Two of these powerful monsters were related which was just another terrifying element I wasn't in a hurry to confront. Relatives had similar mana fluctuations. There could be three or four more powerful mages I was having trouble detecting at the moment. If they were related to the others then their mana fluctuations could be completely covered by a more powerful relative. I sped up a bit to push our pace up a bit.
I didn't want to stay in any of the newer hotels. The more run down ones might allow me to stay in the room with Sekka instead of the stables. It was hard to protect him when I was over a hundred feet away. He was strong enough to hold his own against some opponents, but others could crush him in an instant. It was a little frustrating how slow he was progressing.
It made sense though. I could teach him how to strengthen his affinity, and in turn strengthen his mana control, but I couldn't teach him how to use it. His imagination when it came to spellcasting was lacking. He was the type that needed a proper teacher, and couldn't improve on his own. While I was a talent who just did whatever my instincts told me would work.
Not having that kind of talent made improving his spellcasting harder for him then it was me. It wasn't as if he wasn't progressing at all. While his core was larger then my three bonded, and in turn contained more mana that wasn't where he was lacking. The number of spells he could successfully cast were limited. Most relied on restraining their target while others simply relied on them getting killed in one hit.
Wounding was also an important aspect of spellcasting. Making your opponents bleed was a good way to put them down without involving yourself with them closely. Sekka didn't like making people suffer which I understood to a degree, but suffering was how you beat an opponent stronger then yourself. You wounded them more then they could wound you as fast as you could over, and over again until you opponent was dead. Rarely would you get a chance to strike them down in one go.
I couldn't stress just how lucky I was to take down that city lord with one strike. If it weren't for the trick behind my soul blade I wouldn't have succeeded. Poisoning him also helped. I wasn't invincible or omnipotent so pretending I was was a bit of a waste of time on my part.
*****
Sefrika
I yawned as we brought the wyverns down. The bandits in the woods had recently caused large scale destruction to their base so I'd been sent to investigate. My ability to peer through time would allow me to see what exactly had happened to all the bandits just a few weeks ago. We'd already investigated the forest several times, and found that whatever had happened had killed all the bandits. From the traces of mana in the area it was obvious that they had been boxed in with a wall of flaming wood.
I wish I could say they were weaklings, and that was why we never bothered with them personally despite knowing exactly where they were, but the truth was that to properly eradicate them we would need at least two of the wyvern riders, and we simply didn't want to bother sending two of our strongest to deal with a few pathetic bandits. Had they taken a blow strong enough to reduce the number of riders to one then we would have eradicated them without hesitation, but since their numbers remained high enough to give us trouble we left them be. Now the bandit camp that had been something of an annoyance for some time was in shambles. The mana in the area was incredibly sparse as if something had devoured it all. There weren't very many creatures capable of such a thing so we had an idea of what did it, but what was confusing was how a corrupted spirit got so far into the forest without leaving a trail of destruction in it's wake.
There was the possibility of it being born her, but that was highly unlikely due to the power the creature that destroyed this area had to have possessed to do this much damage. The more powerful spirits had a firm grasp of what they could handle so they didn't often turn corrupted. That meant this one had probably been contained, and controlled in some way. Weapons made to contain the core of a corrupted creature were useful in some ways if you didn't feed them too much. There were half a dozen relegated to waste disposal in the city since these creatures desperately needed mana to survive, and anything they devoured was turned into their mana they worked as excellent disposal methods.
It was clear that this one had been overfed, and gone out of control, but who had contained it. I allowed my time affinity to flow into my eyes. First checking if the forest would be able to recover on its own since this was a very large patch of land, and then turning my attention to the past. Only to find there was only fragments left of the battle that had been fought here. I caught glimpses of a young man in a fox mask as well as the bandits that had been fighting here.
It seemed that the man in the fox mask managed to contain the rampant spirit on his own. I couldn't help but be a little impressed, but any thought I had about smirking or giving him credit vanished when a small portion of his mask broke away revealing his other eye, and one of his ears. The rounded appearance of his ear told me that this powerful fox was at least half human.
"You don't seem to like what you're seeing," Frigga interrupted me while I was viewing what little of the past I could see.