Getting back on course, Jellal once again begins his trek to the city. Pushing his way through the brush he avoids the conflicts between the hordes of monsters and adventurers. Except for a few rare triple digit hordes the small groups of monsters are on the losing side of the conflict so far.

‘It may be in their favor now but what about when larger groups pop up. Besides even if they take care of these ones the monsters will just keep coming. They haven’t made a move on the other side of the stream causing an increase in the size of the groups. Plus it’s impossible to tell when those stronger monsters will come out from the center of the forest.

If this is how they tried to deal with the miasma in the past it’s no wonder there are legends about civilizations collapsing. While they’re playing around out here the monsters are gaining strength elsewhere. Well, maybe they know something I don’t.

Hmm, now that I think about it, I haven’t seen any aura users amongst the adventurers I’ve come across. Do they think it’s unnecessary to send them out, or are there too few of them? With the ridiculous number of swordsmen running around you’d think they would have some sort of training program to teach people how to use in case of an emergency like, I don’t know, miasma spreading near their city. I guess they could be focusing them somewhere else, after all I only know the general situation around where I’ve been living while remaining ignorant to the rest of the world.’

Jellal continues to analyze the situation as he moves about. His straight path to the city cuts through some of the thickest brush on this side of the stream making it easy for him to sneak by the fighting.

Eventually he comes upon the road running perpendicular to him. Hiding in the brush he watches as numerous groups of adventurers run around on the road leaving him no gap to sneak through to the other side.

With plenty of time to think he mulls over his options. According to his original plan he would continue on a straight path until he hit the city but his curiosity makes him hesitate. After careful deliberation he makes up his mind to stick with his original plan. Even if he uses the direct route to get to the city it won’t be too late to check out the road on the way back.

Quietly moving to an area with more space to move around in he takes out his disguise. Looking at the inconsistent color scheme, he vows that finding a place to buy an outfit will be the first thing he does when he gets to the city, even before he visits the adventurers guild to get an id to make moving around easier. After all, running around in such clothes for long will tarnish his pristine image and reputation.

While changing into his disguise he’s careful not to make any noise that could draw someone’s attention. Putting on the mask he has the vines wrap around each other to hold it in place before he pulls his hood up for the finishing touch. With his ensemble complete he has no skin showing making it impossible to tell from the outside that he isn’t human.

Rather than immediately hopping out of the bushes and utilizing his disguise to get passed the adventurers he chooses to act stealthily. Seeing this as an opportunity to practice his infiltration before he arrives at the city he begins gathering shadow mana.

Unfortunately he doesn’t have the innate ability to merge into shadow like the shadow wolf so he has to do it manually. His inability to fully merge with the shadows leaves him looking as if he was buried waist deep in the ground.

Thinking about the advantages and disadvantages his physical change brought him he comes up with a new idea. Since natural mana can merge and separate, he figures he can use it to his advantage. For a normal person to use magic they have to resonate with it causing it to be ridiculously difficult to use two types of magic at the same time, much less merge two types of mana into one magic. With his new form and his closeness with natural mana he decides to try his hand at merging two types of mana and using them to form magic.

Given the situation, his first choice for supplementary mana is space since it would allow him to fully sink into an extended space within the shadow if he’s successful.

He climbs out of the shadow before attempting to influence the two types of mana to merge. The merging goes unexpectedly well for his first attempt, seeming to work perfectly. Before he has a chance to celebrate they start separating, raining on his parade before it even began.

In preparations for his second attempt he shrinks the range of his mana, concentrating it within ten meter radius with him at the center. He influences the two types of mana to merge again before having his own mana join the mix.

He keeps increasing the amount of his mana he adds until they stop trying to separate. With his mana acting as an adhesive to help keep the two merged, he feels comfortable enough to start working on forming his magic.

The plan for the magic is for it to extend the space inside the shadow. In this way he’s essentially turning the shadow into a temporary item bag that only lets in things that have the ability to merge with shadows. If he created a space without any sort of restrictions it would be too easy to be discovered by the roaming adventurers which would go against the point of the magic in the first place.

Once the magic is formed he gives it a minute to ensure it won’t separate unexpectedly. It holds up to his thorough examination with no flaws to be found. With his magic set and meeting his standards he begins to merge with the shadow mana.

