Chương 56: Deific Destruction

Ryland needed less than a heartbeat to finish reading the new screen from the Grand Frame. His Inscribed Glyph of Alacrity made it easy. By the time he was done, he almost laughed. After all that, after trying to recognize something closer to the true extent of his power, the Grand Frame had still failed to give him a proper rank. So much so that it had compensated him with another achievement.

Really, the lengths that this system would go just to satisfy its own obscure rules, even if it needed to bend over backwards to do so… The shining additions to his figure were rather interesting too. Curls and lines of blindingly bright mana extended off his shoulders like he was wearing a Glyph as a cape. A crown of pearlescent spikes adorned his head, his dark hair gently wafting with the same aura interspersed among the strands. Similar spikes jutted off his shoulders and ringed his forearm and calf.

Ryland could feel the tremendous magic imbued into those… representations. It was hard to tell what else they could be defined as. He couldn't figure out an actual use for them. Maybe just making him look the part of an actual Incarnation was all they were supposed to do. For now, he ignored them. As the Living Mana continued ineffectually hammering away at his barrier, Ryland cast his newest Glyph. The Glyph of Manasoul was only at Tier [1].

Where every other spell Ryland used was so strong that the world started warping at the sheer intensity of magic he was pulling forth, to the point where he hardly even noted it anymore—when he wasn't in the presence of others, at least—this Glyph was a little too weak at the moment to have that sort of effect. Weak, but not mundane. Not at all. The complicated expression of magic, one of the most convolutedly knotted Glyphs he had ever seen, shone for a few seconds. Then it disappeared.

Leaving behind a real manasoul. It wasn't a full, real manasoul, of course. Just an apple-sized blob of magic trying to expand and find a form that could constitute some semblance of life. With the Glyph at just Tier [1], the fragment of a manasoul was vastly limited. And even if it had been significantly higher Tier, Ryland was right to doubt that even he could create a fully-functioning manasoul. Nevertheless, there was strong potential for combining his latest Glyph with his Soul Glyph of Genesis.

Deific, the Grand Frame had called his manasoul. Hmm… At least there was strong proof it was a manasoul. The beginning of one, at least. As soon as it had birthed into reality, the whole world went insane. As if it wasn't already bad enough, with how the unleashing of his actual manasoul had made the fundamental properties of the universe start to lose themselves, they all reacted just as intensely to the Glyph of Manasoul's effect. Air pressure condensed upon that manasoul like the world wished to imprison it.

Light bent and twisted as reality itself refused to let it expand any further than it already had, distorting space and time itself around the same location. Even the Living Mana all around Ryland began crying out in fury, as though it hypocritically hated the fact that there was other magic trying to find life. Amazingly, it had even drawn out his replica.

Black threads of Fate shot in from some point far behind Ryland, stringing into and attempting to wrap the fragment of a manasoul in Fate's constricting dark grip. He supposed there was one reason to be thankful for just casting his new Glyph experimentally. Ryland didn't even need to cast [Omniscience] when he turned around.

His replica was wisely trying to remain tremendously distant, but with his manasoul more alive than it had been since he'd arrived on Vyrd, the Glyph of Eversight Inscribed on his eyeball flared. In a mere heartbeat, it was as if the monstrous clone of him was right in front of him, despite being half a city away." [Animus Cleave]," he incanted. And then— " [Absolute Null]." The first spell destroyed the threads of Fate.

Pesky, annoying, entirely ineffective on the grand scheme of things if Ryland was being honest, Fate had been a thorn in his side for far too long. His next spell targeted the replica, of course. While it hadn't managed to recreate the entirety of its body in the short time since their last altercation, it was still visibly alive. No longer. Ryland wiped out every Glyph from existence.

In the blink of an eye, in less than a heartbeat, in the infinitesimal moment before his replica could once again react, he eradicated magic itself from the world. Every single one of the millions of Glyphs that made up his clone, big and microscopic, all disintegrated into motes of used-up mana that all dissolved into nothing. He was utterly thorough this time. There was no room for the replica to react, no chance for it to even start screaming or shrieking as it had been doing. One moment it existed.

Before the very next one, it was already as if it had never been there to begin with. All around Ryland, the Living Mana screamed. Its flesh pulsed, its blood boiled literally, a storm of bones cascading out to charge ineffectually at him. He hardly paid it any mind. [Eternal Bastion] kept the Living Mana at bay rather easily. The real concern was that Ryland had to end this Incursion once and for all. He had to obliterate it in no less an utter fashion as he had the replica.

