Shadowmen have four rankings. Scath, Scath-ridire, Scath-tiarna, and Scath-ri were Shadowmen, Shadow Knights, Shadow Lords, and Shadow Kings. Rarely has a Scath-ridire been able to leave Tech Duinn, and if a Scath-ri ever escapes, it won’t be a few clans that die, but the entire realm will be consumed.
~Zorya, Goddess of the Sun Gate
The Shadowmen weren’t in abundance like they were in that hidden valley. Crow used the Draw the Sky and tried to create the formation from the cabin. After escaping that valley, he’d parsed the different layers and figured out that the formation to repel the Scath wasn’t all that complicated. It did require a lot of skill and focus. Had he been able to use the Draw the Oak method, but that required time he didn’t have. To make it worse, he knew he had to trust his two companions because he had no time to pay attention to their battle.
Distantly, he registered their fight and was thankful that the Shadowmen were showing up singly. However, after a dozen of deaths, he knew that would change. They were mindless creatures, but the thing controlling them would eventually catch on.
The pattern he traced in the air around him visibly brightened when the ends were connected. Three concentric rings formed. The outer and middle rings spun in different directions while the innermost ring didn’t move.
Now, all he had to do was draw twelve runes between the outer and middle ring. The space between the center and inner ring just required Mana Crystals.
Knowing his companions were fighting urged him to hurry. However, he still couldn’t rush the runes, or the formation would collapse. If that happened, he and his companions would die.
One by one, he carefully formed each of the runes. He only breathed a sigh of relief when all twelve were glowing and remained unmoving despite the rings flowing around them.
Lastly, he added in the power connections on the innermost ring, which was something that didn’t require much thought. The only consideration was that they had to be equidistant apart. With four of them in place, he pushed his hands outward, forcing the rings to expand. Once the innermost ring had a diameter of roughly fifteen meters, he centered the formation on the campfire and pushed it down until the rings were right at surface level.
Using his spiritual energy, he placed four Mana Crystals on power connections and activated the formation. Crow felt his Source drain out so fast that he nearly fainted from exhaustion. Although he managed to keep his consciousness, everything around him went blurry.
He knew the formation was a success because he could feel the incoming Scath scratching at the barrier. However, none of them directly attacked it, choosing to back away instead.
Hooligan was injured, but Crow couldn’t do anything for her. Instead, he spilled out dozens of Mana Crystals and fell to his knees.
“Crow?” Munro asked, and it sounded like he was injured too.
“Take. Replace depleted. Keep active. Daylight,” Crow tried to explain and collapsed to the ground, dead to the world. Munro sighed, carried Crow into his tent, and placed him on the bed.
He saw Hooligan bandaging herself when he exited the tent and decided to check the formation. He didn’t fully understand what Crow meant because he had never studied formations. Regardless, Munro understood enough to know that it was powered by Mana Crystals. Once he located the four places, he checked how much mana was still in each crystal and watched for a time to see how fast they depleted. Based on his calculations, provided nothing attacked the barrier, the crystals would last about two hours each. Still, he made it a point to check every thirty minutes.
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“Do you know what you are doing?” Hooligan asked when he tossed more wood on the fire.
“No, but I know how to keep it going at the very least. What about you? That gash on your back looks infected.”
“It’s some sort of Death Mana. I need to cultivate for a while. If I can’t push it out, the wound won’t heal. If you can handle the formation, I’ll focus on recovering.”
“I got it, but I need to cultivate some as well. My mana is mostly depleted. The method I use allows me to remain in Sentinel mode, which means I can pay attention to what is happening around me while cultivating. So take your time. I’ll watch over the camp.”
“Is Crow alright?”
“I think he might have overdrawn his mana. He’ll recover, but it will probably be a few days.”
“Do you know if this formation will keep other things out? Like those people?”
“I have no idea, but I better assume it’ll only keep the Shadowmen out. Should I let the others enter the camp?”
“Your call, but if you do, make sure it’s not that sexually depraved weirdo.”
“Too late. Crow is already inside the formation.”
Hooligan chuckled but didn’t make any further replies. She closed her eyes and focused on her cultivation. When she opened them again, the sun was rising, and the formation had dispersed. Laying around the fire were half a dozen people, most of them severely wounded. Munro was seated in front of Crow’s tent, and his vigilance remained high.
Noticing Hooligan stirring, he stood up and handed her some food. “Looks like we survived the night.”
“Barely. Crow is…”
“A freak of nature?”
“Yeah, he really is.”
“If I became his woman, would he…?”
Munro sighed and wondered how Crow did it. He knew several of his wives, and they were outstanding in their own way. “He’s mentioned Otto a few times, but you don’t know that the giant is a half-wit. Most of the kids would pick on him because he’d never defend himself despite his size. Me included. One particular day, Otto was getting beat worst than usual, and he called out for Big Brother Crow. No one even knew when he arrived, but Crow waded into the crowd pummeling everyone who stood in his way while breaking arms, legs, and faces. Despite the overwhelming odds, despite being crippled by Soul Burn, and despite the fact that they were all children of powerful clans, Crow fought.” Munro paused and took a deep breath.
“At the time, I thought he was as big of an idiot as Otto, but now I realize he was always a better person than I was. Those he recognizes as allies, friends, and lovers, he’ll never wrong them. They could torture him for ten thousand years and tell him it can end if he betrays one of his people. They’d fail because he won’t break and would rather die a thousand deaths than betray those worthy of his trust.”
Munro laughed at himself deprecatingly. It was a hard truth for him to face.
“You want to know how he’d treat you if you became his woman? Ask for the moon, and he’d find a way to gift it to you. All the good karma for your last ten lives must have been spent giving you this one opportunity.”
“Are you sure you two aren’t friends? You sound like his wingman trying to help his buddy get laid,” Hooligan asked, shocked beyond words.
“If you ever tell him what I just said, I vow I’ll make it my life’s goal to destroy you,” Munro snorted and walked outside the camp.
Hooligan smiled to herself and found Munro’s actions even more inexplicable than Crow’s. She’d never seen a man praise their nemesis to such a degree. It made her wonder if Crow’s charm was winning Munro over—another soldier joining the Murder of Crows.
Still, she had to admit she never felt as safe as she did while adventuring with Crow. In every scenario, he had a solution of some sort. Even the Shadowmen were enough to terrify entire nations, but Crow took less than thirty minutes to erect a formation that could repel them.
Even now, she still couldn’t believe it. Unlike them, Hooligan had a lot of experience fighting against Shadowmen, which is why she dared to take the blow meant for Crow. Her Shield would protect her because the toxins from the Shadowmen fell under the Dark Mana umbrella, so her Shield alone would have purified her. Her clan was in a perpetual battle with those evil bastards.