Keron
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Chapter 164 - Gathering Death
🕑 Added 2025-03-17 18:00:08 +0000 UTCEmily places her hands against the hefty, glowing crystal before her, gazing into the swirling vortexes of wind trapped within its crystalline confines. She attributes her mana to match, pushing a wind current of her own through the unstable formation.
Slowly, like a shepherd guiding her flock, she nudges the chaotic winds, bending the wild vortexes and gathering them together. At first, none of them touch, but under her influence, the first two violent currents meet, sending shuddering vibrations through the entire crystal and out into the surrounding walls.
Emily maintains her pressure, pushing on the two conflicting streams until they join into one. In an instant, the edges of the crystal crack, releasing shards from its body that lose their rich lustre and crumble to dust.
She ignores the changes and pushes another gust of wind into the centre of the formation, increasing the vibrations and breaking away another chunk.
Two more streams join the whirling forces raging in the heart of the crystal, combining and reducing the crystal’s size to half its original mass, around the size of Emily’s torso.
Emily doesn’t bat an eye as chunks of rock dislodge themselves high above and fall, landing with harsh cracks, having grown used to the crevasse threatening to collapse around her over the past few days of mindless crystal extraction. She calmly releases a flood of earth mana from her legs and wrists, pouring it into the surrounding rock to reinforce it again as she creates a thin film around the wind crystal, preparing to tear it from its home.
The mine around her stabilises, and Emily pushes another vortex into the gathered cluster of energy in the centre of the crystal.
So close. Just three more.
She turns her focus to a new stream of energy, but, midway through her work, while carefully making sure not to touch one of the other free vortices, she hears a voice calling down to her from above.
“Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue. “Guess that’s time.”
Freezing her work inside it, Emily pulls on the bubble of earth mana wrapped around the greater wind crystal. The crystal shudders, releasing a faint pulse of mana that synchronises with the ambient mana leaking from the walls as the surrounding rock shatters.
The swirling mass of energy that was under her control spins excitedly while the three uncompleted vortices begin leaking from the crystal, reducing the vibrancy of its light as it settles.
A bit of a waste, but it’ll have to do for now.
The shuddering of the mine ceases, and Emily sends the harvested crystal into one of the almost-full pouches strapped to her belt before turning her gaze to Sandman, a few metres away, standing up and brushing the sweat from his brow as he pockets another lesser crystal.
“Meet me up top,” Emily says, wrapping her legs in air walk’s magic circle and kicking off the ground. “Sounds like it’s time to leave.”
Kicking off thin air a few times, Emily lands on the lip of the crevasse beside Ice Petal, watching her detection array. She sees the glittering fireflies marking her own team, along with over a dozen new lights at the edge on Denros’ side. Most of them are dull, indicating the unawakened nature of most of the approaching troops, but three of the leading lights are bright enough to almost match Emily’s.
“Pack up and get ready to leave,” Emily calls decisively, looking over her shoulder at Whistler meditating on a bedroll with Pretty Boy sitting nearby. “We move in five minutes unless you want to get caught up in my gift.”
“Gift?” Ice Petal questions softly beside her.
Emily doesn’t respond immediately, gesturing with her head to the densely packed crystals still forming on the walls below and watching as realisation flashes through the young mage’s eyes.
“Unfortunately, we can’t take the rest of the vein with us. However, it would be a waste not to use the mana,” she says, a savage grin tugging on the corners of her mouth and threatening to crack her emotionless mask. “And I just so happen to have a little experience blowing up mana veins.”
Ice Petal shudders, taking one glance at the cold light in Emily’s eyes before scurrying over to help pack away their bedrolls.
Let’s hope this works as I planned.
Emily reaches into her belt and pulls out her engraving staff again, leaping over the crevasse in a single bound and landing on the side from which Denros’ forces are approaching. She quickly begins adding several runes and patterns to the array, breaking its symmetry and weighting it unnaturally to one side.
The glowing image floating over the clearing disintegrates as she works, but the light remains, floating about as if unsure where to go while slowly gaining density.
It doesn’t take long for her modifications to be completed and, as she puts the final mark on her masterpiece, she turns to find her squad waiting to leave.
“Let’s go,” she commands, tucking the staff away and heading over to join them.
“Is that really enough?” Pretty Boy asks, looking at the building green light with doubt.
“You want to stay and find out?” Emily asks with a raised brow, stepping past them without breaking her stride.
“Of course not. I trust my squad leader.”
