Chương 206

+1 Attunement +131. 333 Exp Level up! The Alpha Yeti lay motionless in the snow. A clean, smoking hole was bored straight through its skull. Orion knelt beside the massive carcass, his breath fogging in the freezing air. Thanks to many years of experience working alongside his mother, he used a skinning knife to cut through the thick, matted fur and muscle of the chest cavity.

"That was a pretty clean kill," he murmured, more to himself than the others.

"The coherence of the beam held until it exited the cranial plate, which means there was no thermal bloom to damage the pelt."

"You're so weird for immediately dissecting a monster that tried to turn us into paste," Luna commented, leaning on a rock a few feet away. She looked exhausted, her face flushed from the exertion of channeling the new magic, but her eyes were bright.

"It's just better to do it now than wait for it to start to smell," Orion said, before something caught his attention. Something was stuck between the yeti's ribs, something that really didn't look like it belonged. He reached inside, pushing and cutting away some of the flesh that clung to it, then pulled it out. Holding it up to the light made the veins of dark, oily gray that ran through the crystal stand out even more, and Orion didn't have to think twice to recognize the specific color.

It wasn't the complete void of the distilled form of the Silence, but many of the weapons used by the Iron State had similar coloring and were still very dangerous.

"It was tainted," Selene said, stepping closer. She looked faintly disgusted to be near it, yet a strange glint in her eyes suggested that something had finally begun to click into place.

"It certainly is some kind of corruption," Orion agreed, wiping the core on a patch of snow before bagging it.

"That's not a natural growth, and it explains its behavior... this yeti was sick. Its mana system was fighting off an infection, and the byproduct was hyper-aggression."

"An infection?" Dorian asked, peering over with a worried frown.

"Is it from a disease?"

"From a poison," Orion corrected, and he already had a pretty good idea of what might have caused it. He stood up, looking around the pristine white peaks.

"Something in this environment is wrong. And if the Alpha had it, the whole herd probably had it, but we should check just to be sure." The others groaned, knowing it meant they would have to cut through every yeti, but Oron wasn't about to ignore such a warning sign.

"Come on, the quicker we start, the sooner we finish and find a spot to set up. I want to scout around a bit and see if anything else stands out." They set up camp in a sheltered alcove beneath a rocky overhang. Luna set up a perimeter ward, apparently having spent some time working on the finicky art over the past months, and Orion busied himself making the environment warm and comfortable, while Selene distributed their pre-prepared meals.

Normally, this would have been the perfect time to use some hunted meat to make a tasty stew, but knowing that somewhere in the nearby peaks a source of corruption was tainting the fauna, and probably the flora, Orion wasn't willing to take the risk, so cold cuts and bread it was. Fortunately, we brought more than we thought we needed. I guess having a seer among us is good for more than just ominous warnings, even if it's a bit annoying not knowing why she feels we need to do something.

"This might be weird, but my arm feels strangely okay," Dorian admitted, flexing his hand.

"Usually, after blocking hits like that, my muscles ache from the impact. But it's like I didn't even take the hit."

"Because you didn't," Orion said, poking the fire.

"Your shield did. When you changed the spell's structure, you created a surface with much higher tension, and the kinetic energy didn't transfer to your arm; instead, it spread across the geometric face of the barrier and reflected back into the Yeti. Your usual shield spell probably requires less thought and might even be better at higher mastery levels, but there are some advantages to my approach, you know?" He then turned to Luna and gave her a look.

"The same goes for you. I know it might seem counterintuitive to use such unusual methods in a dangerous battle, but it will pay off later." Luna nodded slowly, staring into the flames.

"I can't say I'll ever prefer it, but I understand why you work so hard at it." Stolen novel; please report. I could probably persuade them to abandon intent-based casting with enough time. But I'm beginning to see that just because my approach works better against the Silence doesn't necessarily mean it's better in every way. It might be worth exploring for myself, given my experiences with [Gamma Ray].

"That is the difference between art and science," he finally said.

"Art is beautiful, but science is consistent and dependable. The fight against the Iron State is just beginning, and we will encounter many more of their tricks. Being able to cast without worrying that it will be disrupted will be a huge advantage."

"You're sucking the romance out of magic, you know that?" Luna teased, though she smiled to soften the remark.

"As long as we make it out alive, I'll be a grump all the time," he replied with a snicker. Before Luna could rebut, Selene twitched, and her eyes went vacant. A moment later, she blinked, returning to herself, and smiled.

"I've found the origin of the taint," she said, and Orion couldn't help but sigh. Sometimes I hate being right. That afternoon, the mountain was less forgiving. The wind had quieted, but a thick fog had moved in, reducing visibility to less than fifty feet. The silence felt ghostly, broken only by the crunch of their boots on the ice. They climbed higher, beyond the treeline, into the rugged rocks of the upper peak.

