Chương 454: (447) 6.61. I Can Be Very Persuasive

"Seriously?!" Vin asked, struggling to form a coherent sentence as his mind warred between chasing after Scule and Reginald and helping the dwarves." Now?!"" They just breached our border,"the Whisperer confirmed, and Vin thought he picked up on a hint of worry in her quiet tone." The misshapen ground is slowing them down, but it's not stopping them. Hundreds are flowing across the border every few seconds, and it doesn't appear as if there is an end to the tide of bodies.

At this rate, we are not going to have enough time to fully evacuate the Burrow."

"The Whisperer confirms, they're in the fragment," Vin told his friends, his hands shaking as he envisioned all the kind, peaceful dwarves down here being torn limb from limb as the trogums flooded the tunnels. Their plan to go straight for the Rebel Queen was a good one, but Scule and Reginald had only just started moving. It was going to take time for whatever was dragging the carcass they were hiding in back to wherever the Rebel Queen was located. Time that the dwarves simply didn't have."

Vin, my apprentices are speeding things up as we speak,"the Whisperer said, sounding hurried for the first time." Please, take the children and get them to safety. Some of us will follow, and the rest will bunker down within the Burrow and try to buy you some time."

"We're not just going to leave you to die!" Vin shouted, before realizing his friends had no idea what he was talking about.

"The Whisperer is telling us to take the children and run. To leave the rest of them to their fates."

"Do we even have another option?" Shia asked, clutching her staff to her chest as she looked between them.

"Vin, we're good, but we can't fight an army!"

"Numbers are the great equalizer," Alka nodded, her voice low and somber.

"We have to do as the Whisperer says. Save who we can while we still have the chance."

"There has to be another way!" Vin demanded, his eyes lighting up as he realized there was perhaps one thing they could try.

"The dungeon! If we can just figure out how to trip the failsafe the Gods built into the Underside, it will teleport all the dwarves to safety!"

"That would teleport everyone on the entire fragment down there!" Alka shouted, stomping up to him and grabbing him by the collar.

"That includes the trogums!"

"And not even Lumel could figure out how to do that manually," Shia added. Stepping between them, she laid a hand on Alka's shoulder, gently separating them as she turned to look at him.

"If a twice-prestiged Dimensional Mage couldn't figure it out in days of study, there's no chance we can manage it in the next hour. Vin… we can't save them all. We can't win this one."" The children have said their goodbyes and are ready to leave,"the Whisperer informed him." Please, Vin. Before it is too late." Vin stood there, his soul feeling like it was breaking as he took in Shia's pained face, Alka's clear anger, and the Whisperer's distraught pleading.

He refused to believe there was nothing they could do, but try as he might, he couldn't come up with an idea.

"I just… I learned a new spell," he offered weakly, hanging his head as he realized it was pointless." Mass Vibrations … I could slow them, or…"

"I'm going to start leading the children away," Shia said quietly, giving him one last look before turning and heading out of the room. Alka's head turned to follow her, before it snapped back to look at him.

"People die, Vin," she said bluntly.

"I know that better than anyone. I know it's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth. Better to save who you can than save none at all. With any luck, Scule and Reginald will make it to the Rebel Queen, and we can stop her before she takes out any more fragments after this one." With that, the Slayer turned and left the room, letting the door swing shut behind her with a bang. Vin remained standing there, at a loss for perhaps the first time in his life as to what he should be doing.

His heart screamed at him to do something, anything to slow down or stop the impending horde, but his friends were right. As high-leveled as he was. With as many spells as he knew. Vin couldn't defeat an army." It's alright, Vin,"the Whisperer reassured him. He could practically see her gentle, elderly smile directed at him as she sat in her chair sipping at her tea. Now that Shia had headed off to help ensure that the children made it out safely, she seemed at peace with what was going to happen."

