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“This feels familiar,” I murmured as I continued, aware that, as I continued, I would only face more and more such creatures. As I moved forward, the necrotic energy in the air got thicker, giving a suffocating feeling of oppression, the darkness further enhancing the feeling.

Luckily, I had my shield to disperse the energy. A gust of wind hit, moving reverse downstream, carrying much thicker death energy. My senses crawled, a deep feeling wanting me to avoid the repulsive necrotic energy.

Sensible. Too bad the situation forced me to ignore it and continue walking. My skin continued to crawl as I continued to walk, the routine occasionally interrupted by the same type of huge trees, still maintaining a sense of life after death, more than the initial tree I had stumbled upon.

Maybe it was because of the differing strength, but I was more willing to believe a moving invasion force, using the river as a magical battering ram to repeatedly slam against some kind of magical defensive line as they moved forward.

It wasn’t hard to imagine those trees as a part of some defensive line — though whether it was natural or by design, it was another question. I lacked even the slightest information to actually guess that.

I prepared myself for another war, though luckily with enough mana to give me the confidence to escape even against what was supposed to pass as a strong opposition in a random fragmented plane. I was confident to escape Janelor or someone equivalent, and from what she had described — even discounting greatly her arrogance — she was supposed to be a peak combatant.

At least, she was important enough to be actively targeted through an inter-planar conspiracy, which confirmed that.

The quality of one’s enemies always gave a good understanding of their capabilities. Of course, the existence of gods and Janelor’s respect toward them meant that while she was a peak combatant, she was far from the true ceiling.

But such a being would have created enough commotion that would warn me of their presence.

Hopefully.

Lost in thoughts, I had paid little attention to the zombies that continued to find my location, taking them down with a stab each. Some wolves, and others were even smaller critters. One thing I paid for about them was their quality, which didn’t change.

But more importantly, their numbers stayed limited. Which, ironically, made me tenser than the alternative. With the density of the necrotic energy, I expected to find far more zombies, yet there were none.

Nor I could find any corpses, meaning someone either pulled back the beasts before the wave, or a necromancer actively raised and controlled most of them, only leaving a few lost scraps behind.

Either case, it was a sign that I would soon meet a more organized opponent.

It would be better to meet the opponent of the undead rather than the alternative, but not decisively so. I wasn’t naive enough to think that they would be my allies just because they were fighting against the undead, especially when I was a completely unknown quality.

No, either way, I needed to stay hidden.

The denser the necrotic energy got, the slower I started to move, the shield taking more of my attention. It wasn’t an issue of capability, but I was forced to reduce it to a thinner structure, afraid that it would be detected by another mage.

The stronger a shield, the brighter its presence shone against the senses of a mage, which was less dangerous than the occasional necrotic energy slipping through the weakened shield.

Then, I felt a flare in the distance, the thing that I had been hoping, for and was afraid of at the same time. The distinct flare of magical combat.

“Once more onto the breach,” I murmured as I continued to move, suppressing my magical presence even more as I moved forward, leaning down, a tense frown invading my face once more. Luckily, this close to the battle, there were no wandering zombies.

They weren’t scary, but fighting against them would greatly increase the chances of getting caught, so their lack of presence was good. I was ready to fight against the enemy if they noticed my presence, but I certainly had no complaints about their failure.

And, as I got closer, I was able to get a better sense of the conflicting energies, the life energy battling against necrotic energy — through the life energy was different than I was used to.

It had a different feeling, green and immobile. It felt more like plants than animals, but with some difference than a simple biomancy trick I could pull off — could have pulled off when I had access to the System, I corrected myself as I suppressed the reflex of casting it to compare.

The differences were interesting, but not as interesting to delay me as I moved forward, more interested to see the scene of combat. Though, I first got away from the stream, where the fighting was clearly centered due to the thickness of the necrotic energy, allowing any necromancer to have an easy source of transformed mana.

A great strategic tool, but also makes their strategic deployment rather predictable. I walked away almost two minutes before I came across a convenient hilltop — the signs of a recent battle showing that I wasn’t the only one that noticed its convenient location.

The side that was looking at the river was marked with signs of battle, mostly blood and broken pieces of enchanted wood — but absolutely no metal, which was rather interesting. Maybe they had recycled all of it.

There were no bodies as well, but that was less surprising. Either the defending forces had taken the bodies with them — which was the simplest strategic choice in fighting against the necromancers — or they failed to do so, and their comrades joined the enemy in their battle.

In either case, nothing outside the expectations.

I continued climbing, avoiding particularly dense points of necrotic energy until I neared the peak, and looked down.

Right at the battle.

The distance was significant yet not too great, almost about a mile, and the high vantage point gave me an excellent view.

The first thing I noticed was the fact that the stream was split into two, creating a small delta. I noticed that first because of the contrast. The upstream was still filled with necrotic mana contrasting with the delta, filled with that variant of life energy, with two sides filled with fighting figures.

I first focused on the mana sources first rather than the combatant — because one side was necromancers, which was rather similar to what I had been used to, while the other side was far too distant to get any proper details other than the fact that they were mostly using bows and cloaked thickly, their numbers few.

Also, the situation with the mana was much clear, enough to be resolved in a few seconds. The source of the variant of the life energy I was feeling was not hidden. Along the riverbank, there were a great number of those huge trees — far denser than the occasional dead ones that I had come across, radiating that life energy, which then tried to overwhelm the necrotic energy.

Too bad it was a desperate battle. One of the trees, the one that was planted right at the split, was almost two times as tall as others, easily a hundred feet, but most of its leaves had already blackened, showing the desperate battle it was giving. Other trees — guardian trees, I decided to call them — further along the bank were in better condition than the vanguard tree, but still, about a quarter of their leaves were tainted.

Their fate was not too different from the occasional guardian trees I had stumbled on my way.

Interestingly, there were no trees I could see on my side of the riverbank, but there were several huge holes, like several trees had been just pulled out several hours ago.

Maybe they had been uprooted and replanted on the other side to create the dense outlook I was seeing — making the small delta an intentional point of defense.

Not for no reason, as the guardian trees were still desperately pushing their mana out to fight against the necrotic wave rather than trying to cure themselves — which the energy seemed to be capable of if I was reading the collusion of free mana in the air correctly — which implied a certain strategic thought rather than just instinct.

It was likely that the cloaked figures were responsible for that, but technically, it wasn’t a certain conclusion. A sapient tree would have been unexpected, but not technically impossible. After all, there were plant monsters back in the main material plane.

I could have concluded that if I were closer to the battle, or the constant flares of mana blocking any potential spell, but they were rather efficient barriers to my curiosity. Whether it was the decision of the trees or the cloaked figures wasn’t exactly the most urgent issue.

The imminent victory of the necromancers was much more urgent, inevitable unless I intervened.

Yet, rather than doing so, I first decided to waste a few seconds examining the cloaked figures, casting a spell that would replicate a working spyglass.

Curious about what I would find.

[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]