Ressara watched closely as the pair of young maybe-mages walked up to the bar, talked briefly, haggled only a little before handing over some coins, and walked up the stairs and out of sight, their two guards marching close behind. She relaxed for a moment when the guards left her line of sight, relieved by the cessation of the relentless pull on her attention. She really was starting to regret the inversion of effect aspect of her mental protection soul structure.

She had made that structure because she knew many of the most sophisticated concealment ward designs included subtle attention-diverting elements, and she figured that making those actively draw her attention instead would help her find valuable things that anyone else would overlook. People with the means to make such sophisticated wards generally didn't bother putting them on cheap trash, after all. Changing one detail of what the attention-altering enchantment would do to her was more efficient than stopping it in its tracks, too, allowing her to defeat such wards set by people much more powerful than her. She hadn't accounted for how aggravating having her attention constantly pulled toward something she already knew about would be, however.

Ressara stopped her woolgathering and stood up from her dark spot in a corner to walk over to the bar herself. "Interesting young couple, there. With the guards."

The barkeeper finished filling a drink and handed it to a big man with an even bigger sword on his back, then turned to her. "Ressara, was it? First time I've heard you call anyone 'interesting'."

Ressara shrugged, and put a few coppers on the bar, the standard price for an ale. "I call it as I see it. What of it?"

"You've watched young newbies with chaperones come through before and said nothing. What's so interesting about these two in particular?" The barkeep placed a mug of ale in front of her and scooped up her coppers.

She took a sip, taking her time with the drink before replying again. "I have a feeling you'll find out, in due time." She smiled. "Does it matter, when my coin spends the same regardless?" She placed one silver on the bar, but held her hand over it to block anyone but the barkeeper from seeing it.

The barkeeper looked askance at Ressara over his shoulder as he filled three more ale mugs, and plopped them on the counter for other customers. "You know I can't tell you their room. This is the Haven."

Ressara nodded. "A down payment. For whatever you can find out for me."

"Fine. The boy's named Carlos, the girl's Amber. Anyone with decent mana sense can tell they have barely any development. We'll see what else comes to my ears. No promises." He smoothly disappeared her silver and nodded, then pointedly turned away and moved to another section of the bar.

Ressara returned to her corner table and ate a bit more, but barely tasted anything as she kept glancing towards the stairs. It wouldn't do to be too obvious in her pursuit, but if she waited too long their aura trail would fade, and she was anxious to find out more. Just a few minutes later, she cursed to herself, and hurriedly gulped down her ale as she stood, stacking her knife and fork on the plate to indicate she was done. She would have to apologize to the chef later for leaving so much of his masterfully prepared food uneaten, but she couldn't wait any longer.

It was at times like this that she wished she could develop her soul as easily as nobles could. Her improvised hodgepodge of soul structures gave her some useful tricks, such as seeing the aura trails of people whose souls she'd examined well enough, but even with several years of development she had only reached her fifth density compression overall, and her tricks were correspondingly weak. Aura trails faded for her faster than even for the products of an apprentice enchanter. Though, she did have some advantages over aura tracing devices. She only needed to have seen her quarry closely enough, not go hunting for hairs, or blood, or samples of mana, and her tracking did not advertise what she was doing to anyone who saw her.

She walked over to the stairs, ignoring a couple attempts to waylay her for some question or other, and climbed. She had her own room in the Adventurer's Haven, so simply going up the stairs shouldn't be at all suspicious to anyone. She looked around furtively at the third floor, however, checking if anyone might see her turning off from the stairs on the wrong floor. Her room was on the fourth floor, but the lingering wisps of aura she was following led down one of the third floor hallways.

Ressara followed the etherial trail around a corner and down another hall, until it turned through the closed door of room 317. She gingerly tiptoed the last few steps, and quietly pressed her ear against the door. She could dimly sense the presence of Carlos and Amber somewhere inside the room. Actually, if she remembered the inn's floor plan correctly, this was a small suite. The two guards were there too, with their attention-diverting soul disguises that her mental influence inverter made annoyingly difficult to ignore. She wanted to be focusing on the two youths and whatever conversation might be audible through the door, not on the irrelevant guard that was... approaching the door rapidly. Whoops.

She had barely taken two brisk steps back the way she'd come when the door was flung open and a guard stepped out and called out to her. "Halt!"

Ressara froze, and slowly turned around to face the guard. She put on her best innocently deferential smile and tried to sound nonchalant. "Yes? What can I do for you?"

