NOVEL NEXT Chapter 124 - Disorder
"One more time. We have almost broken through," Aoife said between pants, her face reddened by exhaustion and matted with sweat. Archie nodded, in a similar state, but with his hands on his hips as he leaned slightly backward, breathing heavily.
'Let me just try the runic script once more,' Archie signed as he took out his Runic Scriber, tilting his head to look at Aoife, who nodded in response, focusing on trying to catch her breath.
"Will it be like last time?" Aoife asked while staring at the singed and hastily reinforced root and dirt floor.
'Hopefully not,' Archie replied, using mana constructs to reply. 'The protections imbued within the wall were too strong, and the explosion took the path of least resistance, aka our direction.'
Archie took two steps forward toward the bleach-white sandstone brick wall, and both he and Aoife had spent the past hour trying to break through. He exhaled sharply, eyes tracing the web of fractures now spreading across its surface as he rolled the Runic Scriber between his fingers.
Unlike before, when the only visible sign of progress was slightly red and soot-covered bricks, the entire wall was now covered with spiderweb-like cracks. And their last attempt had managed to create a small hole just large enough for a finger to fit through.
'If I place it around here, it should explode in the direction where we hit it,' Archie continued, pointing at the small hole with the tip of his Runic Scriber.
"…Should?" Aoife repeated, her concern evident. The last time Archie had etched runic script onto the wall and they struck it, they had been blasted backward, damaging the reinforced remains of their tunnel. Their ears had rung for twenty straight minutes before the sound finally faded.
'I meant will,' Archie signed, glancing over his shoulder at Aoife with a poker face. But as he turned back to the cracked wall, his smile turned into a guilty frown in less than a second, and his composure vanished. I hope.
Composing himself once more, Archie began to etch a Detonation runic script around the small hole both he and Aoife managed to create after an hour of constant attempts to break through.
The Detonation runic script he was currently etching was a lesser-moderate quality one, or that's what it was called when he'd first etched it onto the wall. However, as he observed the script, he was met with a surprise.
A welcome one.
Skill Upgrade: Identify (Initiate → Common)]
Identify (Common):
A slightly more advanced identification skill, given to all the myriad races. The skill allows you to see the history of items and identify creatures. When examining the history of runic items, you can now detect the quality of the etched runes. Limited to your Racial Grade Limit.
It had been well over two months since he'd first gained the skill. Since then, he'd been using it left and right on anything he could, so for it to now upgrade meant that he had to have fulfilled some type of requirement for it to upgrade.
It was something he would have to research once he was no longer two and a half kilometers underground and a good enough distance away from the Netharim Sovereignty.
Archie's furrowed brows eased as he finished etching the mana pathways connecting the Fire Runic Base to the Wind Runic Base's amplifier, which was linked to the Earth Runic Base's grounding circuit.
He then watched as the entire Detonation runic script glowed before sinking into the wall. Activating Gaze of the Forgefather, he checked and confirmed that it had succeeded and that this time, it could absorb attacks.
He'd come up with this design based on the principles of combustion, where the buildup and release of energy mimicked the type of combustion you would normally see in a combustion engine, but far greater.
The Fire Runic Base acted as the ignition spark, converting the stored mana from both Aoife and his own strikes into an intense burst of heat, boosted by his own Embergrasp Gauntlets.
While that alone would have been a good idea, it would have taken far too long for the wall to get hot enough for it to get superheated and for them to shield bash through it, so he thought it would be better to use a Wind transformer.
Which, in Archie's opinion, was far more difficult than he had expected. He ultimately chose to give up on making a Wind transformer, as the ones he attempted to etch required physical components to work rather than mana pathways that used resistors, transistors, capacitors, and so on.
While he was sure-definitely sure that runic transistor scripts existed, his knowledge of how to create one was severely lacking. And that was entirely his own fault for not experimenting with runes when he had the time, as basic transistors were simple to scribble down on paper, but translating them into a runic script was far more complicated than what he expected.
So, instead, he used an amplifier circuit, based around the Wind Runic Base instead. Because in Archie's own words; Fuck it, we ball.
And finally, the last circuit connecting the two was the grounding circuit, using an Earth Runic Base. This stabilized the process of storing and then releasing energy in a controlled detonation. As a result, the rune should, hopefully, not explode on the first strike but instead build up until it reaches maximum capacity, at which point Archie would amplify it with Runic Amplification to hopefully create enough extra power to either melt the wall or burst it open.
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Sending his Runic Scriber back into his spatial storage, Archie took out another Potion of Mana and a Potion of Stamina and quickly knocked them back down. He'd wanted to be as topped off as possible just in case something happened that would require him to need that extra bit of mana or stamina.
Now with a fully topped off mana reserve, Archie wiped his brow and got back into a close-range boxer's stance, while Aoife tightened her grip on her pickaxe.
Reactivating their boosting skills, both of them once more became wreathed in color-tinged steam, a light red for Archie and a dull gray for Aoife.
As if on cue, Archie and Aoife shot forward, unleashing a flurry of blows.
Archie's flame-wreathed fists struck the soot-stained, cracked sandstone brick wall with a burning intensity that rose with every third punch, only for the flames that wreathed his fists to double in size. An indicator that Archie had just activated Runic Amplification on his Embergrasp Gauntlets, which was currently empowering Ember's Embrace.
