“Explosives have been set alongside each entrance,” Kyyle explained. “Once you give the signal, we’ll blow the tunnels. That should keep any reinforcements off us – at least for a little while.”
“And our exit?”
“Typical pit trap and tapered tunnel,” Kyyle explained, pointing at their escape route. “Although, I built in a small ledge on either side of the pit. It shouldn’t affect the ants but should let the less nimble of the group make it across,” he offered in a dry tone, tapping his own chest.
“You’re getting better,” Julia quipped. “All that running away has really loosened you up.” This earned her a mock glare from the earth mage.
“Okay, sounds like we’re nearly ready,” Finn interjected with a small smile of his own. “Let’s get our targets lined up.
“Daniel,” he whispered. The AI flashed into existence beside them only an instant later. “Get down and near the crystals,” Finn urged Daniel quickly. They didn’t want his fiery form to give away their presence.
“I’m going, I’m going… sir,” the AI grumbled, soon hovering only inches away from the gems. Finn glanced warily at the soldiers, their antennae twitching, but it didn’t seem they had been discovered yet.
“Okay, I need you to highlight the exploders and the soldiers. Identify weak points, please,” Finn instructed, pulling a series of sawblades out of his pack, and laying them in a line along the ground. A moment later, the ants were all outlined in blue, smaller and brighter targets painted along the ridge at the base of their neck and their leg joints.
“I take it you’re going to focus on the exploders first?” Julia whispered.
“Exactly. I need you to keep the other ants busy – particularly the soldiers. You’ll probably have about 60 seconds before Kyyle finishes blowing the tunnels.”
Julia gave a curt nod and pulled down the shield slung across her back. They had finished construction only a few hours ago – the instrument taking far longer to assemble than Finn had expected. Kyyle had been right. It had taken both the ambient magma in the Sauna and heat rank level 4 of Imbue Fire to melt enough of the dark iron ore. It didn’t help that they had been forced to bring the metal down to a pure liquid in order to fill the mold.
The result was a shield roughly two inches thick and three feet across, creating a perfect circle. After they had broken the shield out of the mold, Finn had abruptly decided to dip into his stash of ant mandibles. He used one of his sawblades to chip away stray flecks of metal, smoothing the surface and edges. Then, he’d welded the spare mandibles along the edge of the device until the shield’s rim glimmered in the light cast by the fire mana crystals. Luckily, he’d been able to replenish some of his stockpile on the way here – the group encountering a few stray ant workers in the tunnels.
“I still have no idea how you’re going to fight with that thing,” Kyyle muttered. “It’s like trying to move with a boulder mounted to your arm.”
Julia just grinned as she hefted the shield smoothly, apparently unaffected by its weight. “I think I’ll be fine. I’m looking forward to giving it a test run.” Both Finn and Kyyle eyed her skeptically. Neither of the mages could easily lift the shield, even after Brutus’ physical training.
Julia ignored their stares and yanked an incendiary grenade from her pack, palming the explosive carefully. The group had decided the safest way for her to carry the grenades was in her bag. The in-game packs seemed to defy normal physics, making it almost impossible to detonate them when they were stored inside.
Although, testing that particular game feature had been a little nerve-racking.
“Okay, once Kyyle takes down the tunnels, he can help by altering the terrain.” Finn glanced at the earth mage. “Just try to keep the workers off her.”
His gaze bounced between his two companions. “We had to retreat quickly last time, but it’s possible that blowing the tunnels and the exploders detonating could summon more of the ants – the heat acting like an alarm bell. So be prepared to evacuate if the shit hits the fan.”
Kyyle and Julia both nodded, their muscles tense and expressions grim.
Finn swiped aside the map, feeling his own mana respond to the tension, causing his limbs to glow with warmth. This was it. Round two.
Hopefully, it would go better than last time.
With that dire thought, Finn nodded at Julia and began casting Imbue Fire. His hands moved swiftly, and tendrils of flame soon curled around one of the sawblades. Finn held the single channel and cast again, more flames enveloping the other blade. The pair rose into the air until they hovered at waist height, trembling slightly as Finn struggled to hold them in place at the lower temperature.
Then he started ratcheting up the heat on both channels simultaneously, the fire flaring brightly around the blades and a blue-ish color flickering at the edges as he hit heat rank 2 and kept going. He was going to need to put a bit more speed on these blades. The soldiers in the center of the room finally shifted, their antennae drifting toward the group’s location as they picked up on the flare of heat.
That was Julia’s signal. She darted forward into the room, her shield mounted along one arm and a grenade resting in her other palm. As she neared the exploder and workers – still chipping away at the crystals – she hurled the bomb with incredible force. The grenade rocketed forward and smashed against the wall, promptly exploding in a torrent of flame. The blast ignited some of the ambient crystals along the wall, creating a cascade of fire that rocked the cave and sent the nearby ants stumbling – suddenly blind and disoriented. The stone cracked, a massive fissure forming. But the wall held… for the moment.