"Something's watching us," Dorian whispered, raising his shield.

"I feel it too," Luna agreed, and her wand slipped into her hand. Orion activated [Hypotheticism], looking around for whatever might have caused such a strange feeling. The ambient mana here was thin and erratic. It felt static-charged, like the air before a lightning strike, and it wasn't long before he spotted something.

"They're coming from the right!" he shouted, and a few seconds later, shapes burst out of the fog, though luckily, they weren't more yetis. Instead, they were Frost-Horn Ibexes, large mountain goats with spiral horns made of magical ice. Usually, these creatures were known to be skittish, fleeing at the first hint of a predator. These ones, however, did not flee upon seeing them. Rather, they appeared extremely angry at their presence and charged with the intent to gore them.

There were a dozen, and foam dripped from their mouths, instantly freezing in the air, showing that where the yeti's natural resilience had allowed them to maintain more control of their minds, the corruption had spread wildly inside them.

"They're rabid!" Dorian shouted, stepping forward to intercept the largest one. It wasn't the right sickness, but Orion didn't think a correction here would be appreciated. The Ibex lowered its head, pointing its diamond-hard horns at Dorian's chest.

"Remember the structure!" Orion warned, earning a grunt. A moment later, the Ibex struck a white-light shield. The impact was devastating for the goat; its horns shattered upon contact, and it crumpled, with its neck broken by the force of its own momentum.

"Left side!" Selene called out. Three more ibexes leaped from a rock outcropping, aiming for Luna, who pointed her wand up and cast three spells in quick succession. Two of the goats dropped from mid-air, with holes punched through their skulls, while the third took a grazing hit to the side and tumbled into the snow, thrashing.

"That should be all of them," Orion said after scanning the fog. He approached the thrashing ibex, which didn't seem ready to stop. Even with a cauterized wound, it was trying to crawl toward them, snapping its teeth. Orion finished it off with a quick [Gravity Cannon] to the brainstem.

"That definitely wasn't territorial aggression," he noted, looking at the frothing mouth. Selene had managed to detect a spring somewhere in the upper ranges, where her vision became much blurrier. If the corruption was spread through water, then the environmental damage could already be significant, but he couldn't rule out the possibility that it was a recent change, perhaps a result of the golem facility's destruction. That was the only reason he hadn't packed up and gone back to the Sanctum.

It's not just that I feel responsible, he told himself. The longer we let it run unchecked, the more damage it will do to the ecosystem. We need to stop it now. He looked up the slope. The fog was clearing a bit, showing a narrow path winding between two glaciers.

"Selene?" he asked.

"That way, yes," she confirmed.

"My sight is getting blurrier, which means we must not be that far." It still took them another hour of trudging through the snow before they got there. Orion would have gladly taken his broom if he had any idea of where the actual spring was, but the fog made it very hard to stay on course—which would have been even more difficult without being on the ground—and the growing winds convinced him that hiking was the better option. It turned out that a natural caldera was hidden among the peaks.

Steam rose from it in thick plumes, melting the snow in the immediate area but also completely shrouding it from above. It should have been a beautiful oasis of warmth in the frozen wasteland, but it was clear that it hadn't been so for quite some time. The hot spring water was a murky green, not clear or blue, with an oily sheen that reflected an iridescent palette. The smell of sulfur hit them even before they reached the edge, and dead birds littered the rim of the pool.

"Don't get too close to it," Orion warned.

"The water itself is toxic enough, but the fumes might be worse." Defying his own order, he walked to the edge, activating his [-g] field to hover a few inches above the contaminated pool, and peered into the depths. The water was deep, but near the center, bubbles rose. Every five seconds, a tiny amount of a substance was released, and although the quantity was small, over time it was enough to contaminate the spring.

"There's something down there," Orion said, and activated the CC, casting a gravitational spell through it. With some effort, he managed to interact with the water and gradually adapted the spell to its specific resistance. This wasn't something he could do during a battle. Even from a long distance, it wasn't practical to spend time tuning his spell to the enemy's defenses, but since nothing was attacking now, Orion took a few minutes to push the water aside, creating a tunnel of air leading down to the lakebed.

At the bottom, half-buried in the silt, there was a metallic canister shaped like a prism, roughly the size of a golf ball. It was rusted and covered in algae, clearly having been there for quite some time, yet the design was unmistakably similar to that of the centurion and the more sophisticated golems of the Iron State. A small valve on the side was releasing a cloud of silver liquid, which was easy enough to recognize as being silence-based.

"A deadman switch?" Orion murmured, even as dread began to rise at the implications. It was clear to him that this device had been placed months earlier, yet it had only started acting up recently. The only catalyst for this change was his actions in the factory, and while he didn't regret taking them, it suddenly became clear that there were more consequences than he initially realized.