When he’s as at the limit of his ability to merge, he steps onto the shadow. Controlling the magic he slowly sinks down into the shadow. As he sinks he keeps some contingency plans ready in case things go off the rails. Sinking past his waist he passes his first version’s record with ease. Soon it’s just his head out of the shadows.

Taking a deep breath he prepares to fully enter the shadow. His head slowly sinks down as he disappears without a trace.

Inside the shadow everything feels muted. Jellal can still sense and spread his mana into the outside world, but the response feels sluggish. Curious if he can still use magic from inside he tries to gather wind mana above the shadow. The mana slowly congregates as he starts forming magic. The amount of effort he has to put in to create a simple magic reminds him of when he first started using magic.

His experiment eventually succeeds as he forms a wind needle successfully. Taking it to the next level he uses the magic to attack the shadow. The needle drills into the ground leaving a skinny hole. A small amount of residual magic managed to reach the shadow, though it was harmless.

‘It looks like it’s a pain in the ass to attack me in this state. Since I can attack from in here without my enemies knowing where I am this could end up being an incredibly broken magic. That being said it’s still possible for some magic to get through if the shadow’s attacked by magic. If it was hit with a powerful enough magic attack it could get dangerous. I don’t think it would have any problems if it’s hit with a large number of small attacks, but it’s still best to play it safe. Unfortunately I’m also restricted which does balance it out a bit. With my magical abilities this would only hold me back if I use it for something other than stealth.’

Reaching his hand up to his face the vines that had kept the mask secured unwind. Pulling of the mask he started looking around the mysterious space. Around him there was nothing but darkness, with only a faint light leaking in from above. Looking up he could see a dark and hazy version of the outside world through the ceiling. The shadow acted like a filter making it difficult to see clearly while simultaneously draining away the color, allowing him to see the world in an interesting new way.

Because of his magic the space around him is almost ethereal. Even though he isn’t standing on anything he doesn’t continuously sink. When he moves his arm he can feel a resistance as if he was submerged in water, yet it’s just empty space. That feeling of being in water while standing in nothingness gives him a sense of incongruity that is only heightened by his inability to breathe while in the shadow.

Shifting his gaze to the mask in his hand he started regretting not putting eyeholes in the mask. Even though he can use mana to “see” the world instead of his eyes there are somethings that can only be relayed visually. He seriously contemplates adding eyeholes to the mask but in the end not having them will give him a bit of mystique he wouldn’t have otherwise.

He stops worrying about his looks as he tries to come up with a solution for his breathing problem. Controlling the shadow to push him up he pokes his head out of the shadow and takes a breath. Before going back down he gathers wind mana around the shadow for his next experiment.

Sinking back inside, he starts his tests. First he tries the simple and straight forward method of pulling wind inside, which fails miserably. Since his wind needle didn’t penetrate the shadow he expected it to fail, but tried anyways to cover his bases.

Moving on to options he expects to work, he once again uses wind mana. He tries to influence the wind mana to merge with the space he created in hopes it would bring air along with it. As the wind mana begins to merge the resistance on his body also decreases slightly.

Taking in a deep breath he confirms it’s a success, but only a minor one. The air is incredibly thin making it impossible for him to stay inside for an extended period of time. If he only looks at it from the perspective of gaining extra time by being able to breathe it’s acceptable, and since that’s all he wanted in the first place he decides it’s fine for now.

Leaving his mask off he controls the shadow to move him instead of trying to do it himself physically. He continues drifting through the shadow until he reaches the roadside.

Around the road trees have been cleared out leaving a gap in the canopy. Light shining through the leaves causes the shadow on the road to be speckled with light, constantly shifting as the wind blows. The inconsistency causes an interesting challenge for Jellal.

His original magic used a large shadow as a base so it isn’t ideal for the situation. In theory he could create as big of a space as he needs within any shadow by mixing space mana with it but he would still have to travel between shadows.

While crafting a solution he realizes crossing this road is much harder than entering the city. If he wants to enter the city he only needs to sneak into the shadow of a person or carriage entering the city and he’s golden. To cross the road he needs to deal with broken, inconsistent shadow causing an abrupt spike in difficulty.

The easiest way to solve the problem would be to merge the shadows, but he’s trying to be stealthy. Unless the adventurers are blind or completely inept dolts they would notice the change in no time at all. Even if they all happened to be so incompetent they didn’t notice it’s impossible for everyone he comes across in the future to be that pathetically useless, so he ditches the easy way for the good of his future self.

