A Jaded Life

Leaving the others up on the ridge, I ghosted down into the valley. My cloak was the perfect piece of equipment to sneak around in the dark, especially across rough terrain, and I was making great use of it. While the people down in the valley had posted a guard, that guard was focusing on the obvious paths of approach, up and down the valley, so coming down the ridge on a silent whisper of wind wasn’t what they expected at all. Furthermore, I was about as invisible as a shadow in the dark, meaning even if he had looked my way, he wouldn’t have spotted me, unless he had some seriously powerful traits and abilities and was using them at the time.

Which might be the biggest problem, even I’d be hard-pressed to find Lia, to say nothing of myself, when hiding without the awareness that there was something to find. Sure, I could use my Magical Sight, Soul Sight and the methods of elemental perception to scan an area and, by now, I was fairly certain I’d find anything trying to hide within that area but to even start the initial scan, I’d need to know that something was wrong. Constant Vigilance was a wonderful watchword but nobody could be constantly on full alert, just the attempt would automatically dull the senses and make them much less efficient when it counted.

Sadly, there was no easy or obvious answer to the problem but given that I was currently benefitting from it, I wasn’t about to complain. Instead, I was drifting down, towards the group and could soon land silently on a nearby rock, making sure that there’d be no trace of my presence, even after I left later. It would be quite annoying to leave a footprint in some unlikely place, allowing these people to discern more about my capabilities than I wanted, or even realise that I knew about them unless I wanted them to know about me.

My initial observations were completely passive, not even activating my Magical or Soul Sight, instead, I simply let the air carry the scent of these people past me, my mind trying to categorise the scents according to individuals and differentiating between magical and mundane scents. It wasn’t easy and I quickly realised I’d need a lot more practice to get useful information from mundane scents. The only thing I could readily discern was that they had a dinner of grilled meat and bread but other than that? I could perceive the scents but their meaning eluded me. However, I began to make mental notes, so I’d hopefully be able to get started on that practice.

Luckily, I had a lot more practice on the magical side of things and could readily understand the scents I could perceive there, at least to a point. The most obvious thing I could detect was that none of them had a particularly powerful scent, indicating that they either had impressive magical control or lacked magical power in the first place. My initial estimation was that the second possibility was the truth, as I could smell a bit of weak magic from each of them and letting just enough magic leak out to give that impression sounded like a fairly difficult thing to do. I might be capable of doing so, but only with practice and likely only while I was aware and awake, so the fact that I remained undetected should protect me from such deception.

Visually, I couldn’t make out a whole lot about the people, other than the fact that they were all guys, all somewhere in their twenties or thirties and all quite physically fit, though not excessively so. Sadly, after the Chagne and with the System in play, their physical looks were a lot less indicative of their physical prowess. I was a perfect example of that, I didn’t look all that powerful but thanks to the Dragon Touched Trait, I was superhumanly strong and fast. Both my Strength and Agility were at a level that somebody without beneficial traits would reach around level fifty if they solely focused on one of those attributes.

Looking at the gear strewn around the camp, I could conclude that they had two people primarily using bows, while the other three had spears and shields. They all seemed to have fairly long knives in addition to that and I could also see a hatchet that could be used as a weapon and a shovel. The last two were from before the change, so I doubted they’d be actually used, but the possibility was there and, for just a moment, I wondered how it would feel to get struck by one of them, the momentary consideration about my attributes having reminded me just how far from human I now was. Well, the ears certainly gave it away, as did the night vision, but now, I started to wonder. And quickly discarded that curiosity, I didn’t need to know everything and this might just be one of those things.

Looking at the single guy keeping watch, I could discern that they had some fairly simple leather armour, nothing seriously fancy or sturdy, just very thick and heavy leather jackets and pants. Not strong enough to provide protection against serious weapons and attacks but likely enough to at least blunt the bite from a canine, or maybe stop a bear from ripping their arms off.

Finishing my visual inspection of the group, I started to open myself up a little, activating my magical sight and quickly noticing something peculiar. One of these people had a magical amulet of some kind, I couldn’t tell what it looked like or what it did, but I could tell that it was enchanted with a kind of Divine Magic that gave me unpleasant vibes. Without getting a closer look, I wouldn’t be able to determine anything about it and a part of me was questioning whether I ever wanted to take that look. Even from a distance, I was feeling repulsed by it, a fairly strange sensation that I couldn’t quite place.

Now, I only needed to figure out what these guys were and maybe take a closer look at the mundane gear they were lugging around. Maybe I’d be able to discern something from the craftsmanship, though I wasn’t quite confident I had the foundational knowledge. Maybe Identify would give me something to work with, or I might be forced to bring in Alex, who had a much greater knowledge when it came to non-magical materials. I wasn’t about to call what they could do with their Alchemy ‘mundane’, even if it wasn’t ‘magical’ by my understanding of magic.

After a quick check to make sure that the guy on watch was looking in the other direction, I drew the Concealment Rune into the air, maintaining it so I could push the Observe-ability through the Rune. Even now, I wasn’t certain if the process was actually necessary or if I simply believed that it was and I was subconsciously dependant on it, not that it truly mattered for me. Maybe I’d be able to have Lia try it without this process but for now, this was what I had to do to keep use of the Observe-ability hidden.

Moments later, without disturbing the sleeping man, a blue window opened, letting me know that the guy was a level fifty-eight human, the level enough to make my eyes open in surprise. To see if this was a coincidence or if they all had such high levels, I checked the others and received similar results, ranging from fifty-six on the low side to sixty-one on the high side. Quite a bit stronger than I had expected, mostly because there were very few beasts with such a high level. Unless these people were, somehow, the strongest of elite warriors, the group who took care of all the truly dangerous nasties, the community they called home might be quite dangerous. Hopefully, they were at least somewhat above average amongst their people, or I couldn’t be confident that, no matter how many there were, my group would remain victorious. Even if I was able to kill them all, they might be able to take one of my companions with them.

After another moment of consideration, I decided to take a closer look at their gear and snuck my way over, using all my abilities to remain concealed. When I used Identify on one of their spears, I didn’t get a whole lot of information, but what I got, told me that it was a weapon of above-average quality, though without any magical reinforcement, something I had already known. However, an interesting tidbit was found in the item description, labelling the material as unrefined, making me wonder if they had simply used metal from before the Change, somehow managed to smelt it and poured it all together into ingots, without having an understanding of what the Change had done to it.

Or maybe they had some other, sub-optimal method to procure the metal, which made the fact that the weapon was described as ‘above-average’ all the more impressive.

Pleased with the information I had managed to gather, I took back to the sky, letting my cloak carry me back to my companions, where we could decide what to do next.