Lith could understand why his appearance had caused so much anger . The city had many gates and each one had a queue several hundreds of meters long that was getting longer by the minute .
Merchants, travellers, even residents had to pass several checks to get in or out . The Warp Gate was a fast lane, usually reserved for nobles and high officials . Lith ignored them, activating Life Vision to check if he could take off .
'What the heck?' His surprised expression was mistaken by some of those present as an indignant one, which prompted them to resume their swearing . Lith couldn't care less about them and spun around himself to make sure his eyes weren't playing a trick on him .
The arrays weren't in a fixed position . Unlike the academy and the Royal palace, they could only be described as a maelstrom . The magical energies covered the whole city at all times, but they also change their size and height with no warning .
Lith watched a mage flying above the city, until the array became like a hurricane and reached for the sky . The poor fellow fell like a rock, crashing on a rooftop with deadly consequences .
"Move along, sir . Otherwise you may be run over . " The guard's voice woke Lith up from his stupor . He walked away double time, eager to find a better viewpoint which would allow him to study Belius .
The city was surrounded by walls made of stone that stood twenty meters (66') high with evenly spaced observation towers built along the perimeter . Each one of them was topped by blue magic crystals the size of a person .
Lith and Solus observed the arrays for a time, watching them shift like a tide . Whenever one of the spells the formations were meant to negate were used, even from a considerable distance from the city, the towers would detect it .
They would then produce a lightning of mystical energies invisible to the naked eye marking the mage as a target . The arrays would shapeshift accordingly to the information received killing their victims almost instantly .
Thanks to his heightened senses and the tall tree he had climbed, Lith was able to spot from a distance several towers placed along the mountain range, spanning as far as the eye could see .
'By my maker, those towers are relay points for Belius' arrays . ' The revelations flabbergasted Solus .
'Yeah, they also allow the sealing magic to pinpoint its target and send an alarm signal . ' Lith pondered . 'The corpses of the idiots we've seen trying to bypass the city checks have all been promptly collected . '
He had no idea what was actually happening but he could see a Warp Steps and several humanoid figures appear where the trespassers had fallen just a few seconds after their demise .
Everything happened too fast to be a coincidence, so Lith assumed that, just like for the Academy, elite guards could ignore the arrays and move freely .
'An almost living magical formation capable of changing its shape . To think that Yurial always nagged about Wardens being useless . ' A sad smile appeared on Lith's face while thinking about his lost friend .
'I wish he were still alive, here with us . I could finally say to him "I told you so" . '
Lith jumped down on the ground, landing with a roll to break his fall . It couldn't actually harm him, but he was still in an area were air magic was negated by the arrays . Neither his armor or spells could justify him being unscathed so he had to play the elite soldier card .
Lith had to run for over one kilometer to escape from the boundaries of the array . Only then he was able to take out from his pocket dimension the map of the Kellar region and put it inside Soluspedia replacing the one of the Distar Marquisate .
'We have up to four months here . ' Lith thought . 'Let's plan our patrol so to give priority to the lost cities . '
The Kellar region was mostly uncharted . Aside from big cities like Belius, small settlements would pop up as fast as they would disappear . In the north, a cold wave was enough to freeze to death whoever didn't possess a properly insulated house .
Monsters would run rampant, slaughtering small villages for a midnight snack . Last but not least, there were the Rangers like Lith . Most of those small settlements were illegal, a safe haven for bandits, deserters, and all those who had an aversion to paying taxes .
They enjoyed the safety the army's patrols ensured, just like the comfort of using the roads paved by the Kingdom to connect rural areas with the main trading cities . Yet they took everything for granted and considered the harsh life in the north reason enough to be exempted from paying their dues .
In case such settlements were discovered by soldiers, one of the two had to disappear .
Lith was flying high enough to check with Life Vision a large area while he moved towards his first destination, the fallen city of Kaduria . The landscape was different from what he was used in the Distar Marquisate .
While his birthplace was mostly comprised of cultivated lands and woods filling the space between the populated areas, Kellar was mostly barren . It was still late fall, but snow already covered the ground and the tops of the few trees Lith encountered .
Ever since he departed from Belius, he met no farms nor villages . The frozen earth was full of rocks, making it unfertile without a considerable amount of effort . The area Lith was currently in was too far from the main road for any kind of trading to be profitable .
The only life forms he met were animals looking for food . Winter was coming and those without enough fat reserves were bound to meet a bad end . After several hours of flight, Lith was starting to feel tired .
'I have yet to recover completely from treating Kalla, tonight I'd like a good night sleep . Solus, did we meet a mana geyser on our way here?'
'None, but I believe that even without an external energy source I can at least form the ground floor of the tower . ' She replied .
'Are you asking me to sleep while you work your a*s off? No way, we're in this together . Either we both rest or I use Invigoration . '
'Or we could sleep there . ' Solus pointed at him the smoke coming out of several chimneys visible on the horizon .
'F*ck me sideways!' Lith cursed . A human settlement was the last thing he wanted to meet . He used the army's communication amulet to call his handler .
"Ranger Lith Verhen calling the Nest, do you copy?"
"Loud and clear . " Said a feminine voice coming from the other side . Unlike Lith's amulet, the one provided by the army was engraved with several green mana crystals which, among many other things, strengthened its signal .
The gemstones emitted a series of flashes, scanning his surroundings .
"You deserve your reputation, Ranger Verhen . Covering so much ground in a single day is praiseworthy . Please give me a brief report of your findings . " It was a polite way to ask him to prove he hadn't ignored his patrol duty .
There wasn't much to say, but Lith had taken note of all the unmapped landmarks he met on his way . He was certain they had been left out on purpose, some were too obvious to be missed, unless one was blind, deaf, and dumb .
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