Since I have a couple days until the bats return, I started to collect some animals from the surrounding highland forests. Keeping a breeding pair in a closed off enclosure I've collected a variety of animals, mostly herbivores. Predators tend to avoid my area of influence. Perhaps they can sense my mana or my presence. But some less keen predators still entered my territory, allowing me to subjugate them. Though I only had a pair of foxes and a single malnourished mountain lion, It seemed to be able to detect my presence, but starvation had driven it to be desperate enough to enter my territory.
Unfortunately, I found no other mountain lion to be its mate. Among the herbivores I had in my possession were a few crows and sparrows that had been foolish enough to fly in my area of influence. A pair of rodents, a pair of rabbits, and a pair of deer were also collected. To contain all the animals, I imbued them all with null attribute mana to form cores and make them unreliant on food and water, and I gave them a magically induced coma not to harm them but to simply put them into stasis so that I could retrieve them if needed.
In my pursuit of animals, I discovered a new element of mana. How stupid of me to not realize it I simply had to look up as the sun constantly emitted it in rays of radiant light. It was the exact antithesis of darkness mana; it was brilliant, bright, and luminous. I'll call it light mana.
After finishing the enclosed animal containment area, the bats from the south seemed to have come back. Taking them into the fortress, I performed a lobotomy on one of them so I could peer into its mind. Sifting through the memories of the past ten days, the bat seemed to leave the Highlands. After two days of flying, it entered a vast temperate plain with mighty herds of bison-like bovines roaming the vast, never-ending steppe.
After four days of travel, the bat seemed to come across a human settlement around 200 to 250 kilometers away from my dungeon. The settlement seemed to border an abundant river, with docks lining the riverbed. The architecture and technology here resembled that of late medieval Europe. Wooden houses lined the river, while a tall cobblestone wall encompassed the small city. Within its walls, upon a hill, lay an imposing stronghold that overlooked the land.
The bat approached the stronghold sitting on a window, overhearing a conversation between two guardsmen. They wore chainmail and strange helmets resembling bears, and they wielded a set of short spears and kite shields. As they conversed, I began to analyze their conversation. However, it seemed the language they used bore no resemblance to any I had studied or was fluent in. What a shame for a minute; I thought my linguistics classes would have been of help here. After night befell the city, the bat turned away, heading back to the dungeon with his fellow brethren. That was informative; there were humans in this land after all.
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However, their stature and size did not resemble those of the previous masters of the desolate fortress. Maybe they were a subspecies of humans. While delving into the minds of the bats, I seemed to have missed the return of the other bats; these were the ones that headed east and west.
Lobotomizing the bats, I began to delve into their memories. The west seemed like a very, very desolate place. The dense forests of the Highlands stretched further west than south, taking five days to travel. However, once it left the Highlands, it was lifeless; it is as though the life was sucked out of every tree, every bush, and every stone. Here, the only sound to be heard was the sound of silence.
After the end of the fifth day, as night encompassed the land, the bat stumbled upon a ruined city. It reeked of death and pestilence. The bat refused to enter the city's confines, being content to watch it from afar. The city's residents were all dead, their rotting corpses standing lifelessly in the city square. What are these things undead? They look like they've had their souls sucked out of them. Perhaps this is some kind of necromancy.
It's a shame the bats don't seem capable of possessing mana vision; otherwise, I would've studied these strange dead things. Perhaps whatever killed these poor humans killed the humanoids that resided here as well. Though I can't be sure. Hopefully, whatever resided within the east was less dreadful. Examine the memories of the bats that headed east. It seemed the Highlands ended only after a day of flying.
Temperate plains now encompassed the bat's sight. However, after four days, it seemed the bat had encountered an ocean. It looked wrong; the black sand beach seemed to stretch into the horizon. Wait, no, sand isn't supposed to undulate like that. No, it was the water; the water was black. This is unsettling; this could be a simple magical phenomenon In this world, but it doesn't feel right. The water looked wrong, oh so wrong. And the bat seemed to feel the same way, heading back right after it took a look at the black sea.
The bats that headed north didn't come back; perhaps they never will. What dreadful threat lay on the other side of this unassailable mountain range? This doesn't bode well for me; perhaps humans weren't the biggest threat to my survival after all. I was surrounded by a bunch of unknown yet insidiously dangerous entities. The sealed spirit entombed in the ruin. The undead horde just west of me, the black sea that lay east That one was probably dormant; however, I don't even want to know what lay beneath its murky depths and finally, what resided within or on the other side of this mountain range. I should probably be getting to work on the third layer of my defenses.