Book 3, Chapter 42

We flew relatively low, only a few hundred feet over the ground. It didn’t make a lot of difference to our overall speed, but this way, we could scout out everything living in the area. I managed this primarily through my ability to sense mana and the various monsters and animals not caring at all to hide theirs. I’d probably missed any number of ambush predators or savvy prey animals that were able to mask their mana cores one way or another, but this expedition wasn’t about cataloging every single thing we could.

Specifically, we were looking for something for Senica to fight. She’d grown immensely over the last few months and wanted to test her magic against an opponent she could actually beat. Apparently, having all of her spells splash ineffectually against my shield ward wasn’t stimulating enough. Normally, I wouldn’t have been inclined to indulge Senica, but I found myself a bit curious about exactly how strong the monsters that had grown in a relatively mana-rich environment actually were.

‘What about that one?’ Senica asked through our telepathic link.

I looked down to see something brown and gray with a hard shell. It stood on two stubby legs and had arms that probably touched the ground if it hunched over. While its back and the top of its head were armored, its belly appeared to be relatively soft, so much so that I had a suspicion it was the type of creature that curled up into a ball to defend itself, which might indicate that it had almost no offensive capabilities.

If that was the case, this could be a good test for Senica. She was learning a wide variety of spells, and it would be interesting to see what she would try if conjurations ended up being ineffective against her target. For myself, I’d probably start with offensive divinations, then move on to transmutations if possible or indirect conjurations that effected the environment.

‘Sure. Let’s do a lap around to make sure it’s alone, first.’

There were several small, lizard-like monsters about a foot long basking in the sunlight on some nearby rocks, but I judged them to be non-threatening and uninterested in us. Anything else in the area was either too adept at hiding from me or passing through and soon to be gone.

We settled down fifty feet downwind, not that I suspected it would keep the creature from detecting us. “You know what your opening move will be?” I asked as Senica drew her wand.

“Yeah.”

“Shield ward is charged?” I asked. For once, it actually was, but I wanted to make sure Senica was going through her whole pre-combat checklist.

“Yes,” she said in exasperation. “I know what I’m doing, Gravin.”

It was surprising how many thirteen-year-olds thought exactly that, and how often they were wrong. I’d certainly made that mistake enough times when I’d been young. Making it into my twenties had been a long string of desperate decisions and unearned luck.

“Alright. Looks like it spotted us. Good luck.”

I wouldn’t be interfering unless Senica’s shield ward failed or the armored creature unveiled some sort of ability that allowed it to bypass the defense. It wasn’t that I expected something like that, but those acid-spitting burrowers were still fresh in my mind and I’d never seen anything like this armored monster.

It advanced at a waddle, about four feet tall all hunched over and more curious than hostile for the moment. Its nose twitched as it closed in on us, perhaps smelling Senica’s mana like those sniffer monsters that I’d encountered outside my home village six years ago. Unlike the mana sniffers, this monster’s defenses were significant enough that it would be a challenge to crack its armor plating.

Senica must not have agreed, because she leveled her wand and unleashed a tight beam of heat directly in the monster’s face. It twitched away before the beam could do any real damage, ducking its head down to let the heat hit its armored skull. Somewhat surprisingly, the spell didn’t scare it off. If anything, the monster started moving faster.

Senica adjusted the beam to try to strike at its face again, but the creature wasn’t stupid and it clearly associated the red visual effect with the pain of being burnt. After three more seconds, Senica gave up the attack and switched to one that sent a wave of fire rolling across the ground. At the sight of that, the creature rolled forward, tucking its softer limbs and underbelly into the center of the ball that was its body.

Most creatures using those kinds of tactics became immobile, but not this one. Instead, it continued to roll forward, its long upper arms flashing out from the ball for brief moments to propel it and increase its speed. As the fire splashed across it, it merely tucked its arms back in and weathered the flames until it cleared the obstacle.

Stone spikes jutted up in front of it, angled to impale the monster using its own momentum. It hit the spikes and juked sideways, but didn’t really lose much momentum. The stone cracked and the needle-thin points snapped from the impact.

“Uh… Gravin?” Senica asked, her eyes widening.

“You know what you’re doing,” I repeated back to her, earning me a brief scowl before she turned back to her opponent. With a look of intense concentration on her face, she started chanting the runes for a greater telekinesis spell. She’d only be able to maintain it for at most two seconds before she ran out of mana, and I knew for a fact that she wasn’t able to cast while pulling from the storage crystal I’d given her yet. Since her wand specifically worked with fire magic—at her request—channeling this particular spell through the crystal embedded in the tool was also a non-starter.

