88th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd imperial era

Newt's short nap lasted seven hours. By the time he got up, the morning had nearly passed, noon merely half an hour away.

Mound, the innkeeper, fiddled with his hands, but steeled himself and approached Newt the moment he spotted the young man.

"Lord Mageknight, we have honored your wish and sent a man to warn the Salamandra clan." Mound licked his lips and lowered his gaze. "Would you grace the remaining farms with your presence after your meal?"

"We can go now."

"Yes," the innkeeper nearly shouted, put on a light jacket and followed Newt outside.

The man sniffled as he walked, wiping his nose with his sleeve.

Evenings outside are still too cold for commoners, and he didn't have a jacket yesterday, and he got drenched in sweat while leading me around.

"Are you all right?" Newt asked. "Someone else can show me the farms."

"I am the village elder, Lord Mageknight. Solving the village's problems is my job." The man's voice seemed raspy to Newt's ear.

"Did only the southern farms suffer from saurian attacks? The ones at the edge of the forest?" Newt asked and continued when the innkeeper nodded. "Just take me to the latest site, or I could follow the longclaws' tracks, and once we are done, go back to the inn and eat the stew you prepared for me. I don't want you to fall ill for no reason."

"Yes, Lord Mageknight. Thank you, Lord Mageknight," the man blurted the words so quickly, Newt got the feeling he either practiced them, or had to say them much more often than seemed reasonable.

The trampled field was no different from the last one. A bunch of hard-packed mud, big prints, bigger dropping piles, definitely trihorns assailing cabbages.

What am I to do with a herd of twenty-ton herbivores? Well, at least there aren't any longnecks or dreadwalkers around. Newt found little solace in the thought. While he might be able to kill a solitary trihorn, it would waste time and mana. And things might turn horribly complicated if some of them were manabeasts.

"You should return home and rest. I'll take it from here," Newt said. "It's fairly obvious they are coming from the forest and returning to it after a while."

Why are they returning? If they are fleeing something, then they should stay out of the forest. If they are invading, they should proceed and trample the mortals, but they are going back. I doubt they are hungry for cabbages, which means after a while, whatever is forcing them out into the open vanishes or allows them to return.

Newt went towards the woods with a frown, leaving Mound, the innkeeper, behind. The air grew cooler as Newt entered the shade. The humidity was slightly greater, and the earthy scent saturated the air. Most importantly, Newt noticed a thin, luminous mist with his mindcore and frowned.

I'm not even in Summersweald, yet mana is denser here. Newt focused, going back and forth at the forest's edge, determining that while a difference existed, it was minute, around five percent, maybe less. That detail explained the saurian's instinct to return, but not why they had left the forest in the first place.

Something spooked them or drove them away. Maybe the cabbages had an especially enticing smell? Newt knew the last one wasn't the real reason, especially with predators leaving their natural habitat as well, but he couldn't help the sarcastic thought.

But in all seriousness, why are they eating outside the forest? Maybe that's the key?

Newt had some clues, but didn't know what to do with them. So, he followed the tracks, noting after several minutes that his mindcore no longer perceived the faint mist. He had grown accustomed to the increased level of the ambient mana, but the deep forest was still a marvel.

Even at the fringe, cycadophytes, ferns, and giant tree-like horsetails replaced the regular trees Newt was used to. The forest was dark. Nowhere nearly as dark as the mines, but even in midday, the lighting reminded Newt of early dusk. The air grew heavier and the sounds of life died out the deeper Newt advanced into the jungle, and he still had some fifty miles to travel before entering Summersweald itself.

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While it did not affect him, sweat would have cascaded down the commoners' backs as the temperature and humidity grew, until the forest reached the point where warm droplets drizzled from the canopy like rain. Wild saurians had no trouble surviving harsh winters because their habitat rarely grew cold enough to affect them. But despite knowing that, Newt found the heat and the moisture had grown beyond normal. Enough to drive away the local wildlife.

Deeper in, a turbulent flow of mana swirled in the air. Unlike before, the energy wasn't omnipresent but hung in clouds, fire clashing with water, slowly giving birth to vapor as the energies weakened at a barely perceptible rate.

Newt's heart started beating faster.

Battle.

And given the persisting mana in the air, the creatures fighting were able to project mana outside their bodies, meaning they were above the second realm. Newt suddenly understood why the jungle was dead silent, and why regular beasts had fled.

