Chương 38: A DDoS Attack

Ch 38: A DDoS Attack After announcing their intentions, those five black-armored people simply stepped into the room without asking for permission, their focus entirely on Sahirah as if I didn't exist.

"You're coming with us." I was too busy writing a new version of Haste in my Mind Library to notice Sahirah's reaction to this authoritarian demand, but the moment my focus shifted to her, her mana was flowing wildly. Her long black hair floated around her as though she were submerged in invisible water, while the air itself began to glow around her.

Even more impressive was how two simplified versions of Mana Wave took shape in front of her, eight runes in total, the raw version of the spell I had provided her for the tournament but without all the safety features I had created.

"A girl does not wish to kill you, so please get out of our room." From my perspective, Sahirah looked strong enough to scare even one of the teachers right now. And the fact she could inklessly cast runes without assistance was a massive improvement over her previous limit of just two. Yet, those five armored Greys only laughed at her, completely at ease facing such a display of power.

The armored Grey whose chest was engraved with three golden stars rather than the two golden stars of the others took a step forward, ahead of the group.

"Let me explain something to you, rare species girl," he said.

"Our armor can protect us from gravity spells, heat spells, illusion spells, and much more. Do you really think a basic mana surge can threaten us?" Another Grey took a step forward, extending an inviting hand toward Sahirah.

"You have nothing to fear from us." The voice that spoke belonged to a Grey woman.

"I know we look scary, but believe me, the Krosak family will treat you well and pay for everything going forward. Your future will be much brighter than you can imagine." When her display of power failed, Sahirah's eyes met mine, silently asking me if I had a plan as her floating hair settled atop her shoulders.

"Gentlemen," I said as I slowly walked toward Sahirah. When I got near her, I pointed at the open door.

"Who are those folks over there? Are they here to save us?" There was nobody there, of course, but all five armored Greys turned around to check anyway, becoming victims of the oldest trick in the book. I wasted no time. I grabbed Sahirah and, through my Casting Assistant, painted the runes of the special Haste I had created in my Mind Library. It pushed us violently towards the sturdy window. Yet, that wasn't a problem.

With my improved mental speed, I quickly cast Kinetic Push, not even using the Casting Assistant. The magic circle took shape almost instantly, drinking from my mana and activating just as fast. The window frame gave in to the sudden Kinetic Push, glass shards and wooden splinters flying outside while my right arm took the recoil. Haste was still active however, pushing us outside through the now broken window and toward the one-story drop that awaited us.

Still, no further action was needed since I had accounted for the fall when I created the spell. The modified Haste broke most of our momentum, and when our feet touched the ground, I was already inside my Mind Library, ready to test the limits of my current mental power. All the runes I had engraved on my right arm activated at once, the Casting Assistant being pushed like never before as it outlined nearly two hundred runes for me to fill in with my mana. My heart beat once. Twice.

And the magic circle was completed before the third heartbeat. Sahirah herself stared with wide eyes as I cast the Presence Erasure spell without paper and ink for the first time, straining my mind a little further than I usually would even with the Translation Spell sphere currently active in my pocket. We were in the middle of the street now.

And the proof that the Grey bystanders were not seeing us came when they all looked up, watching the inn's broken window without even noticing that Sahirah and I had just fallen from it.

"Did your plan really work?" I didn't reply to her, and instead I looked up, trying to find the five black armored Greys. They appeared behind what was left of the broken window one after another, first the one with three golden stars on his chest, and then the others. I swallowed hard the moment their gazes met mine. Could it be that they were seeing through my illusion? No. The illusion spell was my mostly reliable tool. It had never failed before.

As if to force me to swallow all my certainty, the group suddenly jumped. Their fall was accelerated by a spell rather than slowed. And when they touched the ground, the runes covering their leg harnesses all shining bright as they landed around us, forming a circle to keep us from running. Most of the Greys on the street panicked at seeing them. I was no different.

"How the hell can you see us?" Before any of them could even reply, I noticed that a particular group of runes on their helmets was glowing. And even though I had never seen that spell before, I managed to spot several runes meant to interact with the mind. The one with the three golden stars on his chest finally answered my question, "I should be the one asking how a first-year student has access to an illusion spell of that category."

