It was clear they intended to scan the earth through some means. There were a few patches of ore nearby that seemed like they would be good cover against what a civilization tiered at the level Zenith judged them to be at. It moved its vessel behind one that was large enough to not just shield its body, but almost encompass it on its own, and disabled its energy projectors. Estimations still put it at reaching its biological charges before the adventurers did.

They were reaching the edge of the crater its previous vessel created. With all traces of its existence gone, Zenith could only hope that the little temporal energy utilized by the priest wouldn't be able to tell of Zenith's presence there, or that she wouldn't think to use it.

What Zenith appeared to have going for it was that they thought it had sunk into the ground. While this, at a surface level, seemed to be a disadvantage, the ground that should've been packed by impact from a large object was actually quite loose thanks to both Zenith's wyrm-body moving through the area and the extensive efforts of removing the last traces of its previous vessel, much of which was buried at shallow depths. Zenith didn't have the time now to try and make it look like a proper cave-in, but this could work if the humans' understanding of geology was less advanced than its own.

----------------------------------------

"Mara. Mara!" Her head snapped up from looking right at the creature underground, and she turned quickly to face Morval.

"Y-yes! Sorry. What is it?" She wasn't sure how long she spent staring at the creature instead of the adventurers she was supposed to keep an eye on. That could cause some serious problems. As it was, she would need to get used to the creature's presence.

"What are they doing?"

"It looks... like they want to check the ground of the crater for some kind of cave-in. They're climbing the edge of it now."

"Are there any signs that they might... well... be a threat?" asked Cade. "I mean, like, more than they kind of are now."

"No, not really. I think that most of their anxiety is from the creature watching them. It seems like something happened to alert them in the middle of the forest, and I think it was its doing."

"Its name is Zenith." said Itval. "It is alive. Learn to respect it."

"I will when it stops... looking at me like that. It's a distraction, and it feels... wrong. To not be the ghost that you trained me to be."

Mara was definitely an oddity among the six most important people of the Valley Rangers. Morval and Itval, the de facto decision makers, were in their late forties, Lan only a few years behind, and Cade and Kenneth were sixty-three and sixty-five respectively. In comparison, Mara's twenty-three made her the youngest of them.

Cade and Kenneth thought that the amount of resources hidden from the rest of the Guild, material and immaterial, in order to funnel it into Mara was not just a mistake, but a misuse of their trust. Itval always responded with a simple phrase.

It is the duty of the leader to make hard decisions for their people.

"All life is sacred, in its own way." said Lan, neither agreeing nor diagreeing. Morval nodded.

"If you asked it, it probably would." he said. "It can probably hear us right now, all things considered. It's extremely powerful, probably beyond even those adventurers I remember asking you about."

"Oh, yes, right, right... I'll ask it more formally later, I guess." Mara stuttered. The adventurers had reached the top of the crater's edge and the one she believed to be a geomancer was touching the rough, scorched rock at the height. "Looks like they're checking the stability now, if I had to guess." She looked at Cade. "Can you feel anything?"

"There is some notable magic in use, yes, but it's outside of my specialty and I'm too far to see exactly what." Cade considered. "It's not likely a threat to us."

"Good." said Morval. "Kenneth, can you handle any further discussions if they come back to us?"

Kenneth, who had largely made himself scarce the past day and a half, nodded. "We do have a significant amount of that worm's carcass to offer as trade of sorts if the noble demands a tithe. And he is definitely a noble, but I don't think of this region. Nonetheless, it would be best to concede to him."

Cade glared at Kenneth. She knew his reasoning, knew he was right on this mark. But she still felt a souring emotion about his... magical assistance. He looked back, not really any emotion on his face, but there has some hint of apology in the unspoken communication before they broke eye contact. Cade looking back towards the crater and Kenneth looking to Itval, who just looked at him plainly.

Clearly, the tension between these two would last a while. She didn't really blame Cade for her distrust; Kenneth had basically played her. The information he'd given her had been spread to the other two mages, including her own apprentice, and to try and sort through it or forbid its use would backfire spectacularly.

But this was how the Guild always grew. Outside forces mixing with the inside, creating change. Like Mara, a child who found herself one of only three survivors of a raided caravan, and the only one who chose to join the Guild.

Or Zenith. What change, exactly, would Zenith bring?

