Alone, Isaac stood in front of the ruins ahead of him, in the middle of the barren plain.
The sun was glaring hot, living up to the name Heliosphere—the domain of sun. Isaac felt the mightiness from the remnants of the empire of the past.
There were boulders all over the place. Some sturdier walls withstood through centuries, although he could tell that they had eroded considerably over time—enough to crumble down should there be a sufficient impact.
He understood that what stood before him was only a fraction of its past glory. Heliosphere had been the capital of an empire, and empires did not build small. What remained was the surviving corner of something that had once stretched past the horizon. The rest had gone back to sand.
In no way a capital would be built in a harsh condition like this, however. Isaac noted silently, this arid environment could be the aftermath of a war—no, it is the most likely scenario.
Isaac's eyes wandered over the features. He noted the potential entrance at the front, and noted how much the continuous blow of wind muffled any proximal noise.
Sense of sight and hearing, which were two primary senses that people relied on, were limited in this environment. In other words, this place was dangerous. This mission was dangerous. Yet, the man named Howe was the only one sent alongside to monitor them. Isaac wondered if this structure was intended, or if it was a systematic failure caused by the shortage in manpower.
Would there be no individual assessment in this mission? Should students decide to split up like we did, the assessor cannot monitor four at once. Isaac didn't understand the rationale behind the structure of this assignment. After a moment, he reached a conclusion, there must be something that can mitigate this limitation, such as skills.
Isaac breathed. Calmed his thoughts down as he briefly closed his eyes, knowing that a fight was guaranteed to occur inside the ruins.
His thoughts then lingered over his three teammates.
Would they be fine? He shook his head. It was their choice to enter without a second thought. If Randal was as experienced as he said he was, if Vane and Camilla were as strong as their pride, they would be fine.
Red Wolf. B-rank: [Raging Fire]—the same skill as Magnus.
Chanting the details of the Manafold Beast, Isaac opened his eyes.
Then, he stepped in.
…
The ruins were awfully quiet.
With deteriorated walls blocking the wind, the air in the ruins was stale and dusty. On top of that, the sandy ground sank with each step.
Walking, Isaac noticed the bizarreness in the layout. It was complex and lacked a pattern, and the reason behind this complexity wasn't simply due to the sheer scale of the ruins, but also because of the blockade of paths by the boulders and rubble.
Isaac looked below at the sandy ground. Grimaced. The fact that it was sandy meant that with enough time, traces would disappear.
The ruins were no longer a city. It was a maze, that was, whether intended or not, designed to entrap those who dared to enter.
Red Wolf. Isaac's eyes narrowed, how intelligent is it?
Isaac kept his pace deliberate. He read the walls as he passed—the wear patterns, the direction the wind had scoured them, the way sound carried and died. The maze swallowed noise. A place like this did not let you hear what was coming.
Then, a rustle. It was slight but audible enough for his bare ears to catch. Isaac's eyes immediately shifted toward the direction. [The Prism] caught the sliver of tail beyond a wall.
A wolf. On the sand, there were footprints that didn't exist just a moment ago. It wasn't that he found them, but that they found him.
Isaac didn't cease the walk. Pretended as if he didn't notice any abnormality. Brought himself on guard. No howling, he thought, there are two possibilities. One is that the wolf is acting alone. Two is that there is no need to howl, because they are acting in accordance with Red Wolf's orders.
Isaac concentrated. It wasn't long before he caught on the beastly odor of wolves that appeared to be surrounding him, silently, beyond the walls around him. The sound of wolves breathing began to reach his ears through the wind and walls. He prepared as he continued to walk. One behind the wall on the left. Another behind the wall on the right. Last behind a boulder at my back. Three in total.
There was no way that Red Wolf gave them instructions to that degree. By no means was that possible if Red Wolf's skill was [Raging Fire] and nothing more. This meant that Isaac could use these wolves' instincts against them. In other words, if he pretended to let his guard down, these wolves would strike.
Isaac stopped the walk. Gathered his palms as he pretended exhaustion.
[Condensation].
The operation of [Condensation] was harder than the usual due to how dry the environment was. However, this was another reason why he was continuously cooling down the environment at his proximity—not only to deal with the heat, but to reduce the required time to successfully gather the ambient moisture.
In his hands, a sliver of water was generated. He brought his hands to his mouth, as if trying to drink to satiate his thirst.
That was when the wolves decided to strike, as they simultaneously revealed themselves from their positions and leapt at him.
Isaac let the water fall from his palms instead of consuming it.
[Condensation].
Mid-air, the water suddenly gathered at a singular point, becoming an extremely compact droplet of water. Isaac placed his index fingertip atop it as it briefly hovered over the air. Guided it to the closest wolf.
The water drop fired. It struck right into the wolf's right eye with precision. Blood splashed, and the wolf made a pain-filled noise as it lost momentum and rolled on the sand.
