Location: Immediately after the battle.
Time: That same night.The team caught their breath. The enemies had fled, leaving their wounded behind.Elara approached Lirion and treated his nosebleed. "What did you do? That circuit... it looked wrong.""It was necessary," Lirion replied, wiping away the blood. "There was a field disrupting our magic. These aren't ordinary bounty hunters. They have technology."He pulled the black shard from the monster's pocket and showed it to them. "And this was inside the beast. I believe they use these to distort our magic remotely as well."Garek looked at the shard with disgust. "Who would do something like this?""I don't know," Lirion said. "But the festival has become their testing ground."Lirion decided not to return to the assembly point immediately. "We will continue hunting. We need first place to guarantee entry into the Royal Library. There, we might find answers about these shards."That night, Lirion redrew the modified circuit in his tent.[Modified Pattern Saved to Stone Memory.]
[New Ability Unlocked: "Adaptive Circuit". Allows casting of circuits that function under mild interference.]Lirion closed his eyes. He had gained a new power, but the price was the knowledge that his enemy was not just monsters, but a malicious mind playing with the laws of magic.