Before he did anything pertaining to the request, though, he first had to attend to Emma. The sun had long since dipped below the horizon, and the inn Emma was in had started to quieten down after the adventures that would make a ruckus every night had either fallen asleep or cleared out. As he strolled casually through the doors of the stereotypical inn and went up to the doors of the room where Emma's comatose body lay, Noah barged into the room, only to find two men sprawled unceremoniously on the floor.

Both were clearly adventurers, judging by their rugged build and armor. They had probably noticed Noah walk in with an unconscious woman during the day and thought that they could have some 'fun', when they saw only Noah leave.

Shaking his head with a slightly amused expression, he disabled the shaman sorcery trap he had cast in the room as a mimic orc shaman. He had expected that something like this would happen, but it was still embarrassing that it actually happened.

The next morning, two naked men could be found outside the doors of the inn with a vacant room that a woman with waist-length blonde hair had been sleeping in. Noah had moved Emma to the Lord's estate with similar shaman sorcery cast for her protection with the permission of the City Lord, and he had requested that they care for her while he began to take steps to complete the request.

With his preparations done, he let out a sigh of preparation and opened the doors to the estate while grabbing his cloak that he had left hanging on the coat rack and flinging it around his shoulders.

"Time to work, I guess."

-

If one strained their eyes, they might have caught a male with green skin, green hair, and eyes hidden behind green eyelids and clad in a black coat, silently rooted in place, right outside an expansive and lush forest.

Noah the Dryad was currently scanning the forest. The dryad was a being with an intrinsic connection to nature who could examine the condition of vegetation to glean all sorts of information. By scanning the forest for large concentrations of dead or dying vegetation, he was able to determine anomalies. This method wasn't foolproof, considering that vegetation could die for natural reasons such as minor landslides, invasive species of monsters moving around, and the like. However, he would be able to determine a few suspicious locations, one of which was likely the true source of the continuous overflow.

A few hours later, green eyes snapped open, revealing resplendent green eyes that rapidly transformed into large yellow vertical slit-like ones. Noah's arms turned to large wings, and his legs retreated into a body that rapidly expanded.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Mimicry - Wyvern!

With a powerful flap of his wings, he took off, the resulting gust of wind flattening the plants in the area.

The wyvern was an obnoxious flyer, with wings that flapped loudly and a large size. Noah would have preferred to fly with the relatively more silent and precise harpy in order to avoid the possibility of the disturbance being one that could detect him, but speed was of the essence here if he wished to find a solution to this problem before the collateral damage to nearby towns due to the overflow could escalate too much.

Watching the land below him change at blinding speeds, Noah started to plan how he would switch up his battle style now that he no longer had a party. He had to do this to prevent mishaps where he instinctively looked for allies in a desperate situation.

'In the first place, we never really were a party that synergized with others or even each other all that much, were we?

Noah came to a shocking realization after a full year of fighting together. Sure, sometimes, they would buy time for Mia to charge herself with enchantments, or wait for Emma to deploy a large illusion, but that was sort of it. Once they started to fight, they would only try to avoid getting in each other's way. This train of thought prompted him to think about whether anything could have been different if they had worked together, before inwardly shaking his head. He shouldn't think about what could have been, as it would only drive him to sorrow.

The good thing was that this meant he wouldn't really have to focus on fighting differently when he eventually located the threat. If it was a threat he had to fight, that is.

It was entirely possible that the overflow was being caused by a mana hurricane or a natural disaster, in which case he wouldn't really be doing any fighting. The possibility of such a situation being the cause of the overflow was the reason why City Lord Cedric felt that Noah was so perfectly suited to this task.

In the case of a mana hurricane, he could just assume the form of a wyrm, the current largest monster he had in his possession. He would disturb the air currents of the mana hurricane, thus effectively disrupting it. If the cause was something like a forest fire, he could just throw his archmage levels of mana at the First Circle - Water Ball to unleash rivers that would extinguish the fires.

Noah rapidly transformed into a harpy from his wyvern while still in the air as he arrived near a suspicious spot with dying vegetation he had spotted as a dryad. He then slowly flew lazy circles in the air as he scoped out the problem. The circular region was roughly a hundred meters in diameter, with what seemed to be wilting plant life and weird white spots on various leaves.

'Looks like some local naturally occurring plant disease. Boring. Moving on.'

Transforming back to a wyvern as he turned around, he took off to search the next area. In the last few hours of flight, he had already traveled several dozen kilometres and would need to rest soon, but he just used mana to keep himself going.

'Fuck resting. I'll bash my head into a wall if I don't get my S-rank from this just because I decided to rest.'

With another powerful flap, he accelerated even further.