NOVEL NEXT Chapter 195: Shattered
Wulf and Dr. Tallari hung back, keeping to the shadows as Kalee, Irmond, and Seith approached the academy's main codex room.
Four Iron-tier Academy guards in red gambesons stood in the hallway, holding spears and halberds, but they were only the first line of defense. If something was wrong, they were supposed to signal to the rest of the academy—and to warn the guild Ascendants keeping closer watch within the codex room itself.
"Stop right there!" one of the guards said. "Announce yourselves."
"They're just students," another said.
"They're fourth years," the first guard replied. "Golds. Three of them."
"Sorry," Kalee said, purposely panting. "We heard something that sounded like an explosion. A pulse of energy coming from down here?"
That was a lie, of course. But these guards had to vouch for them. The guards slowly lowered their weapons. The first guard who spoke said, "We've heard no such thing. It must have been somewhere else. Please leave. You're not authorized to be here."
"Wait, look!" Irmond exclaimed, pointing down the hallway flicking his hand out. He flung two tiny metal pulser constructs down the hallway, but he moved so fast, and propelled them with a burst of wind, that the guards didn't see.
The pulsers detonated, creating what seemed like an unstable burst of energy coming from the codex room. The guards stumbled back, but they looked in the direction Irmond was pointing.
While they were distracted, Seith set up a small lightning construct, set it on the ground, and activated it. Shocks of lightning surged through the hallway, interfering with the guards' communication constructs. Before they could react to the new pulse, Kalee held up her staff and triggered a spell Skill. Four orange runic circles lit up beneath the guards. Gravity increased, slamming them to the ground and knocking them unconscious.
"Go," Wulf whispered. He and Dr. Tallari ran along the side of the hallway, extinguishing candles as they ran, until they reached the main codex hall.
Already, the guild guards were running around, scrambling to face the threat, but Wulf and Dr. Tallari veiled themselves. Without even looking at their rank badges, Wulf's arcane senses told him that all the guards were Irons or Silvers, except three Golds.
He and the professor hid in a shaded alcove, keeping their heads down. Wulf set the construct down on the ground. "Alright," Wulf whispered. "Should be easy enough. This construct…we won't even have to load it manually if I do it right."
A pair of guards ran right past them, entering the hallway outside. Wulf heard Irmond, Seith, and Kalee pressing the same story as before, but the guards were getting increasingly more non-believing.
But their attention was still focused on the hallway outside. There were only a few guards who stayed behind, as well as a Silver-tier guild artificer. These guards wore the livery of the Hunters Guild—fur cloaks, and a skull sigil of some long-extinct giant lizard. They were one of the five Orichalcum guilds, and they did much more than hunt. They had a monopoly on almost all the cargo shipping in the northern seas.
Wulf was pretty sure their Orichalcum was the muscular woman in the fur cloak, but he couldn't say for sure. He also couldn't say what exactly they wanted to erase from the codex, but that didn't matter.
"I'll just put this here…" Wulf muttered, placing the construct down on the ground. He flexed his fingers preparing to fill it with twice the normal amount of mana.
"Wait, Hrothen," Dr. Tallari hissed. "Look. They're still modifying a set of storage crystals."
On the other side of the room, the Silver-tier Artificer was chiselling away at a set of crystals.
"We can still take them," Wulf said.
"Have my lessons taught you nothing?" Tallari snapped. "You move a codex crystal halfway through a modification, or Field forbid, you stop carving for too long, and the crystal will shatter. The wave of resonance will actually destroy the rest of the codex. Nevermind that I don't trust these brutes to seal off their rune-lines properly."
"Sorry, sir," Wulf whispered. "I was being too hasty."
"I'll distract him and disconnect the crystal," Dr. Tallari said. "And replace it with a backup."
"They'll see you."
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"Which is why you need to be ready to activate your storage construct. Your friends won't be able to distract them for much longer."
"Professor—"
Before Wulf could protest, Dr. Tallari took off at a sprint, charging across the room. One of the guards shouted, "Hey! Stop there, professor!"
A Silver charged toward Dr. Tallari, but Wulf popped open a vial of poison and used [Arm of the Alchemist], creating a jet that knocked the woman back.
Dr. Tallari skidded to a halt in front of the in-modification crystal, then punched the Artificer hard enough to send the man skidding along the ground. Dr. Tallari snatched up the man's crystal-marking awl and a small hammer, then began chiselling a new set of runes into the crystals on the shelf.
