Chương 189

"Ready?" Orion whispered, barely raising his voice enough to be heard over the rhythmic thud of crates being loaded below. Selene didn't look at him. Her eyes stayed fixed on the crossbows, glowing with a faint silver light that made her pupils look like pinpricks.

"It will take them three seconds to react," she murmured, her knuckles white around her staff.

"The loader on the left will slip out of shock. The elder is the fastest to get his bearings and will find us. Then they will start shooting." Orion nodded.

"Then we need to ensure the crates are secure during that time." He took one last look at where Dorian and Luna were hiding. Pauline was long gone, vanished into the shadows and probably impossible to find in the chamber's darkness, but he knew she would react the moment he moved, so he nodded at the two and stood up.

Orion would have liked to shout a challenge or maybe use flashier magic to scare the villagers, but Selene had made it clear that such tactics wouldn't work, so he simply aimed at the crates and spun an anti-gravity spell around them. Below, the man who was hauling it gasped as the hundred-pound crate suddenly became buoyant and ripped itself from his grip, shooting upward toward the cavern ceiling like a balloon.

"What in the—!" He shouted, stumbling back.

"We got company!" the elder roared, spotting the movement on the ridge and proving Selene's foresight to be correct. Relatively smoothly for a group of ex-fishermen, the villagers stopped what they were doing and aimed their crossbows upward, releasing a high-pitched whine as the internal mechanisms began glowing.

"Get down!" Selene screamed. Orion didn't hesitate. He threw himself flat against the limestone just as the air above him sizzled. Thwip-hiss. Three bolts slammed into the rock face where he had been standing, cracking the stone. Although the kinetic damage alone could have been enough to kill him, and was probably comparable to what an archer of the same level could do, it was the glowing liquid coating the bolts that sent a shiver down his spine.

In its dormant state, it had caused some annoyance to his sensory abilities, but now that it was activated, he was struggling to do anything to affect the bolts.

"Don't let those hit you!" he shouted.

"Magical shielding won't work!" It suddenly became much easier to see why Selene had come alone. Anyone she could have brought who might have believed her probably wouldn't have been able to survive an attack from such a weapon. It would be a death sentence. She said she saw it twelve times. That means she witnessed multiple deaths of people she trusted.

The men below only needed a few seconds to reload, which at the very least showed that the technology behind the crossbows wasn't advanced enough to match a gun, but that didn't mean he had time to waste. Before they could unleash the second barrage, Pauline stepped onto the field. The shadows stretching from the dock pilings surged upward, transforming into tendrils of solid darkness that lashed out at the villagers' ankles, knocking several down, while only a few managed to hop out of reach.

"Cut the lines!" the elder shouted, abandoning the floating crate.

"Launch the boat! Suppressing fire on the ridge!" More bolts hissed through the air.

"Dorian, right flank! Luna, blind them!" Orion shouted, sliding down the scree slope. Luna popped up from cover a moment later, her wand tip blazing with a [Flashbang] spell. A sphere of intense, stroboscopic light exploded over the dock, and the villagers still standing with their crossbows shouted out, shielding their eyes as their aim went wild. Dorian capitalized on the chaos. He leaped from the ridge, surrounding his sword with a fierce light that Orion couldn't recognize at a glance.

He landed among the crates and began mowing through the villagers with the grace of a dancer. He didn't aim to kill—since they were still technically citizens of the Sanctum—but his blade sheared through a crossbow's stock, making the weapon useless, just as it lightly cut into flesh. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Stop the mage!" a woman shouted, pointing a shock baton at Orion, who was still trying to get the crates containing the dangerous liquid out of the fight. Three crossbows swiveled toward him.

"High, left, center," Selene's voice echoed in his ear. Orion didn't even try to shield. He trusted his defensive spells less than his offensive ones, and he already knew they wouldn't stand up against this new weapon. Instead, he kept sliding, digging in his heels, and the high shot flew just above his hair, ruffling the ends. He twisted his torso to the right, feeling the second bolt pass inches from his ribs. The third bolt, however, was perfectly aimed at his chest.

Despite his increased strength, he simply didn't have the stats to dodge it, so his frantic mind came up with a solution based on the observations he had been passively gathering from the corrupted data he received from the anti-mana liquid.

"[Collapsing Wormhole]," he said almost instinctively, aiming at the air around the bolt. He increased the space's viscosity, forming a tunnel of high-density resistance. He didn't expect the spell to crush it entirely, due to the anti-mana properties, but that wasn't necessary. The bolt struck the distorted air and veered sharply downward, slamming into the dirt a foot in front of his boots.

"Impossible," the shooter gasped, fumbling to reload.

"Nothing is impossible," Orion muttered, feeling a bit corny but also justified, given what he'd just done. He pointed at the very same man who had tried to take his life and cast [Gravity Cannon] upon the air. The wood just beneath his shoes cracked and gave way, and the shooter fell through the dock, splashing into the dark water below with a muffled shout. Many of the other men and women had already retreated from the fight after failing to confront Pauline's attack.

