“Well, that escalated really far, really fast,” I couldn’t help but mutter once I took another glance through my scrying constructs. I hadn’t focused on Luna all that long, just long enough to explain what I had seen, heard and felt, but that bit of time had been enough to bring the entire brawl to an end, leaving three people on the ground, grievously wounded, while the rest looked worse for wear. Given that one of those three guys still had a knife sticking from his chest, I wasn’t about to bet on his chances of survival. Unless they had a magical healer of some sort, but given that I had been asked to help Cy the day before, well, I doubted they had somebody for this.

  As I continued to watch, I realised that nobody seemed to be willing to help the downed people. It took far longer than I would have thought, especially in a community which had to be as close-knit as this one, for anyone to check on them and by that point, the one with the knife in his chest had stopped moving completely. Additionally, when looking at the body, there was no knowledge slamming into my head, reminding me that he was an Oathbreaker; it was as if he was just part of the scenery. Or rather, I was fairly certain he was no longer there, just his body. Death seemed to have washed away the shame of breaking an Oath.

  And even once they started checking the bodies, they lacked any sort of gentle care, making me wonder just how great the impact of that Oathbreaker effect was when viewed directly. I couldn’t quite fathom that people, after living together in close quarters for months, could be so callous to treat others in their group like this. It was rougher than I would treat a stranger unless I already knew and didn’t like them, but for everyone to be like this? It boggled my mind, driving home the lesson we had learned: be careful around Oaths, be mindful of your obligations and, most of all, don’t mess around with effects you don’t understand.

  “That’s just a little bit insane,” I told Luna as I was describing the events I had witnessed once the two injured people had been taken away and the body carried out for a later burial.

  As I was saying that, Luna let out a long, drawn-out yawn, reminding me that our rest had been short and our days quite long, so looking for a temporary shelter to get some additional shut-eye sounded like a wonderful idea. It would also allow me to get a better look at the events back at the farm. Without the continued travel to occupy my mind, it would be a lot easier to focus there. I might even be able to channel some magic through one of my scrying constructs if I were to be so inclined. There were a few fairly amusing ways I might be able to use such an effect, especially if they managed to start another brawl.

  Finding a suitable spot to camp for a few hours was easy, even with the ongoing rain. It just took a bit of magic and we had a roof to keep out the rain, walls to avoid the wind and dry space to lay down our sleeping bags. Once again, I was reminded just how much we relied on these powers, and I was incredibly grateful for my ability to use the different elements. Otherwise, we would have been forced to improvise a lot, or the travel would have been completely impossible. I briefly wondered how many people could travel like this but didn’t think there were all that many, simply due to the wide array of abilities needed. Maybe if some group of Travellers had been living together before the change, but given that the capsules had allegedly been assigned randomly, that wasn’t all that likely.

  Shaking my head, I made sure that Luna was comfortable and Silva was willing to keep an open ear before focusing back through my scrying constructs. There were a few things I wanted to try out, especially in regards to channelling magic across this distance. I already knew it was possible, or at least it had been on Mundus, so it should also be possible here. For a moment, I wondered if using constructs to battle foes across vast distances, somewhat similar to a drone pilot controlling a drone from hundreds of kilometres away, would allow to engage in perfectly safe combat, allowing me to gain a tremendous amount of levels. But just as quickly as that idea came, I had to ask myself a different question. Namely, was it the killing that gave EXP and increased the skills one had, or was it the risk one had to endure? Sigmir, back on Mundus, had told me it had something to do with the opponents’ souls leaving the body, that this process gave a portion of the power that being had in life to its conqueror, but that didn’t make all that much sense if I were, to be honest. It didn’t account for herbivores, nor did it explain why the levels of creatures remained largely constant in an area; at least, it had been that way on Mundus. Maybe Terra hadn’t settled down in that regard yet, just as the Astral hadn’t settled, I wasn’t sure.

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  Something to test later, for now, I just wanted to see if I could cast through my scrying constructs. For that, I needed to project my magic to the area I could see through them through the Astral, meaning I had to partially keep track of the visual connection channelled through my scrying construct and a different connection for my magic, working through the Astral.

  It was a good thing I hadn’t tried that while moving; I would have walked into a tree or something like that or simply fallen on my face. But while sitting on a conjured throne of ice, with my eyes tightly closed and my mind focused on a single scrying construct, it worked out somewhat well. There was some resistance, requiring me to spend additional Astral Power, thus lowering my efficiency, but it worked, at least for small spells.

  Curious, I started testing around a little with a scrying construct some distance from the farm, just so I wouldn’t needlessly alert them and quickly came to a few conclusions. Firstly, the more power I channelled through the connection at once, the worse the resistance became, making it impossible to cast any truly powerful spells. The only way to accomplish anything great would be to work slowly, carefully channelling what power I needed while keeping things under tight control, essentially the opposite of all combat casting. Healing would be possible, but, again, only when done in a slow and steady way.

  To celebrate my successful experiment, I used one of the scrying constructs sitting on the shrine of Lady Hecate next to the farm to conjure a few more scrying constructs, essentially creating a large murder of crows or conspiracy of ravens; my scrying constructs weren’t quite detailed enough to fit neatly into either category. Granted, I wasn’t even completely certain what the detailed differences were, other than the size and, as far as I remembered, the shape of the beak, but even if I were certain, I wouldn’t try to make them perfect, there was just no need.

  Regardless of whether it was ravens or crows that Stephanie saw when she walked towards the shrine, the look on her face was quite amusing, though it also made me realise that I might have overdone it a little. There were, easily, some fifty constructs sitting on that roof, maybe even a hundred, which must have given her some serious creeps. Even worse, given that I only controlled one construct actively, the rest were sitting eerily still, adding to the intimidating atmosphere. However, despite the clearly visible trepidation on her face, she steeled herself and moved across the soggy ground until she reached the door, knocking on it.

  For a moment, I considered what to do, but then I decided to have just that little bit of fun. One of my constructs hopped down, sitting right above her head as she was knocking on the door when I used Wind Magic to speak.

  “Here I’m sitting, nearly napping, and suddenly there is a tapping

  as of some gentle rapping, rapping at my shrine’s door…”

  Due to the magic I used to make the sounds, my voice sounded completely different; though I wasn’t certain she would even recognise my voice, it wasn’t as if we had talked all that much. Regardless of that, however, the experience of having a completely black raven cite poetry to her was a little too much for Stephanie and after staring at the construct’s beady eyes for half a second, she bolted with surprising alacrity. Sadly, her balance wasn’t up to par, causing her to slip and slide, just as the four fools had done the night before, leaving her in the mud.

  It would be interesting to see if she was willing to return at some point.