Atticus constantly released mana pulses from his mana core as he ran through the forest, his entire focus on the countless number of paw imprints on the forest floor.
As Atticus kept moving, he couldn't help but notice the glowing paw imprints getting more numerous than before.
He was able to find out why after a few seconds. As he ran, Atticus began noticing different trails of paw imprints seamlessly joining the one he was currently following, making them become even more numerous.
'Looks like I made the right choice,' Atticus thought.
Thinking about everything he had seen until now, with the different imprints joining the current trail he was on, it was clear that all the beasts had been initially moving on a single trail before they started splitting, forming different trails in different directions.
'So they come from here, split up, with some circling around the expanse and then attack us from different directions,' Atticus deduced.
His assumption was proven soon enough. After running for about 7 minutes, Atticus finally got to a small clearing in the middle of the forest.
And in front of him was what many would call a dead end. A towering cliff face.
The rock wall looked completely ordinary, and any normal individual would have thought nothing of it other than it was a normal earthen wall.
However fortunately, Atticus wasn't a normal individual.
The clearing wasn't large, just less than 40 meters. And Atticus was currently releasing pulses from his mana core, able to feel everything clearly in a 50-meter radius.
In this surreal space, all around him, strewn across the forest floor was an uncountable number of glowing paw imprints.
Their numbers so high that it was simply impossible for someone to distinguish individual prints.
It simply looked as though the ground in a whole 50-meter radius away from him was an ethereal, radiant canvas..
Gazing around the clearing, Atticus could see various trails of paw imprints converging toward the center, the glow extending through the cliff as though it wasn't there.
"I guess I found the base," Atticus muttered while looking around the small clearing.
After a few seconds, he turned his gaze back towards the cliff and started walking to it.
'Is it an illusion?' Atticus pondered.
Apart from the numerous imprints on the forest floor, Atticus could also feel the intense amounts of mana radiating from on the unassuming earthen cliff wall.
It was clear that there was another illusion at play.
'Just what isn't a lie,' Atticus thought.
From what he had just found out, in the forest, there was a large illusion at play, whose function was to hide any and all traces of the thousands of beasts.
If he didn't have his perception, Atticus wouldn't have been able to find this location in the first place.
On getting to the wall, Atticus lifted his hand, placing his palm on it.
"Hmm," Atticus muttered.
If one was only relying on their vision, it looked exactly as if he was actually touching an ordinary earthen wall.
It looked so real that if not for feel, he would have truly believed he was touching a normal wall.
His mind raced as he tried to think of multiple ways to get past this obvious barrier, arriving at a solution in less than a second.
'Would it work?' Atticus muttered to no one in particular.
What Atticus had decided to do now was something many would consider impossible, and truly for someone of his rank, it should be impossible.
Atticus was 100% sure that what he was currently seeing in front of him was a lie.
There was no earthen wall in front of him. But even he couldn't deny that he was currently touching something tangible, something that could affect the material world.
Coming to this conclusion, the answer was easy to arrive at.
Currently, in front of him was a mana barrier, which was being masked by an illusion. That would explain the intense amounts of mana he had felt.
Illusions were exactly as they sound, illusions — intangible and should not be able to truly affect the material world.
Atticus had always believed that power could make even the most impossible possible.
He couldn't even begin to fathom how, but if illusions were to become tangible and able to affect the material world, he believed that only the paragon of the Nebulon family could achieve such.
But now, for this current illusion, Atticus was very sure that it had no such power.
Using feel, Atticus could tell that he wasn't touching an earthen wall; his palm was currently touching a large cluster of mana.
One would have to have an appropriate understanding of what a mana barrier was to understand what Atticus wanted to do.
It was simply a large amount of tightly clustered mana.
Mana was a very adaptable form of energy. Despite how clustered and tightely packed natural mana became, it would never stop an individual from passing through it.
So then, how was the barrier able to repel and stop people from passing through it?
It was simply because, unlike natural mana which had no claim, the mana making up this barrier was different.
It was formed using mana that had already been imprinted with another person's unique signature, which made it so that only something with the same mana signature could pass through it, with anything else being actively repelled.
And this was the case with Atticus's palm, which was currently touching the barrier—it wasn't able to pass through it.
So with all of this information gathered together, what was Atticus's plan?
It was simple.
He was going to mimic the signature of the mana barrier for a brief moment, enabling him to pass through swiftly.
Of course, this action wasn't as simple as it sounded. There was no way the academy would not be aware of such a glaring weakness of mana barriers.
There were more sophisticated powerful barriers and measures that were usually taken to guard important things, but would you use an armored tank just to simply take care of an ant?
The only reason this normal barrier was being used here was because the academy could have never foreseen that they would ever get someone as monstrous Atticus.