Alacryan Arthur

Chapter 15

Reynolds Leywin POV

The rest of the day was calm. After Tessia and her parents returned to their Kingdom Tabitha spent the rest of the day distracting Lilia. Vincent and I left to meet with the noble form earlier and Alice went shopping.

The noble behaved as entitled as before, but at least he bought many artifacts and an armor set, as well as multiple swords. So he was worth all the trouble he caused with his personality.

After that Vincent decided to visit a merchant friend of his and I had a nice talk with his bodyguard Jeff. We talked about the good old days of adventuring. I told him from the stories I had collected, while leading the twin horns, while he told me of his group, the thunder hawks. I had already heard of them, they were quite well known, as they were also quite strong. They focused a lot on clearing Dungeons the first time, while the twin horns focused more on well known dungeons.

It was interesting to hear his experiences, how they had been cornered on one trip, and how they had to fight their way out. The way he told the story reminded me how much I had missed these days.

While we were in the middle of a story, Vincent came out. He looked quite irritated. "What happened?" I asked.

"My friend told me that he expected a delivery tonight, but it hasn't come yet."

"Why don't we help them check where the delivery went?" I proposed, since I knew that our evening was free otherwise. "That's what I was thinking of doing as well," Vincent agreed. After his friend finished packing a couple of things, the four of us left.

As we got closer to the storage place of the merchant group Vincent's friend had bought the items from, I noticed that the place was surrounded by fog. It was weird to see such dense fog in the city and at the beginning of the night. At least if it was really fog. Maybe some kind of artifact or chemical produced this fog.

I went to take a closer look. I couldn't see a single light from inside the warehouse, the fog was only illuminated by the street lantern. The other sides of the warehouse were painted black by the lack of the moon. I remembered, today was a new moon. I surrounded the warehouse only to realize that the fog was limited to the warehouse. Now I was sure that this fog was something weird. I activated my mana core and could feel the reminisce of multiple spells being cast. The whole warehouse was enveloped by an aerie aura.

I came back to the group and exchanged a glance with Jeff. He had also noticed the strange effect that surrounded the house.

"Something happened in there, the mist is either a spell or produced by an artifact."

"What do you mean, something happened there?" Vincent's friend asked me.

"I mean to say, that a few hours ago there was a fight there. I could feel mana residues all over that place."

"I thought only mages with a very high core stage or certain artifacts could detect those" he murmured.

I nodded "That is true. To be able to detect the presence of my spells some hours ago, one would have to be at least a silver core mage. However, the higher the core of the user, the easier it is to detect the traces, if the caster does not conceal them. This is unknown to most people, since a mage would normally try to conceal his casts as much as possible. The only other place I had ever seen residues before was in a dungeon in the beast glades. An old friend of mine was at the yellow core, and I could feel his residues for about 5 minutes after he cast a spell."

"But you said that this incident happened hours ago.." The merchant said.

"Yes I did, and the residues are a lot stronger than that time. The mage who did this was at least a silver core mage." I said. "And the fact that he left those residues can only mean one thing..."