NOVEL NEXT Chapter 409 – Start of the 3rd Trial
POV Black Tower
Something moves on the edge of our detection web and I quickly send a signal to the headquarters and reposition to another balcony with stronger defenses. Mieru’s already waiting.
“What did you see?” he asks me quickly.
“I don't know yet, but I asked the headquarters to check it.”
After a while, a signal comes back with a declaration of danger level 5, the lowest one. It seems they think it might be a monster.
“Did you get scared of a tiny little monster? Did you…” Mieru doesn't finish his words and disappears from my sight.
I turn to the right and find his body, head pierced through with a javelin and pinned deep into the reinforced wall.
Something like this shouldn't…
Whistling noises pierce the air along with something like a crack of lightning and then the world turns black.
POV Black Tower
The signal indicates a danger level 2, just a few seconds after it was declared level 5. Very serious, most likely another group attacking us.
“What the hell!” someone shouts pointing with a finger.
I follow the direction of his gaze and there, suspended high in the air, are a multitude of huge stones. Each of them is as big as a building but they look as if they weigh nothing.
Then they start falling at an ever-increasing speed.
“Barriers!”
“Someone shoot them!”
“Activate defenses!”
Multiple orders are given at once, but it's all for naught, because the sheer inertia and weight of the stones breaks through our hastily constructed defenses, breaking through multiple walls and buildings.
Afterward, a rain of blue flames drops from the sky.
The only thing they burn is people, causing no damage at all to anything else.
“Where are the guards? Why are barriers not in place? Why…”
From the rubble, steps a single woman. Her expression is unnervingly calm even as she strides through the destruction and mayhem.
Beautiful blue armor envelops her body as a sword of radiant blue mana materializes in her hand. A few javelins hover just above her shoulders, while a small shield, also made of mana, rests in her other hand.
A few guys work together in well practiced formation and a disrupting wave crashes against her to no avail. She just shakes it off.
With the same expression on her face, the armor turns darker blue and she disappears from my sight, the floor cracking under her feet.
The world around me spins and I watch as my headless body falls to the ground while the woman moves on to someone else.
POV Black Tower
“What’s happening here? Where are the barriers? Why…” I freeze and look around.
The control room is completely trashed, barely anything remains in one piece. It's almost like something exploded in here and the bodies of the assholes that were supposed to be defending it have been scattered about in unceremonious heaps. Standing in the middle of the room is a single creature.
It’s small, barely reaching my knees, and is it wearing clothes?
I manipulate my mana, and spikes made from the densest earth I can muster pierce the ground. Behind me, I hear others rushing in, just as surprised as I am.
Purple mana surrounds the creature and it turns to us.
An astounding amount of mana radiates from it and moves to a single point where it compresses into an orb which quickly turns white. The last thing I hear is someone calling me an asshole.
POV Black Tower
“I would start running if I were you.”
“Yeah dickhead, run away.”
“Shut up, both of you!” I scream at the twins. Unlike our other prisoners, they can’t seem to stop giggling while this chaos ensues.
“Oriel, what’s happening?” asks one of the good-for-nothings I’m working with.
“Fuck if I know, we’re under attack. Danger level 1.”
“Is it really that fucking bad?”
“Of course it is, you dumb fuck, now shut…”
The doors open and I redirect my weapon, but the newcomer is Kelen, who’s supposed to be keeping guard just outside.
“What are you doing here? Any further orders?” I ask her.
She shakes her head and glances over at the annoying twins. She even smiles for a moment and takes a few steps towards me.
“What do you want?” I ask, letting mana seep into my body.
As she puts her hand on me I look down at her.
Why are her eyes a different color than usual?
Before I can react, gray mana flashes out of her, and then, nothing.
POV Black Tower
The wave of mana encompasses the entire building with a speed that surprises even me and it starts interfering with our defenses.
Out of the windows, I see flashes of lightning, and any one of our men who tries to escape finds themselves pinned by lightning-fast javelins. They move at such speed they break through any defense. They even come from so far and yet no one seems capable of detecting them.