Simultaneously, Isaac kicked his feet, quickly propelling to the right. A claw missed him at the last second, grazing by the back of his left hand. It was only a tiny bit of blood that was drawn from him, nothing serious. Ignoring the second wolf, Isaac rolled and stood up. Stared directly at the third wolf that managed to change the path and was now running directly toward his current position.
There was no luxury for him to maintain the cool temperature around him as he fought. Therefore, at the start of the battle, Isaac released it. This meant that he was currently dealing with the hot air as he made intense movements.
Naturally, this generated sweat. Sweat was moisture, and in a hot environment, it was evaporating.
[Condensation]. Isaac's next generation of the dense water drop was faster than the last, for this reason. He fired, and the water drop struck in the eye of this wolf as well. The impact was strong enough to burst the eye and invoke the pain big enough to stop the movements of instinct-guided wolves.
With two wolves down from the pain, only one remained—the one who managed to generate a trickle of blood from him. It was standing in front of him with its kin down behind it, protective but afraid.
Isaac used the dense water drop twice by now. The wolf witnessed and learned. There was a high likelihood that the next water drop may be dodged, for the wolf was now on guard.
Then, what he had to do was simple, to use what the wolf didn't expect.
[Condensation]. Cupping his palms together, he generated water once more. This time around, he poured it into his mouth, but not to drink.
As the wolf didn't move but watched him carefully, Isaac spit out the water with enough force to briefly generate a visible mist. As he did so, his eyes glanced over the sun high above.
[Condensation]. The moment the mist transformed to generate a split-second mirage of him, Isaac raised his finger. The dense water drop manifested. The cautious wolf wasn't aware.
Then, it was fired. Struck in the eye of the cautious wolf. Said wolf fell with a roar, thrashing on the sand from the pain.
However, as said wolf fell, the other two wolves rose, although shaky and unstable. They still were quite affected, but Isaac read murderous intent in their remaining eyes, which was the sign of adrenaline surge.
One of two wolves lunged, but missed him completely. Isaac, quickly unsheathing his knife, stabbed the blade at the wolf's neck with precision. Retrieved the knife, and the wolf fell to the sand, choking.
He then read that the second wolf was trying to howl, likely to call more of the pack. He raised his finger, and the wolf flinched instead of howling—the pain was enough to teach it what to expect.
This gap in time was enough for him to throw his knife at the wolf. It landed exactly on the head, and the wolf fell.
The last wolf remaining, the most cautious one of all, shivered as Isaac approached it after retrieving the knife. It seemed to have lost its control over its bladder, as the urine stained the sand it occupied.
There was no hesitation. Isaac leaned down and stabbed it by the neck, ending its life.
Without a delay, he used the sand to remove the flesh that was on his knife. Straightening his body, he evaporated the blood residues on the blade—although the removal wasn't complete, this would be enough to reduce the extent of odor.
Sheathing his blade, he gazed at the small wound on the back of his left hand. There was a bit of his own blood, to which he frowned.
They will pick up the smell. He was alone, and he didn't know how many wolves there were. Flicking the blood off his hand, he began moving, away from these three dead wolves.
Three were sent to hunt me down. There are, including me, five people in the ruins right now. If three were sent to hunt me, then it is safe to assume that there would be at least fifteen wolves or more—which is far too many.
A large pack in a desert. It didn't make sense.
Isaac had knelt in this sand and felt how dry it was—void of water, hostile to life. Nothing large lived in a place like this without a reason, and a pack this size was not merely large; it was a population, and a population needed to eat and drink, and neither food nor water simply existed here. The pack this size in an environment this barren was thermodynamically impossible unless something was sustaining it.
There was a source. Somewhere in this ruin there was water, and there was food, concentrated enough to keep a population alive against everything the desert wanted. He didn't have to see it to know it was there. The wolves were the evidence. Their number was the proof.
And the source would be deeper than the periphery that he was in. The source would be where Red Wolf was.
Camilla, Randal, and Vane were deeper than he was. The number fifteen that he estimated was nothing but an estimation—it could be smaller or larger, and he was assuming that larger was more likely.
This place was dangerous, especially dangerous for those pride-filled nobles who refused to acknowledge their weaknesses.
He had to find them. His pace began to pick up. His vision was sharp and he was more concentrated than ever, as his body entered the alert mode and adjusted accordingly. He picked up whatever information [The Prism] could identify. Continued to look for traces of his teammates.
Then, he came to a stop.
He did find someone.
The assessor, Howe.
The assessor was in a widening where two passages met, half in the shade of a leaning wall. He was still and unmoving, as if he were a lifeless doll.
He was dead. Isaac's eyes widened.
What is going on? Howe was, apart from being an assessor, a professional Manafold Beast hunter. Such a man was found dead.
Isaac immediately inspected the body. It was intact, undisturbed. It was far too clean for wolves to be the cause.
Isaac crouched. He read it the way he read everything, and what he read was not the ragged violence of teeth, but a single entry point by the neck. Something small and precise had gone into Howe and he had not gotten up. There was almost no blood for it.
Poison, Isaac deduced. And an animal doesn't carry poison.
A person had done this. A person had killed the assessor.