At last, Avery had gotten up the winding path up to the circular hole in the canyon wall. This was not exactly typical in terms of the standard forces of erosion, being a near-perfect two meter in diameter hole of indeterminate length. However, it was quite indicative of some powerful magic user. A single casting of a stone shaping spell could excavate a significant amount of rock, but every spell had it's limit. In order to get as much space as possible out of their spell, a canny caster would attempt to minimize the area of at least one of their workings dimensions. As it happened, a sphere would have the least amount of resistance in a metaphysical way, and that would be where they begin when modifying the base to suit their needs.

In terms of terrain deformation, wizards as a general rule would have to expend more energy for the same effect as any who gained their power from non-research-based magic. For reasons that continue to escape the understanding of the tower, the majority of those systems had a sort of closed internal network wherein any spell that is created, ever, along with any specifically made variation of the magic, is instantly available to every individual user of that power source. Wizards, on the other hand, would continuously have to pass around their notes manually, leading to many retreading the same ground as their predecessors, but also leading to complete understanding and deeper knowledge of their particular niche over time, with a continual increase in the total pool of knowledge. While it would be nice to have instant easy access to every possible spell she would ever need, and the free time to pursue other avenues of self-improvement, Avery preferred the path that led to a better long term future.

At least, that's what she continuously told herself every time someone who decided themselves to the god of hierarchy at sixteen, or some random person that lived in the woods for years, suddenly pulls out incredibly powerful spells perfectly suited to whatever situation is at hand with no thought or effort, when figuring out how to do the same thing would take weeks of hunting down someone that specializes in that field of study and a bunch of money to bribe them into letting her see their notes, and then a few hours trying to figure out what the thing was saying. Nothing was worse than getting upstaged magically by a circus performer.

There was no way for Avery to know that a large number of people who run away to join the circus would find themselves ideologically attracted to the god of defiance.

She takes a few steps forward into the probably unnatural cavern. No plants of any kind grow on the walls, as is typical for new construction, nor do there appear to be any creatures taking refuge in the darkness. Deciding it was better to be safe that eaten, the necromancer cast the spell she was most proud of. Detect life. Any library could direct its readers to a book or two about the divinatory arts, and any of them would have listed within them the lowest tier of spells. One of these was the incredibly situationally useful spell, detect undead. Within a short range, the caster could send out a burst of magical energy that would reflect off of any creature brought to life by necromancy, whether through natural or unnatural means. While this could potentially alert someone who was already wary of the possibility about the less corporeal varieties, it tended to be less than useful, considering eyes, ears, and nose were typically all one would need to recognize that a zombie was trying to shamble closer.

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What her spell did was simple. It did the same thing, but for normal living things. Wasn’t even hard. Technically it was using a necromantic wave, and technically she hadn’t tested whether long term exposure to the energies involved were safe for the things being scanned, but she only had so much mana and time in a day to do experiments. It took a lot of effort to get a decent sample size, particularly when they keep dying in the middle of setting things up. Slimes were a lot of things, but hardy was not one of them.

Nothing was showing up, at least in the eighteen meters the spell covered. Fortunately, Avery could keep it up for a couple of minutes, and was able to walk fast enough that she could reach the end of the cavern before those minutes were up. It didn’t take long to run the burst over the area and make sure nothing was hiding in the darkness, other than her, and once the place was secured, she could go about making it actually secure.

While it wouldn’t do much to prevent anyone from actually entering the area, nor a careful examination from discovering the ruse, Avery had happened to have brought a decently sized blanket along with her to the canyon. On her way through, she had soaked the coarse fabric in water, and dragged one side through as much dirt and dust as she could on the way up. That may have contributed to how absolutely exhausted she felt after lugging a giant rock up a mountain, but she placed the blame on the rock exclusively. Also the path. And the canyon.

With so much canyon staining the blanket, hanging it in front of the entrance would keep the casual glance from noticing the big black dot on the other side of the canyon, like she had. The people who were actually doing their waste collecting duty today were due to arrive at any moment, and a hole away from the world was something any mage would love to have. It was one of the reasons competition for space in the tower was so fierce; no one can interrupt you when you’re in a sealed environment.

As she hadn’t exactly been expecting this kind of windfall when she came to the canyon, more figuring that she would be trying to just set up a quick shelter by flipping over her cart and casting inside of it, Avery hadn’t brought pitons or anything that would hold the blanket in place. Glue would have been nice to have. She made due with rocks, smacking the wall of the canyon until enough broke away to shelve a stone on each side, with cloth held down beneath it. The blanket wasn’t quite long enough to reach the ground, but it would have to do. Enough light made it through that she could retrieve the gem from where she had placed it near the entrance before heading in the darkness, to perform her dark ritual.