Chapter 126 - Fieldtrips
Scarlett sat on top of a smooth piece of stone, idly flipping through a book on magic theory she had found in the Freybrook mansion’s library. It didn’t cover exactly what Arlene had lectured her about back in Freymeadow, and a lot of its contents honestly went over her head, but some of the concepts described appeared to be at least similar. It was an interesting comparison, at least, considering that quite a bit of time would have passed between when this was written and Arlene’s days.
As she finished a chapter, she glanced up from the book’s pages to observe Adalicia’s progress.
They were currently on top of a small hill, and at its center, the wizard was moving back and forth between several metal stands placed around the area. Each held an irregularly shaped crystal that emitted a soft light. The woman had been at it for a while, and it had taken at least an hour or so just to set up all the equipment. Since then, she had been busy calibrating it all according to the data Scarlett had provided her.
Their group had left Faybarrow early this morning, before the sun had risen, in order to get here as soon as possible. They had traveled eastwards from the city, along the coast, for several hours, until they reached a highland region surrounded by stretching forests. While there were roads through the forests, the carriages couldn’t traverse through the highland, so they’d had to make the rest of the trek on foot, carrying all of Adalicia’s equipment along with them. Or, to be more exact, Fynn and Shin carried it.
They were searching for a set of Zuverian ruins, but Scarlett had only vaguely remembered where they had been in the game. All she had to go off was that there would be a rather distinct kopje—a tall, mostly flat, stone formation—nearby. But ‘nearby’ in the game was pretty different from ‘nearby’ in this world.
Fynn had been able to spot the stone formation itself relatively quickly, which had assuaged some of Scarlet’s worries, but she didn’t know where to go from there.
Thankfully, this was exactly why she had wanted to get Adalicia involved in all of this to begin with. Or at least one of the reasons.
She watched as the wizard leaned over one of the metal stands, inspecting the crystal at its crown. In her left hand, Adalicia held the thick, decorated tome that she always carried on her side, opened so that she could glance down at its pages now and then, while a white light shone above her right hand which she occasionally raised to the crystal.
The crystals themselves were a kind of surveying device. They were what Adalicia was using to locate their final destination.
Scarlett hadn’t actually been sure how this surveying magic worked before she first discussed it with the woman. She just knew that it was a thing that had been used in one of the quests if you joined Elystead Tower in the game. Now she had a rough idea of the process, though.
Essentially, the surveying crystals set up by Adalicia scanned for different sorts of energies that were present in the surroundings. The way the crystals were positioned was supposed to help triangulate exactly where the origin of those energies were. It wasn’t too different from how many signal-detecting technologies worked back in Scarlett’s world, though the range didn’t appear to be as impressive as what she was used to.
These crystals were supposed to be incredibly sensitive—not to mention expensive—which was a necessity if they were to be used to detect anything underground. According to Adalicia, the ground and soil in general were pretty good at absorbing most types of magical energies, so it was very much up to chance when enough would escape so that it could be detected. When it did, it was often in extraordinarily minuscule amounts. That was why you wanted to calibrate these crystals to as many types of energy as possible. Specificity was key. It apparently wasn’t enough to just search for lumomancy-attuned mana, or something ‘general’ like that, because that wasn’t often what you found out in the real world. Not unless there was a mage specifically going around casting lumomancy-based spells everywhere.