Guidance of some kind? The Guild had been wandering for much time, moving between valleys without a defined purpose other than surviving by harvesting the fauna and flora they came across, and selling what they didn't use to the settlements they passed by on their way.

Likely something similar was going through Morval's mind, too. It was closer to his purpose than hers. She was much more of a historian, or a teacher, than him.

She looked back at Mara, trying to dispel the awkward quiet. Whether they liked it or not, Kenneth and Cade would have to find other time to deal with their issues.

"And where is Zenith?"

"Where do you think? Underground. I know I don't have any Skills for it, but I swear... I can still see it looking at them. Even from as far away as it is. Even if they can tell they're being watched, or it didn't have the strange properties of being semi-immune to anti-detection Skills like you two say..." she turned to look back at the crater. "The raw distance it's at would put most detection Skills to shame, and I have a feeling it's only doing it to entertain me, specifically."

"You think Zenith knows your limits?" asked Cade, interested.

"No. Well, yes. But... I don't know. It's always been on the bare edge of my maximum for Solid Object Translucence unless it's here. It's amazingly fast, too... hard to keep up with. I don't think Morval could keep up." She looked at him apologetically. "Sorry to say it, but..."

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Nothing wrong with being honest. Do you mind if I test something right now, however?" Morval interrupted her.

"What is it?" asked Mara, and Kenneth sighed. Sometimes, he really did understand what others said about calling the Valley Rangers Guild savage or barbaric. Not that he agreed with them.

"Zenith, if you can hear us right now, do the thing where you... look at Mara. Just for a short moment."

Mara pre-emptively flinched, but it seemed like nothing came for a brief moment.

Then she felt every stealth and anti-detection Skill snap like twigs. It was nearly enough to make her scream.

"Please..." struggled its way out of her mouth. Zenith stopped focusing on her immediately.

This human had a confusing dynamic with the rest of them. It would like to investigate. If it were to protect its biologicals, it would need to know how to avoid harming them.

Zenith wasn't sure what likely traumatic event had likely changed her in the past, or perhaps if she was one of the exiles that the Valley Rangers supposedly took in. It could even be so bad that it would be considered rude to ask.

When she first entered Zenith's scanning range, even from the weakest of its sensors, she seemed to stand out like a beacon of energy. It was what led Zenith to stretch its spybots out in her direction so early.

Of all the humans who had hardly slept that first night, she never got a wink for two whole days. She hid almost still the whole time, only getting back up when Zenith began to focus more on the bloodlight creatures, and even then she just pulled the ambient energy from the air and disappeared from everyone's view once again.

She said it herself, in a slightly roundabout way. She wanted to be a ghost. She was trained to be invisible to every sense, even the mind itself. She wasn't observed fighting at all, and though she seemed quite capable of seeing Zenith through solid barriers, probably through 'Solid Object Translucence', likely a system-provided Skill, she never had the focus to look at Zenith before its incredibly risky plan to kill the worm that chased it.

The amount of energy that beamed from her, and the attention Morval and Itval gave to her, was what led him to label her a powerhouse. It still believed that was an accurate definition, in the loosest of ways. Her combat capabilities would likely remain undefined unless the humans provided the information themselves.

Speaking of humans. The adventurer party. They were descending the steep hill of the crater's interior edge now, apparently having determined that the ground was safe to walk on. None of the energy released was outside of the subspace radiation scale, almost exactly on top of the Physical Force frequency, with slight changes. Once it almost immediately impacted the ground, it functioned essentially as a seismic sensor system, the hands and feet of the one creating the pulses working to map the ground underneath through energy around three quarters between First and Second Set energies, currently labelled as Reconfiguring Force and Neutralizing Force respectively.

The spectrum of possible energy usages made Zenith curious as to what exactly the frequency meant. If it was being aided by the System in its function, that should at least be visible... right?

Well, not necessarily.

Either way, the energy only seemed to extend a certain distance before returning. Not enough to reach Zenith.

"No star... I think. Some good ore around, and a lot of loose dirt, though. There's some really weird stuff around there, though." the human pointed.

"Define 'weird'." Sigmund responded curtly.

"Look, I don't know how to explain it properly, alright? So don't be disappointed." Sigmund stared until he continued. "It's like mana was dumped everywhere. Kind of like a mana bomb, but, like... not. Mana bombs are usually spherical, right?"

