"The culprit?" Alistair narrowed his eyes and released the self-imposed limits on his senses. Immediately, the world was flooded with magical signatures.
Normally, Alistair kept his perception dialed back to avoid the sensory overload of "seeing" 360 degrees in high-definition magic-vision. It was like having two different video feeds playing in his brain at once.
"There's magic everywhere," Alistair whispered, stunned. "The sheer scale of this is... insane."
"Good eyes, meow," Tamagane complimented, looking into the sky.
"You can't see them? The purple mists of mana?" Alistair asked the others.
"Psychic mana is invisible to the naked eye unless you have a specific trait, meow," Tamagane explained. "Usually, you only see magic when it manifests as a spell. This is a massive mental field."
"Whoever did this isn't weak," Alistair noted. If he didn't use the Goat's conversion ability, even he would struggle to coat an entire mountain in such dense energy.
"It's a barrier powered by mana crystals," Tamagane analyzed. "The caster probably used less than ten percent of their own pool. But these runes... they aren't standard. I've never seen this style before."
"Neither have I," Hikari added, sitting on a stone bench. "My family's archives don't have anything like this."
"A mini-boss, then?" Alistair smirked. He felt zero pressure. He was still linked to Sadako and the others through his domain; he could call in a literal army of monster girls if needed. But with his current stats, he doubted he'd need help.
"Probably a Yokai," Tamagane theorized. "Yokai are wild animals that absorbed mana and gained the ability to shift into Demi-human forms. Their mana feels slightly different from ours."
Animal-based Yokai? Alistair rubbed his chin. If the Dragon Talisman's energy could turn regular animals into beast-girls, he could potentially create his own army of cat-girls and fox-girls. But the animals he'd seen before were just mindless monsters.
"We need to find the node to break this barrier, meow," Tamagane said. "Even with my full power, a brute-force approach would take too long."
"Find a node? Too much work," Alistair shrugged. "I'll just burn it down."
"Burn it down?" Tamagane looked at him like he was crazy. "This is a high-level mental construct. Fire won't do anything unless you're packing the power of a nuclear warhead."
"Just watch," Alistair said. He extended his right hand. The power of the Dragon surged. A pale, azure flame flickered into existence on his palm. It didn't radiate heat; it looked almost harmless.
"That's it? I don't feel any heat," Tamagane said, sniffing the air. "It feels dangerous, but it doesn't look like enough to break a barrier."
Alistair grinned and did something reckless—he tossed the azure flame into the surrounding woods.
"Hey! You'll start a forest fire!" Tamagane shrieked, preparing a water spell.
"Relax. My fire doesn't burn trees," Alistair said, stopping her.
The moment the azure flame touched the grass, it didn't ignite the blades. Instead, it hit the purple mana mist like a match hitting gasoline. WHOOSH! The entire area erupted into blue fire.
"ARGH!!! THAT'S CHEATING!" a voice screamed from the void.