Emily rolls her eyes and breaks into a light sprint, staying slow enough for her squad to keep up as she weaves through the trees to get to a safe distance.
She watches through the eyes of one of her birds, floating high above the clearing, as the dense green mist of mana gathers in the centre of her unstable array. It almost looks as if the mana has turned solid when Emily slides to a halt a few kilometres from the crystal vein, turning back and waiting with bated breath.
Five.
She spots a flicker of movement in the trees beside the mine as the first scouts from Denros’ reinforcements arrive.
Four.
One of them sees the gathered mass of mana and turns on his heels.
Three.
The scout pulls an engraved magic crystal from his pocket and vanishes into the foliage again.
Two.
Emily’s squad mates grind to a halt beside her, Ice Petal and Sandman panting lightly.
One.
“Can you still see-“ Whistler starts before a deep rumbling starts behind them, immediately drawing her attention.
Emily ignores Whistler as she watches her handiwork through the bird’s vision.
The gathered mana bursts, releasing a violent torrent of biting winds. Arcing blades of mana, only visible as distortions in the air, flood the forest, chasing after the fleeing scouts and leaving destruction in their wake.
Swathes of trees fall, shredded to pieces, and Emily spots the scouts again, as red explosions against the greens and browns of the woods. As a wave of destruction spreads towards the east, the majority of the mana condensed above the crystal vein is directed down into the narrow crevasse.
While she can’t see the damage done inside, the shuddering of the ground that scatters birds from all of the trees in a several-kilometre radius, and almost knocks her squad to the floor, is a good indication of her success.
In the distance, before the wave of destruction sweeps the Denrosi reinforcements away, Emily sees a wall of mud bubble up before solidifying. The shrubbery in front of the wall ignites at the same time, stretching up into a defensive wall of heat.
The powerful wind blades buffet the wall, the layer of heat helping to redirect them upwards and bleed a bit of their force before they strike the rock behind. Each time an arc of wind strikes, the fire pulses, dispersing and exposing a little more of the rock, where cracks spread rapidly.
The walls hold through the majority of the attack, only shattering into dust as the tail end of the destruction passes through. A few more splatters of blood are discernible through the foliage, but Emily also sees several robed soldiers running over to check on their deceased comrades.
Her attention turns away from the enemy forces as the mana battering the crystal crevasse also starts to run dry. It releases one final burst of strength that cracks the earth, shattering the carved array into pieces and causing the walls of the mine to fall in on themselves.
A sweeping gust spreads from the epicentre of the destruction, blowing in all directions and tearing leaves from the closest trees, scattering them far and wide.
“Shit!” Pretty Boy mutters with a mix of awe and disbelief as he’s knocked to the floor. “I take it that worked?”
The ground’s shaking subsides, and Sandman lets go of the branch he was clinging to before reaching out to help his comrade up.
“The Denrosi reinforcements defended against most of the attack I directed towards them,” Emily responds, crouching down and placing a palm on the ground. “But most of it was directed into the crystal vein which...”
She reaches out with her magical senses, searching for the pulsing heartbeat of the mana vein below. Unlike before, when it was strong enough to lead her to the mine, she only feels a weak, receding pulse. She holds onto it, but it fades fast, sinking lower like a wounded beast dragging itself back to its den to lick its wounds.
It’s not destroyed, just moving… curious.
“Has been destroyed,” she finishes, keeping her extra observations to herself and confirming the completion of their mission. “Other than rubble, they won’t get anything else from it.”
Satisfaction spreads through the squad, with Sandman and Pretty Boy fist-bumping each other as if they were the ones to set off the array, as Emily stands up and checks on her eyes in the sky.
“That attack seems to have delayed our pursuers; they’re approaching far more cautiously now,” she informs her squad, giving them no time to celebrate as she starts moving again. “Let’s not give them a chance to catch up. Come on.”
***
That evening, after putting significant distance between themselves and the Denrosi mages who Emily last saw pausing to inspect the damage to the crystal vein, squad Cold set up camp in a small clearing at the base of a low hill.
Emily deploys her barrier and eats with her squad before taking the first watch alone. She waits until the only sound filling their isolated bubble is the calm, rhythmic breathing of sleep before standing up without a sound and slipping out of the barrier. She leaves a few birds and spiders behind as she crests the hill, heading for the other side where she scales a tree and sits among the branches, reaching into her pouch and pulling out the sealed form of the Mensacus.
