NOVEL NEXT Chapter 437 – On the sand
A burst of mana surges from me and crashes into the barrier. For a moment, they collide like a tidal wave crashing into a jetty. My mana constantly shifts frequency, and in the end, it overwhelms the barrier.
The barrier bursts like a bubble, and tiny particles of blue mana fall from the air around us.
Sensing the broken barrier, the fight stops for a brief moment, and all eyes turn to me.
Blood drips from my body due to the wounds and damage caused by the interrupted teleportation and white sand, while golden flames flicker around, fueling my passive and healing me.
Even the monster, from which I can't sense any mana at all, stops, its piercing eyes turning away from Maya to me. Some sort of mental attack crashes against me but with a burst of mana, I shake it off.
[Sandwraith Marauder - lvl ???]
The monster even seems as if it repels mana. Not with the help of a skill or trait, but just because of the composition of its body.
The Marauder is humanoid and very thin, white plates cover its body like armor covered in spikes. It’s currently facing Maya, while the twins provide support nearby. Sophie is helping them too and I can sense the way she’s defending the group against some weird attack. Tess is fighting against two thylarin with two question marks, and Lily faces the rest of the people with the help of the rest of Group 4.
“You should be dead,” one of the thylarin calls with surprise.
"We made sure of that," the other one adds.
“If you think you can help the remaining two guides control the ship, deal with these two guides, maybe leave one for Sophie. We will take care of the rest,” Tess says calmly, interrupting them. Then rather than using her javelins, she surrounds her body with red and white lightning.
She crashes into the thylarin, and the fight starts anew.
I dodge a rapid stream of attacks thrown my way and blow the head off one of the random guys trying to block my path. The monster tries to charge me, but Maya grabs its arm and pulls it back, followed by the use of [Boost] to strengthen her armor against the monster’s coming attack.
The monster tries to use its strange mental attack again, but Sophie counters it, protecting the group.
Blue flames burn through the terrain, scorching our enemies around us while group 4 remains untouched by the heat.
It looks enjoyable, and I want to join the fight, but it seems like Tess did something to force these people out. Would it really be fair for me to interrupt their fun just like that? I know how annoying it is when someone does that to me.
Well, just for once, I'll let them be.
My mana activates around me and deflects multiple attacks heading my way, some of them really nasty. A burst of flames infused with disrupting mana burns through the body barrier of the nearest melee chump, and I boost my body toward the guides.
Seeing that I ignore the monster and am about to reach them, the two guides quickly reconsider the situation and disappear, their figures passing through the wall as if it wasn’t there.
The remaining people panic, and the two thylarin with question marks over their heads start searching for an escape route. The monster, on the other hand, now free of the guides' control, either as a direct result of Sophie’s actions or because the guides decided to let it go when they escaped, begins attacking anyone in its path.
I let the others deal with it and send my senses through the ship like a wave, before placing a few anchors and teleporting until I catch up to the guides.
The defenses of the ship, which seem to have dissipated for the most part, still seem to work in the place I find myself, and a rough set of vibrations starts shaking their way through my wounded body as if they were trying to tear me apart.
I strengthen my body and shake off the strangely awkward attempts at disruption thrown my way. And it’s then, after teleporting one last time, that I reach them.
The guide, sensing my anchor behind him, waits for me to appear and tries to stab me, but I just move to the side with a short burst of kinetic energy.
Swinging my arm, coated in oscillating mana, I pierce through his defenses, and his head flies away from his body, and a notification rings.
The second guide tries to pass through the wall again, but I disrupt his mana, and instead of passing through, he crashes into it.
“No, no, no, listen, if you kill me here…” I burrow my knee into his nether region and then smash the side of his head.
Then I do it again, put some mana threads around him, and kick his crotch once again.
Sending his location to Sophie, I then cut off his legs just in case and burn the wound closed so he doesn't bleed out.
At that moment, the Deathtrap shakes, and I can feel it start to drop out of the sky. An explosion sounds somewhere nearby, and a burst of powerful mana washes over the ship. An immense amount is released at once, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the ship from what I can sense.
