BXBX NOVEL Chapter 398 397: Reaching Nogart
"It... would have made for an interesting story, but that is all... Body examination shows that the creatures skin or persons barriers that she hit were incredibly hard, even for a human with a Core... I mean, she completely shattered her wrist bones and fractured her fingers... as for their death, it seems that it was a creature, considering the way their top halves were bitten off..."
She continued on a little longer as she boarded the carriage with the rest of us, still theorizing about what we might be up against as we journeyed to the next city, a trading center called Emor.
Like Huran and the villages, the city was a crumbling, burnt mess, littered with decaying corpses and burnt bodies.
Emor, however, provided a rather large amount of evidence for Kolia and Leone to pour over, as the city was home to a few humans that held respectable Cores, which would provide some insight into what we were dealing with.
Autopsies of their bodies, damage dealt to their weapons and armor, what their \'arenas\' looked like... all of it would help out the investigation greatly.
Of course, with the city being so large and the damage being so extensive, this was another multi day investigation that was spent scouring over rubble and the dead.
Not entirely boring, as I was able to spend some time practicing my martial arts against Anput as we \'stood guard\' over Leone at the house we requisitioned for our personal use, while also meditating and honing my arcane arts on my own, all while the mages poured over the dead and looked for clues.
One of which was rather intriguing; the people killed by whatever opened the Gates were incapable of being raised as undead unless it was by a Fiend.
Something about how the residual mana left inside their wounds prevented the decaying of their own natural mana, which in turn results in \'resurrected\' corpses that we would need to put down again.
The mana inside their corpses was nowhere near as complex as what was on the materials under the contact points, but it still was unique and ancient feeling.
Speaking of, the contact point inside Emor was located not in just one place, but three.
The first that we found was - once again - located inside the center of the city, where it would have access to a large amount of people right away.
Corpses were piled up and scattered around a hundred feet around the center of the city, suggesting the creature not only moved incredibly fast but was also incredibly efficient in its kills, capable of slaughtering swathes of humans in mere moments.
That... was slightly worrying, but I do believe that isn\'t a hard bar to clear despite how it sounds; give me a minute and I could probably slaughter around two thirds of what this creature did, and that\'s if I don\'t have speed enhancements from some spells...
The next two contact points were located inside the Emor Palace; the first inside the entrance hall, and the next inside the throne room, where it had butchered the strong guards with what seems like ease before leaving the Nobles as little more than chunks of rotting flesh and bone atop their thrones.
Some of the more intact guards had similar \'self inflicted\' wounds like the woman in the forest did, and their Cores were significantly larger than hers, reaching around the size of the average Empire mercenary.
Even they had splintered wrists, cracked forearms, and broken hands, all while their blades were bent in odd shapes and shattered.
The mages poured over the scraps left behind by the creature, slowly solidifying that we were in fact dealing with a creature and not a human, since most of the bodies seemed to have large bite wounds and chunks of flesh missing, suggesting it ate what it tore away.
They managed to secure a better image of the runes inside the Ritual Circles they found, while also determining a little more about the mana itself, noting that the mana seemed to have trace amount of both Time and Space interwoven into it, but not enough to suggest someone or something with actual Time and / or Space Mana inside their Core.
Perhaps a Time / Space Crystal from inside the Labyrinthian, which were considered unproven theory?
There was a singular account of seeing a Time Crystal inside the Labyrinthian, but the person who saw it went insane, so it wasn\'t a credible, reliable source...
Though, that also asks if the Gates themselves were things that were fueled by Time and Space Mana, and how that influenced how they worked.
It was with those theories in their minds that the mages settled into the march as we made our way through the rest of Tragon, searching the last few small villages and cities that were rumored to be attacked by the Gates and solidifying more and more of what we knew, all while more questions were raised.
What was creating the Gates; specifically, what kind of Ritual Circle was needed to truly warp something from one place to another at such great lengths?
The teleportation magics that we understand inside the Empire are primitive in comparison; in order to go from one side to the other, we need to utilize large quantities of all kinds of mana to even travel from one portal to another a few hundred miles away, let alone the thousands upon thousands that would be needed to go from the Labyrinthian to Tragon.
How much more advanced were those Ritual Circles, and what was fueling them?
Was this creature actually creating them, and if so how?
Has the Labyrinthian itself managed to \'awaken\' and begin directing some of its inhabitants out into the world?
So many questions were raised, but so very few were answered...
It was with that that we reached the capital of Tragon, which lay in ruin.
Nestled into a mountain was the city Nogart, capital of Tragon and where we would hopefully find more answers to our questions.