I decided to check out the statue first and angled my wings to make a slow, lazy turn in its direction.
Suddenly, I had a great idea while tilting and changing the shape of my wings to turn, and dove down to drop Zenobia off. She started screaming, thinking she was going to die, but I spread my wings again as we neared the ground and landed quite nicely.
I let go of her, and she collapsed to the ground looking completely pale. "Clean yourself up and do whatever you want until I need you again."
I flew up again and headed in a straight line towards the edge of the city. A little ways outside the city, I figured what I wanted to try might just pluck all the feathers from my wings. I don't really want that to happen, so I hovered while switching from feather to shadow.
I think if I propel myself with magic while keeping my wings in a sort of triangle, like a fighter jet, I can propel myself at absolutely ridiculous speeds. Probably faster than with just cultivation, magic, or my wings alone. Then I can run away from anyone in this world without them having the slightest chance of catching up.
There are two wing shapes I think I'll try out: just the regular triangle wings and something I vaguely remember reading about once called an oblique wing. The triangle wing is simple, I don't know if it's the best, but it will probably be the easiest.
I levitated myself higher up many thousands of feet in the air and folded the joints of my shadow wings into a triangle, with the peak several feet above my head.
I turned myself so I was parallel with the ground and released myself from the levitation. First, I will try diving down about 1,500 feet and leveling out in a glide before adding more speed.
I pitched forward shot downwards like a missile flying towards the ground, when I figured I couldn't fall any faster, angled the back of my wings downwards to level out. It actually worked much better than I expected, although the glide time was very short with how little of the wings were providing lift.
I did it a few more times while falling before deciding to use wind magic to provide thrust.
I tried it when I pulled up for a glide, increasing it gradually so as not to suddenly shoot myself into a mountain or something. Then I would have to go up again.
After getting a sufficient amount of thrust to maintain my altitude, I estimated it was still slower than flying with just cultivation or magic, so I kept increasing it more.
I began to see a slight haze forming in front of me after reaching a certain speed, but fixed this by looking through the void to immediately in front of it. Pretty soon, I could only hear things in front of me and not behind anymore, and I knew I had reached at least the speed of sound.
So far, I had only been traveling in a straight line and hadn't tried turning. I barely tipped one wing down and the other up. It was a slow turn, but a turn nonetheless. I increased the angle very slowly and the turn became sharper. I kept doing this until I felt like it would be bad to do it anymore.
Turning was definitely slower than at slower speeds, but that is to be expected. I straightened out and kept pushing the speed faster until I started to have a bad feeling about going faster.
I'm sure I was many times faster than when I thought I had reached the speed of sound and many, many times faster than anyone else in this world.
I slowed down until I was just hovering again and checked where I was in relation to Zenobia's tracker. Several thousand miles east and I'd only been trying this out for about half an hour, with part of the time just testing it out. This is definitely the fastest way to travel. Also, I would never be caught if running away.
I should test the oblique wing on the way back. Though, I should be over the werewolf territory right now. I kind of want to see their cities, or maybe they don't have cities, or maybe their cities are futuristic.
If I just dropped down and waltzed in smelling of vampire, they would not hesitate to try and take my head off on the spot.
What to do... What to do... I tried finding something in my vampire abilities that hid my scent. Either I'm too dumb to find it on my own, or it doesn't exist. I know there must be some way because the hidden guards at Lady Nyx's home have hidden their scent, although maybe that was done with chemicals or something.
I decided to alter it with a magic spell. Magic that alters scent is usually used when hunting strong monsters so the hunter isn't discovered. Rather than altering my scent to be non-existent, I'll alter it to be a human. Because having someone walking around without a scent in the middle of a country at war is definitely not suspicious.
After altering my scent, ensuring my clothes were appropriate, and pulling in my aura, I poked my head below the clouds and looked around. About 100 miles to the south is a major city by the looks of it with any other closer than that being smaller, like a town or village.
Alright, I'll go there. If I do happen to get into trouble, I can always teleport away. And since no one in this world can follow me through a teleport, I'm perfectly safe.
I suddenly felt like an idiot. I was so happy about being able to run away from someone on my wings and forgot I already had a better method of escape. I'm so dumb. At least it wasn't really wasted time and I got to have a little fun.
I found a good place in the city to teleport to and disappeared from my place in the clouds. I walked into the city on the side of the main road. It looked relatively the same as Lady Nyx's city, maybe some more factories and the buildings were more spread out. There were also more neatly kept trees, Lady Nyx's city had almost no trees in it, they were all outside.
The streets were busy as I walked through them. I was careful to keep out of peoples way least I cause a scene and ruin my trip.
I did my turning down a street every 450 or so meters to map the area with my divine sense. I have to say, I like whoever organized this city; it's very neat with its grid pattern and straight roads.
My divine sense picked up a group of kids throwing rocks at a little girl. All she could do was shield her head as she lay on the ground and hope for the best. It kind of reminded me of how Lila's siblings treated her and made me angry. I decided I could do something nice and beat up a few kids.
I slipped into an alleyway and teleported near the scene. I could smell they were all werewolves. In my head, I had imagined werewolves having ears and a tail like Lila, but they actually look like humans in their human form. I haven't seen any in their wolf form yet, but I imagine it looks like a wolf rather than a monster.
Apparently, these kids were mocking the girl for being an orphan and thought it was perfectly fine to throw rocks at her. She looks to be about 5-6 but I feel she might be a couple years older.
I decided to set magical traps on the ground that would electrocute them when they stepped on them. Not to death because that would be too mean, but more like 13/14ths of the way there.
If they were adults I'd let the traps kill them, but children just need to be gently corrected.
Traps like this wouldn't work against magicians of a higher level, but these people have no way to detect them.
I cast a whole bunch on the opposite side of them from me and adjusted the output current to be appropriate. I decided to scare them shitless so they run away, then they can step on the traps while running.
I remembered a curse spell that would severely affect their senses. It had a permanent version and a temporary version. It was relatively easy to dispel, so it wasn't used much by magicians, but in this world, it would be fine. The temporary version was developed for friendly duels where permanent things were prohibited, even if it could be dispelled easily.
First, I should ensure not to traumatize the little girl as well, so I cast an opaque barrier that would block all sight and sound from the inside.
I cast the temporary curse about a second ahead of an illusion. They immediately started freaking out when their hearing became muffled and their vision dimmed. It didn't completely cut off their vision so they could see what was coming next.
An abyss-colored cloud slowly came out of the alleyway with my figure vaguely visible inside. For sound effects, I chose a monstrous clicking and the skittering of a thousand large insects which I played on my phone to add to the atmosphere.
I used a small portion of my aura to put pressure on them and started whispering in different voices about how we'd found some good meals today and their bones looked tasty. I made sure to add in that we would leave the girl since we only eat those who were doing bad things.
Two of the six were passed out and they all emptied their bowels immediately. The other four started running only to step on the traps. Sparks of electricity jumped across their skin as they convulsed on the ground before losing consciousness.
This is kind of fun and I'm even doing a good deed, they will be to traumatized for the rest of their life to bully anyone.
I remembered I said something about their bones looking tasty and decided to make this a for anyone else who heard the story in the future. I walked over to the one who I thought to be the ringleader, and looked about 15. I squatted down next to him before controlling a bit of energy to flow through the air and into a few of his bones that wouldn't be fatal if they go missing.