Wulf breathed a sigh of relief, but it didn't last long. Another guard, a Mage, held up her staff. Water swirled up in a cyclone around her, drawn out from the humid Centralis air, and whirled into a destructive jet around her. Already, the water etched away at the floor, digging a small crevice.
If that hit Dr. Tallari or one of the crystals, they were done for.
Wulf grimaced, then opened his normal storage pendant and withdrew his golem, then donned it as quickly as he could. He charged out of the shade, catching an Iron tier guard across the chest with an outstretched arm and flinging the man back toward the central crystal. The man's back cracked against the crystal. Lightning surged around him, and in a matter of seconds, his body vapourised into red mist.
Wulf's eyes went wide. He hadn't planned on killing anyone tonight.
But there was no time to hesitate. He jumped in front of Dr. Tallari, holding his arms up to protect his body, then angled himself.
The water Mage's attack glanced off his forearms, deflecting to the side, then smashed into the codex's central crystal.
The Mage was only a Gold, but the attack etched a crack in the surface of the Messenger-containing crystal.
A spiderweb of cracks raced over the surface of the crystal, then it shattered. Emerald-green liquid surged out, and bolts of lightning arced across the room, incinerating the nearest guild guards. Wulf jumped in front of Dr. Tallari. Droplets of liquid pelted off his back and a bolt of lightning turned his shoulder panel into dust, but he withstood the impact.
Another bolt crashed into the Mage, striking her in the heart, and she fell still, dead on the spot.
There were no more guards, but without their central power, all the crystals dimmed and stopped hovering on their shelves. They fell down with a harmless clink, intact but completely ineffective without their main source of power.
Wulf glanced at the professor then asked, "Did you get the runes sorted?"
"They're intact," Dr. Tallari said. "Get this inside your pendant, and go!"
Wulf ran back across the codex hall, jumping over the debris of the damaged central power crystal and the lifeless body of some hundred-, maybe thousand-year old Messenger, before sliding to a halt in front of his storage pendant.
Already, the guild guards who'd left the codex hall were shouting, "What was that!" or "What's going on in there?"
They'd be back any second.
Wulf pulled Dr. Tallari back into cover a moment later, then triggered his fifty-layer storage pendant and aimed it at the codex hall. He pumped twice the usual amount of mana into it, causing a noticeable dip in his mana supplies, and causing his own core to compress slightly.
In an instant, everything in the hall disappeared, except the dead bodies of the guild guards. The shelves, the tools, the crystals, all of it disappeared into Wulf's storage pendant. Probably some equipment from a nearby janitor's closet, too.
"Last phase," Wulf said. "Quickly. This has to look like an accident."
Dr. Tallari opened his own storage pendant, then withdrew heaps upon heaps of crystal dust. He triggered a skill, creating a surge of water and force in the back of his pendant, and it sent waves upon waves of the purple dust scattering into the hall, as if all the codex crystals had shattered at once.
The guards ran back into the hall and stopped, staring at the scene in shock. "Did…did it explode?"
"Were those kids right? Where are they? Get them back here?"
"They've already run, sir!"
"Time to go," Wulf whispered to Dr. Tallari. "They're distracted, but I don't know for how much longer."
The guards were all gathered around the central crystal, and a few of them checked the guards who'd stay behind for signs of life.
No one who saw Wulf or the professor was left alive.
Wulf and Dr. Tallari ran out into the hallway unopposed, then sprinted back to the workshop, running as quickly as they could.
When they returned, all five of them came to a halt in front of the work table. Dr. Tallari hunched over it, then, after a few seconds, began laughing. He patted his belly, then exclaimed, "Serves those bastards right! That's what they get for touching my codex!"
"Are you alright?" Kalee asked.
"What happened?" Irmond asked.
Wulf explained what had happened in the hall, and how they had staged it to look like a complete accident—with crystal dust scattered all throughout the hall, as if a surge of resonance had annihilated all the crystals.
Then, finally, he turned to Dr. Tallari and said, "Professor, without the main power crystal…is the codex useless?"
Dr. Tallari shook his head. "Not useless. The information is still there, all the same, and it's not going away. Wait ten years, ten thousand, it won't make a difference."
"But we can't access it."
"Not without another Messenger to tap directly into the Field and create a direct conduit, no."
Wulf sighed. Two steps forward, one step back.
"What now?" Seith asked.
"We need to focus on advancing, now," Wulf said. "That's what we worry about. We'll deal with the codex when we have more information. I'll try to think of something. But we still need to be strong."