Aoife's dull grey Deepiron Pickaxe hammered into the cracked sandstone brick wall just as Archie's fists pulled away, leaving no time for the wall to recover from their blows.
Within seconds, the soot-covered, cracked wall began to glow a molten red around the small hole, evidence of the intense heat and force behind their strikes.
And as minutes passed by, the molten red circle around the small hole grew two feet in diameter.
Archie's embered eyes remained fixed on the Detonation runic script's mana pathways that started to shake and twitch as the amount of mana being flooded within its pathways had long since surpassed the limit a lesser-moderate quality runic script could handle.
As such, Archie glanced at Aoife, who immediately picked up on his signal and cut off her flow of mana and leaped away to the back of the reinforced wall three meters away from the wall that now had a molten red circle around two and a half feet in diameter.
Archie swiftly deactivated Runic Amplification on his Embergrasp Gauntlets and leaped backward. At the same time, he conjured an extended mana string infused with Runic Amplification, reaching toward the now visible, glowing red Detonation runic script.
Archie felt Aoife reach out, grab the back of his gorget with her left full-cast cybernetic arm, and yank him toward her as she swiftly deployed her Deepiron Scutum. She slammed its butt onto the ground, covering the area around them in a monochromatic glow - just seconds before the blast.
BOOM!
Both Archie and Aoife ducked under the shield just as a massive eruption of flame and fire detonated in front of them, rattling the defenses Aoife erected once Archie stood beside her, covered by her Deepiron Scutum.
The deafening blast rang in their ears, and shook Archie's bones, while searing heat licked at his skin, leaving second-degree burns across his cheeks and setting light patches of his headdress ablaze.
Archie felt Vital Metabolism spread across his face and feet, accelerating the regeneration of his skin and muscles from the second- and third-degree burns inflicted by the Lesser-Moderate Detonation runic script, which had exploded just three meters away from where he and Aoife stood, crouched behind her Deepiron Scutum.
As the ringing in his ears faded, healed by Vital Metabolism, Archie's soot-covered, freshly healed pinkish face peeked over Aoife's shield. A toothy, soot-streaked, maniacal grin spread across his face.
A large, gaping hole, three meters in diameter, stood before them. Its edges glowed molten red, and the surrounding stone and dirt were scorched and seared by the explosive force.
They had done what no other Yndrosian soldier had managed to achieve in the past twenty-three years: break into the Netharim Sovereignty's Border Wall Barracks.
Picking up a discarded article of clothing from a chest beside a bunk bed, Archie flung it behind him before pushing open the chest and rummaging through its contents.
He pocketed a couple of Silver coins and absentmindedly tossed a moldy bagel over his shoulder, uncaring that it landed on the bunk bed behind him. Standing back up, he cleansed his right hand with a quick pulse of Ember's Embrace, the flames scorching away any grime.
Deactivating the enchantment, Archie lifted the back of his headdress and scratched his head, his gaze sweeping the room once more in search of another chest.
All around him were messy bunk beds, draped in dirty clothes, tangled bed sheets, and storage chests in front of every bunk bed. The disorder honestly confused him; back on Earth, military beds were always made with perfect precision, and according to a whole lot of war movies and his grandpops' army stories, if they weren't perfect, they'd be punished.
And depending on how much of a hard-ass your Room Leader or a higher commanding officer was, you could end up doing hours of extra duties - or worse, Sweat Sessions. From the way his grandpops described it, it sounded like Satan himself was kinder than what the sergeants would put you through if you messed up.
Making his way towards Aoife, who neared the teleporters, Archie gave a couple of glances towards some of the storage chests that were left slightly ajar and quickly scanned them for any valuables before pocketing them.
Their fault for not locking their stuff down, Archie smirked as he approached Aoife, who neatly laid out a set of Border Guard Uniforms beside the storage chest she was looking through.
As he neared, Aoife closed the storage chest and handed Archie a Border Guard Uniform. "Change into these."
'Why?' Archie wrote out using mana constructs, while holding the uniform Aoife passed him.
"We cannot break through the wall as we did before," Aoife said, her eyes flicking back toward the massive hole they had created. "They would capture us in an instant if we tried to tunnel through again, even if we collapsed it."
"If we're going to escape, it'll have to be through the teleporters," Aoife said, her gaze fixed on the array of teleportation platforms before them. "And that means dealing with the Border Guards, which means we need to look the part if we don't want to stand out."
The section of the wall they had broken through led into one of its basement levels - specifically, Barracks Number 23 of the Southern Wall District. It also housed about seventy-three thousand troops, or at least, that was the assumption Archie and Aoife made based on the plaque they had found above the teleporter:
Southern Wall District
Barracks No.23
Maximum Number of Occupants: 3,000
And on the teleporter's console, it displayed a total of twenty-four other options under the Barracks section. Which, with a bit of quick math, totaled seventy-five thousand, assuming that all rooms had the same number of maximum occupants.
While yes, even when not wearing his armor, he'd retain the stats he'd benefit from having them on due to the Soul-Bound rune he'd placed on it, tying his equipment to his soul.
"It's gonna feel a bit weird being out of the armor," Archie remarked with an uncomfortable expression. He'd been wearing armor ever since his Integration into the System.
Grimacing at the Border Guard uniform, Archie looked back at Aoife, who looked at the showering rooms on their right. "You can change first," Archie suggested. "I'll scavenge for a bit more before changing into this monkey suit."