Considering how little time they had to work with, the blue-scaled naga thought it was best to send scouts out immediately.
"Guard, tell my scouts to go search for an opening in the merfolks western line. Tell them we just need a spot to sneak through."
"Yes, Matriarch." With that he rushed off to carry out the new order.
The Eldest Matriarch looked around the room, seeing that none of the matriarchs had anything else to add she turned to Chronos.
"And what will your group be doing in the coming days?"
"We just reached the third rank so for now we are going to stay at the fortress and train some of our methods. After that we may head for the tear and try to close it, I don't want such an unknown factor on the battlefield." Chronos replied.
"Then you should prepare thoroughly. The tear is near the middle of all three battle lines, and I don't doubt that the trolls will try something with it soon."
With the meeting coming to an end late at night Chronos' team retired to their rooms for the evening.
...
The next morning as those inside the fortress continued with their assignments like before there was a minor disturbance.
Bang!
"Pfft hahaha, run into another pole Chronos. Is that training even helping you any?" A lizardfolk called out.
Rubbing his nose Chronos scowled in the direction of the voice.
"Yes actually, I'm beginning to sense something but it's only intermittently right now. I think I'll be able to tell what I'm sensing by evening."
The lizardfolk warriors were still a little ashamed that it had taken five of them to hold him down, so they took every opportunity to tease him whenever he messed up.
Chronos never took their teasing to heart but after hearing it all morning it was starting to be annoying. Deciding that he didn't want to be the butt of the joke again Chronos made his way outside the main gate to the open area he had trained at yesterday.
As he approached the gate, he picked up that strange sense again. Like he could smell something that didn't exist, no, like a door that had opened, and then it was gone just as fast as it had arrived.
Gregory was outside creating and storing Nightweave threads in preparation for whatever crazy idea Chronos had next.
"Ran away from the teasing? Well, it must be difficult to focus when everyone is laughing at you." He spoke.
"There's that too, but I mostly want to see if my senses can detect spatial attacks. They're pretty hard to see and I wouldn't be surprised if they could be disguised or used in other layers of space. If we encounter enemies that do something similar to me, I want to be prepared. By the way how many threads are you at now?"
"I'm up to 11 now, and each new thread is harder to make than the last. I'm just over halfway to my limit, but I should hit it by tomorrow evening. After that, it's all about practicing with them."
Chronos covered his fingers in [Sever] and cast [Isolate] in an attempt to sense space being altered and spent most of the day training.
That evening they went to the newly completed dinner hall.
Gregory looked around for a moment before finding Lyla and Sariah sitting with Vessin. They had become good friends after the experiment and now spent most of their time trading ideas or training together.
"Sorry for interrupting but do you mind if we sit with you." He asked.
"Sure, how is the training going, Chronos?" Lyla gestured for them to sit down.
"Not bad, I can somewhat sense my own attacks now and for some strange reason I can sense doorways."
Sariah gave him a weird look.
"You sense doorways? How? And why?"
"I don't know how, the best description I can give is that it's like a long-lost scent that I'm only now recognizing. As for why I think it has something to do with my bloodline but until I know more about my ancestry I can't be certain." He responded.
As she thought about it, she came to a conclusion.
"I think you are missing some of the training that you're meant to do at a lower level. Like a basic technique that your body is trying to make up for."
"Hah, that makes sense. What about you girls? How was your day?"
"Good, Vessin started on her curse potion and Nimsy is helping Sariah with her curses. Meanwhile I have managed to hold my [Divine Form] for nearly ten minutes. In combat I could fight for at least five minutes without any issues." Lyla said.
The food for the evening was a soup with boar meat and mushrooms; there wasn't much variety right now, but it was filling.
Looking at her meal Sariah was suddenly curious about the boars.
"How are there so many boars in this swamp? We have boar meat in every meal, but their numbers never seem to decrease. Normally having this many magic beasts in one area would overwhelm the environment and cause a natural extinction to the local wildlife. However, the boars in the swamp clearly outnumber any other creature and devour a large amount of food but the swamp is almost completely unaffected." She asked
Vessin answered to the best of her ability, "The boars mostly eat a magical mushroom that grows in copious amounts in Dracon Fen."
She held up a mushroom that was black with a cracked surface, it looked similar to a rock.
"We call this a Tru Fle. It is a natural magical conductor and is used in most of our potions as a stabilizer due to the power it carries. It draws world energy from deep underground before transforming it into magic. Its roots glow blue under moonlight but that doesn't make it any easier to find.
The boars love Tru Fle's, often digging it up which allows its spores to spread to wherever the boars are. After two or three weeks a new patch of mushrooms will have grown wherever the spores landed. The predators in the swamp then feed on the boars to grow stronger."
"I see, but then why doesn't the Tru Fle mushroom spread beyond the swamps borders? If it only takes two weeks to grow, I would expect to see it everywhere near Dracon Fen."
Nobody had an answer to that at first then Chronos remembered what Hrólmir had done with the world crystal before he had left.
"Maybe there isn't enough world energy close to the surface outside of Dracon Fen for them to grow. Hrólmir put the world crystal underground after creating the system and he told us it was a concentration of world energy before that. Perhaps there are several such crystals underground that Tru Fle's draw energy from. It would explain why the tears formed inside of Dracon Fen first and not west of the Dragon church." Chronos offered.
That would explain why four tears appeared inside of Dracon Fen before a single tear formed outside of it.
The Averest river also carried a large amount of magic power in it. That's why it was referred to as spirit water. If it brought more power into the area for the mushrooms to grow, then the rapid growth that almost defied logic started making sense.
Vessin had a sudden understanding about the nature of Dracon Fen thanks to this discussion.
"That's why northern Dracon Fen has swamp lords but not southern Dracon Fen. The power from the Averest river and the world crystals deep underground make the environment more powerful, practically charged with magic. But by the time that the Averest river reaches southern Dracon Fen it has been diluted or absorbed by other creatures making it difficult for powerful creatures to appear."
"So, the mushrooms are a regulator for the swamp? But what regulates the Averest forest then? We are fairly certain that Tru Fle's don't grow there or they grow in much smaller numbers." Lyla asked.
"Not sure, nobody has been allowed inside of the Averest forest depths since the war that created the wasteland. Something happened to the tribes living inside of the forest back then that caused them to close the borders even to this day." Chronos said.
That war had been seven hundred years ago but amongst long lived species, like the elves that were reported to live there, that was just one or two generations ago. They wouldn't have forgotten the harm that the human nations who used to live in the wasteland had done.
All that anybody knew today was that the Averest forest was infested with large insects of all kinds that prevented any sort of army or powerhouse from entering the forest. Anyone that made it deeper than the fringes of the forest disappeared or never talked about what they had seen.
Putting aside the wasteland, learning about the world crystals allowed Chronos to understand why certain parts of the world had vast amounts of power while others were almost devoid of it.