Spending My Retirement In A Game

Xenia looked around the trains, pulling out a small object from her bag. It was a smell lens that was engraved with some special enchantings that could let Xenia view what happened in a space over the past 48 hours by reading the ambient mana in said space.

She twisted the outer rim of the lens, adjusting what 'time' she was actually seeing. Going back one hour, then two, then three, then four, she rewound the time of the space up until she saw something actually change. And then, for just a moment, everything was just 'gone'. The mana in the space seemed to have completely disrupted, making it impossible to really see anything, like a thick fog.

This all lasted for about ten minutes. With a frown, Xenia turned back the lens up until the moment the distortion appeared. It seems to have been about three hours after Eisen gave the tour of the trains to the people that were interested in them.

That disruption seemed to have started somewhere in the center of the area, at least at first glance. But as she looked around more closely, there were a few threads of that disruption flowing through the air, just as thick as a spider's thread. Choosing to follow one of them, Xenia followed that thread, soon reaching its source. A small lump of that disruption centering around a specific stone. Stay updated with m-v l|-novelbuddy.net

Curious to see if it was still there, she picked up a few of the nearby stones and looked at them a bit more closely, soon finding a particular one that felt off, like it didn't quite belong here.

Xenia looked at it more closely and gave it a quick scan with her mana, soon spotting a complex enchanting array hidden inside of it.

"... This is pretty high-quality. Certainly made by an expert in distortion," Xenia muttered quietly, quickly placing the stone into her bag so that she could take a closer look later. But first and foremost, she had to see who actually placed this here. Continuing to turn back the time period she was actually viewing, Xenia soon found the right point.

It was only a few hours before the distortion's activation that the stone was placed here, righ while Eisen and the envoys were walking through the area. Rather, the crowd walked right over the place where the stone was supposed to be. Before they walked past, it wasn't there, and after they did, it had suddenly appeared.

She tried to find the right, exact moment, but it seemed like some level of distortion was used to make it impossible to actually view the details of what happened here at this time, so for a few moments it was like the crowd's mana turned into just a single blob. It could have been any of them. But just like they thought, it was very likely to have been Aaron.

He was the one they were suspecting the most right now anyway, and he was part of that crowd as well.

But it was too early to just assume they were right. There were too many weird things going on for the answer to be suddenly so straightforward. The answer being that Aaron was behind it all was too... off. It just didn't feel right.

Maybe it was because they had already been betrayed by Samuel, or because it really didn't make any sense to them that Aaron was the mastermidn, but it was simply hard to accept that it was just... this.

Either way, there was something else that Xenia had to do. She took out a small cube from her back and tapped it to the side of the lens, and then turned the time she was observing forward up until the distortion was deactivated. Then, she once more tapped the cube to the side of the lens, and twisted the cube around a couple of times to activated it.

The things that Xenia was seeing through the lens changed. Rather, it all went completely black, with the exception of a few small parts. Footsteps, for one. Blades of grass that had been trampled or had simply swayed into a slightly different position. What Xenia was now seeing was the difference in the world between the two moments she created a 'snapshot' of.

The differences were displayed in a silvery white, while the rest simply went black, or rather, disappeared fully.

This way, Xenia was able to see the real world in her left eye, while seeing just the differences between the two moments through her right. And so, it was time for her to take another walk around the area, inspecting everything that was highlighted in that silvery white so that she could check out exactly what had changed. Because clearly, something had been done.

Because why else was there the distortion here?

Though, it did make Xenia wonder... how could they have done so? Sure, the distortion of mana was there to make sure that the events couldn't be viewed afterward. If no imprints were left in the mana, it was practically impossible to really view what had happened in a space before, even for Xenia.

But that didn't mean that the area was covered in actual mist while it was all happening, that would have been too conspicuous. And Jyuuk had his cats follow literally every single individual that had travelled here through the trains, so it wasn't possible for anyone to come here and mess with this space without the cats seeing it.

Xenia looked around the area, soon spotting silvery spots in a particular part of the trains. It was a small piece of wood that had been swapped out, something that seemed invisible to the naked eye, but the mana didn't lie.

Now that she knew that something happened here, Xenia took a closer look at the wooden board, scanning it with her mana. There seemed to be something hidden underneath. Carefully, Xenia pulled the wooden board off the train carriage, and soon spotted something that was very clearly incredibly dangerous.

A bomb. It was a high-powered explosive, that would completely blow up this train carriage, but... it didn't seem like it would be capable of damaging anything beyond this and the directly adjacent carriages. Quickly, Xenia grabbed the bomb and placed it aside carefully, and quickly continued to look around. There were two more bombs placed in similar places in other carriages.

But there was a common thread between each of the placements.

Each country had three carriages, one for each envoy of said country. And the bombs were each placed in the middle one of each country's carriages so that only that country's envoys would be injured. Or rather, considering the type of explosion that would be happening and its strength, it was more likely that it would lead to death.

But there was something that confused Xenia quite a lot. There were bombs placed on both sides. Both the central continent and the giants would be hit by explosions. But the countries or clans that would be affected were the ones that were actively against the peace treaty, such as the holy empire and the cloud giants. But why would both sides be affected? Who would benefit from that?

Xenia could rationalize either one of the sides being bombed somehow. If the central continent's side was bombed, they could use it as a reason to start the war against the giants, having it act as a counter. If it had been on the giants' side, it could be something like an assassination of powerful individuals from the giants' country.

But both sides? And on top of that, only the most troublesome individuals? Just... why?

And then, it flashed by her. An idea of why. It could be an attempt to take out the most annoying individuals, while at the same time putting pressure on Asgard. After all, there were three parties here on the islands right now. The central continent, the giants' country, and Asgard.

So if two of those sides were hit, the only one to blame could be Asgard, right? But... that also didn't make sense. Why would the five originals, some of the most powerful individuals in the world, resort to bombs? None of it made any sense to her. For the time being, Xenia just removed all of the bombs and checked for anything else that could be wrong here, but she didn't find anything else.

For now, Xenia placed some drones around the trains to watch them and make sure nobody could mess with them again, and then made her way back to the meeting hall, updating everyone else on the way there.