that was basically all it needed to be. Someone at that strength level could cause big trouble for anyone who wanted to spread rumors. It made sense that they'd be afraid of that person's wrath.
But they didn't seem scared. They seemed more… protective. As if they were trying to prevent harm to someone. Harm to that person's reputation? Physical harm?
He pinched his chin. If they lost the fight, and the Sword Saint won, and the Sword Saint was injured that badly for winning… It's very possible the other party either didn't survive, or came away crippled.
And if it was someone at the Sword Saint's level who was crippled, that could be a significant blow to the northern region's battle power. Especially if they were even more severely crippled than the Sword Saint, who'd been so injured someone was able to put him under some kind of mind control spell (probably Virgil, or someone aligned with him). If they were that badly crippled, then even someone as weak as Rhys posed a danger to them. Rhys raised his brows. Uh oh. I'm starting to feel like I maybe shouldn't have been so open about my interest in this whole mess.
In the near distance, he sensed mana signatures, right at the edge of his sensing range, and signatures rapidly approaching, at that. He swallowed. The sensation of uh oh was starting to reach its maximum.