Blood in the Deser

by Sophia Schmidt

  "Everyone, stop casting if you want to live!" He yelled on the top of his lungs. "Somehow the Hall's protections have been turned off."

  Chapter 126 Bombshell 2

  Lith's mind immediately went to Soluspedia, accessing the contents of Professor Rudd's book to assess how serious was their predicament.

  "What the heck is going on?" Friya was never far away from Quylla.

  "All the failed dimensional spells have made the space in the class unstable." Quylla beat Lith on time, explaining the root of the matter.

  "Normally it would never happen, since space reconfigures itself after a while. But because in a short time frame, hundreds, if not thousands of spells have been cast, order turned into chaos, making it possible.

  The badly folded space wants to revert to normal, but it's too crumpled. Different spells are still lingering in the air, interacting together. If it keeps up like this, the whole training hall will turn into a huge fireball."

  "What? Can't you dumb it down for me?" Like anyone without Soluspedia, Friya was still at the basics, completely oblivious that over bending space was like lighting a match in a coal mine.

  "Don't cross the streams!" Lith blurted out.

  "What streams?" Quylla looked at him with a puzzled expression.

  "I mean¡ Friya, opening a Warp Steps is like folding a piece of paper. Two extremities separated in space can temporarily overlap, before going back to normal, like a spring.

  What's happening is that multiple pieces of paper are colliding between them, but since it's not paper but energy, it will explode!"

  "That's why dimensional magic is taught only in academies." Quylla chimed in.

  "All the training halls have specific protective arrays, to prevents things like this from occurring. Students are bound to mess up, especially on difficult subjects. But according to Professor Rudd, they must have been turned off!"

  Right after saving the dumb student from his own idiocy, Rudd took out his communication amulet to call for help. Only then he realised that using a dimensional spell hadn't been his brightest moment.

  New cracks started to appear in the points he had Blinked through, spreading to the nearest ones until they formed a rough circle.

  Inwardly cursing, Rudd threw the amulet to the closest student. Then he focused all his attention attempting to fix his mistake, that was about to generate a black hole big enough to destroy the training hall if not the whole academy.

  "Rudd, unless this is important, I'd like to postpone." Linjos' image appeared from the amulet. He seemed to be swamped in paperwork, his usually tidy desk had turned into a battlefield.

  "I'm not Professor Rudd, Headmaster." The student managed to say despite quite some stuttering.

  "Who are you and how you managed to fake his call? Impersonating a Professor is a criminal offense, young man." Hearing a squeaky voice, Linjos finally raised his head, realizing something was off.

  "I'm not impersonating anyone!" He squealed.

  "The Professor gave it to me because¡"

  "Because?" The student had no idea what was happening or how to describe it.

  "Because we need help! Cracks in the air, explosions and something about not wearing protections!"

  "What?!" Linjos could not make head or tails of it.

  "Give me that, you dimwit!" Lith used a mix of air and spirit magic to rip the amulet off his sweaty hands, explaining everything properly to the Headmaster.

  Linjos turned pale, but reacted promptly.

  "I can reactivate the protections from my office, but that will not help with your situation. Has any of you already learned Restoration?"

  It was an advanced dimensional magic spell, developed exactly for situations like that. It was capable of restoring the natural order of things, dispersing the accumulated energy safely.

  Linjos' eyes were actually fixated on Lith. He had proved to be excellent in everything, and that gave Linjos the hope he could pull another of his miracles.

  "No." Lith replied. He knew the spell only because the book was in Soluspedia, but he had never tried it before. There was no chance Lith could manage to do it at the first try. With his luck, it would have made everything worse.

  "Yes." Quylla's voice took everyone by surprise.

  "Good! Then use it to assist Rudd. Help is already on its way, but because of the situation, we cannot risk using Warp Steps. It will take some time to arrive there, even by flying."

  As soon the conversation ended, they regrouped with the others, deciding what to do. The students close to the exit had already run away, but the ever-expanding cracks and their explosions had now trapped all the others inside.

  Only about half the class was still present, along with Professor Rudd, and things were getting worse by the second. Despite all his talent, he was only a man. There were too many sections of space about to collapse, he hadn't the time to properly stabilize them.

  The best he could do alone, was temporarily fix the most dangerous one before moving to the next, but after a while the patch would collapse, forcing him to cycle between cracks.

  Quylla proceeded to close the smaller ones, preventing them to grow and relieving Rudd, albeit a little. She had learned Restoration because the group would always use her room for training in dimensional magic.

  Already having so little of her own, she was scared of losing them, so she had practiced it after everyone left for the night, further developing her mana sensibility by feeling the small damage their practice had caused over time.

  Lith felt helpless. For the first time in his life, he could only watch and do nothing.

  "Let me guess, our friend Lukart has already escaped."

  "Indeed." Yurial nodded. "He and his goons were the first to get out. Either they have great reflexes¡"

  "Or they knew." Lith completed for him. He then used Life Vision to check his surroundings, discovering that visible and invisibles cracks had almost filled the training hall.

  Swallowing a lump of saliva, he racked his brain trying to find a way to make himself useful.

