NOVEL NEXT Chapter 155: Twisting
It had been nearly a year since Gom Huteyn had sent out Pyek to find the disturbance. The lieutenant hadn't returned, and the disturbance hadn't gone away. The Ghirrar's twisting had only gotten worse.
He sat down at the sole table in his chamber, holding his misty head in his hands and staring forward. Pyek had surely died. If the disturbance was strong enough to destroy Pyek, it was strong enough to jeopardize the entire harvesting effort.
The disturbance was a challenge. Huteyn couldn't back down, not until he finally defeated it.
Worse, that city of theirs, the stronghold they called Centralis, was finishing their wall. The city would become infinitely more resilient to attack.
It wasn't supposed to be this difficult. It almost never was. He'd harvested nearly thirty wandering worlds, and they all fell easily—within a few years or so. Perhaps it took a few decades afterward to finish consuming the planet and harvesting its resources, but the dominant lifeform never recovered from its initial defeat.
A door slowly slid open behind him, and another demon-spirit lingered by the doorway, staring into the coordination room with his glowing orange eyes. The coordination room would usually hold fifty lieutenants, all under Gom Huteyn's direct command. From the very top of his sphere, he would assess his harvesting progress and send lieutenants out to directly control the colossal fiends.
"Khinna Gom Huteyn," said the messenger, "You requested a progress report? I bear good news. The First Moon is ready to crack."
"Excellent," Huteyn said. The misty black outlines of his lips quirked up into a smirk. "I have a wondrous spectacle planned for these…pathetic beings. They don't know true despair yet, but I will show them what it feels like. Gather the fiends from the desert, but hold off. They must march on Centralis. Prevent them from finishing their wall. Only crack the moon once the demons arrive. They will witness the full extent of our superiority."
"Will you lead the charge, Khinna?"
Huteyn considered for a moment. He wanted to, he felt inextricably called to, but he was no lesser demon-spirit. He held his composure. If he ventured into battle, he would feel compelled to finish the fight, even against his better judgement. There was a chance they didn't prevail, and that meant there was a chance he died, and couldn't extricate himself from the situation.
"Not yet. It is not time," he said. "Send the fiends, and grind that city into dust."
~ ~ ~
Transmuting ingredients to finish the wall didn't provide Wulf nearly as much mana as other powerful transmutations did, but with the constant accumulation of mana, he was drawing closer and closer to Silver every day, even if it was sometimes only by a single percent.
As the days went by, the wall grew. Where before, Wulf couldn't see the foundations, he could now see an enormous base of a wall just beneath the waves, with internal bricks and stacks reaching up above the waves. They had to build two walls, one on each side of the strait, to finish a circular curtail wall around the city, but each of the walls was almost a mirror image of the other. There was a gate at the center for ships to pass through, but a massive portcullis would stop most ocean-borne threats if the city chose to close it.
As he worked through High-Iron, he continued expanding his core with the Star Hearts, and the four of them shared their use of it—once they all set their baseline Strength and Durability. They couldn't expand their cores with it as much as Wulf could, since they couldn't fuel the constructs like he could. Where he could drink a potion and direct his aura into the Hearts, filling them with the Field, then pulling mana out into his storage core and expanding it, the others could only use their own mana.
That is, unless Wulf left them something behind when he handed the cores over. They simply pulled mana in and out of the cores, and used the constant push and pull to expand their storage.
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They also didn't need as much storage as he did, though. For them, the withdrawal was more important, as the Hearts' special ability enhanced their strength and durability.
The others hadn't managed to set their baseline anywhere near as high as Wulf had, but he made three potions for them each—two strength, one durability, which meant lots of potion crafting and not nearly as many successes as he would've liked. But eventually, he got lucky, and ended up with enough potions for all of them.
Two thirds quarters of the way through the semester, during an evening of transmutation work, he reached Silver.
[By performing many transmutations, your mana has increased. Advancement progress: 100.1%]
[You have increased your Tier to Low-Silver.]
[You may upgrade one Skill and one Mark.]
Wulf saved picking his Skill upgrade until he returned to the academy that evening, but he chose to upgrade his [Spirit Slayer] Mark before he left.
When he made it back to the Academy, he checked his bracer. There were no options for Skill upgrades, except for a list of Skills. He wouldn't know what it did before selecting the upgrade, but it was almost never bad, and he'd been dedicated in his studies. The Field would surely give him something useful.
He considered the Skills he didn't really use, and of the list, he'd say he used [Deadline] the least. So many of his potions were quick-acting already.
But a Skill upgrade had the potential to make the Skill much more useful. With a push of intent, if selected [Deadline] for his Skill upgrade.
[Skill Upgraded: Deadline]
[Deadline] You can immediately detonate any poisonous effects on an enemy, doubling the effect strength for every hour the effect has remaining and triggering it in an instant. If an enemy is killed by this Skill, releases a pulse of resonance that damages anything nearby. Damage dealt increases proportional to the potency of the effect.
Wulf nodded. A small upgrade to the Skill, which was better than nothing, but it'd let him do insane damage to crowds—if he could time it right.
Or if he could hit them with a strong enough poison.
He kept working. Throughout the semester, about three quarters of the way through, he reached Middle-Silver.
By his understanding, the leap between Iron and Silver was the last easy jump. Next time he advanced his element—say, from High-Silver to Low-Gold, or from High-Gold to Low-Ruby—he couldn't just do it through accumulation of mana. There was a trick to it, and it'd take…a more complex alteration of his form. With it came more rewards from the advancement, such as the usual refining of your aspect, which, for most Ascendants, happened at Gold.
(There were, of course, some who the Field gave an aspect refinement to early, like Leo, but they were much rarer. When Wulf had asked Dr. Arnau, she said it could happen for a variety of reasons, though it wasn't something to strive for. There was lots of risk for no reward.)
But the intermediate stages, like Low-Silver to Middle-Silver, were easy enough to reach simply by completing tasks related to your Class.
Three quarters of the way through the semester, when he was making potions to drink, and thus, fuel the Star Hearts, he increased his tier again.
[By crafting many potions, your mana has increased. Advancement progress: 100.5%]
[You have increased your Tier to Middle-Silver.]
[You may upgrade one Skill and one Mark.]
This time, he selected [Bastion]. It wasn't that Bastion was useless—in fact, it was probably the opposite; he'd gotten lots of use out of the Skill—but that he used it so much that upgrading it would be effective for the long-term.
Mentally, he selected [Bastion] for his next upgrade.
[Skill Upgraded: Bastion]
[Bastion] Your strength, durability, and mana-sense increase for every person within a mile under the effect of your potions.
Mana sense. He hadn't considered that before, considering how bad his mana-sense had been in his last life. But it was simply an Ascendant's ability to sense the mana of others, sense the Skills of others, and identify their rank without even looking.
In a fight, he understood the usefulness of being able to sense an incoming Skill, or even someone preparing. He just didn't know what it would feel like.
Perhaps not the most useful upgrade, but he wouldn't say no to it. The Field obviously thought he needed it.
When he reached the end of the semester and exam break began, the wall was now entirely out of the water on one side of the harbour. On the other side, it was mostly out of the water, with tall spires reaching almost the full height of the rest of the wall across the city. By the end of next semester, they'd have it finished.
Which made it all the more horrible when, halfway through his exam for Cockpit Readouts, the city bells began tolling in alarm. People shouted outside the lecture theater, and ran out into the hallways beyond.
No way was Wulf just sitting there. Something was happening. He threw down his quill and ran outside to look.