Chapter 698
"What do you mean, sense them?" the hobgoblin replies, picking up the black stone glowing with a faint white light.
As I open my mouth to reply, I witness the entire rock she holds become enveloped in a portion of her green aura. Then, all the Ether within it pulses and is sucked out, disappearing into her hand and settling evenly throughout her being.
The instinctual sensor in the back of my mind registers her body as slightly warmer than before, and the rock she's holding becomes undetectable.
It is lifeless and black when she drops it back onto the ground and speaks again, holding her hammer up, ready to fight.
"Come on, answer me. You're telling me you can see where Ether Stones are? Is that some kind of new feature? Not even the Lords with High-Grade Avatars can do that... Do you have a Premium Avatar or something?"
I don't speak again. Clearly, I'm even more out of my element than I thought.
With my hands raised, I shrug and turn to my left, slowly walking 20 meters from where I started in silence as the hobgoblin's eyes track my every movement.
I'm unable to detect the exact positioning of each Ether Stone, but a strange pull in my mind gets hotter the closer I get to ones nearby. The rough direction of about a dozen stones in a hundred-meter radius floats in my subconscious, directing my footsteps.
I stop in place and dig through the loose black stones again, burrowing about two meters beneath the surface until I grab another black rock glowing with a faint white mist.