Chương 456: (449) 6.63. Uno Reverse Card

With a groan, Vin opened his eyes, blinking a few times as he realized he was back in the real world once more. It seemed no matter how many times he was yanked away to chat with the Gods in that odd, black void of theirs, the return to his flesh and blood body never got any less jarring.

The first thing he noticed was that he was lying on his back on the cloud he'd created high above the buzzing throng of frenzied trogums, luckily not having rolled off the cloud and into the swarm below after triggering his divine boon from his reckless plan. The second thing he noticed was the cloudy, opaque wall directly in front of him, stretching for miles in all directions. Vin gasped as he realized what he was looking at, and he slowly got to his feet.

The thin, almost invisible barrier separating the invading trogums from the other fragment had been transformed into an actual barrier, one that Vin didn't have a single doubt was capable of stopping anything and everything in this entire world. Just by looking at it he could sense that the mana had all but solidified, growing impossibly dense and turning into a solid object. Arcane discovery! 10, 000 exp gained.

Jutting out of the now-solid barrier was his staff, standing firm and proud as the rings of different wood continued to glow from its base up to the tip. Its unyielding, indestructible properties had to have been the seed that the mana used to alter its own fragment barrier after Vin's desperate plea to be heard. Somehow, Vin knew in his very soul that all he would have to do to revert the fragment barrier back to normal was grab his staff and remove it from the barrier.

Until that time, this new, hardened barrier was here to stay." Vin…" the Whisperer spoke into his ear, her voice all but shaking as she gathered herself.

"... What did you do?"

"It's a little hard to explain, but long story short, I convinced the mana to intervene in order to save everyone," he explained, looking over the side of his cloud and letting out a sigh of relief at what he saw down below.

The lack of buzzing was the first indication that the trogums had been severed from the Rebel Queen once more, but it wasn't until he spotted the familiar sights of trogums plopping themselves down onto the ground as they began plucking blades of grass or collecting rocks as they tried to latch onto a purpose once more that he was certain his plan had worked." But how? I told you before, mana does not care for what we see as right or wrong. All it wishes to experience is change."

"Exactly. That's why I didn't bother bringing up the invasion or pleading to try to save your lives. All I did was convince the mana how much fun it would be to try shifting one of its fragment barriers to a solid form that would block everything from passing through it for a while," Vin said, watching the trogums as he spoke.

"I figured for an omnipotent entity that is constantly changing, briefly becoming rigid and structured of its own free will might be an interesting change of pace. It's basically what the Gods did with their invention of runes, right?" The Whisperer was silent for a moment, and Vin had the feeling she was trying and failing to decide on exactly what she wanted to say. After a few seconds, she sighed, her powerful voice brushing against him like a gentle gust of wind from miles away."

I will call off the evacuation and notify the others that they are safe to return. That barrier you somehow convinced the mana to create. It will hold?"

"Oh yeah, it's not going anywhere until I remove my staff," Vin said, glancing at exactly how high up he was. Even if anyone else were capable of pulling his staff from the barrier, at the moment, it was lodged a half-mile into the sky.

"Unless the Rebel Queen moves her position so that her mental magic broadcasts into this fragment from a different angle, your people are safe."" Excellent. This almost certainly goes without saying, but just to make it abundantly clear. You have my thanks for saving my people, Vin. We owe you a great debt."

"I wasn't just going to leave your people to get torn apart by a horde of mindless trogums," Vin snorted, still watching the trogums wandering about down below. He'd never seen so many of them clustered up in one location before, and he winced as one after another some of the trogums lifted their heads to the heavens and began emitting that buzzing sound once more. Rather than the powerful, mindless buzzing of before, these sounds were clearly of anguish, and he sighed as he realized what was happening.

There were enough trogums gathered below that some of them couldn't find unique actions to devote themselves to that weren't already taken. And that was saying something, seeing as he was well aware the trogums were willing to specify what they were doing to the point where there might be The One That Counts Circles of Grass in a Clockwise Direction sitting right next to The One That Counts Circles of Grass in a Counterc lockwise Direction.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Actually, if you don't mind, I think I might have to call in that supposed debt you owe me already. I know this is a weird request, but is there any chance your people can help out over here with the trogums? Now that they've been cut off from their Rebel Queen, they functionally have the intelligence of toddlers. Really, unnaturally focused toddlers."" You would have us care for the very people who were going to annihilate us mere minutes ago?

"the Whisperer asked, sounding more curious than angry." Why?"

