Hera double checked everything with Queen Typhera and then left for room in question. The one where various cattle were vanishing in the middle of the night. No one had figured out what was going on and, according to all reports, the vanishings were slowly starting to increase. But now, they had another tool to use for the investigation. And that was Helena's wendigo detection device.
And like the heartbeat Queen explained, it took a couple of days for the empress to arrive at the room. However, it was a bit faster than predicted. Instead of a full week, only 6 days were needed. That was all thanks to Nimbus.
There was one particular room they had to pass by that was very, very long and would take them almost a full day to travel, even with the transport service that they had available. And by that, it was specifically a bus that would travel from one doorway to the next. But after a quick conversation, Hera realized that the bus would go at 100 kilometers per hour at most. While Nimbus, in his awakened form, could be much faster. And as long as they were not fighting or having to face a storm or anything, he could stay in that form for a very long time. Enough to cut what should be a full day of travel into just under 4 hours.
Unfortunately, Hera didn't have a chance to do anything during that time. The movement was too violent for her to attempt to read or do anything that requires more than just holding on for dear life. No matter how many times she had Nimbus using that form, she couldn't get used to the insane speed that he could reach. Especially if he was running on the ground.
On the other days, she did have the chance to continue trying to translate the journal. It was a very lengthy process, but one that the empress did without worry. After all, this was something that she truly enjoyed doing. But so far, she had yet to find anything that was truly helpful aside from that initial burst of knowledge. The revelation that there were various different projects happening all around the room. And the information that the owner of this particular journal didn't want to be on the lake project.
But the documents she was able to gather were not all from the same place. She also had a few reports about spell circles and poison density. Including something that should be some sort of calculation about how much poison they wanted to put in the lake. But the numbers were not there. And again, it wasn't hard to figure out that people really messed up the calculations, considering the state of things in the end.
Eventually, the empress arrived at the designated room. It was a place called Grasslands of the Prairie. Which was strange, to say the least, but the name fit quite well with the room. It was just a massive plain where people would be using the space to create a proper farmland to grow cattle and some crops. There were not many powerful monsters in the area and, by all accounts it was a very peaceful place. Which made the disappearance of animals even stranger.
Hera went straight away to the main city of this room. A place that was simply named the Farm Complex. Although it didn't really look like that kind of thing. It was a full-blown city. There were no actual farms and various storage and processing plants. It was a single location that took care of all the various necessary logistics issues that revolved harvesting and shipping the produce.
Hera was supposed to meet Helena and a team that was working with her in the center of the city. Where there was a giant watch tower of sorts. It felt almost ominous and people did feel a bit like they were being watched, but at the same time, everybody understood the need for something like this. It was, in fact, a watchtower. But one that looked specifically for fire and large swarms of monsters.
Hera was eager to get to her friend, as Helena was also part of that group. And being the Aspirant Hero, she more or less got a free pass through any patrols or checkpoints in the area. The moment she arrived in the watchtower, she was guided to the top floor. Where the team was already working on the device to locate wendigos.
Hera gasped and rushed towards her friend," Lena!"
With a big smile, Helena ran over and gave the Empress a hug. Anyone who didn't know them would have said that they spent a few months without seeing each other. Which wasn't the case. While in each other's arms the Empress couldn't help but notice another human in the room. Her eyes almost gravitated towards him. Not just that, but she kept feeling a strange sensation. As if there was something about the man that wasn't normal.
"How are you?" the Ophidianite asked.
"I'm doing great. You can't believe how well equipped the lab was. We managed to do a lot of things in record time."
"And is it working?"
"Every test we tried confirmed that it is. But we never tried on a real-life scenario. Mostly because we can't exactly have wendigos roaming around. They have a bit of a kill on sight situation," Helena explained.
Hera nodded, understanding why it was hard to get a proper test or something like that. "But aren't there any mages that use Devour mana?"
Helena nodded. "We know of a couple, but we weren't able to enlist their help. One is a human who is living back on Earth and, well, the alliance is still not willing to ask for that kind of assistance. A couple others are known to be roaming a few areas, but no one was able to pin down their actual location. Besides, devour Mana is not exactly common. So not many people have it. That goes double for mages. And without them, we can't be sure it's working since the Mana wouldn't be pure."
"Why is that?" Hera asked while approaching the rest of the group.
"While the idea of eating other people's magic is not a novelty, being actually able to do that in a way that it stays as the devour mana instead of just sap or steal or infect is much harder than it seems. I was reading up on it and there's a very specific set of spells that you need to use early on to get to that point. And you starting set up would be much more physically inclined than most mages. At least if you want to aim for that type of mana."
"If you want to go for an approach where you just try things and see what it sticks, then things get much more complicated. You need to be specifically eating magic. And it's already hard to imagine people would be doing that willingly. Even more strange to consider when they would need to be eating fire or water created by someone else. But now we might have a chance. Everybody is pretty sure this a wendigo's doing."
"Really?" Hera asked.
"Did you talk to the guards?" Helena turned to the Empress.
"Not yet. I was told to come here first. I'm not sure if it's because you need help or just so we can meet up?"
"Well, I appreciate that either way. But, like I said, one of the guards was able to see what was going on. And they mentioned a creature that was white with red eyes and arms that look like if they were bleeding. He was actually affected by a pretty nasty mental effect once he saw it," Helena explained while introducing Hera to her team.
"I get that he said that. But if it was just a smart creature, it would make a lot of sense for it to show something different from what it is. I mean, let's say it's not a wendigo, and it's something else that can pretend to be one. The best way to kick us out of the trail is to show itself as something else."
