Waking up after falling asleep from exhaustion, be it magically caused or not, was not a fun experience. Maybe I should consider redesigning my throne into some sort of lounger or maybe turn it into a straight-up bed, just so I could rest comfortably after pushing my body beyond what was reasonable and falling asleep afterwards.
Now, I had to deal with a body that was sore all over, even in places where I wouldn’t think I ever would be sore and I could easily feel that my seated position was partially to blame for that. Or rather, it was to blame for it being as bad as it was, due to the position adding a physical soreness to the magically induced soreness, the two sensations combining into one that made me feel incredibly grumpy. To make matters worse, just considering using my Blood Magic to soothe the physical sensation made me cringe and I realised I would have to be somewhat careful with my magic. At the moment, it was simply strained and sore but if I forced things, I might actually manage to cause damage to some fundamental part of me. Not something I wanted to risk and, luckily, there was no emergency forcing me to exert myself. Well, not unless the others were readily sleeping through that emergency, as Silva and Luna did on the other side of the room.
The two of them were curled up together on one of our sleeping mats, looking quite comfortable and incredibly adorable, so I had no problem with taking my time, especially as I could hear some faint sounds that indicated Lia and Alex were doing something. What, I had no idea but I could hear Lia talking, an occasional chitter from Alex and the clinking of glass, making me think they were doing some sort of experiment.
Whatever the case, there was no indication that I needed to worry, so I took my time, slowly stretching out my limbs to get rid of the tightness before rising from my throne and continuing to get my body back into working order. At the same time, I opened up the system and quickly checked my notifications, the earlier grin returning with full force as I looked over the numerous messages telling me I had killed a Shattered. Sure, the vast majority of those notifications spoke of kills too low in level to give me EXP but not all of them were. And even if I hadn’t received any EXP, just knowing that I could weave my magic into natural phenomena was incredible. So many things I might be able to do with that, not just in regard to destructive magic but also for beneficial magic. The EXP were just gravy, though very tasty gravy, as it was enough to get me a level, so I was now level ninety-three. Soon, I could attempt to cross the next divide, a challenge I was looking forward to.
Additionally, the Rune Masteries involved in the grand runic formation had all gone up by a point or three, Ice Rune Mastery getting to sixty-two, meaning I could glean a new rune from the Astral River, Darkness Rune Mastery got to sixty-one, Blood Rune Mastery got to forty-seven and last, and amusingly least, Water Rune Mastery reached thirty, opening up a new rune, too. And it wasn’t just the Rune Masteries that received a boost. Astral Meditation got one, too, two points, pushing it to fifty-six, while Blood Magic and Enchanting received a point each, bringing them to fifty-one and twenty-nine respectively. All in all, an excellent harvest, even if I had yet to find out just how successful the culling of Shattered was.
Depending on that, we might be able to explore the town, especially if it was now empty of enemies and find out what caused it to be as different from the rest as it was, why there were so many Shattered and not a single Undead in sight. Though the lack of Undead might have to do with the sheer number of Shattered, they might have eaten the bodies or something like that. Not a pleasant thing to consider, but a plausible one.
After getting some food into my body, I realised I was still tired and decided to curl up with my dear daughter and Silva. It didn’t take long for me to fall back asleep, though compared to sleeping on my throne, this was a lot more comfortable.
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When I woke next, my body was a lot better compared to earlier. After comparing notes with Lia and Luna, I realised that I had spent almost eighteen hours channelling power into the runic formation and afterwards, I had slept for about as long, if one discounted the short break I had taken to switch from my throne to Luna. After sleeping for that long, I was a little groggy but that faded soon and we could take a look at the town and find out just how successful my spellwork was.
Together, we set out to find out just how much damage my marathon spellcasting had caused and what we found was enough to make my eyes go wide. Even before we got close to the city, I could smell the results. There was an obvious scent of moisture in the air, indicating that the rain hadn’t been gone for all that long, but what stuck out to me a lot more were the magical scents in the air. There were the obvious ones, Ice, Water, Darkness, Blood, the types of magic I had used in my runic formation but the air wasn’t just filled with them. There was also Death, a whole lot of it, alongside a veritable smorgasbord of scents, diverse and intermixed to the point that I needed a moment to try making sense of them. Not that I had a whole lot of success, the scents were too continuous to try differentiating them all but all primary elements were present, with a whole lot of sub-elements mixed in.
When we saw the results of my spell, I couldn’t help but shake my head in disbelief. The town was no longer visible, instead, the entire area was filled with a dense fog, the clouds thick enough to make any visual identification impossible. When I stretched out my magical senses, I could feel the deadly magic I had wrought but due to the degree of separation between the original magic I had channelled into the clouds, I lacked any control over these mists. Instead, it almost felt as if the magic I had wrought had taken on a life of its own, somewhat similar to Wild Magic, but also different.
The part where the powerful magic lingered, even if it was divorced from its original user, was similar to Wild Magic. But where Wild Magic was just that, a wild, untamed expression of primal power, the mists here felt a lot more alive, for lack of a better word, alive and hungry. Maybe even malevolent but if there was malevolence, it wasn’t the malevolence of a sadist who took pleasure in the pain they inflicted but more along the lines of a ravenous beast, looking for its next meal.
The sheer volume of mist and the discomforting feeling it radiated made approaching the town an impossibility. Looking around, I noticed that the vegetation around town, even beyond the area covered in mist, was gone. The grass had died, trees looked withered and I couldn’t hear a single animal, nothing but the dead and quiet night. When we continued investigating, keeping a good distance to the mist just in case the hungry vapours decided that we made for a good snack, we came across a couple of rainwater runoffs and there, too, the vegetation was dead or dying.
Out of curiosity, I began to analyse the water in a few puddles and the small rivulets of water around town and noticed a strange difference. The mist seemed to be composed out of the remnants of my magic and while it was deadly, the original intent of wiping out live within the town remained. In the runoff water, the diverse magic I had noticed earlier, with that strong, almost overpowering, undertone of Death was the primary magical contaminant, making me wonder where it had come from. It wasn’t part of the magic I had wrought, that much was certain, but otherwise? I had no idea, not even speculation.
Maybe I would have to look into Death Runes once again, though I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that chore, just trying to delve into them in the Astral River had left me aching and in discomfort, trying again didn’t sound like a fun time.
But before I would consider that, there were other things I wanted to investigate, even if it very much looked like we had managed to seal off the town from anybody trying to learn more. Maybe there still were Shattered inside, somehow adapted to the mist, but unless I was interested in trying to subdue the deadly fog, there was little we could do. Well, little, other than continuing on our journey northwards.