Chapter 17
Zeth stood in the middle of the forest outside town, scanning his surroundings for danger. The natural wildlife shouldn’t have been too threatening, but any time a Beast Realm portal opened up and spilled out its armies of monsters, the entire ecosystem shifted to account for its new entrants. Many natural animals went into hiding to avoid being killed by the larger, more dangerous beings, and the new apex predators went around killing everything in sight.
They wouldn’t last long living outside their natural habitats—even if the adults could adapt, any babies they had wouldn’t be able to survive the strange conditions compared to their own realm—so eventually everything would die out and the woods would return to normal. But Beast Realm portals were common enough that a forest completely lacking any monsters was rare.
He’d left Turin’s house in the middle of the night so he could practice his rituals without worrying about the danger of being caught, but all he’d done was replace that threat with the new danger of being mauled to death by the nine-fingered claws of a Torogorn or pierced through the back by a Vorathede’s stinger. Still, he preferred the latter to the former. At least he could fight back against monsters; the strong arm of the law was too overpowering compared to his current strength for him to do anything but run away.
Traversing through the wilderness, Zeth replayed over and over his memory of his narrow escape, hiding behind the shed and eavesdropping on the investigation, trying to extract every bit of information he could from what he’d heard. That blue light seemed to show all the places Zeth had done his magic—but what counted and what didn’t? It hadn’t illuminated any path leading away from the shed, only the interior, so it seemed like the residue wouldn’t follow Zeth around or stick to him after he finished and walked away. Rather, it seemed to specifically only care about the location he physically drew his ritual circles.
That meant, as long as he did the actual drawing out here, he’d be safe from detection. He still didn’t know if it would be okay to bring an already-completed circle with him, so for now, he’d avoid doing so unless he found it absolutely necessary to have one. But he’d have free rein to do whatever he wanted while he was out here.
Zeth glanced around himself. He was in a clearing a good distance away from the town’s borders, and with flat enough terrain that he felt this would be a perfectly fine location for drawing. So, eager to waste no time, he knelt on the ground and placed his finger on the dirt.
First would be protection. As he was now, if any monster showed up—or even some of the local mundane animals—he’d have no defense against them and would be forced to flee. He needed to set up something to help him fight off danger, and currently, his only option for that was Hellfire Ritual. Ideally, he’d be able to surround himself with the circles, that way he could devote full focus on his work without having to worry about checking around himself for danger. Even if a monster snuck up on him, the moment it got too close, it’d step on one of the circles and roast itself alive without Zeth even needing to lift a finger.
The only problem was, he wanted to draw a forty-eight inch Empowerment Ritual circle out in this clearing. Which meant he’d need to surround that entire area with small, five-point-three inch hellfire circles that took fifty minutes each to draw. He didn’t need to do any math to know it’d take days of work to accomplish that. And what happened if a monster stepped over the line of circles he made to get to him? Ideally he’d want to double or even triple up on them in order to ensure nothing could come close without stepping on one. No way that would be possible.
So what else could he do? Just make a single Hellfire Ritual circle off to the side somewhere and hope he’d notice any coming monster while he worked so he could trick it into stepping onto it? That sounded unreliable.