The sheer depth of the sensory data filling his consciousness was staggering, a panoramic revelation that entirely rewrote his understanding of the city.
With the skill, he could observe the flow of ambient mana in the air with a fluid, flawless precision.
He watched as the natural, unrefined currents of the world drifted lazily between the multi-storey houses, moving in long, undulating waves that responded to the gentle pressure of the evening breeze.
It was a beautiful, chaotic network of raw potential, a constant stream of background radiation that sustained the life of the province.
Furthermore, the skill allowed for a deeper, more specialized tracking function.
He could also see traces of a spell, whether active or not.
If a concealnt barrier had been erected over a warehouse a week ago and subsequently dismantled, the energetic footprint of its anchoring runes would still glow like a vibrant scar under his golden gaze.
If a rchant carried a hidden, cursed amulet in his pocket, the leaking corruption would leave a distinct, smoky trail behind his heels.
Nothing could be hidden, nothing could be erased; the environnt kept a perfect, unyielding ledger of every magical cri.
Noah shifted his head slowly, his glowing eyes scanning the length of Ter Street, bypassing the mundane movents of the clerks and laborers who remained completely blind to the brilliant display flaring within the shadows.
Right now, he could see dim reddish-purple lines in the air around the street, intertwined with the normal dull yellow ambient mana.
The contrast was imdiate and jarring. While the natural energy of the world vibrated with a soft, uniform yellow hue, these strange, bleeding fractures of reddish-purple cut through the atmosphere like jagged veins of poison.
They twisted and coiled around the stone door fras, slipped through the lower cellar grates of the residential buildings, and hung weightlessly above the granite pavents, a quiet network of corruption that had survived the passing of several years.
A cold, sharp wave of realization settled into his chest, confirming the subtle warnings that had been whispering at the edge of his consciousness all afternoon.
His mana sense had been picking up sothing strange while they were searching the street earlier, a faint, phantom irritation that had made the skin along his arms prickle despite the apparent normalcy of the neighborhood.
He hadn’t been able to isolate the source of the discomfort with his basic perceptions, but now that he used mana vision, he was sure sothing was indeed strange about this street.
The normalcy was a lie, a superficial crust of dostic peace that had been ticulously pasted over a deep, festering well of dark magic.
Tara hadn’t been wrong, and her mories hadn’t betrayed them; the horror had simply retreated beneath the surface, leaving these bleeding purple lines as its lingering ghost.
Noah didn’t say a word, his body remaining completely motionless to maintain the terrifying, unbothered persona of Mr. White as he tracked the density of the lines.
He turned towards an alley opposite him, his golden eyes narrowing to tight, focused slits as he noticed the strange reddish-purple mana was gathered more strongly there.
The veins of poison didn’t drift randomly through that particular narrow passage; instead, they seed to converge, thickening into heavy, rope-like cables of dark energy that poured out from the shadows between two multi-storey repositories.
It looked like an active drainage system for a hidden reservoir, a concentrated stream of corruption that pointed directly toward a specific node deeper within the old rchant docks.
Noah closed his eyes for a brief second, drawing upon the quiet, telepathic tether that anchored his soul to his familiar. He focused his thoughts, reaching down into the liquid pool of darkness resting beneath his boots.
’Kael... do you have any idea what this might be?’ he thought.
’No... I’ve never seen such... baleful mana before, Master.’ Kael replied, just as confused as Noah.
Noah frowned deeply beneath his black cat mask, his fingers tightening slightly beneath the folds of his traveling cloak as he digested the creature’s warning.
If an ancient dark dragon—a entity engineered from birth to command the absolute peak of the shadow elents—found the energy foreign and disturbing, the danger was far worse than he had calculated.
He thought to himself, his jaw setting into a hard, rigid line of pure disgust: ’Yes... that’s the only way to describe this mana... corrupt and disgusting.’
It felt like a disease made manifest in energy, a foul, artificial corruption that had been forced into existence through the systematic torture of the soul.
’Mana Glove.’ he thought.
The air directly surrounding his right hand fractured with a sharp, glass-like hum as the sheer density of the gathered energy warped the imdiate atmospheric pressure.
In less than a heartbeat, a brilliant golden-yellow glove appeared on his hands, the solid light wrapping flawlessly around each of his fingers, his knuckles, and extending halfway up his forearm like a pristine piece of divine vanguard armor.
The glove vibrated with a terrifying, compact frequency, its surface etched with micro-lines of raw, unadulterated magical power that seed to hiss softly against the cool evening air.
Yuan and Varis’s collective intake of breath was sharp and imdiate, a heavy gasp of surprise echoing through the quiet shadows of the grain repository when they saw the glove materializing before them.
The two veteran master-level casters froze completely, their eyes widening to near-comical proportions as the blinding golden light reflected off their faces.
They briefly glanced at each other, a silent, frantic exchange of looks passing between them that confird they were both experiencing the exact sa wave of instinctual, defensive panic.
The ambient pressure radiating from that single glove was enough to make their own internal mana core ripple uncomfortably, forcing them to realize just how fragile their own human capabilities were next to an S-rank entity.
The recognition hit them like a physical blow, their minds instantly connecting the glowing golden glove to the classified incident reports that had been circulating through the upper echelons of the regional alliance.
They both recognized it instantly, since it was the exact, high-tier manifestation what Noah used to subdue and completely neutralize Tara when she was still a rampaging shadow monster.
User Comments
0 comments from readers