The rolling monster shot up into the air like it had hit an invisible ramp and soared over our heads to crash to the ground, where it kept rolling for another thirty or forty feet before it started wobbling and unfolded itself. Senica took the time to refill her mana core, uncaring about the poor transfer rate that resulted in her losing as much mana to the air as she took into her core. I held back a wince at the waste; we were getting closer to an immense source of mana, after all.

“Well, you haven’t been hit yet, so that’s something,” I said. “But on the other hand, I don’t think you’ve landed a decisive blow either.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “That armor is too strong.”

“Stop trying to go through it,” I offered.

With a grimace, she muttered, “Easier said than done.”

The armored monster got itself reoriented easily enough and started its strange waddle forward to build up momentum before rolling back up on itself. I took to the air to remove myself from the fight, but Senica stayed on the ground and eyed the monster up. Just before it could strike her, she dove to one side. Her shield ward flickered to life anyway and diverted the monster’s course away from her while simultaneously shoving her back in the opposite direction.

“If you’re going to physically fight the thing, maybe use some invocations to give yourself the strength and speed you need first,” I called out to her.

“Not helping!” Senica yelled back as she scrambled to her feet and prepared for the creature’s next charge.

This time, she easily cleared its path and managed to pull her shield ward in tight at the same time so that it didn’t get clipped. She did it without using an invocation either, though I wasn’t sure if she didn’t trust herself to maintain her concentration on the magic or if she just wanted to save the mana for a different spell.

She started chanting again, this time taking several seconds, but she finished the spell with a clap of her hands before the creature reached her. Concussive waves of sound rolled out from her, blasting the creature and disorienting it so bad that it lost control of its roll and went sprawling.

With its vulnerable underbelly exposed, it was a simple matter for Senica to create a few fire blasts to finish the creature off. As it twitched its final moments of life, she moved forward and harvested the mana remaining in its core to recover some of what she’d lost in the fight.

“Not bad,” I said as I floated down to land next to her. “What do you think you did wrong?”

“Too much time wasted trying to burn it,” she said immediately, a frown on her face. “I should have switched tactics as soon as I learned that its hide was thick enough to absorb the heat without a problem.”

“What else?”

She thought back over the fight for a moment, then said, “Wasted mana on my shield ward. That attack wouldn’t have hit me anyway. The greater telekinesis bought me time, but if I’d been quicker on my feet, I wouldn’t have needed it.”

I nodded along. Those were all fair points. “And what did you do right?”

“Fixed the shield ward problem after the first charge clipped it. It was easier once I had a feel for its speed,” she said, still thinking. “A sound attack while it was moving was an easy leap of logic.”

“Easy to say in hindsight. Harder to think of in the middle of a fight,” I said. “You did well. You wasted your first core of mana with experimentation, but you had plenty of reserves and your shield ward only got hit once. If you ever have to fight another one of these things, or anything else that moves like them, you’ll have a solid plan of attack before you cast the first spell.”

Senica brightened at the praise. “I guess I did pretty good.”

While she’d been fighting, I’d been judging the creature’s mana usage. More specifically, I’d been looking at its regeneration rate. I’d need more samples and plenty of time to do experiments, but based on the fluctuating mana density around its body, it was likely that the monster had been capable of pulling in ambient mana and converting it over for its own use.

That confirmed one very important thing for me: the ambient mana in this area, thin as it was, wasn’t a new thing. Whatever was causing it, it had likely been going on for thousands of years. Oh, there were other possibilities, like that someone had raised the monsters in a mana-rich environment and then released them into the wild later, but that was so unlikely that it was safe to dismiss it.

It was a shame we were needed back at home when we were so close to finding the Sanctum of Light now, but we still had a day and a half left to search. The mana was only getting stronger, and if the tower was anything like the two Lightbearers I’d interrogated had described it, I imagined it would be quite easy to spot.

“I think we’ve both learned as much as we can from this monster,” I said. “Are you ready to go?”

“I think so,” my sister said. “Should we… do something with the body before we leave?”

I shook my head. “Let the scavengers have it.”

We took off soon after that, though this time we flew significantly higher. I could still see the ground in detail thanks to a powerful invocation, but since I’d already confirmed my theory, there wasn’t any real reason to take a break to fight another monster. I was silently thankful that I could maintain our flight spells indefinitely now, though. It turned out there was a thriving ecosystem in the mana-rich area, and we’d have been fighting multiple times an hour if we’d been on foot.

It only took another hour before I caught my first glimpse of the tower. At first, it was just a gray smudge hidden between the clouds and the horizon, but as we got closer, the smudge got bigger and bigger. Two hours later, we could see it in all its glory, thousands upon thousands of feet tall, its upper and lower reaches both hidden from sight.

‘That’s a lot of mana,’ Senica sent when we paused to look at it.

‘And it’s still getting stronger, the closer we get,’ I agreed. ‘I think this is a golden opportunity for you.’

‘For some extra practice?’ she asked.

‘Something like that.’