Chương 29: Discovery

It was nearly another month of keeping his head down and searching for the gate on Craters side of the river before anything interesting happened. Days and days of eating fish or forest critters, walking with a somewhat controlled path, and practicing his mana skills. He used the same campsite most of the time. He even had time to sling some arrows from the bow he salvaged a while back. It wasn't too difficult and he was getting fairly proficient at hunting small animals with it.

The only issue was where to keep it. While he was dashing through the tree tops trying to get away from the scout team it was a problem. Slung across his body was the only way to run with it but he was terribly worried about breaking it if he moved wrong. Ultimately he got use to his routine and started leaving it in the tree next to his campsite. He had run so far that he didn't expect anyone to find him out here for a while yet. Routines meant steady practice. Steady practice lead to solid gains.

At some point he made a small pouch of soil that rested on his lower back underneath the cloak. From this pouch he grew his own small blueberry bush. He kept it trimmed down but pumped some mana into it mindlessly every now and then. This kept him fully supplied with mana infused blueberries as his favorite snack. An unintended side effect was the birds. He was collecting a following. Nearly ten of the yellow and blue birds followed him around and he fed them berries and slivers of meat when he had some.

They didn't cling to him but just always seemed to be around on a branch somewhere above. When he would bring out some snacks a couple would flutter down and land on his shoulder or head until they got a berry or slip of meat and they would fly off into the canopy again. It was amusing and kept him distracted from the fact that he hadn't actually found anything familiar yet. He had nearly gotten use to having the power from the single drop in his core.

The circulation technique he was using still burned quite a lot and he was using that as a gauge to determine if he wanted to try and condense another drop. He imagined most people would try and get as many drops as they could to help push their meridians faster, but with his technique it seemed a single drop was plenty to keep pushing. If adding a single drop made the process that painful, he could only imagine that adding a second drop would make the pain worse.

He could see noticeable results already also which wasn't supposed to happen. This was just more evidence the technique was worth the extra effort and pain. The more mana he could force through his meridians the more he could shove into his core at any given time. He decided to give it another few weeks before he condensed another drop, balancing patience with efficiency was the hardest part.

Blick was working with the theory that his ability to move more mana at a time was better than having the strongest mana to move. This translated into what he knew of the military he had seen. They had large numbers of weak individuals instead of investing all their efforts into a few powerful individuals. Quantity over quality. It worked out so long as the top people on the quality ladder weren't too far from the average person in the quantity.

100 average soldiers could do more in a day than 1 person with several drops. And at the rate people collected drops there was not a big enough gap in the average person vs the strongest. Blick was super curious about other groups though. In his adventures would he find people with so much access to mana and so much better techniques that they eclipse entire armies? Something future Blick needed to worry about. He had the kingdoms best tutor and combat trainer.

They hadn't mentioned his method of circulating mana to push meridians. Either they didn't know or it was a secret for the elite. His curious about the world and his ridiculous amount of free time allowed him to try anything he wanted without any preconceived ideas of what was or wasn't possible. At some point he questioned why mana made animals grow larger but not people. He hadn't solved that riddle at the moment. The thing that made today interesting was hearing shouts from the distance.

Captain Fitz had been exceedingly pleased when he heard the report. The last several weeks were strange. The number of encounters with enemy scouts had increased while the casualties had diminutive nearly nothing. Not sure why they would back off the hostilities while they clearly got closer to finding his camp made the captain confused. Today's report came with several men sprinting into camp shouting.

About to berate his men for raising such a loud ruckus and potentially giving away their position, he held himself back as he opened his tent flap and saw the me. Clearly celebrating. Wading into the chaos he gently moved people out of the way to make it to the few men talking loudly in the middle. Clearly giving their report to the sergeant. Who was just about to turn and go get the captain. Realizing there was no need he just saluted at the approaching man and with a smile said.

"We found it sir, we found the gate." The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Within an hour, every leader in the camp was crammed into the captains tent receiving a brief.

"We move this camp to the new location, establish a new perimeter around the gate. Nobody enters it! That is an order! We do not know what's on the other side. Prioritize establishing a boundary outside our camp to keep out any intruders. When that phase is complete we need to create a barricade of armed guard facing the gate also. Blick came through it so we know something else can and we need to be ready for it. This should be maned at every hour.

Once that is established and we have confirmed this is what we think, I will send a report to the capital and seek further guidance. We are not going into the portal without orders from above myself… is that clear?" Looking into each set of eyes for confirmation he nodded and released everyone to their task. Packing up his own tent for the move he called for another report on the enemy movements and if anyone had spotted Blick. It was a huge area they had searched on a very methodical pattern.

It was odd they hadn't seen the beast man. But the forest was absolutely massive and nearly untouched by humans until now. He could imagine if everyone was remaining quiet it would be difficult to find each other in the potential hundred miles of trees. When the report came back of no Blick, but enemy scouts within 4 miles of the current camp he nodded and finished his work. This camp would be found in a week at most and they would be tracked to where they are headed.

There was no way to hide 300 soldiers marching through the woods from a scout. Once their trail had been spotted they were as good as found. The contest would become how well they fortified their position before the rest of the enemy force could make it to them. Security was the priority. Failing that would mean the company could all die. Maybe a few could flee, but the trick then would be surviving being hunted back through the weeks long trip back to the cliff.

Then the nearly 40 miles of travel through dense jungle alone before the first sign of civilization. With a grim determination Fitz set to planning the perimeter boundary in his mind.

Sneaking much more carefully and watching from much farther away than his last time scouting a camp, Blick move in the direction of the shouting. It didn't last very long but it gave him a direction. He had to freeze a couple of times as below him a few scout teams sprinted off into the woods away from the camp. It was nearing night when he made it close enough to see the actual camp. They were clearly packing up and preparing to move to a new location.

These were Crater soldiers according to the uniforms and armor. That didn't make Blick any more trusting tho. He wasn't sure where he stood with them after they left and he took an arrow to the shoulder. Scouts didn't wear the identifying colors so he still wasn't sure if he was a target or not. After being so close to becoming an arrow catcher he was leery about being found. Deciding to stay in the trees as he traveled instead of risking being spotter on the ground he followed the camp as it began to move.

Every hour or so a new set of scouts would merge back with the camp as it moved. A couple came from the rear of the formation clearly having been left behind and having to find their way. Blick guessed scouts were trained to return at some interval and expect random movements. Blick had never been informed because he wasn't a member of the military and had no formal training. He hadn't even spoken with the leader of this group. He just kind of followed when they asked him to come.

It was possible he had just been away at the wrong time and the army expected him to catch up. His decision to meet them out here may have made the situation worse. Thinking to himself that maybe he made a mistake back then, Blick continued to follow. For two days the camp moved. They stopped for breaks and small nap rotations but did not set up a full camp with tents again. They seemed to be attempting to move fast and leaving as little tracks as possible.

With three single file lines of nearly 100 people there would be a path to follow. But it could be mistaken for a game trail. Blick had used those to find some of his bigger food in the early days. The tactic seemed to make sense in a way. If you couldn't hide your trail you could disguise it. Blick didn't immediately understand why they chose to stop where they did. Probably some military tactic he wasn't trained on. But they began setting up tents and even started cutting down trees and building a fence.

He made his way slowly and carefully around the whole camp area and couldn't really tell what the goal was. On the third day of fence building, when the fence was almost a wall taller than him, the soldiers moved to the middle of the camp and started building a barrier around a specific tree. They clear cut every tree between the tents and this one tree… the puzzle snapped together as Blick realized the significance of them keeping one tree under guard.