Different Traces

After going deeper for some distance, Benjamin casually found a fairly spacious cave.

After having a heart-to-heart talk with the cave's blazing-hot owner, he successfully moved in and set up a fire to roast meat.

Looking at the fiery cave owner, Benjamin lowered his head and took out the Rune Artifact he had used earlier from his bag, carefully inspecting it with Alchemy.

"Hmm... as expected, quite a few rune circuits are damaged. The base itself hasn't suffered much harm, though. It seems that even with redundant runes added, excessive release still places considerable strain on the main body." Benjamin shook his head regretfully.

He had considered many solutions to the issue of Rune Artifacts being damaged by excessive release, but none had been particularly good.

Problems like this were rarely seen in the Wizard Civilization. After all, ordinary Wizard Artifacts had limited daily uses. Overheating and damage caused by excessive release generally only occurred in spell arrays built into certain Floating Cities or large-scale stabilization facilities.

However, such objects had enough space for rune inscriptions that they did not require much technical sophistication at all. The problem could simply be solved with overwhelming redundancy.

Or, more simply, the spell array could be designed in modules—replace whichever part broke.

But this problem was not so easily solved with Rune Artifacts.

"Make the Rune Artifact bigger? Then there'd be no point in designing a Rune Artifact at all..."

As for engraving the runes with greater precision...

Greater precision required stronger mental power, but for wizards, stronger mental power meant greater strength. By then, the required spell intensity would rise as well.

And stronger spells required more complex runes, with even higher engraving precision...

"A pure vicious cycle!"

After agonizing over it for a while, Benjamin, having no good solution for the moment, simply stopped thinking about it and turned instead to the problems he had discovered during the battle just now.

"Although that Fire-Element Magic Beast was quite strong, it actually withstood so much of my bombardment. It seems that thing has considerable damage reduction against attacks of the same attribute. Next time, I can make more attacks of other attributes... No!"

A flash of inspiration struck Benjamin, and he suddenly realized something.

Why did he have to stubbornly cling to attribute-based attacks?

The greatest advantage of his Rune Artifact was that it could be cast rapidly and continuously without consuming too much of the user's mental power.

Since it had always relied on overwhelming quantity to win, there was no need for him to keep fixating on the little extra damage brought by elemental restraint.

"I nearly walked into a dead end... Pure energy bolts can completely serve as the main method of attack!"

The Wizard Civilization had no special attribute like "Arcane," but there were plenty of energy-based spells that carried no attribute at all.

Benjamin noted down this idea. "Second... against enemies capable of drawing upon elemental power in battle, the environmental elemental vacuum caused by the Rune Artifact's rapid casting isn't merely a drawback. To some extent, it can even become my advantage."

Just like that Fire-Element Magic Beast—because Benjamin acted too quickly, by the time it prepared to counterattack, more than half of the surrounding Fire Element had already been drained away, greatly reducing the destructive power of its counterattack.

"In a sense, this can count as an artificial anti-magic zone too, although I don't know what use it has for now."

After finishing his rest, Benjamin continued deeper toward the region where this plane's elemental power was concentrated.

The earlier combat testing had already been thorough enough. Now, he intended to focus on searching for higher-grade material samples.

Ever since entering this wasteland formed of red ore, he had encountered Magic Beasts with increasing frequency along the way.

Thorn Lizards that spat poisonous mist, Ice Crystal Wolves that released icy blasts, and Rock Giants hidden among the stones, possessing powerful physical defenses.

With every encounter, Benjamin's collection grew larger, until he had no choice but to discard some of the materials he had previously gathered from ordinary wild beasts.

Benjamin also noticed that as he went deeper, the Magic Beasts he encountered did not necessarily grow stronger, but they became more cunning.

They no longer charged recklessly like the earliest Magic Beasts he had encountered. Instead, they weighed the strength of both sides and retreated in advance, even knowing how to set tactical ambushes.

But none of that posed any threat to Benjamin. At most, it made him spend a little more time searching for materials.

However, amid these skirmishes with Magic Beasts, Benjamin began to notice some unusual traces.

At first, they were merely subtle details.

He found several huge boulders with scraped surfaces, their worn marks seeming more orderly than anything nature would have formed.

Within a seemingly natural forest of stone, strange grooves occasionally appeared on the ground. They did not look like marks left by savage beasts trampling through, but more like tracks left by some kind of tool being moved.

"Man-made traces?"

Benjamin stopped, crouched beside one of the grooves, and reached out to touch it.

The edges of the groove had been smoothed by time, but the energy fluctuations lingering within were subtly different from the elemental power around it.

He activated Analysis Art and extended his mental power into the grooves.

A chaotic stream of information flooded into his mind. It was a more organized, more restrained fluctuation of power, clearly unlike the uninhibited way Magic Beasts wielded their strength.

After confirming this, Benjamin became more cautious as he moved, deliberately searching for traces of this kind.

Before long, he made more discoveries.

At the entrance of a concealed cave, he found piled-up beast bones. Yet the bones had been stacked neatly together, and some had even been crudely polished.

From deep within the cave came a faint scent of burnt-out flames—not the lingering ripples of natural Fire Element, but traces left behind after some artificial flame had gone out.

However, judging from the surrounding traces, this cave had already been abandoned.

Further ahead, he saw a cleared patch of woodland. The marks of felled trees were fresh, and the cuts were clean, clearly the work of some sharp tool.

He even discovered a cleverly disguised trap—not one aimed at large savage beasts, but at smaller creatures, or perhaps... humans?

Benjamin carefully studied the trap.

Its structure was simple yet effective, made from twisted vines and sharp stone spikes. Once triggered, it would emit a piercing sound.

"There are Natives here," Benjamin made a firm judgment in his heart.

Benjamin was not particularly surprised this time. After all, this plane's environment was quite suitable for life. It was hardly incomprehensible that intelligent beings, or even civilization, could have arisen here.

However...

"When the wizards took over this plane, they should have already cleansed the local civilization once... Are these remnants deliberately left behind?"

Compared to the possibility that the natives of this world possessed some special power that allowed them to hide from the wizards' detection, this possibility was more likely.