The idea of making a large enough space to hide in regardless of the size of the shadow seems to have legs, so Jellal decides run with it. Backing into the bushes where he started Jellal begins working on his newest magic experiment.

Popping out of the shadow a smile creeps onto his face as he begins what he would call trial and error, without the error. Starting with a shadow he lengthens it while also slimming it down. When he’s finish he’s left with a hair thick shadow coiled in a spiral in front of him.

From there he begins merging space mana into it so he’ll be able to fit inside it. Making a rough estimation based on the last shadow he sinks in to test its depth. He ends up with only his head above ground, looking like a botched attempt at photoshop horror.

Climbing out he adjusts the depth of the space, jumping in periodically to test. When he’s able to properly fit inside he starts merging wind mana with the other two so he’ll be able to breathe inside.

Under his control the shadow unwinds as one end creeps across the road, going unnoticed by the adventurers. The other end stays with Jellal to act as his access point. His estimation of how long to make the shadow is right on the money as it extends all the way to the bushes on the other side of the road.

He sinks into the shadow and does a final test for good measure. While inside he takes the risk of trying to control the shadow to move. It’s extremely sluggish but he’s able to do it. As it inches along the three types of merged mana begin trying to separate, signaling the immediate end of the unnecessary and dangerous test.

With a bit of effort he sets everything back to normal before setting out inside the shadow. Because of the difference in size between the shadow outside and what’s inside the distance he has to cover is significantly longer. To travel a meter forward on the outside he has to travel ten meters inside.

In the end he successfully crosses to the other side of the road, though it took him nearly a full minute to do so. Before getting out of the shadow he puts on his mask as an extra precautionary measure. As his head pops out he takes a deep breath, filling his deprived lungs of much needed oxygen.

With the bushes blocking him from view the whole time the adventurers are left none the wiser to what transpired right under their noses. Now that his test run for infiltrating the city is complete he sets out so he can do it for real.

Continuing to wear his disguise he pushes forward through the brush. The forest on this side of the road is relatively thin with less brush in general than the other side. For some odd reason the path he’s taking seems to push through a section of overly thick brush which happens to be the only one of its kind in his considerable sensory range.

Rather than trudge through the pointlessly thick brush he breaks out and walks next to it. This continues until he finally reaches the very edge of the forest. The patch of senselessly thick brush constituted a tiny line within the forest that just happened to be on the exact path he took.

Thinking about the fool who ran headlong through it when they could have simply ran next to it he couldn’t help but shake his head while face-palming. Logically speaking the ease of movement would have easily made up for the ten seconds it would have taken to get out and run next to it. Just the prospect of someone choosing to run through it “to save time” is enough to leave him baffled.

Reaching up to his mask the vines loosen as Jellal peaks one of his eyes out from behind it. Looking at the meadow in front of him, he laments its inevitable corruption. The wind billows causing the knee high grass to sway along with it. The sea of green is dotted with colorful patches of wildflowers allowing onlookers to feel at peace.

Once again hiding behind his mask he continues his journey. He moves leisurely through the field, enjoying the feeling of the wind hugging him as he walks through this untainted land. The farther along he gets the shorter the grass becomes. Even the tall, majestic flowers are replaced with ones that can fit on a fingertip.

Far off to his right the road coils around into view. It angles ever so slightly in his direction giving confirmation the city is near. It doesn’t take long for the city wall to make their grand appearance felt on the horizon.

The walls’ massive fifteen meter height seems excessive to Jellal at first, but after considering the physical prowess some monsters possess as well as how powerful magic can be he begins to wonder if they’re really that effective.

Wanting to get a look at the walls with his own eyes, he adjusts his mask. Not wanting to expose his face for long he puts his mask back in order while wondering how much effort it would take for him to destroy such massive stone walls.

Eager to get inside the city he hastens his steps as he moves to converge with the road.

‘Crap, I didn’t think about how to sneak close enough to the city to sneak in without being spotted ahead of time! No need for brainstorming, a simple and quick solution is best. Step one: get near the road unnoticed. Step two: latch onto the bottom of a carriage and hitch a ride close. Step three: use shadow magic to infiltrate.

The first two steps are the hardest but I know a flawless way to accomplish such a stealth mission, kekeke.’