Teleporting a few more times, I reach the location of the tear, before quickly being joined by the two remaining guides as they pass through the wall. Each of us stopping to stare at the giant hole in the wall of the ship, and the Mana Desert looming outside. There are tiny particles of white sand already crashing into the field covering the hole, the same as on the deck.
The guides are still wearing their signature white masks, so I can’t see their expressions, but I would say they seem scared.
“Backup source won't be able to handle it for longer than a few hours…”
“...wall, we need to move the plates to defend it…”
“...Just two of us…”
“Should we run? But how?”
“...don’t know what happened.”
There is a conversation going on quickly between them, their movements taking on an increasing sense of panic.
“The two guides I just took care of were the ones killing the other guides. They even brought a monster onto the ship and were cooperating with some of the passengers. Why?”
That makes them stop, and they turn to me.
“What makes you think I would know?! He and I are the rookies! The two you just killed were among the longest-serving guides around so why the fuck would they care one whit about us!.. But if you stop interrupting us, we will decide what to do to keep us all alive. We need to…”
“I’ll help, just tell me where the backup core is and I will give it some mana,” I say gesturing at my crown.
“[Mana Crown]?”
“Yes.”
“Do you even realize how much mana you would need to…”
“That’s my problem. Plus, we saw a storm heading this way; it’s still far away in this direction,” I say, pointing in the direction of the threat.
That seems to scare them even more than the broken core.
“Take him to the backup core; I will check the sensors to confirm.”
“We’re going to need to change direction as quickly as possible. If it’s the big one, it will…”
“I fucking know! Now go.” With that, the guide enters the wall and disappears.
This time I observe the process, and it seems like he is using some minuscule inscriptions left on the metal of the wall, in concert with a skill or item to do it.
I gesture to the second guide to wait a moment and teleport, going through the pockets of the guides I neutralized to take a few items and mana stones. Though I don’t find anything too interesting. That done, I follow the man to a well isolated and thoroughly hidden room. Given a bit of effort, I’m sure would probably have found it myself.
“You can go,” I say, gesturing dismissively, and he leaves without comment.
I enter and find a small room with a single pillar in the corner and a control panel directly attached to the crystal.
And yet, despite the amazing design of the ship, the equipment looks old, damaged, and somehow even the goddamned crystal manages to look rusty.
And to top it all off it only seems to be 20% full, and it’s depleting rapidly.
I spend a few minutes figuring out the rate of depletion, and when the ship starts shaking and lifting itself higher into the air, that rate increases. And then it speeds up even more as I sense the field around the ship change.
There is a control system to join in, and it only takes me a few minutes to realize that the hole in the side of the ship is eating through a lot of mana to block out the white sand. Without those metal plates, it’s going to be much hungrier than usual.
I think we still have somewhere around 2 days before we reach the central region. At this point, it’s a very rough estimate. Who knows what they did to sabotage us.
The crystal seems to be able to last for a day at most, probably even less.
Well, time to get to it.
I activate my skills and traits and start modifying the crystal.
Lily and Biscuit find me ten minutes later.
I get healed against my will and almost fall as my mana feet get replaced by new ones. As the wounds close, only then do I realize how much damage I actually took and register the presence of a small pool of blood at my feet.
“So?” I ask to take my mind away from it.
“A few got hurt, but nothing I couldn’t fix,” Lily says. “We killed the monster, but it deleted the web, so Sophie is rebuilding it and needs a meeting with you to add you in. I already let them know you are fine.”
“Sounds good.”
“A few more groups joined the attack, and we had to kill them, but it was doable. Tess also caught two of the 4-armed men. Sophie is trying to get into their minds, but it’s difficult. She’s just learned that there seems to be something very special in the direction we were heading.”
(Food!)
“I’m sure that’s not it, Biscuit. Lily, the guide is on his way, so don’t be surprised, and don’t kill him.”
“I wouldn’t…”
And right at that moment, the guide appears with a lovely new message, “We are fucked.”
Just like me, he quickly checks the remaining mana reserves, and his shoulders immediately drop, as if all the hope were leaving his body.
“Mind explaining?”