"I mean, it's not really their fault. Without the Rebel Queen's mind magic turning them into a mindless army, they just want to carry out whatever purpose that pops into their heads," Vin shrugged, his heart sinking as he turned to gaze at the solid fragment barrier once more.

"While I may have saved you and your people, I only managed to convince the mana to do this much. The other fragments that the trogums attacked at the same time as yours have almost certainly been overrun by now, the people living within wiped out completely. My team is going to have to go after the Rebel Queen and take her down before she can push her invasion any farther than she already has.

When that happens, almost every single trogum she's created up until now is going to transform back into what you see below me."" Your cause is noble, Vin, there is no doubt about that. But the fact of the matter is that a few thousand trogums made it into our fragment before you sealed the barrier, and my people simply cannot provide for so many. At best, we could do a few hundred."

"That will have to do," Vin said, clenching his fists as he gazed down at the struggling horde. Without the Rebel Queen or someone to look after the trogums and provide them with food, they would almost certainly die. He didn't like the idea of being responsible for the complete eradication of a race of people, but it was that or allow the Rebel Queen to continue wiping out entire fragments with her armies. As he lamented what was to come, a new thought struck him.

"What if you had some help? The Rebel Queen has another form of trogum she can create as well. These elites are intelligent and capable of moving about on their own. I don't see any of them in the horde down below, but there were a good number of them back in their tunnels in their original fragment, running around and keeping all the others alive. Maybe we can convince a few of those to come help out once we end the Rebel Queen.""

If you can do that, then we will be more than happy to share some of our land with the trogums. However, it may make more sense to simply have them set up their own civilization in one of the fragments they just wiped out. My people could help them get settled, and we could even see about having them join the alliance between us and the elven Tamers we have been discussing."

"That's a bit dark… but yeah, I suppose that makes sense. They'll certainly have their choice of fragments to pick between…" According to Scule's and Reginald's scouting, the Rebel Queen had already managed to conquer three fragments before this latest attack. In the worst-case scenario, if the other two locations she struck at the same time as the dwarves fell to her, that meant there were now five fragments that had been utterly wiped out.

A massive chunk of Vin's map was about to have a large section with trogum scribbled over it, and he gritted his teeth as he pictured the Rebel Queen lounging within her tunnels, mentally wiping out entire civilizations with nothing more than an errant thought. During his entire conversation with the Whisperer, Vin had been opening his core, breathing in and burrowing mana from the world around him. His mana pool was just about refilled, which meant there was no point in waiting around.

Hopping off his cloud, he cast Redirect Gravity, falling back toward the Burrow as he thought about what came next. The moment his Soul Mark on Scule stopped moving, they were going to have to go in hard and fast, ideally taking out the Rebel Queen before she even knew what had hit her. Seeing as she was commanding armies to wipe out who knew how many people, Vin knew his divine boon wasn't going to be any problem with the task ahead.

In fact, he could practically feel Benevolence pleading with his soul to go and deal with the problem. Being forced to watch from on high as so many innocent lives were lost without being able to directly interfere and help… Vin hadn't really stopped to think about how difficult the new System had to be for the Gods. They'd had countless years to grow used to interfering with the lives of mortals, and all of a sudden, their powers were all but sealed away, only allowed to be gifted in tiny slivers of divine boons.

And now that he knew they had once been regular people like anyone else who had merely reached the pinnacle of leveling, his entire view had shifted when it came to the powerful beings. No matter how dangerous or powerful a God was, they were nothing compared to the blanket, infinite force of mana making up the entire universe. His latest grand arcane discovery made that more than clear to him, and Vin shuddered as he recalled the glimpse he'd gotten into everything as mana itself had turned its focus onto him.

If it hadn't been for his divine boon… Deciding that was a train of thought he'd really rather not go down, Vin did his best to put the memory aside. He could tell that Benevolence had somehow dampened the memory, similarly to what she'd done when he discovered Manacraft. The experiences had been similar to one another, but also incredibly different.

When he'd forced Runecraft to evolve into Manacraft, Vin had almost become mana, the runes making up his body trying to break apart at the same time and free the mana trapped within. This time, he had witnessed what mana was capable of with his mana sense and his own two eyes, aided by Beyond the Veil. It was like the difference between being chucked headfirst into a raging star versus drifting within its orbit, briefly watching from up close just how powerful it was and seeing all that it could accomplish.

Both were death sentences, but each resulted in him gleaning vastly different information.

"Last time I gained the power to talk to rats…" Vin muttered, crossing his arms as wind whipped through his hair and he fell through the sky.

"... I wonder what this brush with mana has in store for me."