The control room for the defensive array is destroyed, I'm getting no signal from guards on the walls. Everything is a fucking mess.
“Defend the entrance, I will activate the array and we’ll escape. Plaid, go and take the emergency rations and as much as you can from the treasury.”
I turn away and start working on the array leading to Bone Fortress. Those scaly midgets will surely make me eat it, but it's better than the other option.
While I’m working on that I notice that something seems to be wrong with the array. It still works and we can move to Bone Fortress but teleportation from the Bone Fortress to here seems to have been disabled on their end.
Weird.
“Why are you not fucking moving…” I ask, turning back to the room realizing that I can’t hear them working on the evacuation. Even the treasury and emergency rations are still locked.
As if frozen in time, all of them stand with their eyes wide open. All ten of my strongest men.
Then, one after another, they start killing themselves.
One grabs a dagger and stabs it into his eye. Another one detonates a fire orb in his own face. Another starts tearing chunks out of his neck with his bare hands, blood flowing from the wounds like a waterfall.
Plaid seems to be trying to fight it but even he fails in this task and I watch as he grabs his head and starts twisting until he breaks his own neck.
Then I feel the pressure reach toward me. I find myself unable to move, and at the same time, lightning pierces through one of the walls - something that shouldn’t be possible.
My skill activates, and dozens of my invisible mana arms move, slowing the lightning down and defending me against another attack from behind.
I protect my mind and, with a lot of effort, push that presence away. What is a mind mage even doing here? I thought they were all locked in their own goddamn city in the central region.
Ignoring the items or rations I jump through the active array and destroy it so they can’t follow behind.
Appearing in the Bone Fortress I stop in shock.
Most of the room is melted and destroyed, there I find the remains of the scaly midgets I once knew, and all of them are very dead.
My senses extend throughout the entire fortress, but only a few seem to be alive. Buildings all over the fortress have been destroyed, cut cleanly to pieces, and evaporated, and just these few presences remain, hiding in the city. And the kicker is that all of this seems to have been done with extreme cold-blooded efficiency.
By the man in the room with me. A man standing with his back turned to me next to the rib bone that makes up an entire wall of the room.
At his feet is a pile of bone shards. The amount of which would have taken the entire fortress weeks, maybe months to produce. An immense amount of wealth.
And that man ignores me and continues to cut with a dagger made out of mana.
“Just a moment and I’ll get to you.”
Too shocked to react I continue building up my defenses.
He has some sort of crown and I can't identify which, but it doesn’t matter. In one versus one combat against someone within my reach, I don't think I will lose.
“Thanks for waiting,” he says, finally turning around.
His eyes, one brown and the other gray, reflect a calm expression, barely showing any emotion.
So, is he a concentration skill user as well?
“You know, it was rude of you to destroy the array right after you used it. I get that you did it to keep them from following, but it's annoying nonetheless.”
My attack crashes against his barrier and then another and another one. He blocks all of them while keeping that same calm expression on his face.
His mana moves and crashes into my own barrier, immediately followed by the most powerful attempts to disrupt it I’ve ever felt in my life. I barely manage to endure and face it with my own counterattack, contesting his attempts until they nullify each other.
A dozen projectiles shoot away from his body and I weave the air around me, making them miss and crash right behind me.
I reach for the amulet and break it, as an immense amount of mana I had stored floods the area around my body. I create a hundred invisible arms of mana and reach through the air. Some of them tear chunks from the ground and throw them at him, others attack him directly. The arms are impossible to see with the naked eye and I know how terrifying they are.
I aim for the neck, some of the arms turning sharp and thrusting for the jugular, and others go to grab his limbs. They cannot be seen, they cannot be sensed and they cannot be disrupted.
Golden circles appear in the man’s eyes and in an instant, multiple layers of dark blue barriers surround him, creating a spherical defense.