“We’re way off course; they must have messed with the navigation. It’s going to take at least a week to reach the central region. But that doesn’t matter because we can’t change our direction - they’ve locked it. The storm is one of the biggest I’ve ever seen, and we’re heading straight into it. We have enough mana for one more day, but not enough to outlast that.”
He crumples to the ground, sliding down the wall, and finally removes his mask, throwing it away and revealing the unshaven, tired face of an otherwise normal-looking man.
Looking at my preparations and the designs I’ve painted on the pillar in mana conductive paint and the inscriptions I’ve scratched on the surface, he sighs, “It could work, but even if you do have enough mana, we are screwed.”
“Can you pass it along to the others? Sophie might be able to get some information.”
Lily nods energetically, “I’m doing it already.”
“How long until the storm hits?” I ask, turning to the guide.
“Two to six hours; it’s hard to estimate, with how unpredictable they tend to be.”
“Is it so dangerous because it has the potential to overwhelm the field and defenses in metal plates?” I ask.
“Yes, plus the wind there is very powerful, it will…”
“Nat, the two blue men escaped. They... they are out in the desert?!” Lily has her eyes wide open as she processes the information she’s getting over the new link.
“Deck?” I ask.
“Yes,” she nods, and I put my hand on her shoulder and Biscuit, teleporting us to the top.
This time there are no interruptions to my teleport, and here I find the rest of group 4. All of them are glaring down at the two thylarin walking through the white sand.
There is no damage caused to their bodies.
“They had some kind of weird teleportation skill that let them get to the deck before they jumped down,” Sophie notes.
“Why are you not killing them?” I ask her.
“We need them,” Tess answers for her. “The guide you kept, Sophie couldn’t get any info out of him. Even as she pierced through his defenses, something the people from the central region put on him killed him.”
“So, you want me to get them? That’s so cruel of you; I might die, you know?” I say as I observe the fleeing thylarin.
They aren’t using any skills or mana, and just with the power of their bodies, they’re trying to run away. Right towards the storm, in the same direction as the ship.
It would be very simple to kill them, and they seem to realize it, but just that small chance of escape is probably better than if they had stayed on the ship.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do. Can you get them?” Tess says without hesitation.
“Yeah, I can get them,” I say, nodding as I do.
Then I hand Maya all my weapons and equipment, which she accepts with a dumbfounded expression on her face.
After that, I unbutton my shirt and pull it over my head before handing it to her.
“Yooo,” Maya mumbles, and the other members mutter their reactions.
Some shamelessly stare; some seem to be a bit embarrassed.
I’ve been getting ready for this for the past few days. My constructs, my unique passive, and all my other passives have been turned off for a while. All of my mana is also stored in the crown.
Currently, there is almost no mana in my body at all. I went through a lot of effort, going through multiple rounds of testing, and checks with Sophie just to be sure of it.
The only things inside my body are thermal and kinetic energy along with whatever tiny bits of mana I couldn’t get rid of.
Then I get to my pants, pull them down, and take a quick glance at Group 4, before turning around to remove my underwear and the rest of my clothes.
The only problem is my clothes and gear. I just found myself unable to get rid of all the mana clinging to them. There was always some remaining. And just that little bit would have been enough to doom me. As I’ve learned, the white sand only really becomes dangerous when it absorbs or detects mana or whatever it does. Then it grinds you into nothing, no matter your defenses.
That’s why the monsters in this desert have no mana at all. That’s why splashing a monster with even the slightest bit of mana lets the white sand finish it off.
“What do you think, Sophie?” I ask her without turning back to group 4. My back is still facing them.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHAT DO I THINK!? WHAT DO I THINK OF WHAT!?… oh… your mana.” She says, suddenly quiet. “I can’t feel any mana from you, none at all, just what’s in the crown.”
Even though my natural barrier is weaker from the lack of mana, it still seems to be working. One more thing to look into in the future. Still, I had to lower it so Sophie could scan me.
“Good.”
After that, I give the last order to the crown to float there. It consumes quite a bit of mana as it goes against its usual behavior, but it needs to be done.
I expunge mana from my body one more time and then jump over the railing. Right into the white sand below the ship.