The High Peak of Brenn [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1794.01.08]

A shrill, long sound of a whistle pierced through the silence of the dark woods, reverberating in the darkness for long seconds afterward as the group involuntarily froze in place.

They exchanged nervous glances and slowly crouched down. Zeph dimmed the light produced by his Spell to almost nothing. Even if the self-proclaimed Thompson assured him that trapping the red, monochromatic light in their small ‘bubble of comfort’ was easy to do with his Skills, it still felt wrong to use a strong source of light when hiding.

Makani gestured for them to be quiet, so Zeph focused on smoothening the Mana Masking surrounding them while waiting. Thompson’s face was scrunched up in concentration, too.

The passing seconds stretched impossibly in the tense atmosphere. But for the next few moments, which felt more like minutes, nothing happened.

The uncertainty was killing him, but Makani was still keeping his hand raised to keep them quiet, so he didn’t voice his questions.

Several heartbeats later, he heard it.

Something was moving through the canopy, not paying much attention to the ruckus it was making.

And it was moving fast.

In a quick series of sudden movements the lower branches of the tree, merely 40 meters to their right, shook and swayed, shedding off a layer of snow and needles.

Their group was moving east to make some distance because the enemy was first spotted northwest of their last position. That meant the enemy was already scouting ahead of them.

The forest returned to its silent self, but Makani waited for a few more seconds before dropping his hand and speaking in a whisper.

“Sorry, I didn’t want you to worry you needlessly,” he started giving excuses. “Three people started moving fast over a vast area. I think they are casually scanning for traces. Reporting their position constantly… wasn’t going to work.”

“That guy almost ran over us!” Thompson hissed through clenched teeth.

“I didn’t expect them to gather together like that,” Makani growled. “And even if that one moved closer, it’s your job to make us invisible!”

“Calm down, both of you!” Zeph interjected angrily. “How fast can they move if they don’t have to track us?”

“25 boats per minute, I think.”

Well, fuck me, Zeph thought after a quick calculation. It was over 50 km/h. Moving through the forest canopy faster than Olympic sprinters…

“The good news is, they don’t have any Bonded animals,” Makani added. “They wouldn’t be using half their manpower for scouting if that wasn’t the case.”

“They wouldn’t have to look for you if they had any,” Thompson remarked.

“Maybe,” Zeph commented noncommittally. He was sure that he and Gru would notice a Bond if it got too close, but Thompson didn’t have to know about that. “But that isn’t important right now. We need a plan in case we are found. Our first priority should be to prevent them from giving any kind of signal to the rest of their group. With how fast they can travel through these woods, we will be swarmed almost immediately. And running away isn’t an option, at all. We would have to incapacitate them without giving our position…”

“That’s obvious,” Thompson said. “I can get rid of their sight, but I am in no shape”–he sent him a glare–“to fight hand-to-hand.”

“I will double down on sound dampening,” Makani said. “Let’s work on decreasing the radius of our coordinated construct. The smaller it will be, the harder we will be to notice and the closer to us the enemy would have to be to inspect.”

They all agreed to the idea and tried to strategize about possible coordinated attacks, but they quickly realized that anything more complicated than ‘don’t stand in my way’ would be useless in that kind of confrontation. High-level fights were just way too fast. They managed to agree on the first sequence of attacks, but even that much proved challenging because no one wanted to reveal their abilities to that degree.

Their impromptu whispered strategy meeting was interrupted by Makani’s report.

“They started to move… I can confirm – it’s six opponents. One person is running east and slightly to the north… probably to the village we had visited last. Two people are checking the tracks on the ground. The rest is going for the canopy…”

“No wonder you knew I was there…” Thompson murmured.

“So far, so good,” Zeph commented, ignoring the man. A shame we won’t be able to retrieve those feathers from the windsleds. Am I cursed to lose my feathers every time? Though, the first time was my mistake. Selling them for cheap.