Julia never stopped moving, yanking another grenade free from her pack, and pitching it toward the soldiers in the center of the room. The heavily armored ants were already beginning to spin toward the source of the heat along the far wall and power up their Fireballs. The second blast sent them stumbling, followed shortly by a series of detonations along each hallway as Kyyle triggered the mines planted there. The tunnels soon began to collapse, and rock tumbled to the ground, sending out a cloud of dust from each entrance. The soldiers spun again, not sure where the attack was coming from and unable to find a target with the massive cloud of earth and fire mana that now permeated the air.
Perfect, Finn thought, watching the chaos closely.
He followed up on their advantage. His sawblades rocketed through the air, his fingers twitching as he guided them simultaneously toward their targets – two glowing blue outlines about the size of his palm.
A sawblade struck one of the two worker ants that was being converted into an exploder, its neatly severed head soon crashing against the stone floor with a rumble.
The second strike wasn’t as clean. The exploder bucked at the last moment, its head pitching forward. Finn didn’t have time to alter course or cast Haste. As a result, the blade sliced through the chitin along the corner of the ant’s head, then ricocheted into its shoulder, lodging itself in one of the crystals along its back.
“The exploder is going to blow!” Finn shouted. Julia must have heard him, because she made a beeline for the other side of the cave.
It wasn’t a moment too soon.
The detonation triggered the rest of the crystals along the exploder’s back. A blast of flame swirled around the ant, the force smashing it into the other surviving worker and crushing them both against the nearby wall. The shockwave was also enough to further weaken the rock and stone. Finn looked on with wide eyes as the fissure along the wall widened and stretched, ripping open the stone and cracking up and across the ceiling.
“Kyyle, we have a cave-in!” Finn shouted over the noise, sparing an anxious glance at the earth mage. He was already casting, his eyes glowing a brilliant emerald as tendrils of mana spun around his hands. A short wall rose up from the ground around them, swiftly stretching up into the air.
Then the ceiling split open, several tons of rock crashing down into the cave and burying the wo
rker under a pile of rubble. Yet the avalanche kept going, rocks and debris flying through the air. Finn and Kyyle ducked behind their makeshift barricade, stone smashing against the other side and causing small fractures to form even as the earth mage struggled to reinforce the wall.
Finn just had to hope that Julia’s new shield would protect her from this.
They hadn’t tested it against a cave-in or flying shrapnel.
He kept eyeing her health bar in the corner of his vision. Her health had dipped, but she seemed stable.
Several anxious seconds later, the noise began to slow… then stop. The pair peeked over their barricade to see that the cave-in had decimated one side of the room.
Three down, five to go, Finn thought.
The exploder and the two workers that were being converted were dead, the cave-in having fully buried the surviving worker under a few tons of rock. Out of the remaining ants, two of them were soldiers. Daniel automatically highlighted the ants in his vision, making them more visible despite the cloud of dirt and dust that now drifted through the cavern. With a brief command, Finn pushed those highlights to Kyyle through the group menu, allowing the earth mage to see as well. He had to do this manually, but it was a useful trick.
Finn could just barely make out Julia along the far wall, her shield still raised to block the debris. A glance at his UI showed she’d taken some minor damage, but her natural health regeneration was already repairing the injuries. Meanwhile, his own mana pool was struggling to refill. He needed a few more seconds to recharge.
His attention shifted to the workers and soldiers. The ants were starting to round on Julia, her body heat likely making her stand out amid all the earth mana floating through the room from the cave-in. “They’re heading for Julia. Can you block off the workers?” Finn shouted at Kyyle.
“Working on it,” the earth mage croaked out before his fingers began twining through another complicated series of gestures. Pits formed below the workers, sending them tumbling forward and off balance, their legs scrambling at the stone as they tried to pull themselves out of the holes. It would take them time to recover, even though the pits were hastily constructed and shallow.
Meanwhile, the soldiers hadn’t been idle. The mana crystals along their heads were charging, tendrils of flame condensing into thick balls of fire that soon rocketed toward Julia. She leaped forward at an angle to dodge one missile, rolling and coming up in a crouch with her shield raised. The other blast struck the metal with terrific force, slamming her backward a few feet and shaving off a bit more health. But the shield held.
Then Finn saw his mana hit 50% again.
That should be enough. It was time to try out one of their new tools.
“Julia, I’m going to spin up the disc!” Finn shouted again. Julia reacted, sprinting along the wall toward the other side of the room – likely trying to draw the ants away from Finn and Kyyle. It was a smart move, allowing them to cast unimpeded.
Finn’s hands began moving as he cast Imbue Fire, keeping a watchful eye on his control range. Except this time, he wasn’t enchanting his own weapons. His eyes were on Julia’s shield. Flames soon curled around the metal, but Finn knew that the heat wouldn’t hurt his daughter too badly. He only needed to maintain heat rank level 1, keeping the temperature at a reasonable level while allowing him to regenerate more mana.
His fingers twitched, the locking pins jerked out of place, and the shield began to rotate. He had come up with an interesting idea after reviewing Kyyle’s designs. The limitations of his sawblades were the mana cost of maintaining the higher heat ranks – which he needed to keep the metal aloft, moving quickly, and spinning. But Julia solved some of those problems – supplying much-needed force and velocity. And so, Finn only needed to create some spin. Which is why he had built and then welded a rotating joint into the base of the shield.