"Oh," I said, "I have access to the illusion because–" I cut myself off by grabbing Sahirah and casting Haste, trying to trick them once more. Stolen novel; please report. Still, my trick didn't work twice, and Sahirah and I were stopped by an armored chest that felt like we had simply hasted ourselves into a solid wall.

"My name is Narak," said the Grey man inside the armor.

"And I never believed the rumors that humans were scoundrels with no honor to their names. But it seems I was wrong." He pushed me back, trying to send me to the ground with a casual push, but Sahirah didn't let me fall, helping me regain balance.

"Are you ready to surrender yet?" he asked. I surveyed our surroundings, and found the other four just observing us, not exactly treating us as serious threats. Realizing this might be our chance to escape, I decided to test how strong that black armor really was. I jumped back, spam casting my harmless firework spell at them. And I was doing that just to observe how the armor reacted to being attacked through both my eyes and my recently enhanced mana sense.

As expected, despite the surprise in their eyes, none of them reacted to the fireworks. They let their armor take the hits, totally unconcerned about the possibility I might cast something that could actually harm them. I focused on the specific way the armor was reacting. And I noticed that even though the fireworks were harmless, the armor still considered them an attack, and summoned barriers to defend against it. An interesting behavior. They were wasting a lot of mana to defend against something harmless.

Could it be that the armor was powered by crystals and made in such a way that it worked autonomously, sparing the caster the mental strain of defending themselves? To answer that, I quickly entered my Mind Library, drafting a spell that actually could cause harm. Sahirah's eyes went wide when she recognized the FEIO magic circle taking form near my palm.

I had no time to explain that this was just a simplified version of that spell meant to be used by someone with way less mana than her, and through the Casting Assistant I summoned the fiery vortex that could melt walls And I aimed it at the big boss, the Grey man who had introduced himself as Narak. A large portion of the runes across his body lit up, a solid rectangular mana shield materializing in front of him to block my attack.

With the help of that shield, he tanked the attack like a mountain, crossing his arms and staring at me through the eye slit of the helmet. And that was the gaze of someone who was having fun at my expense. When my spell died out, he spoke again.

"Remarkable. It's better than what most cadets of the royal army can do in their first year, but you're not winning any battles with that pitiful output." If I had high quality ink and paper to give Sahirah the full version of the spell, I bet he wouldn't be criticizing any output. But since that was not viable at the moment, I would have to use my head instead.

My gaze landed on Narak's chest, following the still glowing mana traces until I had a faint idea of where those modules were drawing their power from, crystals likely embedded deep in the armor plates. I was sure I didn't have what it took to overpower that armor, and it would be much worse if I annoyed them enough to the point they got serious. But it was not like all battles had to be won fairly. And nothing was keeping me from taking advantage of the design flaw in that armor.

The only problem is that it would only work if I took them all at once, leaving no opening for them to get serious.

"Can you use that spell you tried to scare them with?" I asked Sahirah. She didn't hesitate for a moment as that simplified version of Mana Wave took shape in front of her, earning her the full attention of all five armored Greys. I didn't waste the time she bought me and entered my Mind Library immediately. A blank tome materialized in my hand, runes already flowing directly from my mind to those pages. With a brief look to ensure there were no mistakes, I confirmed the rune structure was ready.

An original spell had just been born mid-battle, designed specifically for a singular purpose. My consciousness returned to the battle as a cold feeling spread across my body. Yet, even though Sahirah's Mana Wave had forced all five of them to hide behind their shields, they were remarkably calm, just slightly surprised by the sheer mana output Sahirah could maintain. And since their attention was still directed to her... That was my best chance to cast my new spell.

I loaded it into the Casting Assistant, painting the runes of the magic circle at a speed that just yesterday would have been beyond my reach. When Sahirah's spell started to die out, mine was ready and mid-activation. First it shot an unremarkable fireball that hit Narak's chest, earning me a pitying glance. But that spell wasn't finished yet. In fact, it had barely started. When another of them turned, it shot two fireballs. Then, it shot four. Then eight.