The other human in robe-armor nodded.

"Well, this isn't. It's like someone stabbed a giant lance into the ground. But, well, I'm not really sure." Zenith hadn't thought about its use of subspatial radiation underground being traceable. In hindsight, it probably should've thought about this possibility sooner, even if it was for the wrong reasons. The priest woman being able to track its experimentation before should have been evidence enough that the subspace radiation was never truly spent, as far as this dimension was concerned.

However, they had tracked it down by the results, not the lingering energy. There was no way Zenith could really have covered that up anyway.

"How big of a lance are we talking?" asked the priest.

"Big. Like, further down than the crater's edges four times over." The human stretched its hands as far apart as it could, above and below its head.

"I don't mean to jump to conclusions..." started the other mage. Sigmund and the priest looked at him. "Do you think that maybe the Valley Rangers found some new spell to cause that? A lance of pure mana. It'd make sense to use it, too, because of the Blood Moon."

"Do I think the Valley Rangers found some new spell? No. At least, not to cause that." said the priest. Probably the longest sentence she'd said in the past hour. "But I do think they have something to do with it. Besides, they were all too jovial for just having passed through a Blood Moon. Either they were very well prepared, or experienced some kind of miraculous intervention." she added. Definitely the longest sentence, now.

"A miracle?" questioned Sigmund. "Your kind is predisposed to avoiding that kind of talk. What makes you believe it?"

"To my knowledge... there has been not a single Blight mage in this region for decades. I would have to check with the local priesthood to be sure, but-"

"Where does Blight come into this? Explain." Sigmund was positively irate at even the mention.

"I can't be certain, but the broken spells I told you about earlier... there may have been some Blight spells in there. I can't be certain, there's too much interference and - well, I'm just..." Sigmund's gaze pierced her own, and the masked priest was forced to look away. "I am not very good at specific investigation using time... not enough to untangle the mess that is there."

Blight.

Lan had mentioned it earlier. So, one of the energies released on Zenith's experimentation was Blight. Zenith had an idea of which, but was still near the point of believing it impossible, even within this strange System.

Green energy. In its previous dimension, the relative green superspatial dimension was devoid of naturally-developed life. Without shielding, proper cellular structure couldn't be maintained... but it could be mutated. The few species found within could be traced back to species within the Standard dimension as rapid mutations. They remained animate, but without the spark of intelligence found within their former brethren. They were one of the few superspatial species able to exist in Standard for a time greater than 50 seconds, but they still experienced rapid cellular decay without direct application of green energy.

...

Zenith's mindspace began to piece a puzzle together. It wasn't quite sure where the answer led, yet, but it was important, its programmed equivalent of instincts told it. Constructed AI were not entirely inorganic, being allowed to develop some kind of personality over time, but the basic structure which drove them always remained.

Application of green energy had never been tested for ability to reanimate corpses. Not only was that a baseless experiment, but potentially disastrous on a massive scale simply because of the involvement of superspatial energy in an uncontrollable state within Standard matter.

At least, to Zenith's knowledge. There was always information that wasn't shared. Like that destroyed star system.

"I think we may need to call for a Crusade." said Sigmund, after a long pause. Zenith culled some thought processes for more resources. "Or a witch hunt, or even a Guild investigation at the least. All of these oddities, they just don't make sense."

"Are you sure?" asked the man in shielded armor.

"I am sure. And deadly serious. We need some way to keep track of the Valley Rangers while we head back to report, however."

"A skilled Tracker could pick up their steps with ease. We could also try and sneak a lodestone in with them - there's some materials I can make one with. But I don't think that option would work."

"I know a few basic tracking spells as well, but I am also the most confident in a skilled Tracker. Even if the Adventure Management Organization or Society doesn't hire one, you and Gilbred likely have the connections to call on one."

"That might take too much time," countered Gilbred. "There are very few skilled Trackers operating in this region, and they are in high demand. They may be out in the field for days at a time. We can't risk it."

"Agreed. We'll have to get something snuck in with their things. Make a few lodestones, Jonas." Sigmund ordered. "Mearl, think of a good tracking spell to attach to them. We'll go for a quantity is quality approach."

"Sigmund." said the second, unnamed mage. "This could backfire. Greatly."

"Can't it always? Don't lose your sense of adventure, brother."

"Ah. I guess you're right."