Death is not pretty, but it is just as important a part in the cycle of mana as life. This is not the end for us. When you listen to the whispers of mana in your ear going forward, just know that I am a part of those very same whispers. I know I won't retain my mind or cognitive faculties, but perhaps I will be able to sway the mana into helping you in a future time of need. It is a pleasant thought."

"I don't need the mana to help me sometime in the future, I need it to help me now," Vin grumbled, casting a wide, multi-fragment-spanning Sense Soul one more time as he hunted for Scule's Soul Mark yet again. He knew there was no chance Scule and Reginald would have reached the Rebel Queen by now, but it was the one and only hope these people had.

As usual, he felt that slight hesitation in the mana of his spell as it passed through the fragment barrier, as though the mana were judging whether or not it was acceptable for such a vast form of magic to spread out as far as Vin wanted it to.

He knew there had to be an impossibly complex series of rules that the Gods had put in place in order to determine what was allowed to go from one fragment to the next, as otherwise, things like temperature or humidity would end up bleeding through the border, and the different world fragments would turn into one clustered mess. A small part of his mind began to wonder if Lumel had ever bothered trying to research how the fragments themselves were connected.

He had no doubt it was way more complicated than the Underside connections were, but even so— Vin froze, the Whisperer's reply falling on deaf ears as a sudden thought popped into his head. There was no guarantee it would work, and in fact it was quite possibly the riskiest thing he'd ever thought about doing, but there was a chance. A small one, for certain, but a chance nonetheless that he might be able to save the dwarves. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I have an idea!" he shouted, cutting the Whisperer off as he bolted out of the Burrow and sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him down one of the winding passageways that would lead to the surface. As he ran, he went back and forth over the idea in his mind, weighing the odds of it working or not. In the end, it would all come down to the mana, and just how much of a 'friend' he was to it as his Capstone suggested.

"Vin?

"the Whisperer continued speaking to him, sounding more confused than anything." What is it you are trying to do? I do not wish to see you throw your own life away in some futile attempt to save my people. The trogums will be here before you know it. You should leave."

"I'm not going to turn my back on people I might be able to save," Vin huffed, making a mental note that he really needed to practice sprinting more often. His Distance Runner passive didn't kick in if he was running full tilt, so he rarely went all out unless there was a genuine emergency. That said, he was still quite good when it came to running. And if he needed some divine sign that he was making the right choice, a notification he'd been waiting for for absolute ages finally popped up as he ran.

Running increased to lvl 20! 2, 000 exp gained. Vin grinned as he dismissed the notification, deciding to take that as a good sign in his favor. As he raced to the end of the tunnel, the Whisperer continued, her words even more quiet than normal." If you truly have a plan and are not just throwing yourself into harm's way in some foolish attempt to buy time at the cost of your own life…" she paused, clearly struggling to find the right words.

After a few seconds, she sighed, and Vin could hear the steel in her voice as her words grew stronger." …I will do what I can to support you. Though I cannot convince the mana to kill."

"Don't worry. If my half-baked plan works like I'm hoping it will, nobody will have to die. Not even the trogums!" Vin said, grabbing the ladder and scrambling up it before bursting out onto the surface. Turning toward the fragment barrier between this fragment and the one to the east, Vin cast." Redirect Gravity!" The world flipped around, and Vin shot upwards into the sky, covering ground far faster than he could ever hope to run.

As he flew, he focused on his core, breathing in deeply and borrowing mana from the world around him to keep his own mana from draining too quickly. There was less of it available up in the sky, but every little bit counted when his mana was currently draining from his pool like it was going out of style.

As he fell, Vin peered down at the ground, his face paling as he spotted the distant trogums. Or more appropriately, as he spotted the dark wave spreading out across the hilly ground. There had to be thousands of trogums rushing into this fragment one after another, screeching and pushing as they desperately raced forward, following the Rebel Queen's mental orders to find and kill the fragments' occupants so that she could claim it for herself.

