Unsurprisingly, there were no parasitic monsters hiding in the rank-and-file soldiers. Even the officers were clean, as were most of the nobles. The way Velik understood things, it was simply that Sildra was not the first, second, or third druid to sweep the gathered armies here. The ones under the control of men and women still loyal to the crown had already submitted themselves for inspection and been cleared.

The whole reason Sildra herself was here now was to flex her superior range and penetration to locate the agents of corruption hiding in the forces that had rebelled. No one was quite sure who was actually a monster and who was just taking advantage of the chaos to push some agenda of their own, and Sildra’s druids were still the only reliable detection method anyone had come up with.

Despite being the highest-level disciple of Morgus in the area, Sildra still couldn’t guarantee she’d found every possible agent, not when a large enough building or deep enough cave could hide them. Velik’s job was to find those places and get Sildra there, something he did quite easily. When his opponents were barely half his level and largely possessed common classes, it wasn’t exactly a fair contest.

He had two days’ worth of stat boosting meals left by the time they finished scouring the enemy encampments. Velik was suitably impressed by Sildra’s growth and how stealthy she could be, though the process of burning out an agent was never a quiet one. They found sixteen of them total, and with their extraction, the conflict finally started to die down.

His daylight hours were spent working on [Mana Control], but he had little to show for it. Perhaps he was marginally better at it—he certainly felt like he’d improved at least a little bit—but, if so, it wasn’t enough for the system to recognize the growth and advance it to rank 3. Frustrated with his lack of quick progress, he turned to another method of preparation once he’d finished helping Sildra.

Horace Vendilbark was a hale, robust man in his early fifties. His hair had all gone to gray, as had the bushy mustache he sported. His massive frame dominated his side of the table, where half a dozen different plates were arrayed in front of him. He eagerly speared cuts of ham off one of them, then dragged the meat through some sort of sauce that filled a shallow bowl nearby.

Velik, by contrast, had a simple serving of pork and vegetable stew with a slice of thick bread on the side. His cup contained chilled spring water, a novelty mostly due to the ice cubes floating in it. It reminded him of home, though the price certainly didn’t. Then again, they were at the edge of a desert. Presumably, somebody was using some sort of skill to keep the ice from melting away in storage.

“Appreciate you paying for the meal,” Horace said between bites. “Very generous. Unfortunately, I don’t know how much help I can actually be. It’s not like I’ve been out there to look around.”

“Anything you could tell me would be more than I’ve got right now,” Velik said.

Horace was in charge of a research team studying a strange phenomenon that had recently started happening. They described it as a wave of mana rushing across the world, one that had happened three times in the last few months. A bunch of researchers and mages had gotten together and done some fairly advanced math to try to pinpoint the origins of each wave.

The two strongest ones had come from the desert, and so Horace’s research team had arrived in Avordin to observe the site as best they could. Not being able to safely venture past the boundary was a huge stumbling block, but they were making do as best they could. Mostly that involved setting up a research base on the side of the closest mountain and employing a variety of skills, magic, enchantments, and mundane tools to peer out into the sands.

“Well, we know there’s something out there,” Horace told him, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the boundary. “And I don’t mean those giant metal monsters. Something else. It’s a butte out in the middle of the desert, eight hundred and twenty-six feet tall, by our estimates. We’re not sure, but we think there might be some sort of man-made building hidden inside it. There are weird metallic flashes when the sun hits the rocks just right.”

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“How far away is it?”

“Too far,” Horace said grimly. “Oh, we considered it, of course. But you know you can’t set foot past the boundary without losing access to your skills and stats, right? And then there’s the monsters out there. We did the math on it, and it would be weeks of travel to reach it. The logistics for carrying supplies through the desert are daunting enough, never mind the monsters. It’s impossible to get there.”

“I understand that,” Velik said. “But that wasn’t really what I asked.”

The older man chuckled darkly. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, then. If you try to get there, even on horseback, you’re throwing your life away. It’s three hundred sixty-two and a half miles from the boundary in a straight line. Assume longer going over or around the sand dunes.”

At his current speed, Velik could make that in a few hours. The question was what his new speed would be once he finally crossed the boundary. He was eager to pass beyond the edge of the Garden, but he was holding off until he’d consumed the last of the stat boosters. The limited personal system should still benefit from them, and no new divine beasts had shown up to prod him along yet. He had the time to do this right.

“Very much out of reach,” Velik murmured for Horace’s sake. The big man squinted at him for a moment, then shook his head and stabbed his fork into his pile of diced potatoes.

“Anything else I can get for you?” the serving girl asked as she swept up to the table. Velik noted a mildly accelerated heart rate and a slight flush to her face. The first time he’d seen her, she hadn’t been that way, but every day since, when he’d stopped in for a meal, she always seemed to be in some sort of distress.

He’d thought to ask her about it, but Sildra had insisted that she was fine and that the polite thing to do was never, ever mention it to the girl. Velik didn’t really get it, but he knew where his weaknesses lay, and if someone else said it was a social fumble, he was willing to believe them.

“I’m good, thanks,” he told the girl. “Horace? Anything else?”

“If you’re paying,” the big man said, “I suppose I could have a second course.”

“Sir!” a new voice called from the tavern’s front entrance. One of the other researchers, a stick-thin blonde woman with an aggravating, shrill voice, stalked into the dining area. “There you are! You should have told me you were going off somewhere.”

Horace couldn’t stop himself from giving a disgruntled huff. “I think you’re forgetting which one of us works for the other,” he told the woman. Glancing wistfully at the remnants of his meal and the serving girl dutifully waiting to take his order to the kitchen, he sighed and added, “I suppose it would be poor manners to impose upon your purse anymore. Let me leave you with this tidbit, just so you have something you can act on.

“The first mana wave came from the mountains on the south side of the kingdom. Unlike the two out here, that place is actually accessible. If you’re really curious, that’s the place to go. I’ll get someone to do up a rough copy of our map to show you where to go.”

* * *

Velik sat on the side of a cliff, half a mile up from where the researchers had built their station, and stared east. Even at this height, even with his stats and skills, he wouldn’t have picked out the site if they hadn’t pointed it out first. They didn’t know for sure what it was, but they had a theory.

The map marked the location of the first mana wave, the weak one. It was the sky bridge his expedition had broken into and pillaged. With everything in there, Velik could only assume that one of the golems had somehow let the divine beasts know about him.

The researchers assumed the butte out in the desert was another sky bridge, if only because it released two waves of mana similar to the one in Ghestal. The first one was the bigger of the two from the desert sky bridge, though there was a lot of debate and speculation about why that was. Velik thought it was Tesir arriving somehow, using some magic to cross the desert in an instant.

And maybe the last wave was smaller because there wasn’t enough magic left to get him home. If that’s the case, there might not be anything for me to follow him with.

He had no idea what he’d do then, but he wasn’t going to worry about it until he’d confirmed it was actually an issue. Right now, the problem in front of him was how to get there. Horace hadn’t been willing to give him much about the metal monsters living in the desert, but the soldiers were plenty talkative.

The pieces were coming together. He knew where to go. He knew the dangers. There were two more stat boosters left to go. He’d eat one before he went to sleep, then one a few hours after he woke up.

It was almost time.