“Not so much,” Makani said after a moment, frowning. “They’ve gone silent. I won’t be able to track them efficiently anymore.”

“We just need to know when they are close. Should we turn north?”

“I will feel safer if we move closer to the edge of the forest–”

“That’s the worst idea I’ve heard until now,” Thompson interjected. “With your detection abilities, it will be much better to move through the deeper parts of the woods.”

Makani and Zeph exchanged a meaningful glance.

“My Spells have their limits. If we want to avoid fighting the wildlife, we should move away from this area. And we need to hurry,” Makani said with finality. “We need to be as far away as possible before they start sweeping through the ground level.”

There wasn’t much more to say, so they started moving.

Zeph did what he could to find a path that would leave no trace but it was becoming increasingly harder as the boundary of illuminated ground started to shrink as they worked on decreasing the radius of their spherical Mana construct.

The visibility was bad, to put it mildly. Beyond the boundary of the sphere of light – dim as it was, yet still interfering with their ability to see in the dark – murky blackness dominated the world. Only Thompson was able to see more in those conditions.

Thankfully, Zeph had no problems identifying major directions. The trees weren’t growing uniformly – the density and reach of the canopy were a clear indicator of the direction from which the sun was most often illuminating the area. And the roots mirrored that tendency, growing tighter on the opposite side to balance the weight.

Each time they had to travel through the bare forest floor, Zeph made sure to meander a little and leave slightly different tracks. After some time, he even started imitating tracks of the local animals to better hide the evidence of their passing.

An hour into their slow slog, Zeph’s ‘Lesser Life detection’ returned a reading from merely a few meters ahead, giving him a small heart attack.

He immediately motioned them to stop and snuffed out the Light Spell. Something was sitting in the middle of a tree trunk covered in fungi.

Makani and Thompson detected nothing. The air-based Spells weren’t working and the being was hidden from sight, so Thompson didn’t notice.

They waited for half a minute in silence, allowing their eyes to fully accommodate to the darkness.

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The clouds had to clear at some point, because a few stray rays of moonlight managed to seep through the dense canopy, basking the woods in a weak, ethereal light – just enough to discern shapes.

Everything was still.

Zeph decided against firing another Life Detection. He had to construct that Spell outside of their ‘bubble of comfort’ and he didn’t want to risk getting caught in the creature’s Veil. He was surprised they weren’t noticed the first time he used it through his Mana tendril.

Sadly, Mana Masking was working both ways – there was no way to tell if they brushed against a Veil without giving away their own presence.

He exchanged glances with Makani. They nodded.

Ever so slowly, they stepped away from the tree, back the way they came.

After a few meters, they changed directions and started to circle the tree.

Zeph was glancing at the tree from time to time, so he was the first to notice.

Cold shivers run down his spine. This was no Felidae.

A woman, clad in black leather from head to toe, was standing there on a big fungus, unmoving and looking ahead. Her face was hidden behind a black, smooth mask; no weapon in sight. Yet, somehow, to Zeph she seemed more terrifying than even Aisha.

He paused mid-step and blindly patted Makani’s shoulder, not averting his eyes from the creepy woman.

Just as the Manacaster turned his head and followed Zeph’s sight, the woman disappeared.

She didn’t look around, didn’t change posture, didn’t give any indicator that she noticed something was amiss. There was a slight blur and then only silence.

They stood there, paralyzed, for a second.

But they weren’t attacked.

“Chasem! They have an Augur!” Thompson whispered with terror.

“But if they are using her like that… They stopped searching,” Makani deducted. “No wonder I couldn’t hear anyone for some time. They split. Probably to monitor nearby villages…”

“That means nothing!” Thompson growled. “You need to shift your Soul!”

“Do I look like a Soul Artist to you?!” Makani spat back.

“Fy faen! Just drop unconscious, I will do tha—“

“Shut up!” Zeph hissed, suppressing a sudden, uncontrollable shudder. “You shift. I will manage. Makani, just follow my directions. Don’t look around too much,” he ordered, following Gru’s instructions. “That should do, right? Do you think she has advanced external Mana manipulation?” he asked, more worried about the immediate problem.