Although their bolts could penetrate her shadows, she remained concealed, avoiding their attacks and continuing to interfere with their attempts to stop Luna and Dorian. The elder, however, had scrambled onto the sleek black boat and was kicking the mooring lines free.

"We're leaving!" he yelled at the few men left standing.

"Scuttle the cargo! Don't let them take it!" A woman standing near the pile of remaining crates drew her crossbow for the first time, but she didn't aim at Dorian, who was closest to her; instead, she angled her weapon up toward where Orion had floated the crate with the dangerous liquid and fired.

"No!" Selene cried out in terror. The bolt struck the crate, breaking the spell that kept it afloat, and it fell onto the dock, shattering. Glass crunched, and a surge of silvery, viscous liquid spilled out, spreading across the wood like mercury. Orion watched, wide-eyed, as the liquid touched a stray bit of Pauline's shadow-magic that was restraining a nearby guard. The darkness recoiled, turning into gray smoke as the liquid effortlessly ate through the mana.

"What the fuck?!" Pauline shouted, materializing for the first time as she recoiled from the liquid. She solidified her shadows further, trying to create an impenetrable wall to stop it from dripping into the water, but no matter how hard she tried, it was all useless, as her mana simply dissipated upon contact.

"I can't contain it!" she warned, stepping further away and keeping her shadows from touching it. The liquid was spreading rapidly, flowing to the edge of the dock and toward the water. If it reached the subterranean river, it would poison the entire ecosystem, just as Selene had predicted, and the damage would be unimaginable.

"Stop it!" Selene shouted, truly desperate now. Luna tried to conjure a wall of earth, but as soon as the stone rose, the liquid touched it, and the magically summoned rock turned to dust. The substance consumed the mana holding the construct together, causing it to collapse. It attacks the structure, Orion realized, his mind racing as he watched the others try and fail.

Standard magic is conceptual and operates through instinctive understanding and thaumaturgical rituals such as chants and spell structures, but it is essentially held together by hope and will. This… this might be the world's most powerful solvent. It was a gamble to experiment with this now, but the situation was really getting desperate, and the others weren't having any better luck than he was. The substance attacks the active mana matrix.

However, if the matrix is rigid—if it is built on Knowledge rather than conceptual Intent—the dissolution should be, at the very least, slower. I managed to affect the bolt by warping the world around it, which indicates it is not entirely unstoppable. And so he used what had worked before and applied it again. [-g] took hold of the entire dock, reversing the natural order of things and stopping the liquid from dripping down. He had told Selene as much, but if he were honest, it had only been a guess back then.

Now, he could see exactly how much truth there was to it. His method of spellcasting wasn't entirely separate from Intent, but it was a minor part, only needed to produce the effect he planned. By running the whole structure through the CC, he could ensure its solidity, reflecting the depths of his Knowledge. The liquid hissed, reacting to the spell.

It tried to consume it, to dissolve the mana, but the structure was too dense and rigid, and the inverse gravity managed to lift the liquid from the wood, stopping its spread inches from the water's edge. It's not going to last long, but I did it, Orion thought in disbelief. However, the distraction had cost them. The black boat's engines whined loudly, turning on with a mechanical noise that grated on the ears. Water churned at the stern as the hydro-jets engaged.

"They're getting away!" Luna warned, firing a bolt of light that harmlessly ricocheted off the boat's hull. Pauline looked at the boat with hostility but didn't pursue it, instead gathering more stones to fully block off the pier while Orion kept the liquid contained. It was exhausting, draining more from him than any magic of this level should have, but while the spell's structure remained stable, the mana did not, and he kept having to draw from the Field to sustain it.

The elder stood at the stern of the retreating boat, glaring at them with a dark scowl. He raised a hand and made a rough gesture before the boat sped into the dark tunnel, disappearing around the bend.

"Selene!" Orion called out, his voice tinged with strain.

"There are empty jars in the other crates. Please get them; I can't keep this up forever!" That snapped her out of her daze. She looked from where the fleeing boat had been to Orion, who was single-handedly battling a pool of anti-magic sludge.

"Right," Selene whispered, then jumped down to join the others. She tore open an intact crate, finding the padded canisters inside, and hurried to the edge of the spill.

"Scoop it," Orion ordered through gritted teeth.

"I'll release the spell in sections." It took careful effort. Pauline used a discarded shovel to guide the liquid, while Orion adjusted the gravity field to stop it from spreading. Slowly, they filled the canisters and sealed them tightly, one by one. When the last drop was secured, Orion finally released the spell and staggered back, gasping for air. His mind felt bruised as the strain of maintaining such a rigid structure against an active corrosive agent took a heavy toll.

For several seconds, the cavern was silent, except for the sounds of the water lapping and the breathing of the few villagers they had managed to knock unconscious before the retreat was called. Orion wiped sweat from his eyes and glanced at the row of sealed canisters. The liquid inside swirled sluggishly, silver and dangerous.

"We didn't get them all," Dorian muttered, staring at the dark tunnel where the boat had disappeared.

"They got away."

"We won," Orion corrected him.

"I don't know what they wanted to do with this stuff, but it couldn't have been anything good, and now that we have it, we can study it. I'm sure the High Priestess will be very interested in what we found."