A handsome dark-haired boy dressed in dark blue zipped through the forest faster than the eye could track.
Every couple hundred meters, he paused and squatted down on the ground.
A small circle filled with glowing blue runes appeared on the soil.
The boy seemed to fiddle with them for a few seconds before they disappeared into the earth like a good fart, silent but deadly.
Then, the boy would run away again, sprinting as he dodged and weaved through plants and trees at lightning speed through the forest.
If viewed from afar, the boy looked a little manic.
But Otto's expression was anything but.
The greater the pressure, the calmer he would be.
His expression merely reflected his terrifying mental strength.
In his mind, he entertained then tossed speculations and ideas as theory after theory flashed through his brain.
Otto was trying to determine the approximate whereabouts of the thief.
There were three possibilities.
Otto analyzed as he ran.
One: the thief had moved underground.
Otto's [Sense Life] sent out a pulse of mana horizontally.
It spread out like a disk at his own approximate height.
Otto didn't typically need to adjust the direction and height of the disk, but he could certainly do so if he wished.
He had already sent one underground.
So far, he had only detected one life signature, and he already knew that it belonged to Jackal, who hadn't moved from where Otto had hidden him.
But Otto couldn't discount the possibility that the thief had purchased a game shop tool specifically used to hide one's life signature.
Still, he felt suspicious.
Since if the thief did purchase such a thing, it was rather obvious who the scheme was actually targeted at.
Throskarts couldn't use these types of life-sensing spells, after all.
It was only he, the lone human, who the mastermind could be guarding against.
If it was true, it meant the mastermind both knew who he was, and had even predicted his own entrance into this convoluted fight.
But Otto was still slightly puzzled.
There was no such tool when Otto searched the game shop.
Where could the thief have gotten it from? Or was there something Otto had missed?
Even he would not be able to find the thief in this kind of dense forest if he were allowed to escape the area Otto had just painstakingly barricaded.
Otto casually cast out a few modified mobile sensing arrays and sent them to cover the barricaded area underground.
If they sensed rapid movement under the surface, Otto would be alerted immediately.
If the thief really fled underground, Otto wasn't nearly as concerned about stopping him; he would always be the fastest with his [Tunnel] spell.
The second possibility was considerably less worrying.
Otto idly squatted down to draw another array on the ground as he pondered.
It was possible that the real thief was currently hiding amongst the Throskarts already present in the area.
Perhaps he had mixed in with the Throskarts doing the ambushing, or the Throskarts in the chasing mob.
This meant that the thief was still on the ground.
And would still be subject to the invisible barrier arrays Otto had already set up.
Even if the perpetrator was temporarily hidden from Otto's [Sense Life], he wouldn't be able to escape after the duration of his tool wore off.
Otto's spell had no such thing as a time limit, after all, and his arrays lasted for five uses.
Should such a life force blocking tool really exist, Otto highly doubted it would also have the function of saving the thief from inevitable death after Otto completed his plan….
But this possibility was actually not very likely, truth be told.
If he was hiding amongst the Throskarts already chasing, what was the point of the decoy buying time in the first place?
Instead, it was the final possibility that Otto was most worried about.
That was if the thief also possessed a flying tool.
Underground, the perpetrator's mobility would be sharply reduced, no matter what kind of magic item he'd used to dig a tunnel or otherwise move through the earth.
But in the air, with the ability to fly, it was the opposite.
The air provided little resistance to fast speeds of travel.
Even a weaker flying tool would allow the thief to escape as quickly as if he was on the ground.
Perhaps even faster than that.
But this wasn't the toughest problem for Otto.
How would he capture an enemy with high mobility in the air?
If he was at his stone house, perhaps he could use the same method.
Where he would bombard the thief with aerial projectiles such that they covered the sky, and the thief would be forced back to the ground at risk of being shot into a sieve.
Unfortunately, the range was far too large for Otto to complete such a plan in the forest.
Moreover, it was possible that the thief had flown pretty far in this time frame already.
But Otto's lips curved up as his eyes filled with the thrill of a challenge.
He racked his brain for solutions as he placed the last array.
Another [Sense Life] revealed that the disorganized mob of Throskarts had begun to chase the decoy thief between two ominous looking hills.
Otto's eyes brightened as he slapped a [Winged Escape] array on his back.
Two translucent wings popped out from his back, glittering brightly under the warmth of the sun.
Still, Otto remembered to cast [Shadow Stealth] for good measure to make sure he remained unseen high in the air.
He estimated the potential flying speed of the thief, then suddenly felt like groaning as he imagined the sheer breadth of the distance he would have to cover.
Worse was that the thief could have flown in ANY direction, assuming he was indeed in the air.
Which meant that Otto would have to cover EVERY direction.
Fortunately, Otto had thought of a reasonable solution.
He was planning to create a single-link interconnected array formation.
This was mostly just fancy jargon for what essentially meant a 'series of array formations that link and come together to create an even greater whole.'
It wasn't to the level of a legitimate Grade 2 Array, which consisted of two tightly connected arrays with an exponentially larger space for runes, but it was harder than forming two simple connecting arrays together.