Thompson took a deep breath to compose himself. “Yes… Yes, that probably will be enough. And she shouldn’t be able to use advanced manipulation in any meaningful way. They are sure to have a Manacaster, though.”

“Who probably is stationed nearby…” Makani realized. “We need to move!”

Mana Masking or not, a concentrated Mana tendril or wide-area contact with a Veil would reveal them instantly.

They started moving again, this time a little faster.

Zeph wasn’t able to shift his Soul like Gru and Thompson could, but he had training and his Will. Firstly, he used his Will to freeze his Soul in an immutable form. Then, he tried to… oscillate—for the lack of a better word—his Soul between two shapes... or rather – forms. Gru wasn’t good with words.

It was a basic exercise that Gru devised. His execution wasn’t perfect, but it should be enough to confuse anyone who was peering into the Soulscape. The ‘movements’ he was forcing weren’t natural at all, and it was already difficult to augur anything meaningful in neutral circumstances. He would know, as he was trying to do that right at the moment.

Of course, without any results.

He couldn’t feel even a dash of bad premonition besides his already sky-high anxiety. But it wasn’t like he knew what he was doing. Auguring wasn’t a talent that could be learned.

Fuking mystical arts… Giving me shivers in the least appropriate times and going silent whenever it matters. Fuck it, I won’t ever try to train this bullshit, he grumbled internally.

Makani stumbled, squashing a fungus as a result. Zeph grimaced and did his best to hide the evidence as they paused.

“I think we need the light…” he murmured.

“Yes, that would be appreciated.” Makani nodded.

“Use your detection Spells more often,” Thompson grumbled. “I will be on the lookout.”

Zeph wasn’t sure if using light was a good idea, but he had to give it to their baggage – the man did indeed manage to block all the light that was coming out of his Light Spell. After all, even a post-level-100 person wasn’t able to notice them while standing a few meters away.

Thanks to the dim illumination, they were able to move faster. Thompson was concentrating hard enough to sweat. The little droplets on his forehead started coagulating, falling from his face right on Makani’s shoulder.

To his best guess, the man was trying to enhance his sight while ignoring the light from Zeph’s Spell, but he couldn’t be sure. He never heard of someone using Light-Magicules, so it was hard to tell what was possible.

They saw the woman three more times during the next hour. Even after changing directions, she was always waiting for them, scouting the area they should be traveling through. She was no longer only waiting, though, always moving through the canopy or walking unhurriedly on the ground level.

Surprisingly, it was good news. It meant that she was no longer sure about her readings. But it became clear that they missed her more times than they spotted her, which was terrifying to think about.

Zeph wasn’t sure how she was able to pinpoint their current location but had a growing suspicion. Thompson did leave many bodily parts behind.

He never heard about how that could help with auguring, but he knew the basics. A physical medium or direct contact was required for any kind of detailed Soul-scrying.

The presence of the Terminator-level stalker put everyone on the edge. The woman was way too proficient with the art. They could only thank their lucky stars that her team seemed to share the same sentiment about auguring as the rest of the population of Corora – that it was the least reliable ability in existence.

But because of the constant tension, they failed to notice a simple truth. They were being herded.

The first Mana tendril that touched their camouflaging sphere almost tore through the construct. Miraculously, it only skimmed over the Mana Masking, flexing around the obstacle instead of trying to go through directly. But the ravine it left in the dense Ambient Air-Mana coating was so deep that it almost touched Makani’s stabilized Air Sphere.

Zeph paled, hoping that whoever sent the tendril didn’t feel his own Mana mixed in between the Ambient Magicules.

“Down!” he almost screamed, falling down and forcefully flattening their sphere by pushing with his Mana Masking vortex. Makani was fast on the update and threw himself to the ground.

“What’s going on?” Thompson asked from his perch on Makani’s back.