Each fireball was unremarkable, basically a harmless firework, but their armor still recognized it as an attack and performed all the calculations necessary to defend against it. None of them noticed the mana spending math was heavily leaning in my favor, and none of them even considered that the randomized targeting was a feature, not a bug.

"This human can't even aim!" The female voice that complained was taking a step back, slightly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of individual fireballs hitting her from every angle. And judging by the way Sahirah was staring at me, not even she, who was very familiar with my methods, could guess what my goal was with this spell I came up with mid-battle.

"What's this?" The question came as she watched my spell shoot thousands of tiny fireballs every second, draining my mana at a quick rate.

"A DDoS attack." I explained with a smile.

"My attacks are very low cost and random, while each defense is costly and requires very complex calculations by whatever spell is powering that armor."

"A girl doesn't understand." I pointed at the hundreds of individual barriers, and how those mana traces and runes were glowing at an exaggerated brightness.

"Look," I said, "someone's armor is going to melt." It wasn't exactly easy to notice this since my spell was flashy and absolutely overwhelming in the number of attacks, but Sahirah managed to spot a glowing area on one of their armors. And at this moment, the Greys noticed something wrong too.

"Your chest plate is overheating!" screamed one of them.

"Look at your legs!" warned another. They took a few seconds to react as if they had never encountered this situation before. But the four subordinates acted quickly enough, and didn't hesitate to start removing their armor, taking one piece off at a time despite how convoluted the process seemed to be. The exception was Narak.

"No," he said, "that has to be some kind of trick." Narak somehow ignored the burning sensation, trying to inject mana into several of those rune pathways, as if hoping he could reverse the heating by giving that armor some different command.

"No trick. That's a design problem," I said in a hurry.

"Come on, take off your armor, you lost." Yet my voice didn't reach him. And as the moments passed, soon even his subordinates were watching his struggle. And two of them had already finished removing their armor, distancing themselves from the range of my spell.

"Hey–" I was about to warn him one last time, when suddenly a piece of his chestplate melted, destroying the traces connecting the different modules. The failure that followed was worse than an explosion. The interior of the armor simply burst into flames. The helmet's eye slit turned into the equivalent of the exhaust of a jet engine, and Narak's head was violently thrown back as he dropped to the ground. First, I remembered those poor Granar who had been killed by the Mimics, but the memory faded quickly.

Because this time I had been the one who took a life. Perhaps as a defensive mechanism of my own head, I felt like I was back on Earth, accidentally watching one of those gore videos of industrial failure in a metallurgy factory while scrolling some social media feed. The difference was that it was not a low-quality video, and I had been the one who caused that failure. My spell suddenly stopped as I cut off the mana input. Every single eye of those four surviving Greys turned to me with a hint of fear in them.

And at the same time, a terrible feeling emerged inside me when the smell of burning flesh reached my nostrils. Suddenly, Sahirah held me from behind, her arms wrapping around me. She said nothing for a while. But then, she whispered in my ear, "I got this. You don't need to talk to them right now." She released me, and she slowly walked towards the four terrified Greys.

Mana Wave materialized in her palm, and for a brief moment I thought she might be about to ruthlessly finish the four of them now that they didn't have their armor. And yet, she did something better.

"A girl needs to know," she said.

"How did you find us in that inn?" The Grey woman's body was shaking.

"You two... you can't be just first-year students of a Riftschool." Sahirah pressed, "How did you find us?" The four of them exchanged a long pitiful look, and the woman was the one who spoke again in the end.

"We extracted the information from Fernik," she said, "The Krosak family lost their son in this city. They ordered us to use his own kids as an incentive for him to talk. Zorik is the one who gave us the lead. He told us you two had business with the Mayor." The woman dropped to her knees, and I suddenly didn't feel as bad as I had been feeling for what I'd done to Narak. Sahirah returned to my side, and she said two words.

"The archmage." I forced myself to file the whole incident away at the back of my mind for the moment.

"We go back to the school." She grabbed my hand, and I cast the Presence Erasure spell. It was unfortunate, but as much as I wanted a moment of rest to get my thoughts in order, I had killed someone on the street in broad daylight. Could the archmage even protect me against that? And as much as a wild card as Elitha Hearthstrong was, she might be my only hope to get out of this whole thing as a free man now.