I had never felt such an intensity of pressure while setting up a ward, not even back in the days I was still weak, saving Titania from a dangerous necromancer ambush, or the time I had to go and reinforce Cornelia and Helga during the sudden undead ambush.
During the time I saved Titania, I was the hunter, giving me the freedom to strategize however I wished, in a sense, making it even a relaxed affair.
And, while saving Cornelia and Helga had been a much more tense affair, bringing me closer to death than I had ever thought possible until that time, at least I wasn’t in a position to hide my abilities.
Here, it was the worst of both worlds. Not only I was in a dangerous situation, facing a threat that was likely enough to overwhelm me, but also I had to pick and choose which ability I could use, afraid of revealing the wrong thing — all without not even knowing what my mysterious enemy was searching for in the first place.
The difficulty of the ward I was setting up didn’t help anyway.
From a purely technical perspective, it was not a ward, but a combination of a ward and a weapon. I used my mana to put the destroyed material of the ax to good use, the unknown metal flexing easily under my intense magic flow and creating two intersecting circles around me, and ten of the Eternal gems I had just acquired went there, embedding themselves into the structure.
Of course, even for that great number of Eternal gems, the amount of mana they could provide had limits, but it was still measured in thousands. More importantly, the interference they generated was enough for me to use my own mana secretly to support the structure without raising questions about my dangerous mana regeneration.
[-2890 Mana]
Under the great flood of mana, some external and some internal, the ward started to take shape. The great construction, appearing layer by layer, taxing my mental abilities to the limit as I applied every single trick I collected to optimize its impact.
Even then, the recent boost in Craft had been terribly critical in ensuring everything worked as it was supposed to.
It was exhausting, but I couldn’t afford to pull back on that aspect, not when the attackers were already finished dealing with the berserk warrior, taking him down in a few seconds. But, it was still enough to ruin their formation, giving me several precious seconds as they gathered into a formation, and started moving forward.
More than twenty warriors, supported by half as many mages. Ignoring them took a lot of effort, but watching them approach was less important than finishing the ward.
As the inner structure solidified, a mana connection with the remaining four stones appeared, each radiating with pure mana, ready to transform into whatever nature I wished.
Just in time, as the first rain of magical attack hit me, courtesy of the mages hidden behind the formation. Four floating spheres around me danced rapidly to meet the rain of fire and lightning, intense enough to destroy a city.
Controlling four floating mana spheres independently was not difficult, even for a novice mage.
Controlling four floating mana spheres tightly packed with rotating mana, acting as a vortex was harder, but it could still be done easily without assistance. I could have done so easily even without the gems to stabilize their structure.
The real challenge started when the first spell hit, a fireball, the vortex immediately devouring it and taking it to the core, pressuring the foreign mana until it lost its attacking nature, turning it back to its stable state.
Though it was still elemental mana, which made it very difficult to control and contain.
Containing that mana was the main reason I had gone through that crazy design. It was not only a defensive tool, but it also empowered my abilities to counter-attack.
I was still tempted to teleport out, but I didn’t dare to do so without getting a better idea of what my enemy was searching for. Only then, I could accidentally reveal my true secret — one that didn’t require them to chase me at full strength.
Of course, I doubted that, even if succeeded in that, they would just stop chasing me, but I doubted someone that strong only had me as a concern. I had many ways to escape easily as long as I was treated as a nuisance.
I wasn’t as confident in hiding if they actually wanted to chase me, especially if the next time, they didn’t come with the dregs of their organization.
Another spell rushed toward me, this time a huge wave of water threatening to devour me, but before it could reach halfway, another orb rushed forward and cut through the center of the spell, absorbing enough mana to destabilize its structure, but before I could even finish that, other spells rained over me, forcing me to use all four rotating balls of mana at the same time.
Against another mage, it would have been impossible to succeed. Even as I used the orbs to absorb their attacks, I could come up with dozens of ways to destroy my own arrangements. Hitting one of those orbs with a sharp, armor-piercing would have half of the job by disrupting its movement, making it temporarily useless.
A few more, and I would deal with an explosion worse than what my enemies throwing forward.
But my magical attackers were no different than the warriors, showing that their near-berserk state was enough to wipe whatever benefit given to them by their stats. They just rained their spells recklessly while they closed together with the warriors.
Even more beautifully, they restricted themselves to four elements, which, under the simplest look, was the correct move. They were the most destructive ones, and shockingly effective against wards, in a way that couldn’t be replicated by Arcana spells or other disciplines.
Yet, it only made it easier for me to handle it. I targeted each type of element with one orb, making sure each orb only contained one type of energy.
I remember the violent results of mixing different types of energies, and I certainly didn’t try to replicate it. If they had used different types of energies, I would be facing the option of letting them score a hit, pushing another gem from the inner ward matrix to create a fifth external node, or letting out the energies hidden in one of the nodes to keep it empty, using it to deflect multiple types of energies.
And none of those options was preferable. The first would bring unnecessary damage to the inner structure, and while it was inevitable, I didn’t want to start receiving damage, especially since its main objective was to resist the melee damage represented by the warriors, one that would turn into a trap if everything went well.
The second option was equally unpleasant. The inner nodes were there to help me to contain the pressure of the external orbs as the mana they contained grew more and more. Trying to balance more orbs with fewer focal nodes to support would make it more difficult.
Just like juggling, adding another element made it exponentially difficult.
Technically, third was the most tenable option, but it would not only make me waste all the mana I stole, but also risked to alert my mysterious enemy about the true nature of the trick.
I wanted them to believe that my stance was a reckless last stand of a hopeless man, not a dangerous trap.
They moved forward steadily, seconds turning into minutes with no change in their pattern as they continued to rain spells, their pace slightly faster than walking, though they were barely more than soft silhouettes with all the dust and smoke filling my surroundings as the siege continued, the pressure increasing as the mana hidden in the orbs increased.
Yet, even as time passed, there was no change in their pattern as they continued to rain their spells. I felt something warm dripping down. For a moment, I thought it to be sweat, but the iron taste that accompanied it showed that it was not the case.
It was blood.
[-47 HP]
Things had been getting overwhelming. In each orb, the amount of mana that was hidden was more than ten thousand points, and not by a small margin.
A number that was significantly greater than my own reserves, and I was trying to contain that without the assistance of the System. Some, I already absorbed back into my reserves to fill, but the amount was still incredible.
“How much mana do they have?” I found myself murmuring. My own technique of destroying their spells was far from perfect. I would be lucky if I was able to get five percent of the mana they had invested, while the rest was dispersing, consumed by the spell effect after the core of the spell was destroyed by the orb.
Meaning, they had already wasted more than five hundred thousand mana! It had great implications for their mana capacity and mana regeneration, yet, even as the pressure reached an overwhelming degree, I couldn’t help but focus on one thing.
What a waste!
[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000
Strength: 46 Charisma: 63
Precision: 40 Perception: 42
Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45
Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49
Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51
HP: 6982 / 7334 Mana: 9000 / 9000 ]
SKILLS
Grandmaster Tantric [118/140]
Master Melee [100/100]
Master Biomancy [100/100]
Master Elemental [100/100]
Master Arcana [100/100]
Master Subterfuge [100/100]
Master Craft [100/100]
Expert Speech [75/75]
PERKS
Mana Regeneration
Skill Share
Empowerment (0/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Titania - Level 35/38]
[Cornelia - Level 22/26]
[Helga - Level 22/26]
[Marianne - Level 21/29]