“Someone is scanning the vicinity with their Veil! I am not sure if they managed to feel me, but the tendril was impossibly dense,” he explained. “Do you see anything?”

“I can’t just bend light at will. Their Manacaster is probably a few boats away. I can’t just–“

“The fucking what?” Zeph exclaimed, appalled. “How big is their Veil?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Thompson scowled. “You are a Manacaster, too. You should know what happens after reaching level one hundred!”

“Um, guys, can you keep it down,” Makani interjected, awkwardly looking away. “Let’s be nice, quiet, and change positions…”

“You… you…” Zeph was going to call him names but stopped himself. Barely. Having a Veil that could scan at least a hundred meters ahead wasn’t something he’d heard about, nor something that Makani should keep quiet about. Zeph’s own calculations on the matter were thrown out of the widow after the Advanced Statistics disappeared from his Interface. Sadly, they had an outsider in their midst, so he had to be careful with words.

“You are right,” he finally said, breathing out heavily. “Back. We go back. In a minute, I will highlight the surrounding Mana. Thompson, try to see what’s going on.”

“That will give away our position?” the man asked, evidently fishing for more information.

Zeph sighed again. Confirming something that the guy already suspected shouldn’t be disastrous. If they were going to survive this ordeal, he couldn’t allow himself to be sloppy. “I will fire it at a distance. Hopefully, it will be a good bait. We need to see how the Manacaster reacted, either way. I want to believe that he didn’t notice our sphere, but moving blindly will only put us in a bad position.”

Both Makani and Thompson thought about it for a moment.

As they started to crawl back, Zeph started constructing a Mana-L pipe. The same he used to funnel his coolant in the city for the first time. They didn’t have time to make a distance from the ‘drop point’ of the pipe, so he would have to create some actively.

“Agreed. I can’t hear much. We need to ascertain that we are safe,” Makani said.

“Just… do it at least three boats away…” Thompson mumbled with dissatisfaction.

Zeph nodded and put an explosive bead at the end of his stabilized Telekinetic construct. They were still crawling away, but the movement was slow enough for him to manage his Mana. Thankfully, they were on thick, naked roots right now, so he wasn’t worried about leaving obvious tracks.

The bead sneaked away, propelled by the construct. Zeph made sure, through sheer Willpower, that the pipe traveled close to the ground – moving almost entirely horizontally. The bead had to be kept up and at an angle, but he covered it with enough Mana-L for it to be relatively stable. As long as the acceleration was kept constant, that is.

He managed to move it almost 150 meters away, spending almost all of his saved-up Mana-L. Then, he pushed away the Force-Mana residing inside of the pipe by pushing with his Veil. That created a small cloud of Force-Magicules at the end of the pipe, but they were a part of the bait. Besides, those Magicules weren’t connected to his Soul.

As soon as he regained contact with the bead—which meant that his stretched-out Veil reached its destination—he started the construction of Matrix Mana Highlight right there.

It took almost a minute to form the Spell, mostly because he wasn’t proficient in assisting Spell constructions at such distances and because he wanted to put as much Mana into it as possible. By the time he finished, they were already halfway behind a tree.

“Firing.”

“Took you long enough,” Thompson commented.

In the next second, a wave of Will-Mana swept through the forest, dying it in a rainbow of colors. The Magicules in the forest were diverse and dense, to Zeph’s surprise.

But the dark, almost black, veins of Mana that the light show revealed quickly doused his amazement.

There were dozens of them – searching, slithering all around, but, thankfully, focusing mostly on the canopy. They didn’t need Thompson’s help to see them because the Magicules here were so abundant that any ‘empty’ space was directly visible by contrast alone.

Zeph glanced at Makani. He and his passenger seemed mesmerized by the show, and pale as paper.

More tendrils were visible at the boundary of the Mana Highlight’s reach, creeping closer.

The wave was exhausted, and darkness ensued. And that was when Zeph’s consciousness wavered…