Chương 161: chapter 158 - Cost of the Gamble

Around one and a half months after Halvar's conscription, I sat in one of the rooms alone, experimenting with runes. The construction work was 75% done, and mostly finishing work remained. Thankfully, my slave driver, Rowan, had taken some mercy on us. All the soldiers were given some time off for the next two days. The only duties we had to perform were keeping watch on the barn and supply areas. Even those were reduced to half the usual time, giving me some extra time to work on runes.

On the way to the northern frontier village, I had successfully harvested dark mana clay and herbs, and water mana clay and herbs. Including these two elemental clays, I now had clay from a total of five elements. I had found wind and fire clay close to Fort Dunvale on my previous missions, and earth elemental clay in the Untamed Forest. But rune experiments were not as easy as they sounded. Thankfully, some of my broken knowledge from science class helped and provided me with a basic idea for the design.

I was planning to create a box similar to a vacuum box, or something like activated carbon that absorbed impurities from air and water. This is what I wanted to create: a box that used these five elemental clays to form runes, activating the absorption quality of the clay and absorbing elemental mana from low-level mana crystals. Currently, I was stuck at the basic level, which was figuring out how to stop the runes from absorbing neutral mana.

After that, I had to figure out how to create a chamber made of a material that did not absorb any type of mana and could isolate the mana inside the box from the ambient mana. In my mind, the structure was to be built of glass, but then I realized I had no access to glass. After trying a lot of materials, the only material I found that did not absorb any mana or conduct mana was ash. But the problem with ash was that I did not know how to make a wall out of ash. Not all paths led to failure.

One of my best successes in the last seven months since I started experimenting with mana segregation was getting to understand what mana capacity in status meant in the physical world, and I used that to create a measurement for calculating mana inside a mana crystal. I had used the dust of a completely consumed mana crystal and made it into a mana paste with a volume of 1 ml, a paste similar to what we used in drawing runes. The only difference was that this one had no mana in it.

Then, when I tried filling it with mana, it took 10 mana units to fill the liquid with mana. Interestingly, irrespective of mana type or element, it always took the same amount of mana units. I had tested it with all my squad members. To confirm my measure was correct, I measured the volume of mana crystals using Archimedes' principle for various sizes of mana crystals, from walnut-sized crystals to egg-sized crystals. Their volume came out to be 50 cm³ to 100 cm³, i. e., 50 ml to 100 ml.

Then, when I absorbed those crystals, the mana units I gained also came very close to ten times their volumes. This was one of the key steps in my plan. If I had to prove that my theory was correct and that the non-elemental mana crystals we used had impurities in them, then I would have to measure how much mana those crystals had, and later, how much mana was left after the elemental mana was absorbed.

As I was drawing my rune for wind mana absorption on paper, trying to combine the standard mana absorption symbols we used in fort runes with the wind element symbols, the door of my room opened abruptly. I let out my mana in anger. My whole squad knew not to disturb me when I experimented with runes, even more so with these runes. They were secret, and I wanted no one to know about them. I looked up only to see a horrified expression on Peter's face.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Barry has used the emergency signal," Peter said. Without thinking for a second, I stored all my rune work into my backpack and made a run for it. Halvar had provided a small house close to the construction region, and I had set up a fire rune producing red light as an emergency signal. There was also a horn that served the same purpose. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The reason for my hurry was that I had instructed Barry and Silas to use the emergency signal only in life-or-death situations. And it really was a life-and-death situation. Once I reached the garden outside the house, I could see trails of blood.

"Peter! Bring the squad here. Guard this place," I said, making my way inside the house. There, just inside the hall above the signal rune, I saw Barry lying unconscious on the ground. Activating [Triage Ward] and [Vital Restoration] at full force, the first thing I sensed was that Barry was on the verge of dying. He had a puncture hole just above his heart, had lost too much blood, and was almost out of mana. I was surprised. How did he even make it here, and how did he get this injured?

As I stopped the bleeding, I made sure the blood inside his body was not affected and kept flowing without any issue to his vital organs. The more I analyzed the wound, the more worried I became. I was sure this wound came from at least a Tier-4 individual. The whole wound was covered with wind mana. the Wind mana was so highly concentrated that even under the influence of my skills, there was almost no regeneration happening near the wound.

I immediately checked my surroundings, worried about getting attacked, but I did not sense any mana present. While I kept my sensing skills active, I focused back on healing Barry. I slowly started extracting wind mana from the wound by guiding it with multiple thin threads of my mana and releasing it into the atmosphere. A voice in the back of my head was whispering that instead of sending this mana into the atmosphere, I should send it inside Barry's mana channels.

I had a theory that Leif's mana affinity increased because his whole mana system was exposed to high-density earth mana, leading to an increase in his affinity. Barry's wound gave me the perfect opportunity to test that theory, but after thinking about it for some time, I pushed those thoughts away. I had seen the amount of pain Leif was in, and I could also see how violent and uncontrolled the wind mana was. If I made one mistake, I would either cripple Barry or kill him.

After 10 minutes of carefully extracting it, Barry's wound finally started responding to my healing skills. I took out some of the herbs I was carrying and started guiding their mana into Barry's body. The first thing I healed was his severed arteries. Once those healed and connected properly, I focused on his punctured lungs. After healing all his internal organs, I focused on the outer wound. It took more than 45 minutes to close the wound completely.

Once I was done, I left Barry lying on the floor and went outside to check the perimeter. The first thing I did after coming out of the house was check the sky. When I found nothing, I turned to Peter.

"Sergeant, is something wrong? How is Barry?" Peter asked, reading my worried expression. Instead of replying to him, I asked, "Did you see someone close to this area, or did you detect any foreign mana?"

"No, nothing, sir." Listening to Peter's reply, a small sigh of relief left me, confusing Peter further.

"Barry had a wound on his chest. I suspect it came from a Tier-4 or higher individual. I am just surprised why we are still alive. In foolishness, Barry and I almost set the whole squad up to be wiped out. It is hard for me to understand how spying on the village head got him involved with someone of that high level." While it was Barry's fault for running to this place and exposing the hideout, I was responsible for calling the whole squad here without doing a threat assessment first.

The only good thing was that we were not attacked while I was healing Barry. So either the attacker did not want to expose himself, or he was confident that no one would be able to save Barry.

"I think the attacker might have already left this village," Peter said. I gave Peter a questioning look.

"Tier-4s of Avalon do not come to frontier villages. Also, you told me there were rumors of people from Frosthallow coming to this village. This means we are dealing with a Blood Chief, Sergeant, and if they are here, they would not expose themselves for a small village. While Northern Frontier might be an important village for Frosthallow, they would not cross the border for only one village."

"That means Frosthallow is planning something. But why not kill us all or eliminate the whole village? If it was a Tier-4, they would have sensed us approaching here. Why take the chance of getting their identity exposed?" I asked.

"Mostly because killing a royal army squad would do the same thing they are trying to avoid: early detection. The same goes for eliminating the whole village. Northern Frontier could act as a key supply hub for any army. Destroying this village would be a huge loss. Moreover, sooner or later, word will get out that a village of more than 1, 000 people was destroyed.

If they are already cooperating with people on this side of the border, destroying the village would make those collaborators doubt Frosthallow's intentions and its ability to keep promises." Peter replied. That meant they would try some indirect method of dealing with us. Peter and I spent some time discussing what our next best course of action could be. We even considered abandoning the village and the mission, but staying in the village was the only reason we were still alive.

As we were discussing it, Barry finally opened his eyes.

"The village head is working for Frosthallow," Barry stated the obvious.