However, its sheer size made that difficult. Ryland had a myriad of spells that could have still ended it, but those were too destructive. He couldn't risk the fallout this close to Arcoryx City. All the distractions of dealing with Fate and the replica and unleashing his manasoul had made him fail to notice how it had been descending all this while. The lower half of it, at least. But enough was enough. In one fell swoop, Ryland was going to destroy the entire region-wide cloud that this Incursion had become."

[Reality Scar]." Mana spiked out of Ryland like needles bigger than people. If just the presence of his unleashed manasoul was causing the world to twist and bend in order to accommodate him, then it now simply stopped functioning as a habitable planet and started existing as merely a canvas of reality for Ryland's will. Rents cracked across spacetime. Black rifts slashed into being across the entire airspace over Arcoryx City, each connecting to another gash in reality.

But these were nothing like the rifts he normally summoned. These made the world itself start screaming, the noise travelling through every layer of existence to echo across the fabric of the universe. Each rent tore open with a thunderous shriek, then continued its shrill cry as the jagged wound remained open. Even with enhanced vision, even with his Inscribed Glyph of Eversight, he couldn't properly look at the rents. They were, quite literally, tears where nothing at all existed.

There was nothing for his eyes to see. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. The Living Mana screeched as it began to get dragged into the fractures of nothingness. Into the scars of reality. Cracks spiderwebbed out from every rent, each opening drinking in space and time, consuming anything in and around the pockets created by [Reality Scar]'s endlessly spreading rents. Ryland had shattered spacetime itself, broken it into a thousand panes like glass.

And now, he was forcefully thrusting the Living Mana into the space between worlds, into the cracks underlying reality where nothing real could exist. The storm of broken space spread out farther and farther, the jagged claws that scarred the world now piercing through the entirety of the enormous cloud of rotten, horrific detritus. Ryland was done giving the Living Mana room to escape.

In no time at all, with shrieking cries and unearthly roars—not just from the Living Mana, but from the world itself as it was forced to adhere to the unnaturalness that Ryland was instantiating with his boundless magic—the Incursion and all its blood and flesh and bones were pulled into the fractured unreality he had slashed into being. Ryland sighed a little as he was the sole being left floating several hundred handspans over Arcoryx City. He had started closing the rents everywhere, mostly to end the screaming.

Because by now, there was no recovering from the fact that he was presenting quite the vision to the citizens far beneath him.

"Watch where you're going," Alendra said. Her warning had merits. Everything was so chaotic around them, Viren intellectually knew that he needed to focus on where they were going. He needed to keep their real priorities in his head. But screw that. With one hand, Viren tried vaguely pointing upwards the best he could.

"Can't you see what's going on?" Alendra's attention—and Acrypha's too—didn't waver from the streets around them. From the monsters still trying to hem them in.

"Concentrate on surviving the here and now, Viren. Don't get overwhelmed now." Oh. She thought he was scared. That he had seen the ridiculous scale of the opposition they were facing and was now falling into a despondency that would soon lead to despairing defeat. Alendra couldn't have been more wrong. But Viren realized convincing her of that wasn't going to happen easily. There was still too much madness all around them. Too many fleshy horrors trying to land upon them with devastating power.

Too many tendrils trying to slam down from overhead. For all that the cloud of the Incursion's manifestation had consolidated a great deal of its leavings to increase the potency of its internal rampage, there were still too many monsters on the streets of Arcoryx City. Viren could only hope the rest of the Excursion Club were trying their best to stay safe. Good thing they had help.

Academ Firth, the balding man who taught them Mathemagics courses at the academy, was casting spell after spell to literally petrify any of the monsters that came within his reach. He spotted High Academ Tyra at work too, her spell circles calling up enormous flora that were no less monstrous than the abominations invading the city. The city's Warden Mages were effective as ever, multiple members combining their Glyphs together into powerful spell circles that always stopped the Incursion.

Even if they were all quite sure that the Living Mana had grown far stronger than their initial estimation, combining their strength was working well enough to stave off the Incursion's threat. There were even a few Enforcers here and there too, the masked mages destructively swiping through the Living Mana with no trouble at all.

"Is it just me," Acrypha said.

"Or is the Living Mana dying down?" That was an overly hopeful statement that Viren didn't even want to begin to consider. But closer observation was starting to make it feel real. They were being attacked less. Several of the other Excursionists had joined up with their squad, and most of them weren't busy fighting.

"You're right," another student said. A second-year Viren only recognized by his face.

"They're… retreating." The Excursion Club's steps slowed down. If possible, it would be best to set their formation before they reached the academy's gates. Alendra and Viren came to a stop as they decided to take up defensive positions, finally putting down the unconscious Mage Knight. A couple of the other students tried to cast healing Glyphs and contact an actual Healer Mage where possible. Viren didn't bother looking around like everyone else. Instead, he stared straight up. He was right to do so.