Seeing the reaction of the team, Hera quickly realized that she might have scared people a bit too much and quickly backed out. "Or it could be nothing. It's not like wendigos are super smart, anyway."
"But they can be," a man spoke up. It was the only human of the group who had a strange mechanic arm. But upon closer inspection, Hera realized that it wasn't a prosthetic or something of the sort. It seemed it was armor. Various metal plates and cogs connected in an almost futuristic looking arm, "Sorry. I'm Atlas."
The man was ginger and had green eyes, with a soft expression and a muscular build.
"Hi there. Nice to meet you. I wasn't expecting another human to be working on this." Hera put her hand out.
Atlas gave a nod and shook her hand before saying, "It was the least I could do."
The man didn't elaborate on what he was saying, but the Empress felt it was in the best not to press on it. Even though she was a bit curious.
Helena continued to introduce the rest of the team that was working with her. A dwarf called Grimbol, an elf called Sidine, and a harpy called Billie. The four of them were the main group responsible for the wendigo detecting system.
Helena was bringing her expertise on magic and affinity identification. Billie was a scout that was working on creating more and more elegant forms of radar and other devices to scan large areas. Grimbol was a mechanics expert that helps set up the device and Sidine was the one responsible for connecting everything together.
From Helena's explanation, she managed to gather what sounded basically like the dream team for this project. Then again, that might not be an accident. After all, not just the alliance, not just the humans, but every single person in the MAZE would benefit from a wendigo detective system. And those creatures could grow insanely quick without anyone noticing. If left alone could become very big problems for pretty much everyone.
But after hearing that, Hera couldn't understand what Atlas was doing here. He was supposed to be part of the team, but he wasn't contributing to the device.
Helena could tell with just a glance what her friend was thinking and smiled, "We need to place the radar on the highest possible place. We could just try to install it on the antenna, but that's a bit tricky and Atlas can make that much easier for everybody."
"Oh," Hera turned to the man. "So you're kind of like an engineer? The infrastructure engineer, I mean?"
Atlas shrugged. "Not really. I don't know a lick of engineering. But I can do this." He raised his arm, the one wrapped in metal plates, and the plates shifted, all unraveling from his hands, and formed an extra limb almost like a tentacle coming from his shoulder. "I have a machinery legacy. I can control metal and machinery to create limbs or solid structures."
She wasn't expecting to see someone else with a legacy. But it made sense considering the strange feeling she had ever since she walked in here. Although more than that, she was taken aback by how upfront he was about his power. Hera had made a point of hiding her legacy for as long as she could and everybody she knew that had one wanted the same. Yet here this man was giving that information pretty much unprompted. He could just say that he was there to set up the infrastructure, and he was good with that kind of thing and she would believe it without even batting an eye.
"Glad to have you with us," Hera said and glanced at the metal plates, recognizing that just like what he stated, it wasn't all types of machinery that he could control, only some that weren't too advanced but not too rudimentary. The same could be said by metal. She could tell that things like carbon fiber and tungsten would be beyond his ability. But anything that was more rudimentary, like iron, copper, even steel, would still be there. She wasn't quite sure about aluminum. And she couldn't even tell how she knew all that. But the realization came really right away. It was probably the work of her [Legacy Hunter] title. It gave her information about someone's legacy, even though it was the first time she saw it. Or more specifically, the first time she saw it working.
"Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions about the legacy?" Hera tried her luck not just because she was curious about what the man was going to do, but also because she wanted to know how correct her title was.
"Ask away. I already explained everything to the people here, so I don't have a problem with sharing it again. Besides, people tend to make some wrong assumptions about it and it's better to clear everything up."
"Thanks. I imagine that everybody thinks you can mess with machinery in general but you can't. It's more like a clockwork kind of thing, am I right?"
Atlas nodded in surprise. "Yeah. I can't control machines that are too smart, for the lack of a better word. And the futuristic look is just a preference."
"Right. I got it," Hera nodded again, although this time she wasn't as surprised, since this wasn't as much of a stretch as her first statement. "Next, you can handle copper, iron, steel just fine, but more advanced metals like tungsten and carbon fiber are beyond you, right?"
The man just nodded with wide eyes, feeling as if she was reading him like a book. And Hera continued.
"But what about aluminum? That feels like very on the edge of what you could do."
Atlas stared at her and asked, "Did you read my file or something?"
Hera shook her head. "Not really. But I have my ways of knowing that kind of thing. How far off was I?"
"Zero. You were completely spot on. Yes, iron, copper and steel are fine, but more advanced stuff is beyond me. And aluminum is tricky. Some versions of it I can move, but they're not as flexible as the rest, others are very intensive for me to mess with and there are some versions of it that I just can't even try to use. But how do you know that?"
Hera chuckled, "Let's just say that when you get in touch with enough legacies, you get a hang on figuring out how they work."
Helena chuckled, knowing that response wasn't entirely true. After all, she knew about Hera's [Legacy Hunter] title and how most of that information should have come from it. But even then, the mage was surprised about how detailed the knowledge that Hera got was. It seemed like she was only getting more used to the title, which let her gain even more from it.
"Okay," the mage clapped their hands. "We are all set here. Atlas, could you place it on the top of the watchtower? Soon as you do, we can turn it on and see what is hiding in this room."
#### Author's Note ####
And here we have Atlas, the character made by our guide tier patreon Personssess!Hope I can make it justice.
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