I create disrupting orbs and fire them off as well; they splash against the barrier and stick to it, slowly corroding it. It’s only a question of time as I get to him and my arms also pummel against the barrier.
“That’s surprising, I can’t even see or sense your attack. What’s the name of that skill?” he asks.
Ignoring him, I push further and break another amulet, more mana surrounding me and powering my arms.
Good, in terms of mana, I should win. Just a bit longer and…
The air shakes and reverberates. The barrier around him crumbles as if under immense pressure and the crown over his head disappears as well, causing even more mana to radiate from him.
He lifts his hand and a small orb hovers over it, the amount of mana it contains sending a shiver down my spine. That mana is being quickly compressed with astonishing speed and control. The orb turns pitch black and even from where I am, I feel my mana being pulled away. I find myself unable to move at all, held by some skill of his.
My mana arms disappear at shocking speed, the mana they contain sucked into the orb as it hungrily devours everything in its reach. There is no stopping it.
The barrier on my skin cracks and gets sucked in as well, the remaining amulets on my person breaking as the mana is torn free and absorbed.
With a final surge of effort, I use what remains, trying to disrupt the orb, but it’s futile. The orb absorbs everything, leaving me utterly depleted. My vision blurs, the edges darkening as the last of my mana leaves me, mere scraps remaining inside my body.
He doesn’t even look at me, instead observing the black orb he made.
I feel a thud in my chest and looking down, half my body is missing. Falling to the ground, my eyes stay on the ceiling until it blacks out.
Nathaniel’s POV
After dealing with the dude, I watch the array, but no one comes through, which confirms my suspicion that he blocked it before he came here.
He couldn’t have been the leader of the Black Tower, could he? He was terribly weak and other than an invisible attack that would have made a nice party trick and the corrosive orbs he stuck to my barriers, he didn’t show much.
I open the community.
Sset (Hell, group 4) - you got him? The leader escaped and he destroyed the array.
Noname (Hell, group 4) - I got the guy, no problems here. Your side?
Sset (Hell, group 4) - everything here is fine. NotAaron and NotDennis are safe, Knight and Grumpy are mopping up the rest. I had Soph check the array, but she doesn’t think she could fix it.
Noname (Hell, group 4) - that’s fine then. Say hello to the others, I’ll be doing the 3rd trial as planned.
Sset (Hell, group 4) - will do. Take care.
I close the Community and turn my attention to the black orb. I still don’t plan to use it for a while, even though I’ve come to realize that I was relying on that black mana too much. Even so, I wanted to test it before the 3rd trial to know what to expect in case I’m forced to use it.
And it exceeded expectations. I used a lot of mana to do it, even by my standards, but it was easier to create and control than before.
It also dealt with that weak guy’s mana in seconds, with no trouble at all, pulling it from a greater distance than before and even from the skin.
Lissandra said that if I relied on black mana then any mana user would be at a huge disadvantage compared to me, and it is getting more and more confirmed.
When I glance at the corpse of the man, I can’t help but feel disappointed.
Wouldn't Tess, Sophie, or Lily be capable of winning a 1v1 fight against someone of his level if they leveled up a bit more?
Was he just that weak, or are they just strong?
I move over to him and search his body.
Finding a few epic items on him, I quickly sell them to the shop and then find a pocket very deep under the ground. There, I store all of my items with the exception of Flamebearer, some supplies, my epic water storage vial, and a few less valuable things.
Waiting for a while, I let my mana fully replenish and then I use the token.
The world around me spins until the surroundings change leaving me in a jungle-like area. The trees surrounding me towering high into the sky, their trunks as thick as buildings. The gravity around me increases, pressing me against the ground and the air is hot and humid, my body sweating immediately.
I catch flashes of flying monsters through the branches as their screeches echo from everywhere around me.
Welcome to the last trial, after which you will be able to enter Beyond.
I check the quest and reward.
Beyond’s third trial quest: Hunt the king of the forest
Quest Rewards: Beyond Three-Day Stay Token