The biggest issue here was that Otto knew he would have to be fast when drawing and placing these arrays to be able to cover the entire space before the thief had a chance to.
First, he flew as high as he could bear before he started losing health from either the bitter cold or the lack of oxygen.
He tentatively set this as the maximum possible height the thief could escape to.
Otto's eyes were filled with focus. He set the first array link down, and carefully suspended it with mana.
Otto wasn't using his pre-made arrays for this task.
He couldn't have anticipated this project, so he had to draw each of these links from scratch.
It took him around a 40 seconds to draw the first link, using the full force of his concentration.
Which was, fortunately, significantly enhanced by his [Multitask] innate trait.
The link slowly began to take shape, abstruse runes glittering in the sunlight.
After he was finished, Otto sent out another pulse of [Sense Life] to determine where the rest of the Throskarts were located.
Back on the ground, the ambush had started.
As soon as more than half of the members of the three factions entered into the small valley formed by the two hills on either side, a stream of arrows flew at the mob.
None of the three leaders were particularly surprised by the ambush.
They had long figured out that something was amiss.
Of course, they had also made some preparations.
Lefwyne led the force furthest in front.
Upon seeing the arrows flying at his men, two small discs were revealed in his hand.
He yelled,
"Clump together!"
There was not a hint of panic in his voice.
Even though his subordinates felt that this order was counterintuitive, even harmful in the face of so many arrows, they still dutifully clumped together.
Lefwyne wasn't a kind man, by any means.
Some felt that if they disobeyed him, they might be the next on the chopping block.
The army reluctantly gathered.
Lefwyne made a motion to activate the two discs.
Before the arrows could harvest lives, the two discs expanded rapidly on each side of the army, forming two giant metal shields facing the hills.
The arrows struck the metal discs, letting out the bright, sharp CLANG of metal hitting metal.
Not a single Throskart died to the initial volley.
Edward's faction was the next in line, but still more than 80% of his men had already entered the small valley.
When he saw the arrows flying at them, his expression darkened slightly, but there was still no panic or alarm to be found.
He also pulled out a magic tool.
Actually, it wasn't that these leaders cared overmuch about their subordinates.
Rather, they knew they couldn't afford to lose any power here, especially not before they caught the thief and had to fight the other two factions for the coin.
The magic tool Edward chose was a small white cube.
When he activated it, a transparent, glowing barrier appeared around his faction.
But this glowing barrier was more powerful than Lefwyne's metal discs.
The first one hundred arrows that attacked not only bounced off, but were even returned at full speed to their origin.
Screams of pain from behind the hills rose in the forest, leading Edward's subordinates to cheer as the remaining arrows were soon deflected.
Aluerad's contingent was the luckiest.
Most of his men had yet to enter the ambush spot.
Upon seeing the arrows, a clear indication of an ambush, he immediately took his men to scurry around the hills.
Lefwyne and Edward's eyes were bright as they witness the tactic of 'counter-ambushing' the enemy.
Perhaps they'd be the one harvesting points instead…
Otto kept one eye on the fight to check their movements, then attached fifty thin-as-hair threads of mana to the finished array link, with the other link still attached to himself.
Fortunately, because Otto was building a linked array, he didn't need to sustain all of these mana threads using his own mana.
Or else, who knew if even he would have the mana to support them.
These mana threads would be attached to the fifty other array links in the array to create one huge bubble dome.
Otto flew down at top speed, even going so far as to cast [Haste] to speed up his flight.
[Haste: Unlimited]
Wind Element
Level 13
Enhances the caster's movement speed by 70%.
Mana Cost: 520
Duration: 150 seconds
Cast Time: Instant
No Cooldown
He descended to the ground at the speed of a bullet before pulling up just before landing.
He immediately began drawing out mana, shaping the runes with his fingers.
Otto worked as quickly as humanly possible.
Runes flashed and changed in front of him faster than the naked eye could see.
Luckily, a linking array of this level was still considered the basics of the basics for Otto to draw.
He finished in 35 seconds, carefully placing the thin thread of mana into its representative location in the array.
The runes hummed as mana filled them.
They hovered in the air, invisible.
Otto wiped his sweat and hurried on.
Fortunately, he was fast enough to take into account even one of the fastest possible flying tools in the thief's arsenal, which Otto quite frankly doubted he had, if he was even in the air in the first place…
********************************************************************
Thirty minutes later, Otto stepped back and watched as the final array link was completed.
The runes in front of him THRUMMED with power.
Otto revealed an almost manic grin as he looked over his handiwork.
He didn't think the thief could escape in time; this particular linked array spanned well over 60 kilometers in diameter.
It was too bad the forest ring was still so large, or else he might have caught quite a few additional lurkers…
This time, the array formation he had created was not invisible to the naked eye.
As the links connected and communicated, an enormous, vivid blue dome shimmered into the existence.
It spanned the entire sky for those beneath it.
Even Otto felt a little giddy at the sight of such a gigantic creation.
Not that he hadn't made such huge arrays in the past, but, they were rarely so…vibrant and conspicuous.
As Otto watched, the dome began to contract.
A deep, low guffaw uncontrollably bubbled up from his throat.
He was almost ready….to harvest his points.
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