The others had finally noted what he had been trying to spectate for a while now. The Living Mana wasn't exactly retreating so much as it was coagulating in that enormous cloud over them all. Some of it was being forced back into the writhing mass. A storm of tendrils that had burst out like lightning bolts, each more massive than the buildings surrounding them, had frozen before being forcefully dragged into their parent mass.

Horrors in the streets were breaking apart, their rotting hides and jagged bones ascending until they conjoined back the cloud that could have swallowed the whole city with no trouble. What in the world was Ryland doing to that thing? … wait, was he inside it? Because now that Viren focused, he could see an echo of the incredible magic pulsing inside that cloud. He could hear the muted thumps, like the heartbeat of a titanic monster.

"Hold your positions," Alendra said.

"We have a small reprieve, so we need to take a stand." A reprieve thanks to Ryland. Viren was still mostly focused on staring at the madness going on above them. The last dregs of the Incursion only attacking the outer spots of their defence, far from Viren's location. This meant he could pay attention to how the tides were shifting where it really mattered. And he wasn't the only one doing so.

Acrypha had let her cloak and sword disappear, her grey eyes inscrutable as she stared where Viren was looking far above them. The still conscious local Mage Knights had finally disengaged from their comparatively smaller but no less deadly and flesh monstrosities, mostly because it too had broken down to join the massive cloud. The cloud was breaking apart. Undoubtedly.

Viren's breath caught in his chest as chunks of it got ripped apart to form an endless series of depressions on its surface It still didn't end the monstrosity. Not at first. Which was a crazy thing to consider because Viren could see the undeniable proof of the utterly insane levels of magic being cast so high up. Light and space and time were all doing things that they really shouldn't, which made just looking at the events, even from this far away, hurt his head.

Had he been there in person, he'd probably have been wiped out in seconds. And the Living Mana Incursion was still surviving that? It was still alive and fighting back? Had they seriously been underestimating just how strong this Incursion was? Because at this point, Viren was handily certain even Exalted was a mis-rank. The thing was easily pushing Titan, was perhaps even Primordial -ranked. Which meant that even the Headmaster would have had trouble stopping the Living Mana Incursion.

He was starting to realize what a blessing it was that Ryland was present. The staccato hammering grew undeniably potent in the tattered but still strong flesh cloud. It was like a thousand hammering thunderbolts all striking at once, like Alendra's spell on overdrive. Then the air pulsed. Viren blinked. For just a second, his eyesight went bonkers. Had he just… No. No way. Surely, he hadn't just seen everything in the world turning into an array of Glyphs, like the entire universe was made of magic.

Going by how the others were reacting… Viren probably wasn't far off. Acrypha had frozen. Everyone else was gawking. And it wasn't just the students. Academs, Wardens, even both Mage Knights were staring at the rupture of power far, far above them.

"What's going on over there?" a student asked, staring agog at the insanity. As if in reply to the query, space broke apart. Viren couldn't even stare at it properly because the sheer wrongness of the power in display, of the impossible spell fracturing reality into discrete zones edged with… with the opposite of reality, made him feel like dying. Like he was being unwritten just by staring at those series of gargantuan yet imperceptible cracks. Those were definitely not Ryland's regular rifts. Which made sense.

It wasn't just Ryland within that cloud any longer. Or, not the Ryland Viren was familiar with. He was sure of it. The way magic was writhing in the centre of it all, the way just looking at it felt like he was wounding his own soul in some unfathomable way, proved it to be true. And yet, there was no way Viren could look away. How could he not stare at a once-in-a-lifetime event? In the blink of an eye, the fractures spread everywhere. They took over the entire cloud of the Living Mana Incursion just like that.

Then they began consuming reality. It would have been enough if it was simply the Incursion being dragged into those fissures of unreality or whatever those were supposed to be. But no. The potency of whatever Ryland had cast was affecting Arcoryx City too. The buildings shook, the streets cracked. The air tore away from Viren's lungs, making it harder to breathe. His hair and clothes fluttered upwards, his whole body feeling an irrepressible tug that normally would have made him think he could fly.

But it wasn't flying if he was rising to pure annihilation. Everyone was frightened. Several people were looking to take shelter elsewhere, others desperately asking what sort of greater danger they were now in. Viren just stared straight up. The cracks suddenly coalesced to one spot, every bit of the Living Mana all dragged to one location. An unreal location. With a world-bending snap, the cracks that swallowed Living Mana turned white and incandescent, before disappearing entirely.

Taking the Incursion and the impossible to resist tug and pressure with it.

"Well," Acrypha said, slowly turning to Viren with an unreadable expression.

"Looks like it wasn't just me, then." Eventually, Viren remembered to laugh.