  Suddenly, Life Vison showed him that the spatial crack that Quylla was fixing had turned white hot, albeit the change was unnoticeable at the naked eye.

  Reacting as fast as he could, Lith managed to shield her with his body before the explosion, conjuring at the same time a series of concentric barriers made of darkness, air and water.

  From his fight with the Wither, he had learned that dark magic barriers, despite not blocking all the damage, would wear away everything. As expected, the dark layer reduced the strength of the impact, the air one blocked part of the shockwave, while the water layer smothered some of the flames.

  The remaining damage was enough to riddle the back of Lith's uniform with holes, burning his skin and hair.

  "Oh gods! I'm so sorry, it's all my fault!" Quylla's eyes filled with tears, but Lith stopped her, putting his index finger on her lips.

  "No time for that! As long as I'm alive, we can regenerate everything. What's just happened?" He tried to act though, but he was now quite pale, his skin stretched from the waves of pain.

  Luckily, both Friya and Yurial moved forward, one healing Lith, the other supplying him with energy to withstand the process without fainting.

  "I've never used Restoration on distortions that big. I used the smaller ones to practice, but it seems I'm not good enough. There's only so much energy I manage to dissipate with my spell, the rest becomes unstable and explodes."

  Despite the fear and all that was happening, Quylla immediately stopped sobbing. She had just realized that it was the first time they actually touched not through the uniform.

  Lith's skin had a pleasant smell of soap, still bronze coloured from the years spent hunting in the wild under the sun.

  "Would you manage to close them if they contained less energy?"

  Quylla nodded, while Lith turned around, facing the nearest crack and flooding it with darkness magic.

  "I have no clue about light
magic, but after much thinking I'm quite sure that darkness is pure entropy. No matter what kind of energies a dimensional fissure is composed off, if I'm right the darkness will eat them, until they become weak enough for Quylla to fix them."

  "And if you are wrong?" Solus voice was worried like when they had faced the Scorpicore.

  "In that case I suck at science as much as I do at magic. Here goes everything!" ¨C

  Chapter 127 Bombshell 3

  At first, everything went according to plan. Lith could see via Life Vision that the highly compressed forces stored inside the spatial crack were progressively weakening.

  But then, he noticed its edges turning white hot, just like had happened to the previous one before exploding.

  "Dammit, I was too na?ve. In this situation darkness magic is a double-edged sword. It allows me to erode the energy just as I predicted. What I didn't take into account, is that at the same time it accelerates the destabilization of the crack, making it even more volatile." ¨C

  "Quylla, I did all that I could. Time for you to step in!"

  Lith let the darkness fade away, hoping she had still enough time to complete her spell. At the same time, his hands moved rapidly, forming random signs, pretending to cast one spell after another, creating strong and thick multi layered barriers in case something went wrong.

  Lith could only count the seconds, watching the fissure becoming more and more unstable, inwardly wishing for Quylla to hurry up and finish. Just when the crack was about to collapse, the Restoration spell took effect, making it disappear with a small bang.

  "One down, one million to go." Lith didn't find any joy in succeeding. There were still too many spatial distortions, and only a handful of seconds had passed since he closed the conversation with Linjos.

  Time wasn't on their side.

  He immediately attacked the next crack, using all his focus and skill to speed the energy degeneration process while trying not to affect the fissure's stability. If before he had just made chaos clash with chaos, now there was a method behind it.

  Lith could see the hot spots where different cracks overlapped, and gently used darkness magic to weaken the interactions between them before attacking their cores, avoiding chain reactions.

  Rudd had no such thing as Life Vision, but thanks to his talent and abundant experience, he could appreciate the finesse Lith was demonstrating by using darkness magic in such an unorthodox way.

  "Brilliant, simply brilliant." He thought. "It's such a shame that his space sensibility is so much greater than his dimensional magic aptitude. And to add insult to injury, the only one capable of using Restoration is a flimsy commoner.

  The world has really turned upside down. Here I am, fighting side by side with some 'inferior' commoners that yet stand at the top of the class, showing unparallel talent and improvisation, while the 'nobles' do nothing but run like rabbits.

  Maybe I have grown too old for this job." - Rudd inwardly sighed, closing one fissure after the other, trying to create a safe zone for the students.

  Meanwhile, Lith realized that the strategy was doomed to fail. They had only two mages able to use Restoration, while the space distortions were too many and too strong to keep attacking them one at the time.

  "Quylla, focus only on the cracks that I point out for you! Phloria, Friya, you protect her at all costs with your Mage Knight's shields! I'm going all out!"

  Without waiting for a reply, he enveloped several spatial distortions at once with darkness magic, marking each time the most dangerous one with a wisp of light.

  His hands and mouth moved like crazy, mixing random seals and words, giving Lith the alibi he needed to create small but densely packed barriers around the remaining cracks, this time trying to prevent the resulting explosion to get out, rather than get in.

  "What in the gods' name is that?" Professor Rudd was flabbergasted by his performance. "He is controlling so many spells at once, adapting the shape, size and intensity of each one according to the situation.