The guard glared at her, unimpressed. "You can tell me your name and why you were attempting to spy on us."

"Ressara, Investigative Scholar at your service, sir." She bowed. "I was merely curious about your charges. They seem to have greater potential than most I see pass through here."

"If you want to join their party for when they venture into the Wilds, you may register your interest with the inn just like anyone else, along with the origin and significance of your unfamiliar title and any other credentials you might have. We are not entertaining hangers-on, and if we catch you spying again I will not let you off so lightly a second time. You may go."

The guard stepped back inside the suite and firmly shut the door. Ressara paused a moment, then shook herself and walked away. They would notice if she stayed. She would need to prepare and be much more thoroughly stealthy before trying again. If she tried again. Maybe she should be more circumspect about investigating them. Or more direct. Or both. In any case, in hindsight pitting her pitiful stealth skills against such professional guards had been foolish.

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Carlos looked at Colonel Lorvan as he closed and locked the door again. When they reached the privacy of their new suite, Carlos had taken the opportunity to finally insist on introductions. Lorvan - the more senior of the two guards - had protested that it was not proper for such loaned guards to go by anything other than their ranks (which Carlos was pretty sure he was getting translated by closest equivalence, not actual meaning), but had yielded to Carlos's insistence when he pointed out that calling out their ranks could spoil their efforts to remain incognito. Lorvan and Major Ordens had given their names and ranks, and Lorvan had just started saying something about nobles and methods of something, when he abruptly cut himself off and rushed to the door.

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Carlos hadn't caught the whole conversation, but heard enough to know there'd been some kind of confrontation. "What was that about?"

Lorvan shook his head. "Just some overly nosy scholar, my lord. I gave her a good scare and a warning. If she tries spying on you again, she'll get a much harsher warning. Now, where was I?"

Amber spoke up first. "Soul development methods, I think?"

"Right. As I was saying-"

"Ahem." Carlos interrupted. "Before we get into that, you need to drop the titles as long as we remain incognito. Your gear may have been prepared for this, but it appears your training was not."

Lorvan paused, then bowed briefly and started again. "My apology, my lo- Er, my apology, sir. I believe we are not being spied on at this time, but our defenses against such are not infallible, and you are correct that I should accustom myself to the pretense. Unfortunately, we must discuss an important matter now that would likely give it away if overheard regardless."

Carlos nodded. "Fair enough. Proceed."

"What do you already know of how souls are developed?"

"Well, besides my inherited soul shell and making my soul structures in the first place, the biggest portion of my development so far came from siphoning off the accumulated development of a pair of soul suppression cuffs I wore. I don't think that will work anymore, though, even if we had any."

Colonel Lorvan blinked, and Major Ordens was visibly struggling not to laugh, shaking slightly with the corners of her mouth turned up.

Lorvan coughed. "Yes, well. Ahem. Leaving aside such unorthodox methods, what do you know of the usual ways people develop their souls?"

Amber took the lead in answering. "Using soul structures causes them to develop. When a soul structure expends mana to achieve an effect, it simultaneously absorbs a proportional amount of mana into itself. Some of the mana absorbed spills over into other soul structures as well, especially those the active structure has direct synergy with, so all of a person's structures tend to develop approximately in sync."

She paused, her eyes going unfocused for a moment, and Carlos was fairly sure he knew why: she'd gotten her own version of the same alert his introspector had just given him.

Ambient mana density is greater than the density of several soul structures and of the soul surface layer. Density differential is causing passive mana absorption to gradually advance development up to the ambient density.

Amber paraphrased the alert to the guards, phrasing it as general knowledge with just an incidental mention that it was happening right now. She ended with a more vague comment. "Adventuring, especially in the Wilds, supposedly also helps develop faster, but I'm not clear on why."

Lorvan nodded, and turned to Carlos. "And you, sir?"

Carlos shrugged. "She knows as much as I do about that."

Lorvan nodded again. "It's good that you know about ambient absorption in high mana density areas such as Dramos, but you need to know more. Do you know why nobles are vital for the pacification of the Wilds and accompanying expansion of Kalor?"

Carlos hesitated. "I... can guess? There are dangerous things in the Wilds that only nobles are powerful enough to handle safely?" He shrugged and looked at Amber.

