Chương 507: AF Chapter 506 – The Heart of the System

Briggs reached up, grabbed the stone at the side of the path, and as agilely as a much smaller monkey, heaved himself up over the side and down onto the walkway there. It was unnatural in his Tremblesense, clearly artificially made, sloped and graded just so to let the water run off, minor complex Runework underneath it that cleaned it constantly and kept the plant life from growing onto and over this ready surface.

It was also recessed three feet down into the stone, so there was basically a natural railing all around the place, both helping conceal it from sight and providing a convenient place to stop and lean out and inspect the surroundings. It went down slightly counter-clockwise, up in the opposite direction. A long, slender hand with jet-black nails reached up and grasped the stone, nails sinking into the rock like it was butter.

His Hag just hopped, going right into a perfect one-armed handstand, then over and right into his arms smoothly, earning a quick smooch of appreciation before she spun out of his grasp, dropped to the path, and reached out and over the side. It took her no effort to lift Ryin up the side, the Magos scampering easily up the side with the absolute bracing and gracefully swinging out onto the pathway in a dancer's spin of control and poise.

As always, her calm demeanor in everything contrasted with Kris' unabashed physicality, and Briggs could only thank Valus that he got to spend a lot of time with two such very gorgeous women who were so different and easy to appreciate.

"My guess is that this walkway is for casual tours, exercise, and inspecting the surroundings when bored," he said, tapping his armored Boot down with a distinct tapping, which would be as silent as a cat's paw if he desired it.

"There has been a lot of traffic, but it was also spread out over a very long time, and the Runework below is ameliorating most of the wear and tear. I can only see shadows of a lot of walks around this place."

"No mass travel or large numbers," Kris noted, also tapping her foot to read her Tremblesense more intently, and Briggs nodded agreement.

"So, there's someone or something here, but not many of them, or they don't do a lot of walking."

"I am guessing up is the way to whatever residential areas are here, but it would be strange if there's only one way off the ramp. What about the sides?" Ryin asked calmly. Briggs lifted his bushy eyebrows at that thought, reaching out to run his gauntleted hand over the stones. With his Tremblesense, it was more sensitive than any normal sense of touch, Armor or no. Kris did likewise with her lethal black nails.

"Yes, they trail their hands along the stones," he said, somewhat distracted as he took some casual steps down the walkway, his fingers trailing along the stones.

"I don't know about a thumb, but I'm pretty sure that's four fingers smoothing the rock down over millennia."

"Agreed," Kris nodded again, trailing after him, and Ryin followed smoothly, her Footsteps of the Mage little different from Waveskating if they were moving slowly.

"We should even be able to tell where they pause if they do so at the same places and lean on the stones…"

"We aren't in a huge hurry," Ryin assured him, trailing after them. He was aware she had a large number of Permanent passive spells on her now, courtesy of virtually unlimited funding capabilities, but she wasn't spinning out dozens of Detect X variants because that might draw attention. She was seeing different things about the place that they couldn't see, but they were mostly magical in nature, and so not important for the most part. She'd alert them if they were.

She'd shuffled her eyeview over to them whenever they asked, and the way she was looking through at least three spectra at the same time was pretty headache-inducing. If she was playing the Sublime Chord at the time, it was also terrifyingly hypnotic. Even someone with a rote Detect Magic going when she was Singing that stuff tended to just stop and gape blankly... So, there was nothing significantly magical to see here.

"Why were you asking about that?" Kris asked.

"If you could differentiate fingerprints and footsteps," Ryin responded.

"Multiple people, how many if so, or just one?" Briggs glanced down at the stones, then at his feet.

"Footsteps… no, I can't. If we find some stones that see more hands, we'll let you know."

"Agreed," Kris said as well, as they continued walking down and around the mountainside, looking for something truly mundane… a door.

Lots of birds on this mountain, setting up nests. None were getting close to the walkway. Kris assumed it was because any nests made were disposed of, just like their droppings, and likely there was probably a faint pressure pushing them off of the area, or maybe a protective field they found uncomfortable. Hard to tell, with the pressure of the magic on all sides. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She'd never walked through such a powerful magical field, so omnipresent and mighty. She'd felt more powerful focused magic. Ryin could launch specific spells with Theurgic bonuses that were way over the top of what anyone might expect, and with Spell Perfection the Caster Level on her Shards were insane. Ryin had landed them without the slightest resistance from herself or Briggs, meaning she was Casting them north of 70.

They'd tested it out to find out their limits, and to know what magic of such levels felt like accurately. Want to know what Caster Level 60 felt like? Step right up and Ryin would show you… Not that anyone took her up on it. Feeling that level of power was absolutely overwhelming to an average person. +20 was nominally soul-crushing when comparing Levels. There'd been some proud paramounts who'd wondered at Ryin's pure power, and she had dominated them with Dispels in the 100-class.

