August 1st
"It was a corrupted spirit," I snarled at her, "That fox character beat it. I'm trying to figure out where he came from."
She really didn't know when to shut up. I jumped down off my wyvern, and landed gently on the ground. Scanning the area for clues with one eye while looking through time with the other. The vast majority of time had been erased from this area. There was an imprint on time that told me something large had landed right in the middle of the encampment.
I got the feeling that it was a wyvern, but there were no traces of of it's tracks left so I was having a hard time telling for sure. I looked around at the world around me with a little curiosity trying to find the slightest sign of what happened here besides the fragmented bits of time. That was just giving me a massive headache. I blinked, and allowed my time element to settle.
"The fox knows someone who can use the time element," I looked over to Frigga, "Between the corrupted spirit, and his ally with the time element I can't tell what happened in what order. What I do know is that the fox made it out alive, and so did the wolf, and all the bandits that were here are dead. That, and they took everything that the bandits had collected."
"So the two criminals are rich now," Frigga started laughing, "Where are they planning to spend all that money?"
Her joyful attitude was more then a little irritating. This was a serious matter. She shouldn't be joking around about all of this nonsense. Two rich criminals would draw attention to themselves rather quickly. Yet these two hadn't spent a single coin.
It was clear that the fox was a powerful fighter, but the wolf hadn't given away much beyond the fact that he was capable of defending himself. We hadn't done much investigating into the two so far. The fact that the fox had managed to kill Alderon who was a city lord was a bit of a mystery. He'd used some magical tools I'd never seen before. Those gauntlets weren't something I'd ever seen.
They weren't forged with techniques I knew, and they weren't anything too fancy. I'd seen many forging techniques that could create much better equipment, but those didn't have a trick ability like this. Alderon seemed to be trapped in an illusion fighting against the fox while the real fox sat, and watched him with what I assumed was an amused expression. I didn't see how he killed him. Whatever it was had been hidden by a time item.
The time element was incredibly rare so the chances of a little human or halfling awakening it was near impossible. He seemed to be more of a physical fighter. He always had some sort of mana weapon on him whenever I could see what he was doing. I assumed he had a massive armory at his disposal. There was one odd thing I noticed that kind of bothered me.
Barely concealed within the collar of his outfit was a slave collar. He clearly had a mana core, but the extent of his magical abilities was a mystery to me. Someone with physical magical abilities was a bit troublesome, but not impossible to deal with. I was a bit confused as to where this guy kept all of his weapons since I didn't see any spatial item on him. Not that it mattered since he hid most of his activities from my sight.
That disturbed me more than anything. Time crystals were incredibly rare, and if he had an ally with the time element then we'd be looking down death's nose fairly soon. The time element was even more rare then the crystals. No one who lived currently knew how to create the elemental crystals time rarely left behind. Each planet usually only had one.
Even a weak one was incredibly valuable. Rumor had it that you could buy a city with one. I had never seen one before so I didn't know what made them so valuable as it was I was highly valued by the nobles in the capital. I may have been born as a low born peasant, but my awakening had brought me many titles, and anything I wanted was given to me freely without hesitation. My family lived the happy life of pampered nobles while I was promised to marry the youngest princess.
She was the weakest of the sisters, but her mana sight was unique. She didn't see mana itself or the poor girl would have long since gone blind on a mana rich world like this. Although it was unclear exactly what she saw she was highly capable of evaluating the power, and potential of individuals. Military careers lived, and died with her evaluation. Her ability cost her greatly though.
She was unable to use magic herself as a result. She had two cores contained within her eyes instead of the normal cores. She wasn't able to see without accumulating massive amounts of mana. That prevented her from using mana of any form. The trait was genetic, and there was a chance our children would inherit it as well.
She was both the most, and least desirable of the kings daughters. Having her unique eyes would be a benefit few could pass up. Thus the reason she was given to me. Two valuable pawns that were both heavily tied to the crown. The highly talented time elementalist, and the girl with the golden eyes.
She'd been the one selecting the palace guards since she was young. As soon as she was able to speak her word was the final say on all promotions. Her innate weakness meant that she wasn't often allowed outside of the capital, and many assumed that it would be easy to just assassinate the girl, but with someone who could see the future by her side no one had been able to come close without me noticing. I'd foiled many attempts. More then she knew about.