Chapter 56: The Next War
Leon placed the camera on the table in the room and sat next to Rosvitha.
“One of the 27 hidden posts on the eastern border is missing, right?” Leon asked.
Rosvitha nodded but remained silent, waiting quietly for Leon to continue.
“And since there were no sounds of a fight, it means this post was taken out silently,” Leon continued. “Only the top-tier assassins could pull something like that off.”
“But no matter how elite they are, it’s only possible for them to bypass so many patrol posts along the border if they are detected. Whether they’re still lurking, waiting for another opportunity, or have already retreated, they would leave some trace behind.”
“Yet, the situation on the ground is just like this—the sentry seems to have ‘vanished into thin air’ with no trace at all.”
As he spoke, Leon activated the camera’s magical preview projection.
Rosvitha took the camera. The images Leon had taken in the forest on the eastern border were displayed, including the location of the disappeared hidden post.
It was a bushy area, and the sentry’s disguise was a partial burial in the ground, using the bushes as cover.
However, while the bushes appeared undisturbed, the sentry within had mysteriously disappeared.
“Keep going,” Leon urged.
Rosvitha continued flipping through the photos on the camera and moved to the next one.
This showed the scene after the bushes had been uncovered—a deep pit. The sentry had hidden himself in this pit.
“The intruder made the sentry disappear without disturbing the bushes or being in combat,” Leon said slowly. “Sounds pretty creepy, doesn’t it?”
“It is a bit creepy…”
“And this post isn’t even right on the border; it’s positioned a bit toward the middle. That means the intruder bypassed at least eight to ten other hidden posts before taking out this one in the bushes.”
Leon added, “This level of concealment is beyond even the best-disguised dragon clans. In fact… it might be impossible.”
Rosvitha had encountered attacks on sentry posts before. But most were near the border, the most vulnerable area, often attacked as either a provocation or a decoy for larger plans. The attacks, however, were never as strange as this one.
Compared to the past, this attacker seemed more like… a ghost.
Rosvitha stared at the projection from the camera, unconsciously biting her lip. “Any other clues?”
“Of course,” Leon said. “Remember a few days ago when we were at the border, and I told you to assign more personnel?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Rosvitha replied.
“The reason I asked you to do that was because I found an extremely, extremely neat and clear dividing line at your territorial boundary.”
“A dividing line?”
“Yes.” Leon took the camera, flipped through a few photos, and handed it back to Rosvitha. “Look, here it is.”
Rosvitha looked at the image.
Sure enough, there was a perfectly clean cut in the projection, like a blade had sliced through. Although the line wasn’t long, it stood out, jarring against the uneven environment of the rest of the boundary.
“Of course, the world is full of strange things, and such a dividing line could naturally occur. So to figure out whether this was just a coincidence, I visited several other spots over the past few days.”
Leon scrolled through more of the projections. “As expected, I found similar markings at every point vulnerable to attack. I can safely conclude that these lines are not a coincidence.”
“But what do these lines have to do with the missing sentry?” Rosvitha asked.
“They’re connected,” Leon replied, bringing the preview back to the image of the bush. He zoomed in, pointing to a part of the bush’s edge.
“Look, while there’s no evidence of a fight at the scene, this part of the bush looks like it was cleanly cut off—smooth, not something that happens naturally or from decay.”
“Also, in the pit where the sentry hid, you can see similar signs of a clean cut.”
Leon put down the camera and looked at Rosvitha.
“Earlier, I said even the best dragon clan disguises couldn’t achieve this level of perfection. That’s because this is far beyond what any ordinary assassin can do. Rather than an assassination, this feels more like… a ghostly event.”
He said “ghostly” in a lighthearted tone, and Rosvitha’s heavy expression eased into a faint smile. She turned her head to glance at Leon.
“So, you’re saying this intruder didn’t use any conventional assassination method we know of, but something completely outside our understanding?”
The joke was merely to lighten the mood, but Rosvitha understood the point Leon was making.
Leon nodded. “Besides investigating the traces these days, I also spent time in the library. Your copy of *A Brief History of Dragons* has been a huge help.”
Rosvitha raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
Leon explained, “That book mostly praises and glorifies the dragon clans, likely so as not to offend any dragon kings,” Leon said. “But in one chapter, I found this description:
The Star-Walking Dragon King, Ravi, excelled in spatial magic. To him, space was not just a concept but an art form. As Ravi’s mastery of spatial magic advanced, he began to incorporate it into daily life, for example, in construction.
The architecture of the Star-Walking Dragons was flawless and precise. They never needed tools for cutting, polishing, or blasting, as Ravi’s spatial magic could precisely sever any excess material.'”
“After reading this description, I dug deeper into spatial magic and found it could be used for much more than just building houses. It can do a lot more.”
“Silent attacks, leaving no trace, perfectly clean cuts—these are all things spatial magic can accomplish.”
“So, let’s make a bold hypothesis. It was Ravi, or someone else skilled in spatial magic, who used this magic to take out your sentry.”
“And it was this person who made those clean cuts at your borders and outposts.”
Leon concluded, “Rosvitha, the one who attacked the post wasn’t a ghost. It’s clear that it’s a method we’ve never encountered before—spatial magic.”
Rosvitha followed Leon’s logic. “Yes, if we apply the traits of spatial magic to this incident, then everything makes sense.”
She paused for a moment and then asked, “But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. If the attacker is so skilled with spatial magic, why did they only take out one of my sentries and create a few clean dividing lines?”
Leon continued analyzing.
“In my opinion, there are two possibilities for why they did this.”
“First, spatial magic may have significant limitations or a certain range, and within that safe range, the best they could manage was eliminating the sentry in the middle of the forest.”
“Second, this is a challenge.”
Rosvitha was confused, “…A challenge?”
“Yes.” Leon’s expression grew serious. “The attacker is telling us that a battle far greater than the Battle of Constantine… is coming.”
