My master has a pretty terrifying mana sense. I have seen his mana sense in action many times before. Still, the more I see it, the more unreachable it seems.

  Even now, I don't know how exactly the man managed to sense a source of mana from so far away.

  I have been traveling the Bone Valley for a week now. I have not yet managed to find this trap that my master was speaking about. I can't even detect a trace of this trap. Right now, the necromancers are supposed to be days away from the trap.

  There is also the fact that I have not made as much progress as I expected to in the Bone Valley. Traveling in this valley has been harder than I expected, and I had to slow myself more than I had expected to.

  Well, calling it tough terrain is an understatement. Right now, all of my focus is occupied by making sure that the ship doesn't crash. Well, it is a bit dramatic to call it crashing. I will end up sticking the ship right into the walls of this valley if I don't maneuver carefully, though.

  I don't know which genius had the idea of calling this place a valley. It would be more precise to call it a crack in the ground, given how narrow this place is. The place is tiny enough that I am barely able to move my ship inside the place. As if that wasn't enough the entire place is crooked like a lightning bolt.

  Every few moments, I have to turn the ship to stop it from crashing. If I could see the turns I had to make, things would not have been that scary. The problem is that they pop up so randomly. The first couple of times, I almost crashed into the wall of the tunnel.

  Even now, I have to strain my sensory formations to keep track of these turns. Even then, every time I sense one, it is so sudden that I can feel my heart lurch. After all, we are supposed to be getting closer to this trap of the necromancers. If the ship were to get stuck in such a turn, we would be sitting ducks for any attack. The necromancers could attack us at any moment and I wouldn't be able to move the ship to dodge them.

  Even now I can't shake the feeling that we are being chased right now. The necromancers are just behind us, ready to pounce on us. It is all in my head, I know. Still that doesn't change the nervousness that I feel right now. At least I haven't gotten fully paranoid yet. I haven't shot my cannons at an oddly shaped tree.

  Controlling the ship in places like this can do that to you, I guess. There is just something about this place that makes me shiver. Like, there is something behind just out of the range of my senses. Well, it would be wise to feel fear in this place. We are just a stone's throw away from the bone pits after all.

  I guess that I did not need to travel like this in the valley. I could have followed the curve of the valley from up above in the air. There are the Death Peak mountains that block my path, but they wouldn't have been a challenge. I dare to approach the storm line in the hexmountain. Even the greatest of the Death Peak mountains is half that height.

  That would have been my strategy any other time. The problem with that is that it will cost us our element of surprise. The archer would certainly be able to detect me if we were to take that path. The damn bastard must be keeping an eye behind him for us. He will find us. The valley, while hard to traverse, is also hiding our presence to a certain degree.

  With us having no idea what trap they have laid out for us, that is a benefit that we can't lose. We are already too exposed as it is. This close to the bone pits that would be a pretty stupid thing to do anyway. You never know what undead creature will pop out in the death peaks.

  To be honest, I was expecting to be assaulted by the undead already. They are attacking us, but it is not the numbers I was expecting. None of them has been created by a necromancer as well. Even the natural undead are oddly scarce. When I study the Bone Valley, I think I can guess a reason for that.

  The place seems pretty well protected from the ravages of the bone pits. I am not the best judge of that since I have never seen the place properly. I always went there with my master and even then only to the safer parts.

  The first thing is the quantity of the death mana in the place. There is only a tiny river that flows from the bone pits through this valley. (Anything from the bone pits is pretty deadly.) No, calling it a river is wrong. It would be better to call it a stream.

  The water is heavily tainted with death mana. It would be more accurate to say that the death mana is trapped in the water and flows with it. That is why the surrounding region is still relatively clear of the death mana inside the water. I can sense the death mana in the air, but I don't even need to cycle my mana to block it. This might change the closer we get to the bone pit.

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  Based on what I have found out, all of this water collects in a little lake near the Mayfire castle. I didn't get to visit the place, but it is popular in the Mayfire castle as a suicide point. They try to keep people away from it, though it seems.

  The death mana in the place is enough that people nearby call it the witches' pot. The young masters of the Mayfire family tend to consider going to this lake as a badge of bravery. They also swear that you can meet the ghosts of your loved ones there.