  No matter how simple each incantation is by itself, the combined effect is on par with a tier five spell." ¨C

  The number of fissures started to decrease rapidly, but it came at a cost. Only those treated properly with Restoration would just disappear, the rest would suffer the corruption of darkness magic until they blew up.

  Thanks to Lith's efforts and planning, they were controlled explosions, but explosions nonetheless. He couldn't get too far from them, the hot spots were small to begin with, and he had to keep track of all at the same time with Life Vision.

  Each time, the flames were strong enough to overcome the uniform's magical protections, burning through the fabric and the flesh alike. The others were barely able to defend themselves with their combined efforts, leaving Lith alone.

  The burns kept piling up, until the pain became unbearable. Lith was forced to use light fusion to regenerate the parts of his body that were too damaged, while cutting off the pain receptors with dark magic to avoid impairing his focus and movements.

  "Where the heck is Linjos?" He tried to yell, but the hot air had injured even his throat. His voice came out as a raspy hiss, before he started to cough uncontrollably, falling on his knees while gasping for air.

  Yurial immediately came to Lith's side, attempting to treat the most severe injuries without draining too much of his life force.

  "You can't keep up like this, it's a suicidal move." Yurial was horrified.

  Most of Lith's upper body was now exposed, burned beyond recognition. His arms and back, which he had used to cover his vitals, had flakes of skin falling down at his every movement, revealing the bloody muscle tissue underneath.

  "I don't know how can you handle so much pain without going crazy, but you need to rest, or you will die!"

  "Thanks, man." Lith appreciated him being so concerned about him to be blind to the truth.

  "But if I stop, we'll all die. Or do you have a god in the family that we can call upon for actual help?" Lith smiled, patting Yurial's shoulder before attacking the next group of cracks.

  In the new world, religions were a relic of the past, whose only remnants were the old gods' names, used either as exclamations or swear words. Since humans had discovered magic, they had stopped believing in superstitions and devoted their passion and faith in the mystical arts.

  Even the so called "six gods of magic", one for each element, weren't considered real deities. They referred to the first mages that not only mastered the power of the elements, but also left behind their legacy, allowing their knowledge to spread and be shared instead of getting lost after their demise.

  Lith's words were meant to remember Yurial that it was useless to stay idle and hope for help. He was no hero; his actions weren't a selfless sacrifice for a bunch of strangers and an old coot.

  He was simply doing the only thing he could in a time of crisis, creating a path for himself and his friends to survive an unjust fate.

  For the second time in less than a week, Yurial felt stupid for choosing the Warden specialization. Even if he had started casting a fire protection array from the moment Rudd had warned them of the danger, he would had never finished it in time.

  Yet he swallowed down his self-pity. Lith constantly needed healing and energy, hence Yurial focused on keeping close to him, assisting whenever he could, to at least lessen his burden.

  Finally, help arrived. Linjos and several Professors entered the class, using an artifact to completely clear the door's surroundings from spatial fissures. Lith's group moved towards them, to escape the death trap.

  Yet the ray of hope quickly turned into despair. The students closer to the exit went into a frenzy, trying to force their way out even at the cost of trampling others. During the struggle that ensued, a girl pushed all those around her away conjuring a powerful gust of wind.

  One of her victims ended up colliding with a spatial crack, triggering a chain reaction that quickly spread to the whole training hall. Cursing mankind stupi
dity, Lith dashed forward, dodging people and explosions alike.

  Then, something hard crashed against his chest with the strength of a cannonball. The combined pain from the impact and the burns almost made him lose consciousness, and because of that, Lith didn't manage to change his trajectory.

  The hit sent him against one of the still open fissures, that seemed to swallow him whole before tinging his world red.

  Chapter 128 Severance

  The moment Lith collided with the spatial crack, he knew that something horrible would happen. Twisting and turning his body despite the blinding agony, Lith managed to use air magic to avoid crashing head first against it.

  But with the little margin he had, and the feeble energy he managed to muster, avoiding the fissure entirely was impossible. His left arm penetrated it up to the head of the humerus, giving him the feeling that someone had thrown a massive boulder from a cliff, but not before gluing his left hand to it.

  It was like every single cell in his arm had been put into a blender filled with gasoline and a flint. It stretched endlessly in the deformed space, appearing and disappearing multiple times from different spatial cracks, before they finally closed down under the effect of Linjos' artifact.

  The result was that both Lith and his left arm were finally free from the dimensional vise. But while he was still where he had fallen, the arm was about twenty meters (66') away, cleanly cut from the shoulder with inhuman precision.

  Lith's world turned red when his mind went beyond the pain and the blood gushing out of the stump, realizing what had happened. No matter how many times he had mentally simulated the event in the past, the shock of the amputation almost overwhelmed him.

  Almost.

  Emitting an outraged roar rather than a scream of pain, Lith used what energy he had left to stop the bleeding, before his body collapsed due to the accumulated damage.

  The group had stopped in its tracks since their friend had been knocked down by a tower shield, ripped off the hands of his owner by the same explosion that turned it into a deadly bullet.