Amber looked back and furrowed her eyebrows. "Let me think. The Wilds are dangerous because of all the powerful monsters that live there. Those monsters grow so powerful because of the dense ambient mana of the area. Powerful creatures generate high density mana, so the ambient mana and the monsters sustain each other. To pacify the Wilds, you have to deal with both the monsters and the excessively dense mana, or one will replenish the other." She bit her lip, thinking. "Killing the monsters is simple if you have enough power, but... Hmm. I've read about people draining areas of dangerously dense mana, but I don't think any of my books ever said how it is done."

Lorvan bowed slightly towards Amber. "Very good. Let me add the missing piece: Areas of extraordinarily dense mana are drained and made safe for ordinary people by nobles absorbing the mana into their own souls, simultaneously also advancing their soul development. Only nobles have the capacity to do this quickly enough for the process to be viable. In fact, for the greatest extremes of mana density, only nobles who have already developed beyond what most others could ever dream of have the capacity to even survive attempting it."

He adopted a severely stern expression. "The danger I speak of is extreme, and you must approach it with caution. For most commoners, and even yourselves as you are now, if you traveled to where dragons live, you would not survive long enough for the dragons to even notice you, much less kill you. You would not even respawn. Your souls would dissolve into nothing, overwhelmed by the extremely dense ambient mana of those areas. You will not be ready for such areas until well after the point when our service to you ends."

"Thank you for the warning." Carlos chose not to mention that he was sure they would notice the danger well in advance thanks to their introspectors. "I assume there is a reason you're explaining this to us now?"

"Of course. You need to learn how to actively and quickly absorb denser mana, and you have a very limited opportunity to learn and practice that here, in the safety of Dramos itself, while the mana in your souls is still less dense than the ambient mana here."

Carlos nodded. "Alright, let's get to it, then. How do we start?"

"Your soul plan as mages will make this easier than for most. Meditate, and focus your mana sense around yourself, and even inward if you can. Try to sense the flow of ambient mana, and how it is flowing into you, and merging into your souls."

Carlos blinked, exchanged a knowing look with Amber, and smirked. His introspector trivially sensed that flow for him. "Ok. Done."

Lorvan frowned. "Even mages of Sandaras's caliber take at least a minute or two to fully identify and comprehend this flow at your level of development. It is subtle, weak, and pervasive."

Amber crossed her arms and scowled at him. "We did it already. House secret. Next step, now."

Lorvan looked back and forth between them for a few seconds, then sighed. "Very well. Focus on the flow, and use your mana manipulators to reach out to it, and speed it along. Take hold of the ambient mana around you, pull it in towards the intake of that flow, and guide it along the same path, to merge into your soul structures and your surface layer. Urge the mana to hasten what it is already do- What the?!"

Carlos smirked, and crossed his arms. "We told you." At the urging of his debugger, in conjunction with his mana manipulator but still primarily his debugger, ambient mana was pouring into him in a torrent, and he sensed the same torrent in Amber. The dense mana in the air crossed the boundary of his soul's surface from all directions, ballooned into a diffuse gas spread over four times the volume, and soaked into everything. His soul structures were drinking it up like desert sands hit with a sudden flood. His debugger, the one structure he had that was actually more dense than the ambient mana of Dramos, was throwing its extra-heavy weight into the effort, and nothing was opposing it.

Warning: Rate of ambient mana absorption is almost maximum tolerable. Increasing speed further will risk soul erosion damage.

Carlos blinked, and hastily directed his debugger to keep it at a safe speed, below the danger threshold.

Lorvan gaped at them for a few more seconds, then shook his head and laughed. "Did you two really make special purpose soul structures for this? But, wait, you only learned about it just now, so...?"

Carlos grinned. "Eh, kind of. We didn't make anything just for this, specifically. Details are secret."

"I see." Lorvan took a deep breath, and settled back into his mask of professionalism. "My apology for doubting your claim, sir. It appears you need little instruction for this, but take care to not absorb so much so quickly that it damages you."

"Already got that covered. Thanks, though."

"...As you say, sir."

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On the ground floor of the Adventurer's Haven, the barkeeper sidled up to a lanky man with several daggers worn openly and several more secreted in his boots and sleeves, under his shirt, inside his cap, and various other places. The barkeeper spoke quietly. "You wanted info about what that scholar woman's up to."

The lanky man with all the daggers nodded almost imperceptibly.

"The pair of youths with escorts that came in this evening. She's interested in them. Wouldn't say why. Paid silver up front for whatever info I find. Might have tracked 'em to their room, not sure."

"Hmm. Sounds fishy." The lanky man spoke just as quietly in response. "One more ale for tonight, and... Good work. Put it on my tab."