The metal disc was a blur of orange and red now. Somewhat ironically, the rotation also made the disc lighter, the centrifugal force actually helping Julia to lift the shield depending on its angle and direction – an interesting result that they had discovered when testing the new weapon. Although, it only worked so long as Finn kept channeling Imbue Fire and maintained the spin.
Julia sprinted toward the soldiers as they prepared to fire again. Kyyle raised a wall in between them, a Fireball slamming against the stone and causing it to crumble and crack. She darted around the obstacle as she closed, fragments of rock ricocheting off her shield as she eyed the other soldier. It sent another blast forward, which she intercepted with her shield. With the rotation, the Fireball struck the metal surface and was sent hurtling into one of the adjacent tunnels, exploding harmlessly against the pile of rubble that lay there.
Then Julia was upon them. She slammed the shield forward with terrific force. The combination of the strength of her blow and the spin caused what was now a massive sawblade to carve through the soldier’s neck, shearing clean through to the other side in one smooth stroke.
She stumbled slightly, obviously expecting more resistance.
However, the moment of hesitation didn’t last long. Julia fell into the stumble, the weight and spin of the shield allowing her to hold it in place and flip over the sawblade, pivoting into another spin as she hit the ground. It soon sliced through the second soldier’s neck, severing its head just before the ant could launch another Fireball – the flames petering out with a hiss of smoke.
Julia soon stood above the corpses on the far side of the room, her shield spinning and her eyes on the three workers who were still struggling to drag themselves out of Kyyle’s pits. It seemed they had turned the tide, and Finn dropped the spell on her shield, preparing to summon his remaining sawblades to take out the workers at a distance.
That was when he felt it… just a small tremble in the floor. The slightest shift of the rubble lying across the tunnel entrance behind Julia. Finn watched as his daughter turned, likely feeling the same movement.
Oh, shit… reinforcements.
The debris blew apart, smashing outward. The last thing Finn saw was Julia raise her shield as Kyyle pulled him down behind their small barrier. Rocks pelted the other side, and when they slowed, the pair immediately retook their feet.
An exploder must have blasted open the tunnel because the entire entrance had been cleared of loose rock and flames still coiled in the air. The stony shrapnel had rocketed through the room, crashing against anything in its path – including Julia. She had managed to bring her shield up in time, but the blast and the flying rock had still done some damage. She was on the ground, a lance of stone embedded in her calf, and her health had dipped below half. She was struggling to drag herself away from the tunnel, her eyes wide as she glanced back toward the gaping opening.
And Finn could see why.
Two more exploders were charging through the wreckage, their ungainly forms swaying from side to side and the crystals embedded in their backs glowing an ominous red and orange. The world seemed to slow as Finn took in the scene.
His daughter was injured – she couldn’t retreat easily.
Three workers were to her rear, slowly dragging themselves out of Kyyle’s pits.
Exploders were charging from the front, and reinforcements were likely hot on their heels. They inched forward as though moving through molasses, the crystals along their backs pulsing and preparing to detonate.
And only a single thought echoed through his mind.
They couldn’t lose her – he couldn’t let Julia die!
Chapter 28 - Explosive
Bilel’s Journal – Entry 117
It is now conclusive and corroborated. It is possible for a mage to intentionally absorb ambient mana of their dominant affinity – which, I suppose, doesn’t seem that unusual upon reflection. Our bodies perform this process naturally, don’t they? How else would we replenish our own mana? Frankly, after further thought, I’m surprised that this was not previously common knowledge. Perhaps former mages were simply more ris
k-averse and less patient than myself.
Regardless, this latest discovery has also led me to question my earlier assumption about my dominant affinity. As I have observed, a mage’s body and Najima store mana of all six affinities – although not in equal measure. Shouldn’t I then be able to absorb all six schools of mana? Perhaps my previous failures were an issue of “control.” For example, if my water affinity were quite low, it would be challenging for me to control and absorb a large quantity of ambient water mana.
However, if I were to start with something smaller… perhaps I could manage the feat.
***
“Fuck,” Finn muttered. He needed more time.
His fingers started moving in a blur, an incantation drifting from his lips. He could feel his mana surge, a river of magma suddenly flowing through his veins. It was a sharp, stinging pain, but he was already growing accustomed to it, grimacing as the burning sensation spread through his limbs and organs.
More problematic was his stamina.
Haste burned through his body’s energy like it was tinder.
Finn ground his teeth together, even as the world around him began to slow to a crawl. The exploders were still shambling toward Julia. And she was still inching away, her shield clasped in hand. And Kyyle was still standing beside him, attempting to cast another spell, the energy moving forward at a listless pace.
The situation seemed hopeless.
But at least he had a bit more time, and he needed to make the most of it.
“You can only sustain this spell for 18.9 seconds,” Daniel chirped helpfully.
“Thanks for that,” Finn snapped. Less than 19 seconds to figure out how to save Julia. His thoughts were racing as he eyed his options.
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