The diminutive stall owner Eric, the badly beaten bald man, and the three gray-clad men who had promptly surrendered and remained unharmed were escorted away by more than a dozen Sparx Race members, headed for the so-called Magistrate Tribunal—three streets away.
Sheriff Loom, however, stayed behind without any hurry to leave, accompanied by several Sparx Race members.
What Loom did was simple enough. He asked the surrounding people for their testimony, then swept his gaze around and fixed it on a pole standing several dozen meters away.
The pole was over ten centimeters in diameter and entirely crimson, looking nothing like a streetlamp. In fact, Atlantis City's urban streetlight plan still existed only on paper. Various proposals each had their own merits and flaws, and discussions had continued without a final decision.
The pole was taller than an ordinary streetlamp, nearly ten meters high, with a head-sized Crystal Ball at its top that looked like an ornament. If the Crystal Ball were removed and someone stood on top of it, they could take in a vast area around them at a glance. From closer up, one could see identical words written half a meter above the ground in both the Main Continent common tongue and the local Shalin language: "You have entered a spell-monitored area. Please mind your conduct—Shalin Law Department."
This was precisely the Spell Monitoring Crystal Ball that Atlantis City had recently begun constructing and promoting. Since there were relatively few options to choose from, it had been finalized and put into trial operation earlier than the streetlights. Quite a few areas within Atlantis City had already erected such Spell Monitoring Crystal Balls, and the Eighth Avenue area was one of them.
Loom glanced at the distant Spell Monitoring Crystal Ball, estimated the distance, then turned to a