With a light flex of her mana, a soft glow illuminates the metal ovoid. Emily holds it up in the light, carefully tracing the detailed carvings covering it, comparing them to the original blueprint in her mind and checking for any damage.
She pauses on a few distorted runes, glowing with a stronger black hue than the others, noting how the metal seems to have twisted to change their forms.
The only runes that have actually changed are those guarding against external influences. Those focused on containment are unaltered.
With a curious quirk of her brow, Emily reaches into her belt and pulls out a lesser fire, light, and lightning crystal. She holds the three crystals in one hand and releases a burst of mana, causing them to float as she etches the same binding array wrapping the Mensacus on the air, using the crystals to stabilise it in place.
She places the Mensacus in the centre of the array, floating before her eyes, and casts Forgemaster, wrapping her fingers in orange and silver runes.
Emily reaches into the array and places a finger against the smooth metal ovoid, pushing a string of glowing orange mana into it and drawing her hand down, splitting the egg in half. Her hand pulls back, and mana strings shoot from her fingers, gently wrapping the metal shell and pulling it apart, revealing the cursed tooth within.
In an instant, thick red and black mana oozes from the shell, pooling at the bottom of the new array and leaving a light haze behind with the tooth. The lighter mist quivers, churning as if in panic.
Emily reaches out and watches in rapt fascination as the thick, almost liquid mana shudders and tries to move away from her. It writhes and struggles as the light mist swirls around her hand, gently brushing past without trying to infect her with its malice.
“You’re conscious, aren’t you?” Emily asks, feeling the mist lap against her fingers almost happily.
She narrows her eyes, peering through the mist to check on the tooth. The black and red cracks running along its surface seem to have widened by a few hairs, and they pulse rhythmically, like a beating heart.
“Can you understand me?”
The pulse pauses for a beat, blinking twice in quick succession before returning to its rhythm.
“You can!”
A small grin curls Emily’s lips as she amends her notes on the tooth.
“In that case, can you blink twice for yes,” she says, immediately running through a series of possible questions in her mind. “And not at all for no?”
The Mensacus blinks in agreement, and Emily licks her lips in eager anticipation.
“Okay, let’s start this off easy. Do you intend to harm me?”
Nothing.
“Do you feel emotions?”
Two blinks.
“Do you resent me for sealing you in?”
Nothing again.
It’s not just conscious, it’s sentient!
Her grin grows into a smile, but a moment later it falters, falling back into a calm mask as her excitement slips away like water through her fingers.
It doesn’t resent me for incarcerating it… why?
“Is the seal harmful to you?”
One blink.
Can’t be answered with a yes or no.
Emily’s mind spins, searching for the right words to unravel the cursed tooth’s mystery as her gaze flicks from it and the light mist of mana eagerly playing with her fingers, to the dense liquid death below still trying to squirm away from her. An idea flashes through her mind, lighting up her eyes.
“Can you control that condensed mana?”
Nothing.
It can’t seem to even hold it in!
“Is condensing mana beneficial to you?”
Two blinks.
“Is that helping you grow?”
Two blinks.
Emily drums the fingers of her free hand against her thigh, pulling up the system window in the corner of her vision as she does.
¯¯¯¯¯
[Mensacus]
[Rank:] D
[Stats:] -5 int
[Description:] A shard of the abyss given form, imbued with the curse of hunger, fed and refined by Emily Coldstone.
[Effect:] Converts death into corrupted mana that drives nearby organisms to the depths of hunger.
_____
The change in the description catches her eye, along with the increase of the intelligence debuff.
Fed and refined…
She dips her finger into the liquid mana trying to avoid her, watching the mist above it shake in panic, and instantly feels lethargic as it seeps into her skin, tinting the end of the finger black as her intelligence drops and several notifications about mental attacks pop into her vision. She pulls her hand back, and the miasma drains from her skin, dripping back into its pool like tainted blood.
It’s even stronger than the decay before.
“Is the seal harmful because it keeps mana out?” she questions.
One blink.
“Yes, but that’s not the only reason?”
Two blinks.
“Is the other reason because it keeps you from feeding properly?”
Two blinks, and Emily swallows as several weapon ideas pop into her mind.
“If I rework your seal and help you grow,” she asks, raising the hand within the seal and touching the cold surface of the jagged tooth, feeling it buzzing with what she could almost mistake for affection if it weren’t for the oozing malicious intent. “Will you remain loyal to me?”
Two blinks.
Comments
Quendolayne
Thx for the chapter ☺️👍😎