She just EXTINGUISHED magic at that level, there was no resistance. It just vanished before her. Said Paramounts had felt her power come down and wipe their own, and any challenges to her power or position had just evaporated. None of them wanted to confront the power that could overwhelm theirs as if it wasn't even there... But an entire field this massive at CL 50? She… well. It was totally new, but thinking about it, any field at this CL was bound to be massive, wasn't it?

A Caster Level used to bring forth a spell that could shield a livable island, a great metropolis… or as part of something that could bind a Mythos Entity, while living at the center of the game-like shenanigans affecting this entire island? Okay, yeah, this was something she should have expected, she had just never expected to actually enter one. Not that such things didn't exist, but had existed where she'd ever meet them.

She should have been thinking more long-term, and there was at least thirty thousand years of long-term going on across Dereth. You could do a LOT of shit with that much time. Something surely had. The view here was actually pretty nice. The hanging clouds around the islands, the fairly serene waters, gentle waves crashing here and there in the distance where energy was being vented. Birds a-flight, greenery crawling over the stones, a clear horizon free of any activity that wasn't natural…

Eh, she'd get sick of it soon. No people, and Ranthas were not isolationists, that was a given. That would be Yaraq on the horizon, her Mask of Clarity up and x50 magnification doing the job, clearly able to make out the bay and hills before the most eligible town for resettling among the former Gharu'n localities. It was outside the primary security zone for now, however, and they didn't have the people to expand there as yet, so only a light garrison was present, and patrols coming through regularly.

There were no really important Dungeons in the area, although the Gear Knight assembly area to the south was being worked by the few Constructs they'd managed to reassemble. However, Gearknights didn't need farms or fishing, so there was no real reason to move people there. The primary attraction would be the orchards, and there were some descendants interested in reclaiming the farms and fields of their fathers, if they could…

Fuzzy paused ahead of her, the moving mountain, so much like her father, stopping abruptly. The turn of his head and twitch of his ear was as easy to read as a book, asking if she felt the same thing. Her Tremblesense was actually more versatile and sensitive to more things than his, but in terms of reading solid objects they were both pretty equal.

Her Trembling Domain kept her aware of air movement, temperatures, electrical energies, presence of magic inside it, sonar-like sensitivity, and water motion as applicable, all in addition to being able to read solid materials in thorough detail, as well as whatever was touching them, through the vibrations of things as simple as her heartbeat, tapping a finger, or a good firm step on the ground.

His big hand lifted away from a rounded set of stones on a more subtly level portion of this walkway, and she reached over to touch them, tinking them with nails harder than steel, and, if she desired them to be, sharper than razors. Tink, tink…

"There are definitely fingerprints on this," she informed her Bondmage, focusing.

"It's… my apologies. I have never actually tried to read fingerprints on something. It's very hard to focus on such details, and the mists seem to erode them, if the cleaning effect isn't." She felt Ryin's presence as much by her Aura as by sight. Nothing could replicate that Aura and its manifestation in their Bond, the touch of it on her own Aura so singular and perfect, swelling and yet restrained, blazing and so sublime, unbelievably hard and harsh, and yet so gentle and harmonic.

It made other mages look like uncontrolled, wild children around her. Plus it could rise up to fight back against her Null with a radiant pressure she couldn't dominate, while normally her Null swept over it comfortably and familiarly and pressed it down and back, letting Ryin know she was totally safe and her bondmage was probably going to go to sleep if Kris kept it up.

Ryin's response to Kris' comment was to reach into her Masspack, pull out a basic alchemist kit, handing it to her to hold while Ryin opened it, took out a dropper, three vials, poured part of two vials into a perfume atomizer, one drop of the third, shook them up as she resealed them, and then sprayed the rounded stone all over with the glowing cerulean substance inside. Glowing light green smears materialized as the substance reacted with whatever trace oils were left behind.

Impressed, Briggs and Kris watched them ripple into sight across the stone.

"Fingerprint ink. I want the formula," Briggs said, bending over for a closer look, the eyes of his bear-like Mask glowing slightly. It was waved over to both of them immediately, hardly a secret.

"That's more chemistry than alchemy!" Kris noticed immediately, also examining the smears more closely.

"Layers and depth. You want sets, and differentiating between them. I think there's at least two sets there…" Ryin squinted. Kris focused to a preternatural degree, her nails tapping constantly in a patter across the stones as her ki radiated and focused. This set belonged with that set, these were together, layered over one another, this looked more detailed, larger, smaller…

"Three sets," she said after a moment, confident in her assessment. Briggs agreed, the regular tapping of his thumb setting up a nice contrasting vibration that threw the prints into starker relief.

"That might or might not be useful." He pointed further ahead, where the walkway subtly widened.

"I think that's the east side."

"Facing the sunrise?" Kris asked, smirking.

"How predictable…"

"We shall have to see." The three headed for the place at a quicker pace, while Ryin tucked her kit back into her Masspack.