  The point of all this is that the death mana in the valley itself is low. It is low enough that there are still trees growing in this place. Granted, every one of those trees looks like it belongs in a necromancer's garden. Still, they are alive. This close to the bone pits such trees are pretty rare.

  There is a reason why the death mana is so low here in the valley. They say that corpses can absorb death mana (anything living can.) If they absorb enough, though, they rise as undead.

  Any undead that has risen naturally here would have to absorb the death mana here to survive. The mana is low enough that any death mana that comes from the bone pits would have been absorbed by the undead.

  Other than that, I am sure that the necromancers have also made use of the death mana here. I can't give a reason for this feeling. All I can say is that the mana in my surroundings feels disturbed.

  If that is the case, then what was already a pretty low concentration of death mana has decreased even more. Sensing this increases my fear of whatever trap they have set for us. Even with how low the death mana here is, they must have moved a significant amount of mana. I am still able to detect this now.

  The main issue still is that we don't know what the trap is. Right now, we assume that it is some kind of death magic. With the amount of death mana they would be using, it would be a powerful piece of magic.

  I know that the normal assumption would have been that they had raised some kind of powerful undead. If I am honest, there is still a pretty good chance we could be dealing with an undead. I think that it is pretty unlikely. The thing is that raising a powerful undead (one that can be a threat) requires a powerful body as a base. If they had something like that, they would have used it during the attack on the Mayfires.

  Even without the undead on the table we don't know what type of trap we are facing here. That is how diverse death magic can be. You must never assume that you know what a necromancer can pull off. That is a quick way to end up in a grave. (And out of it in short order.)

  It could be something as simple as an explosion of death mana. With the time they had, it does seem pretty unlikely. It would be easy to detect and prepare for. If it does manage to catch us off guard, things won't be pretty. Such a trap could kill half the people on this ship if they are not cycling their vital mana. The other half would not be in a pretty situation in such a situation as well. Death mana is not particularly good for us mages as well. (Though we can survive it at least.)

  It could also be some kind of a summoning spell. If that is the case, things are going to be tough, but we will manage. After all, a necromancer is most likely to summon a demon. The sentinels have to deal with the odd summoned demon every few months. It would also give the black mountain the excuse it needs. Let's just say that getting rid of demons is something everybody wants the legion to do. Then the issue can be left to the legion.

  It could also be something that I am not expecting. (such as plague magic, now that I think about it,) Now we have no idea how to handle that kind of trap. All we can do is cross our fingers that we will be able to survive the trap.

  If I had an idea of what it could be, I would not be sweating even in my sleep right now. Right now, I am scanning all of my surroundings as much as possible. If there is a trap, it is unlikely to appear in my formations. Still, only a fool would not look.

  Well, now that I have complained enough, I should speak about what the other factions are doing. The sentinels and the aegis are doing absolutely nothing right now. Both of them are saving their energy for when they would need to fight an actual battle. (Unless you can call provoking each other as doing something.)

  They are technically doing this on my command. Well, if I had ordered them to do something else, they still would have done the same thing. This way, it looks like they are doing it at my command, at least. The scholars and the Mayfires are the people who are fighting right now. Well, calling it fighting is wrong. It would be better to call it pest control.

  As I said before, the death mana here is enough to naturally spawn undead. The undead created would not be particularly strong.

  Most of them would be the corpses of animals that accidentally stumbled into the valley. (The water in the stream down there would be poison for any nonmage.) The mayfires are careful not to let anything powerful die in here.

  The undead created can be destroyed with a single attack. Most of the ones that are attacking us would be just crows or pigeons that would have stumbled in here. Technically speaking, I don't need to assign the scholars and the mayfires for this task. Just a single person with a bow would be enough to manage the undead that would have come closer. (Somebody like Eric.)

  The main reason that I have done this is to prevent them from interacting too much with the other two factions. I am sure that the legion and the aegis are already beginning to try and woo the scholars to their side. They will start with the Mayfires soon enough as well.

  I won't be able to stop the politics from happening, but I plan to delay it for as long as possible. I need the people here focused on the battle at least until we clear the bone valley.