Shades of the New World

Evin put the scroll in a safe and easily accessible place, which was of course, his shadow. 

"For the time being, I've nothing else to tell you. Ertu will explain how the rest of the team will operate in our search, and you can start thinking of a way to best search for the foreign teams. After you make your decision, you can report it to either me or Dzuko. As long as we don't see anything too bizarre in your decision, we'll let you enjoy your free rein. Obviously, I might ask you to do some things for us, but other than that you're mostly free to do whatever you want in the interests of the mission." 

"Thank you for your generosity," Evin replied, but inwardly, he was more impressed at Nasst's authority.

'The old man's words must hold a pretty hefty weight, judging from how they're treating me. Well, I guess it's natural, considering these guys are his subordinates…'

"In any case, that's all from me for the official matters. I'll leave you with Ertu for now so you can get familiar with our modus operandi. And after you're finished, come see me in my room over there," Sannah said and walked into one of the rooms inside the temporary base.

[She really doesn't feel like an old lady. Only her face says she's maybe 40 years old, but everything else doesn't really match up to her age,] Runa commented in Evin's head.

[Hail magic,] Evin replied.

"I'll also retire for the time being. We won't really have much to do before Dzuko comes back anyway," Bull said and walked off with a wave of his hand.

Evin looked to the remaining woman and found her with a distinctly neutral expression on her face. It was definitely better than seeing her with a face of pure worry and heart-rend, as if she was being forced to watch her 10-year-old boy go to war or something.

"I don't wish to waste your time with unnecessary talk, and I don't want to keep the captain waiting, so I'll try to keep things as simple as possible," Ertu said quickly, "In a mission where we have to search for items, in most normal teams, the team will split into two-person groups and scour the area with whatever method they can use on hand. But for us, it's a bit different."

"In our team, usually Dzuko spearheads search missions thanks to his exceptional use of the World of Storms. The rest of the team will simply follow him around to protect him from harm. Since he explained his spell to us in great detail, I'm assuming he won't mind if I tell you about it as well. To put it in a layman's terms, he will create shockwave of air that's very thinly filled with his intent and mana. The shockwave will spread to an area of up to a kilometer around him and make contact with everything inside."

'A radar?' Evin thought, hearing the description.

"He then collects all this information into his head and creates a very detailed map of the area inside his head. An incredibly powerful ability that's envied by every other team in the Paradra Tribe. But obviously, it isn't without shortcomings. The biggest one being that he's very vulnerable in this state, as he just doesn't have the leisure to focus on other things. After all, he has to reconstruct the information he receives from his spell into something coherent and understandable. Hence, the need for us to guard him as he does his job," Ertu explained.

"That's extremely impressive. I was thinking if I could do the same, but I'm pretty sure I'll struggle with simply defining the shape and interior of this base here. To think that Dzuko would be able to reconstruct the shape of an entire landscape using the echoes that come from it is quite honestly baffling to me," Evin replied.

"Naturally," Ertu replied happily.

Evin really wasn't saying some empty praise. Mapping a three-dimensional landscape through what was basically echolocation without the bounce back wasn't something so easy and simple as just seeing the terrain with your own eyes. 

Evin was very familiar with this concept thanks to his experience with the array of totems. But the reason he could so easily see the structure of the kilometer wide cube in that case, was because the information was basically shoved into his head due to the grand spell's effects. It wasn't like he had to derive some kind of cohesive image from a set of random data. The cohesive image was already there.

And from what Evin could hear, Dzuko did that same exact practically impossible thing. The earth equivalent of this ability was called terrain mapping through radars and it usually involved powerful computers equipped with specialized programs to derive meaning from the data collected. 

Evin obviously wasn't equipped with such high-tech programs in his head, so he could very easily smash his hidden hopes to try, and recreate Dzuko's skills. Obviously, he had his Dark Room to give him some form of information control over an area, but its range was abysmal compared to the kilometer wide area that Dzuko could cover.

'From this, I can also deduce that Dzuko's very talented at frugally using his mana,' Evin concluded in his head.

"As for you, well, even though captain had told you that you're mostly free to do whatever you want, I can explain how the Paradra instructs its lone agents to work on similar cases," Ertu continued and started listing some examples to Evin.

Evin heard the examples and realized that most of these solo mission protocols were… what he would expect from a single person team that's trying to search for another group of mages and maybe even others. 

Stalking, observing, and following notably suspicious individuals and groups. Not because these people could be the foreign spies, but because these people might be being stalked by foreign spies. After all, it was hard to imagine highly trained foreigners to come into a town of about maybe 1000 people and try to blend in. They were more likely to have created a temporary base in a nearby area, or some of them could even be in possessions of personal dimensions. They would search for the base during daytime and when they needed to rest, they would coop up inside their dimensions.

But aside from the specific actions, one theme started to strike out to Evin. 

Every one of these methodologies of doing detective work upheld the mage's safety first and foremost. The Paradra discouraged any reckless and unsafe approaches to missions, they outright banned its members from sacrificing themselves for any kind of cause, and the most important thing that was encouraged by the tribe was the process of planning ahead. It was so coddling it was actually starting to have the opposite effect on Evin. 

[Now I just want to go berserker style and get this thing over with.]

[No! Why would you even say that? We've just finished listening to a 10 minute talk about keeping oneself safe!] Runa protested.

[Your big brother's dumb like that, don't worry about it.]

"One more thing I have to tell you is the limitations of your Oath," Ertu began talking about another topic, "As you know, we're not allowed to hurt non-mage citizens in any way, but for missions like these it's okay for you to get a bit rough for citizens that you feel are suspicious. You can't kill them, of course, but just remember this. As for Hornbearers, you can do anything to them. After all, there have been many cases of citizens being bribed by other countries, especially in non-Tribe affiliated cities."

"Alright."

"If you don't have any questions, you can leave for now and visit the captain," Ertu finished her talk and urged Evin to go visit Sannah. 

Evin thanked the young lady, walked over to Sannah's room, and knocked on the door. He then heard the old woman's inviting tone and entered. He saw Sannah sitting behind a simple desk, casually drinking from a fancily decorated tea set.