Should I continue? He wondered. The potential risks were great, but if the heavens smiled upon him, Newt might encounter something worthwhile, maybe even a real treasure, depending on who was fighting.

If it was a pair of saurians, Newt would observe and wait for a chance. If an awakened was fighting a saurian, Newt could help, maybe even earn himself a reward or fame.

Newt bit his lip. His mind wandered, conjuring more and more elaborate scenarios. It could be a brave young woman his age, in a desperate need, and if he saved her—Newt blushed and hurried.

The immaterial conflict in the air grew fiercer, and soon, Newt heard the growls and hisses. He expected more violent sounds, but distant bestial threats entered his ear, not sounds of combat.

Then he stumbled upon the first corpse. The fern bush to his left shone with orange light. Newt stopped, confused and excited. He shifted the thick layer of leaves and saw a raptor's broken corpse.

The beast was one and a half times as big as average specimens, its scales red and orange, and it stank of blood and death. It looked like something had trampled it to death, breaking its head and upper ribcage from which an orange light shone.

Could it be?

Newt ducked and immediately regretted he had not brought a knife or a similar tool. His face twisted, and he stepped away before digging at the wound with his sword. Parting flesh with the overly long blade worked for the most part, but Newt couldn't open a ribcage like that.

This ain't gonna work.

He hesitated, then cleaned his weapon and sheathed it. He covered himself in Granite Crust and sank his bare hands into the torso before pulling out a glowing orb the size of a plum.

It really is a core! It's not much, but it is a start. Someone at the clan can get a chance at awakening.

Newt pocketed his prize and kept going. Two dozen yards away, he found another oversized raptor's body. This one looked like a tree had crushed most of its body. While it had the similar reddish scales, it did not glow or have an orb, Newt checked to make sure and found nothing for his grimy effort.

The third raptor lacked a head, but its chest still shone orange-red. Newt harvested its core and kept skulking closer towards the combat, which had resumed after a deep bellow. Newt arrived at a wide path, recently made by something large and heavy.

The battle was still a distance away, but it had already lasted hours or days, so Newt stopped to examine the scene. Whatever the raptors were fighting was definitely not a shapely princess in need of rescuing. The large saurian was seven feet wide and as heavy as a house.

Newt looked at the cluster of prints and regretted that he had no idea how to read them. Based on the blood splatters, he concluded that whatever had killed the raptors had done it right there on the trail while tossing them quite a few yards into the distance.

Newt looked back in the direction from which the combatants had come. There were almost certainly more dead raptors there, and Newt had found two cores in three bodies. Searching for more cores was a worthwhile endeavor. Unfortunately, the window to harvest them before mana dissipated into the body was only a handful of hours at lower realms, and that was assuming the core had survived the battle.

Newt clenched his teeth and once more started sneaking towards the sounds of battle. Whether there were any cores in the raptors' bodies, if any existed in the first place, was questionable. But before him, a battle was ongoing, certainly creating more fatalities. And it would end with more deaths, if the raptor pack continued their hunt even after some of their number had died.

Newt still didn't know what the raptors were fighting, but whatever their enemy, the manabeast was inflicting heavy damage on the pack. He followed the trail of destruction and ran into nine more bodies, one almost as tall as he was, its head bashed into a pulp.

Newt's heart fluttered with hope. The bigger beast was a higher realm raptor, but the carcass didn't glow. Despite what he had concluded, Newt got to gruesome work, rewarded with nothing but a waste of time.

One of the smaller raptors shone and had a core, while the rest were broken. None of the bodies were marked with slashes, puncture wounds, or bite marks. Whatever the raptors were fighting, it was unlikely it was a predator or a spiketail; Newt suspected a young sauropod of some sort until he found a deep circular depression in a thick, sturdy horsetail.

Macetail? Newt was almost certain. The tracks implied that it was too heavy to be any of its lesser kin, like spikebacks, and the damaged tree pointed towards a round, blunt weapon. Had a sauropod struck it with its tail, the depression would have spanned the entire width of the tree.

No wonder the battle had lasted for days. A large pack of raptors was taking turns attacking the macetail, and the only one who could survive such an onslaught is the heavily fortified saurian.

He turned and looked back, once more considering scavenging the remains.

If it's a macetail, I've got all the time in the world before the raptors kill it.

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