The sight was unlike anything Vin had ever seen, and he gritted his teeth, praying that his idea would work as he continued falling to the east. Even with his core actively borrowing mana from his surroundings, he barely had enough to make it to the fragment border. After ending his spell and slowing his momentum, Vin used the last dregs in his core to cast Create Cloud, giving him a platform to stand upon a good half-mile overhead of the trogum horde.

A single glance down over the edge of his cloud at the writhing horde beneath him was enough to turn his stomach into a knot, and Vin tried to ignore the fact that if his spell wore out, his divine boon would save him from the fall, only for the throng of mindless trogums to tear him limb from limb in an instant. Putting that thought aside, Vin turned toward the fragment border, staring at the thin, almost invisible white wall that stood before him.

He'd crossed straight through these very borders time and time again throughout all his adventures on Edregon, but he'd never really stopped to think about what they entailed. Just like everything else in the universe, they were made of mana. Yet this was mana in a far purer form. Designed with one purpose and one purpose alone. To decide what was allowed to travel from one fragment to another.

"Mana!" Vin shouted, feeling a tad ridiculous as he held his arms out and stared up and into the barrier. While mana had certainly reached out to whisper to him before, he'd never really been the one to initiate the conversation. That said, it was quite literally do or die, so Vin shouted with everything he had.

"I need your help!" he continued, trying to focus on his Friend of Mana Capstone as he pleaded. Almost instinctively, he began venting what little dregs of mana he still had within his core, forcing his body to become a conduit again. He pulled in the mana from the world with every breath he took, and vented it with every syllable he uttered, trying his best to imbue his words with mana in a cheap imitation of the Whisperer.

"The people of this fragment are innocent, and they are going to be slaughtered! I need you to help me stop the Rebel Queen's mental commands from coming through to the trogum below!" Having declared his reckless plan to the world, Vin stood there, staring up at the heavens at the gentle, easily passible barrier between fragments. If he could just convince the mana to listen to him… But in response to his heartfelt cry, nothing happened. Vin stood there, breathing heavily as he cycled mana in and out of his body.

Yet no matter how hard he willed for his desires to happen, the barrier didn't change." It won't work,"the Whisperer muttered in his ear, her tone filled with sadness and resignation as she spoke." Mana cares little for what you or I see as innocent or evil. To it, we are all the same. Merely new, interesting forms it has taken for a brief heartbeat in its infinite existence. Something new for it to experience before it shifts into something else. I told you before, raw mana is like a curious child.

Its sole desire is to experience. It wants for nothing more than to experience change. It is why it allows us to harness its power and cast spells in the first place. Neither you nor I can convince it otherwise."

"Maybe not… but even if I can't convince it that those people down there don't deserve to be torn apart, that doesn't mean I can't convince it to change!" Vin said, shifting his mindset as he summoned his staff to his hand. The moment the colorful, glowing wood touched his skin, he grinned as he felt the staff's power radiate from its thin form. The staff was nothing if not stability and security given solid form, and that was precisely what Vin needed in this very instant.

"You're the one who decided I was your friend!" Vin shouted up at the barrier, his grip tightening around his staff as the air around him seemed to grow choppy and hot. Something gold and heavy flickered into existence for a moment and tugged at his chest as if in warning, but Vin barely even noticed, his eyes all but glued to the barrier and the shimmering, opaque mana making it up. The longer he stared, the more he saw beyond the pale barrier.

Not through it to the fragment on the other side, but through it, witnessing just a sliver of what it represented. Of what mana truly was. Of everything. Grand arcane discovery! 25, 000 exp gained. Level up! Adventurer of the Arcane lvl 52. +3 Attribute points to spend. +1 Skill point to spend.

Golden light erupted out of him as he screamed, the raw sound scraping from his throat carrying his intentions and desires just as eloquently as any of the infinite spoken language across all existence as far as the mana was concerned. Somehow, he knew the mana was listening, just as he knew that his idea had intrigued it. With the last of his willpower, before his strength left him completely, Vin drew his arm back.

And slammed his staff into the barrier dividing the two fragments, lodging the grand artifact into place as though he were striking a solid object.