The one thing Ethan started to miss in his current situations was technology, during the tutorial he was usually occupied by magic and monsters, fighting and training during day and night, only sometimes he slept but mostly fell unconscious because he overextending himself, something he should avoid instead of embracing it all the time. Well currently he sat on some flat rock not far from the ritual site and he meditated for the first time in his life, his staff resting over his knees as he sat there, eyes closed and his breathing steady.

Meditation, as it turns out, isn't just some stupid exercise hippies tell you about. At least that was his opinion, in this new world he could feel so much more with the senses bestowed on him by the system. There was of course the smell of the forest, the slight breeze in his hair that he could feel but under all the obvious things was magic. He breathed it in as he did with air and it rode on the wind through the world. Meditating seemed to further his understanding of magic as the driving force of the universe because it was literally everywhere, you just don't realize it when not actively focusing on it. So he spent another day meditating or wasting time as he would have called it before. While the exercise was beneficial he was still on a clock. Only twenty days left in this tutorial and if his guess was correct they would still spend more time looking for James.

Only hours after he made his suggestion to include more specialized people for the search the first mages showed up, as Lorena told them they're scattered in the forest and tend to plant life and injured animals. It was part of their duty and training to become a proper nature mage, something Ethan just called druids but the elves preferred the term nature magic for whatever reason.

The looks he got for that statement still made him flinch, as did the lengthy explanation that nature magic and druidic magic are two different disciplines and only because there was some overlap it wasn't the same. That they drew power differently and how their control had differences and so on and so forth. So he didn't call them druids, at least not openly but his thoughts were still his own on that matter.

So the "druids" inspected the ritual and discussed something with each other before they started to sing, full on choir singing in a strange melody which seemed to be some form of spell they used to talk with plants, something totally different from druids. That's why Ethan spent his time as far away from them as possible as it was a bad idea to antagonise them when they're in their element.

After the first day he stopped meditating and rather played around with snow. Even after using it extensively his skill still refused to accept the element to one hundred percent. While he felt some assistance when using it there was still a massive gap between snow and ice, but still showing once again that the system wasn't rigid and not set in a straight path as he first thought after the tutorial began.

He formed some ice sculptors and switched to weapons soon after, it was worrying how much he changed during his time here. There were so many factors at play that turned him from a shy man into a determined winter elf. The tutorial itself, his connection to Ouroboros and Nora and the fact that he was no longer human. While it felt surreal before, now it was almost normal. The only question that remained was what would happen once he was back on earth, not alone in a tutorial world but surrounded by actual people.

A sigh escaped his lips as he balanced a hunting knife made from hard packed snow on his finger, his magic giving it the perfect balance it needed with subtle nudges when it began to tip in one direction. "I wonder if the world can return to normal…but I doubt it."

"The world is the way it should be, there is no right or wrong." Lorena appeared out of nowhere, startling Ethan. She looked at him, her arms crossed in front of her chest. "We found something and could use some input from you."

Ethan flinched when she suddenly appeared but quickly regained his composure and jumped from the rock he sat on. Brushing some dirt from his robe while walking towards the clearing. "Two days ago you didn't even speak with me, did I piss you off that much by labeling your magic wrong?"

All he earned was a huff and she turned on the spot, walking towards the clearing. "Well, I was never good with women anyway, let's see what they found." He rested his staff on the shoulder and followed after the wildwood elf. It took only a few minutes and when he was back on the clearing, he saw some scouts maintaining their equipment while the nature mages talked with each other in hushed whispers.

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He stepped into their circle and looked down at the thing one of them was holding. It was a glass bottle, the make of it was amateurish, the glass cloudy and wonky like it was made by a child trying their hand at glassmaking. Still the thing inside was visible. It was some kind of black liquid that Ethan recognized instantly, it looked exactly the same as back then. The liquid that dripped from James' body.

"How did you even find that? It should have sunk into the ground or evaporated at some point." He took the bottle and lifted it against the sun, watching the ooze inside move around, while it looked random at first it always returned to one specific part of the glass, trying to push through it. "It's still active…"

His eyes turned to the elf and one of them stepped forward. "It still contains a surprising amount of magic even if it's such a small amount of liquid but something is feeding it mana over a very long distance. It constantly tries to return to the main source." she pointed into the jungle to a spot near the mountain range. "We believe the necromancer is setting up more rituals around the mountains but leaving this here could have been an accident or a trap. Finding it was pure luck as it was crawling from the body of a dead animal as we inspected the remains of the ritual and searched for magical connections."

She grabbed the glass bottle and shook it. "This stood out as we searched the area with our spell and we managed to catch it." Ethan rubbed his chin and looked at the bottle again. "So we have a tracking device to find his location, that sounds too easy. James is just a pawn in a greater game, you could say he's just an empty husk filled with foul magic. He sold himself and can't escape, that makes him unpredictable. Especially with a god involved as I don't even know what it gains from doing this."

Surprisingly they didn't even react when he talked about gods so freely, it seems the system just deleted that from their minds or something. He closed his eyes and thought about it. With the Wight King long dead there was basically no chance James could pull such a large army together. So the most they had to fight with were some undead beasts. With the elves and himself it should be possible to defeat him quite easily.

The thing that made him hesitate was the fact that James could have planned this and was just waiting for them to find him. Having prepared an ambush site in advance. Ethan opened his eyes and looked at the black sludge in the bottle.

"I believe we would walk into an ambush if we follow this lead but otherwise there is no other real option besides giving up. We could search the entire jungle but that isn't feasible and would just take more time. At least this way we can ensure some form of accuracy in his location. With the people we have here I would say the chance to find him is pretty good overall. So should we try finding him with the knowledge it could just be an ambush to defeat us?"

After his monologue the others discussed it among themselves, mages talked with scouts and vice versa only for all of them to return to Lorena for some final advice or to share their opinion on the matter. They held a vote and to Ethan's surprise they all decided to follow the lead they got. He was kind of surprised but it was their home they tried to protect from outside influence after all. The mages performed another spell but this one would arrange their transport instead of tracking someone.

Ten minutes later a pack of wolves broke through the undergrowth. Fur in black, gray and brown dominated the pack but one white albino stood out, its eyes a bright glowing red. Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Did you plan that? That can't be a coincidence." The mage he looked at just shrugs. "That's Pale, his pack usually stays close to our villages so no we didn't plan that…water mage." The last part he said with a mocking tone in his voice

"Hey! I'm not a water..forget about it." he grumbled, the elf not even listening to him as he just walked off. He approached Lorena and stood next to her. "The hunt is on then. You think we can catch him before he performs any more rituals?"

"I hope so and when we find him he won't walk away from that."

"Let's hope you're right Lorena. Let's hope you're right…"

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