Chapter 142: Observing and Learning

The ruined city held its breath.

Nero moved quietly through its skeleton. 

He learned quickly, always had, but here, every hour felt like another test.

He had spent nearly two days ghosting through the Shatterveil's outskirts, learning its rhythms. 

He slept in short bursts, always shielded behind a carefully-woven barrier, a dome of silence and distortion that masked his presence from monsters and men alike. 

He chose his hiding spots with precision: narrow crevices, beneath the collapsed arches of old arcades, or wherever the city's own magic helped him blend in.

Every sense was a tool: sight for movement, smell for decay or wild magic, and the constant pressure of danger that pressed in from all sides. 

He trusted his barriers, but never completely, in Shatterveil, nothing was ever foolproof.

He mapped landmarks, portal anchor, bioluminescent moss, cursed fountains, and the silent roads monsters traveled. 

He discovered the city's strange rules: monsters patrolled in packs but rarely crossed certain zones, some plazas seemed untouched, with even the bravest beasts circling wide. 

He marked those, guessing at invisible borders, wondering what older horrors kept even the monsters at bay.

Patience was his greatest ally. 

He used his shikigami as silent scouts, extending his awareness in all directions, patching together a fragmented but growing mental map. 

Most of the city was empty, haunted by nothing but memory and predatory magic, but eventually, signs of life emerged.

It was late on his second day, when the false twilight had deepened into sickly dusk, that he spotted movement different from any monster.

At first, just two people, shadows flitting along the edge of a ruined avenue, careful and deliberate in every step. 

Nero, hidden in a hollowed balcony, watched as they checked corners, communicated with sharp, silent gestures, and vanished into the warren of alleys without ever looking up.

Curiosity, and thirst for information drew him onward.

He followed from a distance, letting his shikigami track their progress from above while he closed the ground below. 

The pair moved with discipline born of fear, they carried makeshift weapons, rusted blades, and battered wands, and kept their backs to walls whenever possible. 

Twice, they froze, waiting for a monster to pass before creeping on.

Nero mirrored their caution, never letting his silhouette break cover. 

He watched for patterns, signs, and anything they might avoid. 

At one point, the two scavengers detoured wide around a plaza overgrown with moss. 

Earlier, Nero had watched that same plaza and marked it on his map, he'd seen packs of monsters pass through, always taking the same route.

When the scavengers avoided it as well, Nero understood: the humans who survived here had learned the dangerous patterns of the city, just as he was doing. 

To stay alive, they followed the same hard rules.

The pursuit was slow, methodical, and rewarding.

They moved deeper, away from the central devastation, winding through mazes of cracked statues and leaning towers. 

Finally, the pair slipped between two massive slabs of fallen masonry, vanishing into a deeper ruin.

Nero ascended a toppled wall for better view, sending his shikigami ahead. 

Through its eyes, he saw the truth: a hidden camp.

Roughly fifteen people clustered around a crumbling fountain, their bodies half-starved, eyes sunken, clothes threadbare and patched together. 

They clung to makeshift weapons, rusted blades, cracked wands, even sharpened pipes. 

Their faces carried the wild-eyed look of the perpetually hunted.

He watched as the pair he'd followed greeted the others, handing over their scavenged goods. 

A dented metal canteen half-full of water, a bundle of dry moss, a chipped ceramic bowl, a handful of withered roots that might pass for food, and two battered wands. 

Everything was counted, inspected, and divided with careful, practiced hands.

The camp's leader, a gaunt woman with a scar splitting her lip, counted the spoils and divided them with swift, military efficiency.

No one spoke above a whisper.

The scavengers moved with the nervous energy of cornered animals, scanning every shadow, never lingering in the open longer than necessary. 

Children huddled close to elders, and everyone flinched at distant sounds, monster howls, the crash of falling stone, or simply the city's strange groans.

At one point, a young man muttered something. 

Another immediately clapped a hand over his mouth, shaking his head, eyes darting skyward as if fearing even the city's air might listen.

Nero observed, cataloguing every detail:

How the camp always maintained at least three watchers facing different directions

How food was rationed to crumbs, with nothing wasted

How a battered, hand-drawn map was checked repeatedly, lines updated and sections erased, hinting at a constant struggle against the city's shifting layout

He noted which nearby ruins were treated as safe, which as off-limits. 

He watched a teenager sweep the area for magical glyphs before allowing children to play in a tiny, sheltered corner, a rare moment of normalcy carved out of terror.

He let his shikigami continue to circle discreetly, mapping routes in and out of the camp, tracking the monsters' patrols and the scavengers' wary forays for water or scraps. 

All the while, Nero remained hidden, content to be a ghost.

He absorbed their routines, learning not just survival but psychology:

Here, trust was a luxury, silence was armor, and every choice could mean life or death.

No one lit a fire. No one wasted words. Even comfort was rationed.

The Shatterveil didn't just kill, he thought. It taught fear so deep it became law.

When the city's light shifted again and the distant howls returned, Nero faded back, satisfied.

He'd learned more in these two days than most would dare in weeks.

Tomorrow, he would use what he had learned, routes, habits, supply caches.

But tonight, he remained a shadow, letting the city's patterns imprint themselves on his memory, waiting for the moment to vanish.

Shatterveil was a living maze, a test not just of strength but of mind.

And as he settled into his latest vantage point, Nero found satisfaction in his newfound knowledge, and in the quiet, patient victory of surviving unseen.

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