As yet another skeleton fell to the ground, scattering into its parts, I had to smile. This one had been destroyed by Rai, who had taken to the anti-magic aspects like a duck to water and was now happily slicing through the magic animating skeletons and had even managed to convince Olivia to help him with training, learning to cut through the simplest of her divine protections. That he had managed to convince her was, in my eyes, quite amazing as she wasn’t too fond of using her magic without true need but his arguments must have been good.

Sadly, while we had destroyed another five-hundred skeletons in the four days we had been traveling, that had only amounted to a single level, the vast majority simply too frail and weak to give us any experience-points. On the other hand, I had gained a single point in Ice-Rune Mastery and two in Ice-Magic, mostly due to figuring out how to create frozen Constructs at range. In hindsight, it was annoyingly simple, at least the way I had stumbled across was. There might be other ways to accomplish the same task, mine was to create semi-permanent items and use those as focus. By creating the initial nucleus right next to me and making sure that it remained connected to my Astral Power, I could use formed Ice-Runes to trigger a near-instant effect, even at range. Or, in simple terms, the small, hand-sized chunk was moved into position with Ice-Magic and once there, I could channel a burst of Astral Power into it, turning it into a large, wall-sized obstruction or coat the ground in a sheet of solid Ice.

More options to perform in a fight, especially as the destruction-aspect I was normally responsible for was easily covered by a gleefully cawing Lenore, sitting on her skull of skeleton-destroying doom, blasting undead left, right and centre. Of all the undead we had destroyed in the past days, she had the highest numbers, simply due to her ability to instantly shatter large groups of chaff, allowing Sigmir, Rai and, to a lesser degree, myself to clean up the rest. I did double-duty, corralling the undead together with Adra, her plant-manipulation combining with the newly figured out walls funnelling the undead into Sigmir’s axe, where they were broken, physically. With that tactic, we had cleaned up four medium-sized groups of fifty to hundred-fifty undead each, the rest of the destroyed undead being kills of opportunity as we were wandering from group to group.

“We’ll have to decide just how much time we want to spend in this area.” Adra reminded me, as we had crossed roughly half of the mountain-range, even with our rather slightly meandering course, going off track whenever Lenore noticed a nicely sized group of undead nearby.

“True. We could continue to gain power here, but I’m not sure how worthwhile that’ll be. Maybe if we had the ability to destroy the actually large groups, like that first one, but I’m wary of having to face another Lord. That thing could easily have killed me, or any of us.” I admitted, shivering at the thought of the Lord and it’s cursed glaive. Without Olivia, I’d have been dead.

“While it pains me to leave the souls trapped here, I think we should continue our journey. You said your teacher gave you a task, one should respect their teachers, even if you disagree with them. And a Journey of Mastery is, traditionally, the road you have to travel to become a master.” Olivia threw in, giving me additional food for thought.

And she was right, if it wasn’t the beta, I’d gladly take my time, grind the undead to dust, maybe even figure out a way to actually cleanse the area of them to the point that they wouldn’t rise again but while the EXP would definitely be worthwhile, grinding for a higher level, without having a chance to enjoy that level due to the Beta ending would be foolish. No, continuing on would be the thing to do.

“Master, do you feel that, too?” Rai suddenly perked up, his eyes focused past a nearby mountain. For a moment, I was flabbergasted, not sure what he was referring to, even as I focused in the same direction, there appeared to be nothing there. I was about to ask what he meant, bewildered that he might have detected something I had overlooked, when I felt a distant twinge, a slight fluctuation in the world, right on the boundary between light and darkness, hidden deep within the shades of twilight. Now, I was even more amazed that he had noticed it at all, without knowing that there was something to look for and I realised that in this particular subject, my disciple might have passed me by, simply because he solely focused on manipulating and hiding within the shadows.

“What do you think that is?” I asked, not sure what to make of the fluctuations.

“Don’t know. But I want to find out.” he replied, before looking at each of the others in turn. , “Could you all wait here? I want to go there, check it out.”, focusing on me, he added, “Master, would you guard my back? We need to remain utterly hidden, so that I can observe them, without disturbing them.”

“You go ahead, I will follow behind with some distance.” I agreed, before turning to the others. Sigmir didn’t look too happy, neither did Adra, but Olivia looked resigned.

“Can you please make camp? We should be back in the morning.” I asked them, pulling the shadows around me once they accepted.

Nearby, Rai did very much the same but once again, I realised that his concealment was just as dense as mine, the Shadows surrounding him, covering him in a cloak of twilight that I could only perceive because I knew it was there, otherwise, noticing him would have been a serious challenge. Without exchanging any additional words, I followed him as we ghosted across the cragged landscape, moving just within the boundary of light and shadow, the twilight allowing us to move quickly and without hindrance from such mundane things as difficult terrain.

With our mode of travel, it barely took any time at all, before I decided that I was close enough. The closer we got, the stronger a certain foreboding feeling in my gut became, making me uneasy about approaching further. After giving a curt nod to Rai, I moved to the side, floating onto the ridge so I could see further.

While Rai moved past me, I settled in to watch, focusing on my senses in an attempt to get a better idea where Rai was and what he actually was after. Now, with the shorter distance, it was a lot easier to figure out what the fluctuations were and once I managed that, the uneasy feeling within my gut made perfect sense.

There was a crag, maybe three, four metres across, in the land of the valley before us, physically there was nothing special about it that I could see from the distance, just another part of the desolate lands, but to my magical senses, there was more to it. The smell of magic in the air was pungent, the sweet, alluring scent of Darkness strong enough to be sickly, too strong for even me and mixed with so much more, with life, with death, with miasma and decay, a whole bouquet of magic that my senses could barely grasp. And from the crag, ghostly shades, barely visible in the dim light of the setting sun that filtered past the clouds, moved creeping across the land for a short distance, before vanishing back into the shadows, disappearing from my senses.

I had no real idea what they were, my best explanation was that I was watching some sort of incorporeal Undead, ghosts, spectres or wraiths, whatever this particular version was called. And Rai, now quite some distance away from me, was heading straight into the centre of their lair, the deepest concentration of them all. I was about to move, to conjure up a magic-eating mist that should be highly effective against creatures that were nothing but shadows and magic, but Lenore spoke up, stopping me.

“Let him. You would hate it, if anyone were to stop you, just because an experiment of ours is a little risky.”

Her warning rang true, I had taken risks most would deem insane, hell, I had died for one of my experiments and had been near-death more than once. If I stopped my disciple because I was worried, without even knowing what he had in mind, I would be a failure as a teacher. Letting out a deep sigh, I settled in, focusing on the spectres and on Rai, ready to spring into motion the moment it became necessary. At the same time, I felt a sense of pride well up within me, as my disciple started to step out of my shadow, making his own way and finding his own subjects to research. Hopefully, he would survive whatever he had in mind. Otherwise, I might have to go there myself, both to find whatever he was looking for and to avenge him by utterly destroying those spectres.